Running success! April 26, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Healthy Living, Running.1 comment so far
I’m up to Day 7, and the whole 21-day rule has been great. I had a couple of days where I crunched for time, but found myself getting out there just so I could avoid starting over. Yay me!
Today was the first day I actually ran this week, thanks to some craziness. But I made it 1.5 miles. Not only that, but instead of my “run .75/walk 1.5/run .75″ plan, I did .75/.5/.75, which cut some time off the total workout and means I’m in better shape than I thought I would be.
Running with music is making a huge difference. It’s a lot easier to just tune out and let the music carry me forward. All those years of marching band training me to move in time are paying off in a completely unexpected way. 
Last week I ran 4.4 miles total, which means $4.40 for my savings pocket. If I can run the same distance Friday and Saturday (my healthy eating class is tomorrow morning, so running then is out), I’ll have 4.5 miles for the week, and will have met my April goal.
My goal next week is to run the 1.5 miles at least four days. I also want to try and run a 1-mile time trial at the high school track to give me a base to measure progress from. I figure a sub-15:00 mile is good for now. That gives me 7 miles for the week.
My goal for May is to build to 10 miles a week, with one run of at least 3 miles during the week. That puts me on track (no pun intended) to run the July 4th 5K at the park. I’ll also repeat the time trial at the end of May to measure progress. Since I found my nice watch with the stopwatch function, it will be easy. (Once I get a new battery, of course.)
Adding on April 23, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Admin, Personal Finance, Uncategorized.add a comment
Since my turn into PF blogging might not be of interest to all the Jixsters, I started a second blog just for PF blogging called Debt $ense. I’ll likely leave the old PF blog posts here so I start fresh there. If the money posts have bored you to tears, now you won’t have to wade through them. And if you liked them, head on over to my second online home for more of that sort.
Make more or spend less? April 22, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Personal Finance, Writing.3 comments
It’s amazing the number of PF books and sites that focus on spending less to either increase your savings or decrease your debt. Not that spending less is a bad idea, mind you. But there’s a limit to what you can cut and survive. I like the few that recommend making more money, like Mia at MSN’s Women in Red. (I suspect Aleta would agree with me, thanks to her online teaching experiences.)
In some ways, that’s not only more sustainable, it’s better long term because you have more money. Unlike Aleta, however, I don’t have the advanced degrees to make online teaching an option. Unlike people with normal jobs, I can’t really take a second job working weekends as a waitress or cashier. (That’s just asking for the news gods to start plotting!) While I can write, I’m somewhat limited in what I can freelance because I already work for a publication.
My best option so far is teaching color guard, which I’m hoping to do through county parks and rec. I e-mailed the coordinator this week to see how sign-ups were going because our calendar girl (woman, really) said somebody called to say several classes were canceled for lack of enrollment, though mine wasn’t one of them. That’s what happened to mine in the fall. Anyway, she hasn’t e-mailed me back, so I’m not sure what’s going on there.
The one other area I’m considering is book reviews, which are one of the few writing options available to me. (Other than writing a best-selling mystery series, which is still on my to-do list. ) I’m going to start next week with books I own, just to get in practice. Don’t be surprised if they start showing up here during the next few weeks.
And, of course, my biggest opportunity would be if another editor position opened up here that I was qualified for. *crosses fingers* There’s a slight, slight chance that might happen later this year. We’ll see…
Day 2 April 21, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Healthy Living, Running, Uncategorized.add a comment
With nine days left in the month, I managed to run two chunks today for a total of 1.05 miles. (.6 and .45) Go me! The iPod’s battery didn’t die this time, and I decided I should have started running to music a long time ago. It’s just enough of a distraction and energizer to keep me going.
The importance of goals April 20, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Healthy Living, Personal Finance, Writing.2 comments
As you’ve all figured out by now, I have credit card debt. (I also have student loan debt, but I’m not really worried about that right now.) My balance now is about three times what it was four years ago, but about two-thirds what it was this time last year. Four years ago, I was determined to pay it down. (Imagine how much money and stress I would have saved had I done it then.) It took hitting five figures before I finally said “OK, enough’s enough.” But then I had to figure how to pay it off. Once I switched to weekly payments, automatically sent from my checking account, I finally started making progress. Why? Partially because I had made it simple. But also because I had a goal that I always see progress toward, something a PF blogger talks about much better than I do in this post.
Now I’ve gotten in the habit of thinking “How can I increase that payment? How can I make a bonus payment (like the one I mentioned earlier today)?” And since every payment shows a noticeable decline in the balance, there’s incentive to continue that, as well as to find sources for one-time payments.
My next goal is to clean out my apartment, weeding out books I can sell back to the used book store and clothes and other items I can save for the next community yard sale. I can certainly do with less stuff, plus the extra money will be another chunk I can put towards my debt. And as I see the space getting freed up, it will make me that much more determined to continue the progress.
Now if I can just find some tangible way to show words piling up, maybe I can get back into writing regularly…
Rolled coins April 20, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Personal Finance.add a comment
OK, so I changed my mind. After discovering that my bank will take rolled coins as a deposit without charging a fee, I picked up coin wrappers ($1.39 for 100) at Staples and started counting. I ended up with $8 to add to my savings, and deposited $106 and change this morning. (That includes the first half of my state tax refund and a milage check, so it’s not as big a deal as it sounds.) Friday, most of that will go to my credit card company.
I did stick to my plan of paying myself for my quarters, and since I traded $5 at work for that much in quarters, that will be even more into my savings next pay period.
Meanwhile, the coin jar has me scouring my apartment, car and desk for coins to add to it.
In other news, I might have to tweak the proportions of my cash pocket method, but it definitely is making me think more about my money and where it goes, so I’m considering it a success. It also helped me save $19 out of my weekly money over and above the $8 in coins, so that’s also a plus. Now if only filling up my car didn’t cost almost $30…
Running fool April 20, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Healthy Living.add a comment
As always, I made time Monday for my annual Marathon Monday run. It’s 2.6 miles, which is one-tenth of a marathon for those unfamiliar with the sport. It also happens to be two loops around the park if I can run the whole 2.6 in one sitting. Alas, I have not run in several months before this week, so I had to cover about 6 miles alternating running and walking to get my 2.6 in. Oh, my aching legs!
I read somewhere that if you can do anything for 21 straight days, it becomes a habit. So my current goal is to spend at least 30 minutes walking for 21 days, mixing running in as I feel like it. (That’s not a cop-out – I actually do prefer running so it gets mixed in pretty often.)
Tuesday I settled for walking because my legs were aching. Wednesday, well, things went a little haywire at work and I didn’t get any walking done, let alone running. But this morning I went out and ran about three-quarters of a mile out of my 2-mile loop. I considered doing a second loop, but figured I was better off going easy today and being able to run again tomorrow. (And for those counting, skipping Wednesday meant I started over on my 21 days, so I’m now at Day 1.)
Today was the first time I ever ran with music – my iPod – and I kind of liked it. There’s no safety issue because I run in the park instead of on the roads, and it actually made the running portion of the loop go by faster. So I think I’m going to continue running to music and see if that makes it easier to build distance because I’m not thinking about how much further I have to go each step. (As I discovered Monday, if I’m not thinking about the actual running, I get in a pretty good groove and cover more ground before I have to walk.)
My goal for April is to be able to run two, three-quarter-mile segments over the course of four miles (two extended loops) over consecutive days.
Stealing from Aleta April 18, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Quiz Time, Work madness.1 comment so far
|
You Passed 8th Grade Math |
 Congratulations, you got 8/10 correct! |
And since the average journalist is on a fourth-grade math level, I suppose this explains why I get to be the newsroom math expert.
Learning from experts April 12, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Healthy Living.add a comment
County parks and rec is offering a class with two dieticians from the local hospital. It meets at the new supermarket (lots of fresh food and organic stuff) and they walk you through shopping, meal planning, eating better, etc. It seemed like a decent deal at $10 for two hours. So I signed up last week (and took the $$ from my food budget). It’s two weeks from today, just before I get paid again and can go to the farmers’ market. I’m also trying to stash a chunk of my food budget away so I can pick some things up then. (It’s about 20 minutes away, so I’d rather cut down the number of trips.)
I’ll post any particularly good advice here later that evening.
Gets me every time April 12, 2006
Posted by irishmadness in Personal Finance.add a comment
I get paid bi-weekly, which means twice a year I have months with three paychecks. Since I budget based on two per month, that gives me “extra” money I can use for savings, special expenses, paying down debt, etc.
The flip side of this is that the first paycheck the next month is almost two weeks into the month.
So I was checking my bank balance and thinking about bills and going “OK, this is the rent (i.e. second) check, which means I only have $X left for all these… This is never going to work. How the heck did I come up short after getting ‘extra’ money?”
Until I looked at the calendar and realized, no, Friday is the *first* check, which means I have enough for everything. *slaps forehead* Panicking over nothing. *sigh*
So now I’m much calmer. Add in the extra money I’ll see from my cable bill dropping 50 percent next month and it’s all good.
