Finance and Fat

More Tips for Keeping a Clean Inbox

Posted on February 20, 2008 | by Franklin Thoreau | 291 Comments

I read an excellent article at Lifehacker recently, ‘Empty Your Inbox with the Trusted Trio‘. I don’t know about you, but I have tried several methods in the past and repeatedly failed at keeping a clean inbox. It’s too soon to tell for sure if this method will work, but I like it so far. Be sure to read the article for all of the details and related reference material. What I want to do here is simply share how I implemented this at work- specifically when using Microsoft Outlook 2003.

As written in the Lifehacker article, the premise here is to create 3 folders and process every item from your inbox using those 3 folders (anything that doesn’t fit these 3 would be deleted). The 3 folders are Archive, Follow-up, and Hold. I think they are relatively self-explanatory, but be sure to reference the original article for elaboration on those concepts.

Creating the 3 folders should be simple enough, and it is, but you need to take a few extra steps to make this system really useful. Outlook comes with a number of default folders that you are stuck with, or at least are likely to want to keep around because you are used to using them (such as Drafts, Outbox, Sent Items, etc…). I’m okay with keeping those folders, but I don’t want to look at them unless I have to. Based on this system, I will only be working with 3 folders so I want those to draw my visual focus to those 3 folders and make them easily distinguishable from the rest. You can accomplish this by creating your new folders and putting an underscore ( _ ) at the start of the folder name- this will keep the folders you want to focus on at the top of the list.

The next step is to make sure we don’t just put email in these folders and forget about it. It’s okay to forget about the archive folder since that can be searched later, but I want to know that I have items waiting for me in Follow-up and Hold. The easiest way to accomplish this is to right click on the folder, choose properties, select the General tab, and click on ‘Show total number of items‘ (see the image below). This will give you a numerical count of the emails in the folder and highlight the folder name in bold (see the above image). I think this gives you a nice way to track how much work you need to do while keeping your inbox clean and organized.

My next step will be to put this system in place on my Gmail account, though it is currently a bit of a mess so that may take some time. I’ll come back and share how I did that in the future.

Omron HBF-500 Scale Review

Posted on January 21, 2008 | by Franklin Thoreau | 6,412 Comments

Omron HBF 500 review I’m using the Omron HBF-500 Body Composition Monitor with Scale to track my weight, body fat, visceral fat, skeletal muscle, resting metabolism, and BMI. I really like the scale and I’m happy I bought it. If you aren’t tracking your body fat at all right now, I recommend you buy this or a similar scale that tracks body fat. There are less expensive options if you already own a scale and just need a way to track your body fat, such as the Omron HBF-306C Fat Loss Monitor (recommended by Lazy Man from Lazy Man & Health).

*Note – You need to be between 18 – 80 years old and between 3’4″ to 6′ 6-3/4″ tall for this scale to work for you.

The Omron HBF-500 Body Composition Monitor with Scale is about the size of a typical bathroom scale, but with a little more weight and bulk (hey, just like me!). With a multitude of buttons and a complicated digital display it looks quite a bit more advanced than the average bathroom scale, but don’t let that scare you–it is very easy to use once you get familiar with it.

You need to spend a few minutes configuring the scale before using it the first time. The first step is to set the date and time because the scale stores up to 90 days of results.

Next, you enter some personal information so the scale can track your statistics. This can be done for up to 4 people, and if you don’t want to store data or if you have used up all 4 spots, anyone can use the scale by selecting a ‘guest’ profile. You can also delete profiles and create new ones at any time.

Once you’ve stored a profile, using the scale is fairly simple, although you need to pay attention to the order of operations in order to get correct measurements.

Before stepping on the scale, turn it on with a large button on the back. The display flashes and changes to 0.00 when ready. After the display shows 0.00, and before you step on the scale, lift the display unit out of the scale (the small T-shaped thing) and hold handles firmly. Select your profile number and, finally, step on the scale. Wait a few seconds for the display to show your weight and begin to flash ‘START’. Then, raise your arms up to a 90 degree angle while holding the display (this all sounds a lot more complicated than it really is).

The scale rates your results in each category, based on your age and gender, with 4 classification symbols “-, 0, +, ++” (0 is normal). And these are saved for 90 days, so don’t worry about remembering everything each time you weigh in.

If you want to quickly check your weight without all this rigmarole, just turn the scale on, wait for 0.00 to display, and step on without grabbing the display unit. You don’t need to select a profile and your weight won’t be saved.

The instruction book is very informative on its own. Take some time to read it, because it describes what each category is, why it matters, and what range you should be in. For example, I had never heard of visceral fat before (it’s fat that surrounds internal organs). Turns out, too much visceral fat leads to high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

Summary
There is some debate over how accurate this form of body fat measurement is, but, unless you’re entering some sort of competition, all that matter is establishing a baseline for tracking your progress.

For myself, I was never going to go see a personal trainer or other professional to get my body fat measured, so this scale provides an easy to use body fat measurement at home that I can do any time (this is extra important when you don’t feel too proud of your body in its current shape).

I paid about $65 for the scale at Amazon.com. You may not want to spend that much money on a scale, but I would encourage you to get something, anything that allows you to measure your body fat. Omron also makes a handheld fat loss monitor for about $27, which makes sense if you already own a scale and want to save a little money. Or, if you don’t already own a good scale, just spend a little extra andget the Omron HBF-500 Body Composition Monitor with Scale so you can establish a baseline and track your progress over time.

Life is better today because I started ‘NOW’

Posted on January 9, 2008 | by Franklin Thoreau | 292 Comments

Start now. That is the best advice I can give for anything you want to change about your life. No matter what it is you want to do, take at least a few minutes today to do something that will get you started on your new plan.

I have lost 18 pounds since I started this blog in September. I still have plenty of pounds to lose, but I woke up feeling good this morning- I feel lighter and the same clothes that were a tight fit a few months ago are loose and will soon be too big. I would not feel this way today if I hadn’t made the effort back in September to start something. I started small, only trying to walk for 5-10 minutes per day and limit my calorie intake, but that was what I needed to get the ball rolling and start building momentum.

Setting a goal to walk for only 5 minutes may seem somewhat small and meaningless, but if you are coming from walking 0 minutes per day, 5 minutes is a huge improvement. The point is, no matter what the situation or what your goal is, changing your life can start today and it can start with something small.

Choose something you know you can do. Don’t wake up one day after months of inactivity and decide that you will jog for 30 minutes and lift weights. That is not realistic! Diets can fail for many reasons, but I believe the problem with a diet is the difficulty of making massive changes overnight. You aren’t building new habits if you take that approach. You are trying to force yourself to behave in a new, uncomfortable way- the odds of success are very slim.

No matter what you want to change in your life, I encourage you to start it now. Take the time to write down your long-term goal (perhaps losing 60 pounds or paying off $25K of debt). Think about where you are now and think about what you can do now (or at least today). Choose something that you can take care of in 5-10 minutes. It could be something simple like walking down your street and back, making an extra payment on a credit card, starting a budget, or getting a how-to book at the library- whatever you can do today, in a short amount of time, that will start you down the path to reaching your long term goal.

Decide what you will do today, then do it today and repeat it tomorrow.

There will be setbacks, there will be days you fail to keep up the pace, but the point is to build new habits. After a few weeks have gone by you will find yourself with a new point of view and that long term goal will seem a little bit closer.
Start now!

Should you be afraid of your debit card?

Posted on January 4, 2008 | by Franklin Thoreau | 341 Comments

Funny that this issue has come up a couple of times today. Both My Dollar Plan (25 Reasons to Love Credit Cards) and Blueprint for Financial Prosperity (Your Take: Why Use Debit Cards) wrote articles that touched on the lack of debit card fraud protection compared to credit cards.

I’m a little surprised that people are afraid to use a debit card due to fear of fraud or theft. According to Visa, you get the same fraud protection when you buy things with your Visa debit card-

*Visa’s Zero Liability policy took effect April 4, 2000, and is a great improvement on the previous policy. The former policy required that you report fraudulent activity within two business days of discovery. After this two-day period, you could be held responsible for up to $50 of the unauthorized charges. With the new Zero Liability policy, you’re no longer required to report fraudulent activity within two days and you’re not responsible for any fraudulent transactions made over the Visa network.

The Zero Liability policy covers all Visa credit and debit card transactions processed over the Visa network—online or off. The only transactions not covered under the Zero Liability policy are commercial card, ATM, and non-Visa-branded PIN transactions.

For transactions on other networks, the liability decision is left to the financial institution that issued your card. The issuer has the option of extending the same protections afforded by Visa’s Zero Liability policy.

You may also have more protection offered from your bank. I primarily use a WellsFargo Visa debit card right now and here is what they do on top of the Visa Zero Liability policy–

You won’t be responsible for promptly reported unauthorized transactions
You won’t be held responsible for any unauthorized purchases or ATM transactions, as long as they are reported promptly.

I don’t know. It seems pretty clear to me. I have no reason to be afraid of fraud when using my debit card (at least for CREDIT transactions). It is a little unclear what will happen to fraudulent PIN transactions, but that would of course require someone finding or stealing your card and knowing your PIN.

I had a fraudulent transaction once posted to my account via a stolen debit card number and I called the bank and had it removed (this was a smaller bank, not sure if it would have been better or worse with a big bank). It took about three days to clear up, so it is true that those funds were frozen during that time, but I was never actually at risk of losing the money. Sure, that was inconvenient, and I’ll give credit cards the advantage there, but are debit cards really that risky?

You may have other reasons for using a credit card over a debit card, rewards programs being the obvious number one choice, but I honestly don’t see the security risk. Am I missing something else?

Looking Back at Our First Cash Only Christmas

Posted on December 29, 2007 | by Franklin Thoreau | 236 Comments

I guess I didn’t really know how it would go, but this Christmas came and went just as quickly as the others before it. However, the big difference this year is that Christmas won’t be lingering in the form of credit card debt or budget regret. I can’t even begin to express how good that feels!

We didn’t plan all year long and we didn’t start saving last Christmas, but we did sit down in November and make a plan for Christmas- and we stuck to that plan. We took a portion of the money that would have gone toward extra debt payments in December and budgeted $800 for Christmas. That included gifts for everyone on our list, cost of food for hosting Christmas dinner at our house, and a little extra padding for unexpected expenses. I am happy to report that we came in under budget, by about $90.

This is the first Christmas I can remember that we didn’t use a credit card and didn’t over spend. Working with a budget for every person on our list was quite liberating. It made it easy to decide what to buy for someone- if we planned to only spend $25 on someone we wanted to make sure we got the best value we could for the money.

What to do if you took on debt to pay for Christmas this year:

If you had to use credit cards to pay for Christmas this year, don’t beat yourself up over it now. Recognize the mistakes you made and take action TODAY to prepare for next Christmas and to be ready to handle it with cash. If you don’t have one yet, open a savings account for Christmas. Call it your ‘Christmas Fund‘ and only use the money for Christmas. Decide now how much you need to spend for next Christmas and divide that total by 11 or 12 (decide if you want to count this month or start in January or whatever). The best advice is to set up an automatic transfer each month for your monthly Christmas Fund contribution so that you won’t even have to think about it. Personally, I don’t like to set up automatic payments or transfers for non-essentials so I will manually move the money each month- decide what works for you here and what you can safely commit to doing.

An example– I opened our Christmas Fund yesterday (with ING Direct) and funded it with $50. I chose $50 because I always start my new ING savings accounts with $50 (no particular reason for that). We have decided to budget $1,000 for next Christmas, which leaves $950 to save from January through November (11 months = $86.36 per month). That’s it! Next Christmas is taken care of! Of course I need to make that transfer a part of my monthly budget, but we can afford it so that won’t be a problem. So whatever your budget may be for next Christmas, decide it now, plan for it now, and get started TODAY! I promise you won’t regret it.

Remember, by preparing for next Christmas now, not only are you taking control of your money and making it work for you, but you are reversing the damaging effects of interest that you would be paying to a credit card company and actually earning interest all year long on your savings account. Compound interest working against you is the enemy of financial freedom and wealth. Compound interest working for you is your greatest ally in changing your financial future and becoming wealthy. This distinction is probably the greatest difference between the poor and the wealthy- don’t let this be another year that you move in the wrong direction.

Best of luck and Merry (cash) Christmas!