Money in the time of Cholera

 

Alright, so maybe cholera is not the right word here, but the situation right now is really bad, and it will probably get worse before it gets better. Thankfully, there’s a bunch of financially-oriented people out there, writing great blogs on how to deal with this mess. My current favorites are

www.consumerist.com

The Consumerist is a blog listing all sorts of great things, such as scam alerts, money-saving deals, customer complaints, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

www.thesimpledollar.com

This one I just discovered, but I really, really liked their 18 Things a New Homeowner Should Do Immediately to Save Money article. I’m going to make this a regular read.

www.yodlee.com and quicken online

The two links above are for two different website, both providing the same service: manage all your bank/credit card accounts at the same time.

You know that excel spreadsheet you’ve setup, with all your bank transactions, that you religiously kept updating until you forgot/deleted it/realized there was an error on it and just went crazy? These websites are the solution you’ve been asking for. The process goes something like this (using quicken online as an example):

1) Create a user account with quicken online (it’s totally free!)

2) Add your bank/credit card accounts to your quicken online account

3) Watch as quicken online downloads your transaction history, categorizes each transaction, then creates a expenses chart that tells you exactly where you’ve been spending your money

4) Come back the following day and watch quicken online update with your transactions from the previous day

5) Realize you’ve been spending too much money at gamestop, and that you need to start spending that money somewhere else (hmmmm….)

And that’s it! It’s much better than microsoft money, and there’s no files to worry about, since all the information is kept on the website. I’ve tried them both, and the process is the same (and both are free, no costs or strings attached). The main difference for me is that yodlee has a lot more features, but it is a bit rougher around the edges. Quicken is more streamlined, but much easier to use. For me, the extra features totally compensate for the occasional issue, so I’ve become a die-hard yodlee fan.

What about you, o ye reader? What do you use for your finances?

oh boy

Nothing cute to post right now…. The whole family was sick over the weekend. It actually started on thursday, and I thought it’d mostly gone away, but it hit full-force on saturday when Ginger really wasn’t doing very good, and then it hit me on sunday. Poor kids, had free reign of the house while Ginger and I mostly just limped around the house, and that when we had the energy to do that much.

We’re doing better know, thankfully. I’m at work, and Ginger is taking care of the kids. My apologies to any one we spread whatever-this-is to.

No bacteria, virus or pumpkin were harmed in the production of this post. The pumpkin depicted above is a talented stunt-pumpkin, hired exclusively for this post.

Babysitting duties & Peanuts

Some kind of bug hit at home, and Ginger and the kids aren’t doing so great today. Truth be told, I’m not feeling so great as well, though not nearly as bad as Ginger or CJ. I got permission from the boss (thanks, Jeff!) to go home and tend to the family. So I got to play baby-sitter and nurse today!

Ginger was really tired and needed some sleep, so after making sure that the kids had something to eat, she went to take a nap. Jordan wasn’t quite ready yet, so she went through some more nursing and a bottle of baby food before she finally crashed. CJ got to feel better soon, so now he’s back to his usual bouncing around the house. In an attempt to keep him under some form of control (I also needed to get some work done), we decided to go through a Peanuts marathon. So far, we probably watched about 8-9 episodes of peanuts. The funny thing is, there’s only 6 different episodes of peanuts between 3 dvds, so we’ve watched some episodes several times already. He doesn’t mind it at all, he’s loving it.

Snoopy prepares a choice Thanksgiving meal: Toast, popcorn and candy. Yum!

I used to be a big Peanuts fan when I was a little kid, until I was about 6 years old, when they stopped broadcasting it (along with the pink panther, mr. magoo, mighty mouse and a bunch of other pretty good ones). So i haven’t really minded the whole marathon thing. Besides, i was able to get much of my work done, with Jordan asleep and him mostly quiet in there watching it. Quiet, of course, doesn’t really apply to Caio, so it’d be more accurate to say that he’s not causing major chaos while watching it, so I guess we’re all good. Hopefully, everybody will wake up feeling better soon.

Video-game soundtracks

I’ve always been a little crazy about music. No, not the type that just listens to music all the time, and any type of music. Crazy as in, it has to be just right: the right style, the right type, the right sound quality, etc… I drive my wife crazy with complaints about bad speakers, distortion, mono sound, vibrations and other things.

My obsession with music actually extends to other media that use music, such as tv shows, video games, movies and just about any other thing that plays something on the background: does it match the mood, is it just plain stupid, is it too loud, on and on and on. I’ve just about given up many a movie and game because I couldn’t stand the soundtrack. After all, if it’s not pleasant to the ear, why stick around? (I told you, it was nuts)

I’ve recently started listening to game music more regularly than “music”.  This may come as surprising or even the ultimate expression of nuttiness, but if you think about it, why not? We’re very long past the age of pc speaker buzz and tweets. Even the not so recent games had real composers and musicians creating their music, people that have a passion for music. You’re bound to find good music to listen to!

To prove my point, I’m linking some of my favorite tracks, some new and not so old. Let’s not think of piracy or that it comes from a video-game; Instead, let us try to enjoy this as it is, just music!

First one up is from Harry Gregson-Williams, of “The Rock” fame (the movie, not the actor)

Second one up is from a very famous Japanese composer, Nobuo Uematsu

Next time I’ll post some of the really old school stuff. You’d be surprised!

Pictures of my kids!

I love my kids, and I love taking pictures of my kids. I don’t care if the pics aren’t that great, and I don’t know a thing about lighting, positioning, exposure time, blah blah blah blah. I just enjoy capturing those moments, or just any moments.

SO, I end up taking lots and lots of pictures. If you’d like to see them, the link is http://picasaweb.google.com/marciolsf. They’re organized by albums, and there’s about 70 albums, with varying number of pictures. Here’s a sample of some of the stuff you’ll find:

Feel free to link, download, comment, whatever! I try to keep it all up to date, so check back, there’ll be more stuff semi-regularly. Enjoy!