Every Friday is 11 Things day at Living Behind the Curve.
Are you feeling run down? Tired? Do you have that not-so-fresh feeling? Are you avoiding your friends and coworkers because you are certain that if someone so much as thinks of coughing in the same room as you, you’re going to get sick? You could say that the common cold or depression is the great health blight upon the modern world, but I say that it’s generalized malaise — I don’t know about the rest of the world, but we Americans don’t take care of ourselves at all, and we suffer the consequences by feeling like our filters are clogged most of the time. That’s me in a nutshell this week, so I thought I’d bring you my 11 Simple Frugal Methods for Curing Your Crappy Feeling. Now pay attention, because your mother has been telling you this same exact stuff for years.

1. Get more sleep. Almost nobody gets enough sleep at night, yours truly included. Get to bed just an hour earlier every night and see if that doesn’t help you feel a little better.

2. Get better sleep. Sometimes, more hours aren’t enough. If you’re snoring at night, or aren’t breathing properly, you’ll be working hard while you’re sleeping just to breathe. There are plenty of over-the-counter treatments for snoring, as well as decongestants and anti-histamines available that may help. You may also want to talk to your doctor if this is an issue. Another thing to consider, if you wake up with a sore back, you’re probably sleeping in pain. Try rotating and flipping your mattress, getting a mattress pad, or even consider buying a new bed. Your bed is supposed to be comfortable, and it’s worth the price.

3. Get more exercise. If you’re feeling rundown, listless, and generally blah, try moving a little. People weren’t designed to sit at a desk and stare at a computer all day, and I’m supremely guilty of this one. Exercising gets your everything moving, and encourages your body to repair and rebuild itself. It’s sort of like taking out the trash and fixing the holes in the walls of your house. Exercise also releases endorphins and other happy chemicals in your brain that make you feel good, which also helps.

4. Cut down on caffeine. I loves me some coffee, and so does everyone else. It’s yummy and creamy and gives that desperately-needed boost in the morning to do what needs to be done. Unfortunately, a raging caffeine addiction borks your body’s attempts to tell you “I’m tired, dumbass!” and generally provides artificial energy that rampages right over your physical needs. Coffee, and the wide variety of garbage we flavor it with, is also kinda tough on your digestion, but drinking a little less coffee and doing a little more in your day-to-day so you don’t need it will make you feel a little better.

5. Cut down on smoking. Same as with coffee. Everyone knows it’s bad for you. I will absolutely never tell an addict to quit their vice, but if it weren’t bad for you, it wouldn’t be a vice. Try to cut down. If you don’t want to or can’t cut down, try to improve the quality of your tobacco. In my experience, the really good premium tobacco is less bad for you than cheap tobacco. None of it is particularly good for you, but I will write an article in the future of the different levels of bad that different tobacco products posses. My hanging should be scheduled about three days after that, so watch this space for more information.

6. Eat more fresh vegetables. They’re full of vitamins and crap, but more importantly, they scrub out your colon and make you regular. Nothing makes you feel like crud than a cruddy colon, and honestly, what’s more enjoyable than a good poo?

7. Eat more red meat. This goes out especially to the women in the crowd. Keeping your iron levels up is kinda vital to having energy, and since women have higher iron requirements and are prone to building up and then expelling the blood-rich temporary lining in our uteri (uteruses?) it’s that much more important for us. Dark green veggies will also supply iron, but isn’t it great to know that, now and then, you can hoist a good steak to your health? And lets not forget those vital B vitamins, either!

8. Eat less crap. Junk food is bad for you, but it tastes so damn good! While all that weird post-modern food science voodoo in the ingredient list probably isn’t helping you any, when you eat junk food you’re not eating good-for-you-food, and so it’s sort of a double-whammy against your general well-being. This would also be a good place to mention multivitamins. If you’re not going to eat healthy, at least try to supplement your crap diet with supplements.

9. Get out more. Humans are social beings. Do you remember, in college, you’d stay up till stupid-o-clock in the morning debating philosophy or social science or music, and how intelligent and deep you felt, and how satisfying it was to binge on your snobby thought of the week? Simply interacting with people and talking will flood your brain with all those same happy chemicals that exercise does. You need to flex your brain, too, and conversation is one of the most efficient ways to do it.

10. Check for allergies. If you’re still feeling like crap, consider consulting with an allergist. There are uncounted walking wounded wandering through life with undiagnosed food allergies that don’t realize chronic malaise is a problem. There are rarely pleasant outcomes to allergist appointments — consider being told that you’re allergic to chocolate, or that you need to avoid wheat or soy for the rest of your life, and good luck to you if you do. If you search the web, there are plenty of elimination diets and other methods for self-diagnosing allergies, and if done properly I’ve seen them be very effective, but I won’t recommend one because I’ve never tried doing that sort of thing.

11. Have more sex. It combines interpersonal communication, exercise, usually a nice dinner, and some hard sleep afterwards. What’s not to love? Even an intimate evening for one helps get the blood and those wonderful sexy brain chemicals flowing. And yes, I advocate regular masturbation for all people, regardless of relationship status, but that’s another post. As long as you’re not doing anything enormously stupid, give it a shot. If absolutely nothing else, an orgasm is cheaper than a sleep aid.

If you’ve got any good tips to add, you know what to do. I’m going to bed now.

Every Monday is Intents and Purchases day at Living Behind the Curve.

I’m gonna take another swipe at the Personal Finance blogosphere. This might turn into a regular series. Please, helmets on.

A couple of things happened this weekend that really changed how I look at money and its place in my life. First, I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Love it or hate it, I think it’s become a perennial classic in modern personal finance literature. (There will be a full detailed book review in the near future, I promise.) Secondly, Dani basically sat me down for a financial meeting Saturday night and laid out a whole buttload of research she’s done on how we can restructure our finances to end up ahead of the game even if her new job becomes a worst-case scenario. While it hasn’t changed how I plan to use and treat my money much, my whole understanding of the process changed dramatically. The concepts of frugality, retirement, and asset were abstracts to me, I realized, but not any more.

The PF community, I think, suffers from the fact that most of its members became members in their attempt to recover from debt. PF bloggers are really, really good at getting people out of debt, and it’s a vitally important learning resource for millions of people. The problem I see is that once these people are out of debt, the PF zeitgeist starts to break down. We learn to live below our means because that’s what got us in trouble in the first place, we learn to be frugal so we can pay off our credit cards. And then, once the credit cards are gone, we pay off the cars! And the mortgage! And then we get a high-interest savings account and marvel at the power of compound interest!

This isn’t a bad way to look at everything, necessarily, but what I see is a whole community of risk-adverse cheapskates who are absolutely terrified of debt. In fact, PF community members have a nasty habit of portraying themselves as recovering victims of their own stupidity. Considering the source, it’s understandable, but it’s not healthy, and it’s not the best way.

I’ve said before that money isn’t a possession for its own sake, and it’s not some sort of evil enemy, it’s a tool. I’m going to amend my previous statement: money is potential power. Money does things, and money can make things happen, but in and of itself it doesn’t do much of anything. It’s just like a battery. When you plug batteries into your gizmos, your gizmos do things, but on their own, batteries just sit there, holding potential.

What the average person doesn’t seem to know, and what the PF community does a piss-poor job at communicating, is that we as citizens of the first world have enormous financial potential with the money we have right now. This includes those in debt and the poor. Almost nobody knows this because financial education is somewhere between abysmal and nonexistent, and because we exist in cultures that encourage us to fritter away our money on bullshit, and therefore become powerless. (If you’re at all familiar with political activism of almost any stripe, this should be a familiar concept.)

Personal finance should be about taking your money and maximizing it’s impact. The PF community does that… sorta… maybe… but most of the time, they get caught up in paying off those god damn credit cards. That’s a totally important thing, since we all know just how crippling consumer debt can be, but it’s not seeing the forest for the trees.

We need to reenvision personal finance. If money is power, then every dollar you bring home that you aren’t compelled to spend represents your power potential. Remember, money in and of itself doesn’t do anything. Your power potential is cumulative. If you have $500 after paying your bills in a month, you don’t have $500 f0r the month, you now have $500 more. It’s tempting to think of budgeting in cyclical months, but if credit card companies can treat your debt cumulatively with their compounding fees and interest, you can do that with your own money, and I think you should. And, it doesn’t matter if you have only a little money. Next month, you’ll have a little more. Even a little bit of money is potential power.

If money is potential power, and that potential power is cumulative, then frugality is the first step to increasing your rate of accumulation by decreasing the compulsion to spend. I don’t mean “stop compulsively shopping”, but you should stop that to. It’s the simple formula of “the less you spend, the more you save”. If you can reduce your power consumption, the power company will compel you to pay less. If you have no credit card debt, you aren’t compelled to feed a Visa.

If you’re spending your money on crap, you are essentially giving your power to the merchants, and you are never compelled to buy crap. You get stuff, and the merchants get profit that they can leverage into building their business, destroying their competitor, or buying a congressman to change industry regulations in the merchant’s favor. It may not be a lot of money to you or the merchant, but the merchants know that little bits here and there accumulate, and so should you. Being in debt is worse — when you buy things on credit, you’re traveling through time and giving away power from your future! Be frugal, hang on to the little bits, and they will accumulate for you too.

So, if money is potential power, and frugality allows you to maximize its accumulation, Personal Finance is the practice that realizes the power of your money. Saving, investment, philanthropy and mindful spending are all how you maximize your money’s power to your greatest benefit. Interest and investment begets more money. Philanthropy begets power to groups, ideas or problems that you feel needs it. Mindful spending begets satisfaction.

It’s all a process, and with a little work and a little luck, with time it speeds up. With a little more time, and a little more luck, the process becomes self-perpetuating, and the instant that happens, you’ve achieved financial independence. Retirement.

Freedom.

~~~

None of this is news. It’s not even that original of an idea, but this concept suddenly popped up and slapped me hard across the face on Saturday night, everything fell into focus all at once. I haven’t heard a single person talking about money like this in the PF blogosphere, and hopefully if I put it out there, it’ll give someone else that “ah-ha!” moment so that like me, they now know what they need to do to achieve their goals.

Next week, Dani will be detailing the budgeting ideas she came up with that inspired this post. It’s not for the weak of heart — risks will be taken, and retirement plans will be plundered. Stay tuned.

We participated in a number of festivals and carnivals this week (and even made editor’s choice!); here are some of our favorite entries from each.

Broke-Ass Student kicked off the week by hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance. Moneymonk asked, “What is Considered an Emergency?“, a post that hits very close to home this week, as did The Cost of Financial Independance by Money Ning and Blunt Money’s 4 Good Reasons not to Raid the 401(k). Our post from last Friday, Sweatin’ to the Low-Calorie, Fat-Free South Beach Cabbage Soup Finance was picked as a host favorite.

Also on Tuesday, Mr. Credit Card welcomed everyone to the 82nd Festival of Frugality by weaving the festival’s posts into a conversation between a father and son. There were some great tips to be found in How to Reduce the Cost of Running a House at UK House Prices, and a great take on why we do what we do in The Simple Dollar’s When Frugality is Fun. Our contribution was Making Memories, Saving Money.

Later in the week, the Carnival of Ethics, Values, and Personal Finance was posted at Money and Values. I found inspiration in How to Quit Your Job at Advice and Rants, and Christine Kane’s Are You Saving Money or Wasting Time?. Mer’s post You Don’t Have to Have Money to be Rich was a top pick.

Rounding out the week, Coming to a Nursery Near You hosted this week’s Carnival of the Recipes, which focused on barbecue sauce. The next time we have fried chicken, I’m looking forward to throwing this recipe together; I might try this one tomorrow on the pork roast in our freezer. Our own WTFBBQ was featured.

Thanks to all the hosts and participants - it was a great week. Have a great weekend - see you Monday!

Every Friday is 11 Things day at Living Behind the Curve.

One of the classic Internet truisms is that the web is a treasure trove of free software. Unfortunately, many of the free programs available today contain spyware, malware, or viruses. There are still some true gems out there, if you know where to look.

Mer and I put on our thinking caps to bring you this list of excellent free software, in celebration of Embrace Your Geekiness day. Although I am a regular Ubuntu user, I decided to make this list Windows-centric simply because almost everything in the Linux ‘verse is already free. I do use Windows daily at work, however, and can vouch for every one of these programs (except Podcast Ready - that’s Mer’s addition.)

11 Free Things You Can Get on the Internet That Won’t Turn Your Computer Into a Zombie:

1. Documents and Spreadsheets
   The best free alternative to Microsoft Office is OpenOffice. It reads and writes to .doc and .xls formats (Word and Excel formats, respectively), as well as the standard Open Document formats .odt and .ods. In addition to word processing and spreadsheets, the suite also includes database and presentation software. It’s incredibly intuitive, and I find Writer and Calc much easier to use than Word and Excel. For an on-line alternative, try GoogleDocs.
2. Image Editing
   Rather than pay hundreds of dollars for a copy of Adobe’s Photoshop, why not install The GIMP? This image editing and manipulation software has many of the same features as Photoshop, and there is an incredible wealth of user-generated GIMP tutorials on the Internet that walk the user through tasks like removing red-eye.
3. Web Browsing
   Firefox is quickly gaining ground on Internet Explorer in the browser wars, and with good reason. It’s secure and customizable, and works well with almost every site on the web (Microsoft’s Outlook Web Access even functions in Firefox.)
4. Internet Security
   If you’d like to protect your computer from a world of nasties, I highly recommend Sandboxie. When you launch your browser with Sandboxie, all cookies, programs, and anything else that would normally be deposited in the depths of your computer is instead quarantined in a pre-defined area. I use Sandboxie whenever I am working in Windows, and I am frequently amazed by the amount of crap that comes from seemingly innocuous sites.
5. Working with PDF Documents
   Adobe distributes its Acrobat Reader free of charge, but it is a major resource hog, especially when dealing with multiple-page PDFs like eBooks. A great alternative is FoxIt, a PDF reader that prides itself on being both small and fast. If you’d like to be able to create PDFs, try PDFCreator.
6. Instant Messaging
   There are a plethora of free IM clients available, but our household favorite is Pidgin. Pidgin (formerly known as GAIM) allows you to sign into all your messaging clients from within one application, which saves on screen clutter and system resource use. If you frequently move between computers, or would like that ability to chat without a software installation, try Meebo, a browser-based IM client that interfaces with all the major networks.
7. Audio Editing
   If you have ever had the desire to cut your own ringtone, remix tracks into mash-ups, record your own music or even create your own podcast, Audacity is for you. It is the standard among podcasters and amateur audiophiles across the Internet, and the absolute best audio recording and editing software available for the price. Be warned that you will need to install the LAME encoder in order to save files in MP3 format, but don’t worry — the program will tell you exactly what you need to do. Once it’s installed, you can convert between WAV, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, but if all you want to do is convert your music files, we recommend Switch instead, as it offers many more format options.
8. Website and Blog Content Managment
   The widespread use of WordPress may be responsible for the blogosphere as we know it today. As a content management system, it provides an interface for layout and design tweaks, storage for works-in-progress, and its scheduled post feature is a godsend. (That’s not actually me posting content at 5:00 AM every morning.) In fact, it has too many nifty features to list here, so suffice it to say that Wordpress is robust, powerful, and easy to use.
9. Listening to Podcasts
   Podcast Ready is a program that organizes and automatically downloads podcasts that you are subscribed to. From within the Podcast Ready software, you can browse and subscribe to an extensive collection of podcasts. You can also trade favorite podcasts with other Podcast Ready network members.
10. Email
    The cousin to Firefox, Thunderbird is Mozilla’s email client. More similar to Outlook Express than the full version of Outlook, it’s a nice simple client for anyone that relies on a local copy of their POP3 or IMAP email. The best web-based client, of course, is GMail. I run Thunderbird once every few months against my GMail accounts to create a local backup of all of my email.
11. Music, Movies and Video
    VLC is a cross-platform open source media player that natively supports most media file types, including MPEG, AVI, MP3, AAC (and therefore iTunes’ M4A files) WMV, MP4, MOV, WMA, WAV, FLV (Flash Video), MPEG, and DIV-X.

A final note - many of the programs listed above are available as portable applications. Portable apps are designed to run from an external USB stick, leaving no trace of themselves behind once the drive is removed.

So, what is your favorite free program? Tell us all about it in the comments.

Every Tuesday is Kitchen Sink day at Living Behind the Curve.

We’re ready to take over the world now. All of our devious plans are shining in their color-coded glory for the whole world to see (if you define the whole world as our cat and anyone who happens to be peeking in our windows). The secret to our newly-found success is a wall-sized whiteboard that we hacked together for about $10.

The project was inspired by this article — we took the basic concept and tweaked it to our needs.

How to Make a Wall-Sized Whiteboard for about $10

• Go to your local hardware store, plumbing supply warehouse, or big box DIY retailer and buy a sheet of smooth white showerboard.
  We visited our local Lowe’s, and found that they sell standard 4′x8′ sheets for $10, and 32″x48″ sheets for $9, specifically marketed for use as dry-erase boards. We purchased the smaller size, because we did not have the room for 32 square feet of whiteboard space. (Some day, I will have a room covered in white board, where I can doodle away. Right now, however, the wall space in our dining-room-cum-office is limited.)
• Find a location, and decide how you’ll attach it.
  The original article involved laminating a sheet of shower board to another sheet of plywood. If you plant to lean your board up against the wall, this is probably a good idea; if you decide to hang it on the wall, however, it’s overkill. If you have drywall, some anchored screws will work just fine. Ours happens to be located on an exterior wall, and rather than break out the masonry bits, we used construction adhesive. The edges are temporarily affixed with masking tape while the adhesive cures.
• Ready, set, brainstorm! (And color!)
  You will need dry erase markers for this part, but you can pick those up just about anywhere. It’s a lot of fun to doodle on the board, and we now have one landing spot for all of our brain dumps.

There are some drawbacks, of course. The board doesn’t have a shelf for markers, although a small strip of molding would remedy that. It’s also not magnetic…but that’s what the fridge is for, right? A look at the price difference tells me it’s well-worth the trade-off, though: Staples sells a slightly smaller whiteboard (31″x48″) on their web site for $94.99.

If you’re not in the mood for a DIY project, or if permanently adhering something to your wall would cause your landlord to break out in hives, there are a few tricks you can use in an emergency brainstorming situation.

• Use a cleaner approach
  If your shower is made of showerboard, you can doodle on it with dry-erase markers. It’s temporary, but useful. (Don’t try this on marble, ceramic, or granite, though - the markers will stain.)
• Look outside
  Dry-erase markers also work on smooth glass. Hang a light-colored curtain or other fabric behind a glass storm door, and you have an instant whiteboard.
• Food for thought
  Many refrigerators have a non-porous surface that dry erase markers will do well on. I wouldn’t recommend using them on stainless steel, however.

A final note of caution: markers will eventually stain even the best dry-erase surfaces. You might want to do a test run in an inconspicuous spot before drawing on your appliances. Windex will normally clean up what a towel will not.