Blog
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I need to budget my blogging time. Last week’s project time was taken up by blog writing, which is not how I’d prefer to use it. I’ve used various time-limiting strategies for my blogging in the past, so I need to revisit them or try new ones.
Finances
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I set up my budget in Quicken. It still needs refinement, but the basics are there. This week begins the March project month, and I’m continuing the finance project. My next step is creating a task list from the advice in my personal finance books.
The Savage Truth on Money is the personal finance book I’d recommend if you only wanted to read one. It’s wide ranging, packed with details, and friendly yet straight talking. Of course, I haven’t read many of these books, so take that recommendation for what it’s worth.
From Here to Financial Happiness is a devotional-style book for people who want to get started quickly. That is the opposite of my approach, so if it’s effective for such people, I wouldn’t know. But I value it for the bit it contributes to my overall understanding of money management.
Spenditude is a slightly confusing examination of three types of spenders. I think it’s really about two consistent approaches—wasteful and frugal—and an inconsistent third one that’s a mixture of the others. My takeaway was that consistent frugality is the way to financial success, but you can still give yourself a little freedom (though they hardly say anything about that, so I can’t tell if they mean it).
Work Your Money, Not Your Life is a mix of career counseling and financial advice aimed at letting you enjoy your work and semi-retire early. I don’t know how it ranks among all books of this sort, but I think it has a lot of advice worth considering.
The best part of The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning was that it introduced me to the Bogleheads. They’re a fan club for John Bogle, the revolutionary founder of Vanguard and all around good guy. Here’s a short video tribute to him. The book itself is jam packed with details and advice, but it was a slog to get through. It probably needs updating too, but that’s what their wiki is for.
I started watching stock and crypto trading streams. Not for advice or news really, just for the ambience of the live graphs and the chat.
Music
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City pop is my new finance soundtrack. It came up in an unrelated Twitch stream, but right away I found it went perfectly with the trading streams, so I looked up a playlist, and the whole week I kept it on in the background of anything I did with finance.
Housekeeping
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I chipped away at my pile of unfiled papers. The pile is gone now, and so I’m one step closer to cleaning the bedroom.
Spirituality
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I did exactly zero Immanuel prayer. I’ll need to find ways to motivate myself and fit it into my day.
Space
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I watched the landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars. My current interest in space started with the landing of InSight, NASA’s previous Mars mission, so I was looking forward to this one. I was also more anxious about it, now that I knew how risky these landings are. Plus its mission felt more weighty and exciting to me than InSight’s. So I shared the team’s relief and celebration when Perseverance landed safely.
