Category: Blog

It has been exactly 3 months since I outlined my goals for 2009. Let’s review my progress:

1. Run 5 miles in 35 minutes

I’m off to a good start with this one. So far, I can run a 6:58 min/mile pace for a little over 2 miles. I can run 5 miles at a much slower pace, so I am trying to find a balance between running both short and long mileages. Does anyone know what a good approach would be? I’m hoping to hit this goal by the latter part of the summer, when I can have some more time to run outside. In the meantime, I am enjoying the episodes of Family Fuud that are displayed above the treadmill!

2. Reach conversational level in Spanish

Haven’t done much here. In August, I’m hoping to travel for a month in Spanish-speaking countries, so I plan on bumping up my training closer to that time. By doing a few Google searches, I have compiled a list of the top Spanish action verbs and spoken words. I will use the Tim Ferriss method first – deconstructing the language grammatically – then I will undergo a calculated memorization operation to help boost my vocabulary as efficiently as possible. Look for a blog post in the next few months.

3. Read and take notes on 3 out of 77 books on the Personal MBA reading list.

I have 3-4 more books in the pipeline before I plan on tackling this goal. Thanks to a gift from my friend Dan, I already have my first Personal MBA book in possession: Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Do you have recommendations for the other 2?

4. Compose a photo-journal coffee table book of my abroad experience in Nepal.

I have collected and sorted through my field notes and class materials, and have a first-draft introduction written out. The whole book should take 5-10 hours to put together. Have any of you used Blurb.com? Looking at the cost of self-publishing a photojournal, it appears to be more expensive than I was originally intending. Are you familiar with any alternatives?

5. Expand my blogging audience to at least 100 RSS subscribers.

In January, I was wavering between 15 and 17 subscribers. Now, I range between 35 and 40! What a jump! I have been meeting people through Twitter and the Travel Blog Exchange and am finding myself much more engaged in the blogging community than I have been in the past. To my regular readers: thank you. Keep the comments and emails coming, and let me know if you have any suggestions! To my new readers: welcome! I look forward to cranking out some good posts for you.

6. Clean up my research paper on vertical farming and send it to Dickson Despommier at Columbia University.

Oops. Forgot about this one.

7. Complete the Hundred Push Ups challenge

The 100 Push Ups challenge is a six-week program that builds endurance, enough to do 100 consecutive push ups. I started this a little over a month ago, but have been stuck at week 4 for the last few weeks. This week, I stopped my push ups altogether and have been replacing those workouts with full body workouts at the gym. When I travel to Eastern Europe in a few weeks, I plan on resuming my training back at week 3 or week 4.

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Next update: July 1, 2009. Until then, I leave you with a quote.

Attitude almost always determines your altitude in life.

Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Gee, it’s good to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case
Honey disconnect the phone
I’m back in the USSR
You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the US
Back in the US
Back in the USSR

Just as my African survey in February had a theme song (Toto – Africa, which is coincidentally one of the greatest karaoke performances of my life), it looks like I will be listening to the Beatles’ Back in the USSR to gear up for this trip. My itinerary is still being finalized, but here are the tentative dates for my spring survey:

23 Apr: Boston to Frankfurt to Minsk
24 Apr – 30 Apr: Minsk, Belarus
1 May – 8 May: Kiev, Ukraine (transfer in Frankfurt)
9 May – 16 May: Bucharest, Romania (transfer in Munich)
17 May – 25 May: Tirana, Albania
26 May: Tirana to Munich to Boston

Ok, so not all my cities are part of the former USSR, but considering I spent some time in the Soviet hinterland last November, I’m excited to go back! If any of my readers happen to be in either of these four cities, please let me know, as I would be happy to meet up.

In other news:

• I just started Ramit Sethi’s new book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich – a 6-week program designed to increase the reader’s financial literacy. So far, so good.
• I also write for a non-profit/technology blog called Twiver. Check out my latest post called “Giving Away $90,000 Through Twitter.“
• I rediscovered my love for Trader Joes.

Mapping your financial infrastructure is a mundane task. It’s not exciting. It’s not likely to save you big bucks. Instead, it’s the sort of Big Picture exercise that each of us ought to perform from time-to-time just to be sure that everything’s working the way we think it is. If you do this every year or two, you just might catch some inefficiencies that need to be corrected. I did.

J.D. Roth – GetRichSlowly.org

Over the last year, my approach to personal finance has become much more deliberate. Through a college class, I was exposed to a wide range of fundamental principles, principles that, at 22 years old, I had never really thought about before. Buzzwords like dollar-cost averaging, compound interest, and amortization now make sense. In an effort to continue my education and ultimately optimize my finances, I subscribed to two personal finance blogs – one focused on finance for post-college graduates and entrepreneurs (I Will Teach You To Be Rich), the other focused on sensible core philosophies (Get Rich Slowly).

This morning, I read a post by J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly titled My Financial Infrastructure. J.D. writes about how important it is to look at your big financial picture every couple of years – mapping out how your money is handled and filtered is the first step in optimization. Below is my own attempt at financial mapping.

Personal Checking

I use Bank of America as my personal checking account. Through my employer I have a direct deposit into this account, and any cash I withdraw or check that I write will come from this pool of money. I have used BoA’s Bill Pay to automate all of the following bills/payments:

• Bill: Apartment rent, once every other month
• Bill: Comcast Internet and Cable, once a month
• Bill: BoA WorldPoints credit card, once a month
• Transfer: to ING Savings account, once a month
• Transfer: to AmericanFunds investment, once a month
• Bill: Student loan #1
• Bill: Student loan #2

Credit Cards

For work, I use a corporate AMEX. All of my statements and reward points are available online, and I sign on a few times a year to do my expense report. My personal card is a Bank of America World Points Visa, and both this card and my BoA checking account are synced together into one online portal. I pay off my credit card in full every month (I am fortunate to be able to do so), and each year I get 50% more reward points for maintaining my BoA checking account. I also have a CitiBank credit card that I used as a backup card during college. The account is still open, but I haven’t made any charges on it in over a year. Hmm. I should probably call them up to see if canceling the card is a good idea – will that affect my credit score? Note:  at some point I will be reevaluating my choice in credit cards, as I’m sure there are better offers out there. For now, I am happy with BoA as my primary card.

Savings

I use ING Direct for my savings account. Their Orange Savings account has two features that I find attractive. 1) They offer competitive interest rates and 2) You can create and label multiple savings accounts on one screen. For instance, I have one “emergency fund” account that I put money into in case of – you guessed it – an emergency, and another one for a climbing trip I plan on taking in the next couple of years. Setting up targeted accounts is incredibly easy. For a fantastic list of other high-interest savings accounts, check out this page.

Investments

Through my employer I have a 401K account setup with Nationwide. My current plan is to invest 13.3% of my gross monthly income into my 401K. I’m all about those tax-free dollars! I also invest monthly into two long-term mutual funds through AmericanFunds. Because I invest at regular intervals, I am taking advantage of dollar-cost-averaging – hopefully I can ride out the economic storm and see some growth over the next 10, 20, 30 years. at this point in time, I do not own shares of single stock.

Student Loans

I have one small loan through the Missouri State Government at a non-variable 6.8% interest rate, and one much larger loan through SunTrust Bank at a variable interest rate, which is now at 2.75%. I am set up to pay back both loans in 10 years, and I automatically have the payments deducted each month from my checking account. As long as the market generates historical returns of 8-10%, my money is more valuable in the market. Each month I make the minimum payment and no more. For peace of mind, though, I may try to pay back the 6.8% loan in the next couple of years.

Syncing It All Together

I use Mint.com for my financial snapshot. Mint aggregates all my online accounts into one portal. Their usability is strong, and I foresee using Mint much more regularly as my finances become more complicated in the future. For now, I have them send me weekly updates via Email.

Those are my finances in a nutshell. Hope this post was more useful than dull! How do you handle your money?

(image from Flickr user sirwiseowl)

On January 1st, I outlined my goals for 2009 in a blog post titled, “Make concrete goals, not sweeping resolutions.” Inspired by a few articles I came across during the latter half of 2008, I created 7 tasks to complete throughout the year. It’s almost the end of March, and while my goals are progressing – I will write a post about that in a few weeks – I sometimes find it difficult to make time for these 7 projects.

That’s always been an issue with me – time. In high school, procrastination and I, we were close friends. During my second semester of college, I spread myself so thin that one night, I had a panic attack (luckily my first and only). I realized at that point that I needed to cut back on a few activities and reevaluate how I manage time. Since then, I have always been fascinated with how people choose to fill/use their days.

Some people are virtuosos at juggling many different projects simultaneously. Entire books, like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, explore the getting-things-done philosophy, and blogs-upon-blogs offer various tips and tricks on productivity, optimization, efficiency and the like. Tim Ferriss, Leo Babauta, and Jay White are some great places to get started.

So recently I started thinking about where I could improve my time management. Because I am out of the country about 5 months in a given year, I am most interested in optimizing my stateside time. If you find yourself looking for extra time to get something done, then try out this simple, two-step exercise.

1. Start by breaking down your 24-hour day
I used the following 5 categories, as I like to keep my metrics simple. Too many numbers and I begin to lose focus. Feel free to use your own categories.

• Sleep
• Work
• Bathroom Time
• Exercise
• Food

2. Allocate your 24 hours, look at the remaining time
Obviously these categories will not take the same amount of time every day – after all, we aren’t drones – but I tried to allocate my hours as accurately as possible for an average day.

• Sleep – 8 hours
• Work – 9 hours (everything that takes place in the office, including 1 hour of commuting)
• Bathroom Time – 30 minutes (at home)
• Exercise – 1.5 hours
• Food – 1 hour

Total allocated hours = 20 hours
Total unallocated hours = 4 hours

Well, there you have it. I just discovered that given my current lifestyle, I have 4 hours of getting-things-done time every day. That’s a lot! Granted, these numbers are not exact, and neither are my categories, but hopefully, by deconstructing your 24-hour day through this exercise, you will discover how precious those unallocated hours are. Remove your daily obligations, and you are presented with personal time – just like that. In my life right now, I find myself using these hours to chip away at my 7 resolutions and to have fun and relax with friends. How do you use yours?

Is this exercise helpful? How would you have done it differently?

Note: if you are viewing this in an email or RSS, then you won’t be able to view the videos. Hop on over to the9to5alternative.com to see! Any problems please let me know.

5 videos, totaling 3 minutes and 26 seconds of the most insane footage that you’ve ever seen!

Not really. To be honest, I’m a horrible videographer. In many of my home movies, I have this strange, Blair Witch-esque obsession where I position the camera under my chin. I promise, I’m not that into myself – I just need to think a little more about how a short clip should be structured. Cheers to better video clips in the future!

1. Entering Germany for the first time. With a 6 hour layover, I hopped on the train into downtown Frankfurt for a little tour and a fierce hunt for food. Unfortunate for me – no food.

2. Taken on the drive from Lagos to Ibadan, Nigeria. Shola, my driver, talked so loudly that I often had to finger plug my ears. He is speaking to his sister in Yerba.

3. After a first day of surveying in Ibadan. I took a quick panoramic shot of the Ring Road traffic congestion.

4. In Kakum National Park in Accra, Ghana. Welcome to the rainforest canopy tour – what an amazing morning.

5. On the trail, I ran into a coconut and palm wine stand. After this guy chopped my up a sweet coconut, I downed enough palm wine to render me tipsy for the remainder of the hike. Nice!