Your Money or your Life is a step by step guide to making you wake up and pay attention to where your money is going, and how you let it get there. If you are unhappy with your financial situation in any way, you need to get on top of it and this book is a valuable eye opener.

I consider myself very on-top of our finances. I can tell you the balance + or – 20 dollars on each of our accounts – from student loans to credit cards to our chequing account to our investments – at the drop of a hat. I can tell you what the interest rates are on all of our liabilities, and the current status of everything that is on either of our credit reports.

I also have a tendency to gloss over the big picture in my head, focusing instead on the here and now – where money needs to be to cover what, if I can make a purchase “work” right now with moving things around where required. We always pay more than the minimum payment on our debts each month, but I have a tendency to use credit more than I should as well. I never backed up and looked at the big picture quite as well as I should.

I now have, very clearly, all sorts of information.

– I know pretty closely what Reilly and I have earned in our lifetimes.

– I know our current net worth – what we have to show for all we’ve earned.

– I know how much time Reilly and I actually spend for each dollar we bring home – calculating in the extra hours and expenses to maintain our jobs such as clothing, lunches at work, drinks after work, commuting time etc.

– I know where almost every dollar we spent last month went.

– I know how many hours each of our spending categories cost us in real working time.

– We’ve contemplated our values, goals, and what is important to us.

– I’ve analyzed each of our spending categories to determine if the expense brought us fulfillment, and if it is in alignment with our values and goals.

– I’ve begun tracking a very simple yet sobering set of numbers, Our Income vs. Our Expenses. The expenses line is currently higher than the income. This will be going on our wall, as a daily reminder.

Going forward, we will continue to track each dollar we spend each month and categorize and analyze our spending in these ways. Once we’ve done this for a few months, we’ll begin to follow some of the later steps in the book, which focus around changing behaviours. That is, other than the changes that we’ll already have made simply by being more aware.

It’s funny. Even the very simple step of remembering to ask myself “Will this purchase bring me fulfillment? Is it in alignment with our values and goals?” before each purchase has caused my spending to go down in the few short days I’ve been doing so. It’s just a matter of being realistic, and actually paying attention to what I’m spending and on what.

On that same note… I used to track all of our expenses this way through online banking and Quicken, but stopped when the budgets never worked as there were always “unexpected” payments each month that threw the whole thing off. I realize now that – like diets – budgeting doesn’t work. The key is simply to track and pay attention to where the money is going, but not try to follow a strict budget as there are always unforeseen expenses and it will never turn out the way you expect it to, and thus you are always failing. So – I found my copy of Quicken, and installed it. After a while deciphering unclear error codes, I discovered that the banks no longer support Quicken 2000. They no longer support Quicken 2001 for that matter. As a result, if I want to use Quicken, I’m required to upgrade – for the tiny little cost of $100. Huh? I paid my dues when I bought the first version, and the program itself works fine. Intuit even still supports it insofar as upgrades and online support go, but it’s the banks that don’t. Go figure that they’re the ones who want everyone to spend the $$$ to upgrade a product that isn’t even theirs.

Anyways, so rather than shell out more $$ for the basic functionality I need, I spent an hour pulling all my transactions from the past month into Excel as a dump from online banking, which is thank goodness a simple procedure. I discovered it takes me no real extra time to categorize all my expenses and sum each category in Excel as it did in Quicken. That, and the ability to see my total income and total expenses, which I can, is simple, and easily doable in Excel. And I saved $100.

The one piece that I wasn’t buying at first – the high degree of auditory – was quickly explained when it mentioned “maintaining significant internal dialogues with yourself” – and then it all made sense. Try it for yourself.

My Brain Usage Profile

Auditory : 72%
Visual : 27%
Left : 63%
Right : 36%

Miranda, you are mildly left-hemisphere dominant while showing a slight preference for auditory processing. This overall combination seems to indicate a well-working blend of logic and judgment and organization, with sufficient intuition, perception and creativity to balance that dominance.

You will at times experience conflict between how you feel and what you think which will generally be resolved in favor of what you think. You will find yourself interested in the practical applications of whatever material you have learned or whatever situation you face and will retain the ability to refine whatever knowledge you possess or aspects of whatever position you are in.

By and large, you will orient yourself toward intellectual activities and structure. Though not rigid, you will schedule yourself, plan, and focus on routine and continuity of operations, rather than on changes and disruptions.

When changes or disruptions occur, you are likely to consider first how to ensure that such disruptions do The same balance is reflected in your sensory preference. You will tend to be reflective and measured in your interaction style. For the most part, you will be considered objective without being cold and goal-oriented while retaining the capacity to listen to others.

Preferentially you learn by listening and maintaining significant internal dialogues with yourself. Nevertheless, you have sufficient visualization capabilities to benefit from using graphs, charts, doodles, or even body movement to enhance your comprehension and memory.

To the extent that you are even implicitly aware of your hemispheric dominance and sensory style, you will feel most comfortable in those arenas which emphasize verbal skills and logic. Teaching, law, and science are those that stand out among the professions, along with technical sales and management.

Anyways… so yesterday was a good GeoCache day. We thought we’d like a drive, so we chose one that was a ways out of the city at the Strathcona Wildlife Centre. Now, the Strathcona Wildlife Centre is definitely one of those places that you would have never ended up had it not been for the GeoCache located on site. Someone (likely a committee of people) decided to take this hunk of bush and cut some really wide trails through it, slap a couple signs up restricting motorized vehicles and bicycles, and call it a Wilderness Park. Not long after beginning our trek in the not-so-beautiful Wilderness Park, we realized that the cache was going to be at least 120 metres off the trail and the thick wall of rosebushes and plethora of mosquitoes convinced us that the walk was all we really wanted, and that we could forego the waltz through the actual bush in search of a keychain.

Moving on, we were nearing the end of our walk when the bush next to us exploded with a large Partridge. We both jumped at first, but once realizing it was only a bird were calm for a second. Just a second. My initial thought was that we had scared the bird, and that it was flying away. The bird had another agenda.

First, it took after Reilly. Squawking, arms flapping, and jumping, it chased him down one fork in the trail (with him running full speed). This was one pissed off bird. Realizing that the bird was preoccupied, I walked quickly down the other fork of the trail, towards our car, laughing at the bird still after Reilly. All in the same few seconds, however, the bird gave up her pursuit of Reilly and came after me! Now I was running at full tilt, bird still squawking and flapping its wings hysterically, it caught up in time to make one full scale attack where it jumped, squawking and flapping, and promptly flung itself against my ass. Seeing that I didn’t topple over, as I’m sure it was hoping, it gave up pursuit and Reilly and I were able to escape the tirade of the bird. Talk about excitement.

In retrospect, we’re sure that this bird had probably been protecting a nest a few feet off the trail, and was likely to go through this episode a few times each day as people, possibly also looking for the elusive GeoCache hidden in the rosebushes, wandered by unknowingly.

Yesterday I was at work from 630 am – 530 pm, then right after work we met with one of Reilly’s models and went for coffee with Kris. Today, half the management team and change skipped out at 2 pm to go golfing. Yup. Golfing. Now, I absolutely can’t Golf, but you get to drive around in a cool cart and have drinks brought out to you by the beer lady, so it was all good. We played best ball and cheated allover the place, there were 20 of us in 5 teams, and we golfed 18 holes in about 5 hours. After, we hit Joey Tomatoe’s for all sorts of food and more drinks. Ahhh… good times. Of course, as I was leaving, my boss/peer/Scott-who’s-job-I’m-acting-in told me to get home and sleep ’cause I have lots of work to do tomorrow, which means he’s tasking me with something (else, and he wouldn’t have mentioned it unless it was something big). I guess I’m not as caught up as I thought I was…. although he tasks me with stuff on a daily basis, so this is no surprise

Anywho… I do actually need to sleep. Chat later!

Had a great time. Saturday I went rafting. I love whitewater rafting. It’s really early in the season so not yet high water, although the guy next to me did get tossed out and another girl and I had to pull him back in while going through some more rapids, so it wasn’t entirely without a little excitement. We’re all decked out in wetsuits, lifejackets, and helmets of course and getting tossed out is all part of the fun. I’m looking forward to going back in a few weeks when the runoff from the mountains is the highest – now that will be a blast. Overall, was a good trip. I’m very burnt as I was planning on wearing a spray jacket but didn’t because of the heat, so I didn’t have suntan lotion on. Hrm.

Reilly went biking while I went rafting, his mother instilled a great fear of rivers in him from birth and although I got him to come once, that was the one and only time. He ended up spending the day climbing to the top of one of the smaller mountains and getting some great pics of the townsite and such. He’s also very burnt. He also had the fortune of blowing one of the tires on his bike out yesterday, so note to self that we need to get that fixed tomorrow. He didn’t have a spare tube with him.

While we won’t even discuss the implications to the scale, we had the best dinner last night. There is a little fondue place right downtown in Banff, and we were able to get a late reservation. It was excellent. Not for every day of course, but once a year or so would do. Started with soup or salad followed by a cheese fondue appetizer. Dinner was chicken and beef on hot rocks with 6 different fondue dips. Dessert – you guessed it – chocolate fondue with strawberries and other fruit. The experience and the place were great. The price was crazy, but worth it. Definitely a meal to remember.

Anywho, I need to get some sleep before work tomorrow. Our place is incredibly hot as they still don’t have the air conditioning turned on…. as the building is new and still half under construction, and apparently they’re working on it. Ugh.

That’s about it. Will chat some more later, will get some pics uploaded when I can get them from Reilly!

My baby girl again. Isn’t she sweet?

Jenn & Mark

Yesterday I bought a new bike. There wasn’t a lot wrong with my old bike, but it didn’t have quick release brakes or front tire, which made taking it places on the car an ordeal as everything had to be unbolted and breaks re-adjusted upon arrival. It was going to be $80 to get quick release parts for it, and coupled with the fact that it had major gear-switching issues not resolved by countless tuneups and adjustments by Reilly, it made sense to get a new one. Low-Cost, Canadian Tire variety, but complete with working gears and quick release brakes and tire. Front suspension, too, which makes things nicer. And, I can get this one on our car and locked down in 3 minutes flat. W00t.

So – we were outside all day. All in all I think we were out about 6 hours allover the city. It was *finally* nice, the first time in about 2 weeks, and I’ve been dying to go out riding. We drove down to a park in the river valley and went for a tour of about 10k of bike paths. We stopped along the way for Reilly to take photos, and I took the opportunity to do some yoga. Still on that hunt for a new studio, I’ve been without a class for over a week and was feeling un-stretched. On the soft ground, the heels of my hands dug in enough so I did’t slip in downward dog, so that was very cool.

After that, we went to Government House for a bit, a couple other parks, then went to the Legislature grounds and walked around there for a long time. The fountains aren’t on yet so there were hardly any people, which was nice. Everything is starting to get green, it was sooooo good to be outside all day.

Tomorrow we have Jenn’s wedding. Who gets married on Mothers Day? Anyways… so that’s our tomorrow. At least it will be nice again, so there may be picture taking opportunities outside. It’s all about the portfolio

Going to run. Gina & Scotty are coming over for a bit and should be here any minute.

Pictures of today and likely the wedding to come!

It’s the first day of my *insert very happy ahhhhh here* 4 day weekend. I had brought some work home – a project that’s been taking my time all damn week – but I did all the work that was urgent first thing this morning and put away my laptop and shouldn’t have to deal with work again until Tuesday. I figured it really was best to get it out of the way first, so it wasn’t hanging over my head all weekend. Yup.

Haven’t posted much all week – again, due to the project @ work – so I’ll try to catch things up.

First, Reilly got his job at Colourfast!! He starts on the 28th – after exams are done. He’ll be doing E6 slide film processing, with other stuff on the side. They were really interested in the fact that he also has the graphics/photoshop background to do digital manipulations/touchups etc. as well. It’s full time, early daytime hours (730 – 330) – which is cool because then he’ll be home when I’m home. No weekends… just Monday to Friday goodness. And the best part is he gets 40% off. Yup. Which, if you spend as much $$ on developing and enlargements as we do/want to do, is a really really good thing.

Hrm… further back… Kris and I took the twins out last weekend. We went to the Odyssium which used to be the Space Science centre, and is very cool. We played in the water table, played with giant lego, went for a ride on a wheelchair, walked on a balance beam, and the highlight of the day (judged by Ethan squealing and flapping his arms like a bird) was crawling underneath a pond with a bubble to stick your heads up into it and watched the fish. This was a really really big hit.

We also took them to lunch @ Chili’s – which leads me to an interlude.

What the heck is it with crappy choices on the children’s menu?? I mean, I understand that we’re already at a restaurant and therefore throwing the reasonable expectation of healthy food out the window, but this is getting ridiculous. I’ve discovered children’s menus contain about 5 things. They go like this:

YAY Kids! All Children’s Item’s on our menu come with Pop (mmmm sugar water)… and a Cookie. Here are the choices….

1. Pizza
2. Burger and Fries
3. Macaroni and Cheese
4. Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Fries
5. Breaded Chicken Fingers and Fries

Yup. That’s it. On ALL of them. So – the fact that I’m not interested in feeding them fries in the first place leaves only 2 items. Macaroni and Cheese has very little of anything actually in it, yet alone nutrition, and Pizza…. well, Pizza is what we went with. At least it had a couple food groups I suppose….

But what I don’t get is that we were at *Chili’s Texas Grill*. There was nothing “Chili’s Texas Grill”-like on their menu. What would have been wrong with children’s chicken fajitas without all the seasoning… just some chicken, tortillas, cheese, and lettuce? What about quessadillas (again…. tortillas, chicken, veggies, cheese)… what about some soup or some *gasp!* mild chili?

To mimic Kris – no *wonder* there is such a problem with childhood obesity! It’s one thing to choose to feed your kids crap, but when the only choices you’re given is crap….. argh… (note: we did scour the adults menu for something that would have worked better, but most was on the spicy/seasoned side which they aren’t in favour of…..)

Anyways – so we did lunch. They sat in booster seats and coloured and were very well behaved as always. We might take them out again this weekend.

On the same note…. went through a picture book with Haley. She still isn’t talking but she’ll point to the cat, baby, spoon, pig, balloon, and the moon. At least it’s a start….

Hrm…. Oh! I got all energetic and signed myself up at blogshares the other day. I’m now available for trading so if you love me you’ll head on over (link is on the right….) Really, there is no actual purpose other than it gives me something to do and watch…. just an FYI

That’s about it for right now. I need to figure out what to do with my weekend. We have 2 Easter dinners to attend to on Saturday and Monday I believe… other than that it’s just free open bliss

We’ve actually had a Kill Your Television sticker on our car for a few years now. Also a couple years ago, we made a production about destroying our perfectly working television (couldn’t let it rot someone else’s brain, could we?). Now, we of course aren’t perfect – a TV tuner card in one of the computers means we can still watch farmer vision – albeit snowy – if the desire comes up. We didn’t watch it for the longest time, and the past few months we’ve been watching the news & crime shows (mmm… law and order) after supper. The way we have our loft setup now, though, there’s no TV even if we wanted it without destroying the office, disconnecting the server, and taking my computer out to the other room. Not likely.

DVD players in both our laptops also allow movies if we rent them, although we usually only rent every couple of months at the most.

Kudos to my Mom though – she’s given up TV for lent. She’s cheating by still *taping* shows so that she’ll have something to watch in a few weeks when she decides to turn it back on, but I’m happy she’s doing it nevertheless She’s even talking about painting later today – something she likely would never do when she has the evil box to fall back on normally.

Anyways… the main message is, if you’re a TV watching person, especially if you have kids, look at reducing the amount of time you spend in front of the thing! Get outside, Read a Book, MAKE ART!

I’m off to read the latest verdicts at the Alberta Courts website… not quite Law and Order, but it gives me my fix