Since returning to corporate life about a year ago, I have also just had my 2nd child, Siena.

Seeing that I have added to my existing lack of time problem, rather than reduced it, I still have trouble finding adequate time to do all of the financial things I want to do. (Let alone get around to paying the taxes!) I do spend at least 1-2 hours a week organizing my financial life. That can range from monitoring my finances and bill payments, to filing papers, to opening new accounts on occasion.

Since I began this site, Lending Club and SmartyPig have become important saving and investment vehicles for me.

I have also opened a Whole Life Insurance product for my husband as a retirement vehicle, and one for my daughter as a college and retirement vehicle down the line. (This is made possible through loans and dividend payments, more explained here). I actually ended up with Ohio National as the company for these rather than Mass Mutual, but either way you would want to pick a very high rated insurance company if you are considering this option, and research more about using the cash account for loans because the options vary greatly by company. For what I selected, the benefit is that I continue to earn a dividend on the cash value of the account, even if I take out a loan, so I can borrow against it for a good overall rate, and then can also continue to earn. Once retirement approaches, I can borrow against the loan for certain increments, which aren’t considered taxable income, and then have the remaining loan paid off upon death. This takes an advisor to get right, so don’t attempt all of the calculations for one of these on your own.

Yet, after all of those options, I still find managing anything stock market related to be something I don’t want to spend more of my time on getting exactly right. I have a Roth 401K at my current employer which I rebalance and monitor about once every 3 months. Now that I’ve been there a year, I have to increase my savings there to 4% to get the company match (an obvious no-brainer). I mostly move between funds and when volatile I may move some of the balance into a stable account.

Beyond that, I haven’t played with the stock market since dabbling in high school. And I don’t want to. So, while I know its been around for a while, I was very excited to noticed the Betterment.com investment site one day while logging into Mint.com. Betterment charges a fee like all mutual funds do, but I equate it to be similar to a fund in terms of investing. Its an easy way to invest in the stock market with brokers that make things simple and transparent. So far, I have invested a bit in a Roth IRA there. The earnings are not staggering (like they are at Lending Club), but hey are positive. I have only been invested about 1 month, so I will continue to montior and see if it provides a valuable return for the fee.

I think more and more sites like this will start to emerge that empower people to invest without an in-person broker, with varying fee structures and return strategies. I can’t wait to try out more of them as them emerge, so please let me know of others in the comments below!

You can earn a free $25 by starting a new Betterment.com investment account.
(Note the $25 only applies to a regular investment account, not a Roth IRA)

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Even if you are 40, aggressively investing in yourself in a whole life insurance policy can be a great option in this volatile market due to the high dividend returns compared to other investment tools, and the amazing death benefit that can be carried on to your children tax-free.

Since I last wrote a post I have been investing in my current full time job Roth 401K, but guess what the year to date returns are? 4%. Great. I haven’t known what’s next for my retirement savings. I know that I need to find other alternatives to the 401k, as the earnings are so volatile. I know that I’m not saving towards retirement aggressively enough.

My recent choice – whole or permanent life insurance. Good returns, tax free retirement withdraws and interest free or low loans later in life. The most amazing part is the death benefit included that you can pass on tax-free to your children and grand children. So many benefits. You must read carefully about them before you decide for yourself, but I think they are a great alternative with tax-free retirement income potential.

Resources

• Pick up the book Tax Free Retirement by Patrick Kelly to learn more. (Most of its obvious, but the meat is in the last chapter explaining the amazing benefits of whole life insurance.)
• Find out the differences between Universal and Whole Permanent Insurance Options

I’m planning on opening this for my husband, myself and my children even! I’m looking to use Mass Mutual as they are A++ rated and have good dividends over the last 30 years (over 6% to 9%). I found this PDF on their site showing their returns over the past 30 years.

This may actually be a better alternative to a 529 as well. After I get this next chapter of an alternative retirement savings figured out, my next plan is to set up whole life insurance for my daughter as a borrowing option for when she reaches college as well as a great retirement vehicle for her.

I actually stumbled upon this as my grandparents are starting one for me as part of annuity and they get to transfer their dollars tax free to me to fund it. What a wonderful thing to be able to do, I hope to continue that pattern with my children and grandchildren.

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The above are some of the most popular posts from the last 365 days of my journey towards financial freedom.

It is amazing to me that is has been 365 days since I have started my quest towards financial education and ultimately, financial freedom.

What have I learned?

1. I have to make a continuous commitment, at minimum weekly if not multiple times a week to do something to better my financial knowledge or take action to improve my personal finances
2. There will always be hurdles in getting to my goals, but tracking progress with them and plugging away will get me closer to them every day.
3. I should not make assumptions about my finances. I assumed that I could not quit my FT job b/c I wouldn’t find health coverage. That was wrong. I assumed that I would never be able to retire, but after looking at some of my better investment choices, I’ve decided there might be a glimmering hope for retirement one day.
4. Despite the difficulty motivating myself to do something so boring, I want to continually improve my knowledge of taxes, inflation and investing.
5. Overall, I’ve learned that life will only get more complicated, and its essential to have your finances manageable to have a chance at staying ahead in today’s world. I know that I will not be financially free immediately, but I am conscious about making the right decisions with my money, job, and choices to ensure that one day, this goal will be achievable for me.

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• October 11, 2010 -- Review of LearnVest – Personal Finance Tools for Women

For a while now, I have, rather pessimistically, been saying that I will never retire. Mainly because I haven’t been saving as much or as often as I should (I am currently the sole income in our household), and because most of the investment accounts that I have attempted, from mutual funds to stocks have gone in the negative.

I’ve decided to look further into this with my amazing returns (14-15%) from Lending Club (This is not the average return at Lending Club, the average is around 9% I believe. My returns are based on taking on more risk and opting for quite a few longer term loans.) All of my prior assumptions were that I would not even be able to reach the 8% return that most investment calculators use for predicting your retirement date.

Right now, if my Roth IRA at lending club continues to perform with my carefully selected loan options, even given an expected default rate over time, I would get well over 12% returns. So, perhaps things do not have to look as doom and gloom now that I have found a good investment vehicle?

This chart shows that I would have to save hardly ANYTHING every month with the funds I currently have in my No Fee IRA retirement savings, plus the help of social security at $15K/year (will that be an option when I retire?).

According to this chart, all that I need to do to retire and live off of $80K/year plus $15K Social Security (well over what I currently live off of), is keep earning those incredibly high returns. Is it possible? Only time will tell.

But over at Mint.com, I tried their GOALS retirement calculator, and they will only let me plug in 11% as the maximum return amount. According to Mint, I will need to contribute $150/month at the 11% return rate to retire at age 65, comfortably. So, my conclusion from all of this is, I’d like to have a goal of saving at least $150/month when we turn into a 2-income household next year sometime. I would also like to have a few more diversified investments, preferably under IRA protection. For those of you that don’t know or have a Roth IRA, you MUST read up on it, it is by far the most useful investment option for anyone under 45 at least, and in 2010 only you can convert your Traditional IRA to a Roth this year and choose whether you want to pay the tax consequences this year or split and defer tax consequences to the next two years (2011 & 2012). More Info.

I encourage you talk with your tax or investment professional before taking my advice at face value.

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www.Shoeboxed.com is an amazing site that helps you de-clutter your paper mess, mainly geared towards small and mid to large sized businesses. For a sole proprietor like myself, this is seriously useful!

In a nut shell, you send your receipts (and anything you need to keep documented for tax purposes, etc) to them in pre-paid secure envelopes. They scan them and file and categories them for you. You can manage your categories and get reports on your receipts online.

A while back, I wrote an article for Wisebread on how to go entirely paperless at home. Though these guys are geared at business, its equally useable for home-based paper and clutter elimination! Another great step in the way to getting more organized and reducing your paper piles and file cabinets crammed full of receipts that you can’t find! I highly recommend this tool, so I am including their banner ad on my site for a while for you to give it a try (free trial). Their pricing is free for the limited version, and goes up according to how many receipts and the usage you need.

It also works well with Evernote for managing your online files.

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It has been a while since I have wrote. I haven’t known what to say. My confidence and diligence has waned.

I was so proud of myself for rolling over my 401k from my former employer. And just as I did, the market took a dive that it has still not recovered from.

That’s right, my mutual funds, even with a few helpful bond indexes thrown in, are down about 8% for the year. Just a quick ‘run the numbers’ calculator will tell me that even with a positive 8% return every year, I won’t be retiring until I’m 125 or so. But it is sad to me, that despite my diligence and research, despite trying to actively manage my financial life for the past year, I still can’t control the market, I can’t control the unpredictable future.

I have since rolled out a large portion of this ‘loss’ into a Lending Club. I’ve tied up my funds for 60 months lending out the money to other people. I am quite excited to actually get a amazingly good (15%!) RETURN ON INVESTMENT from the No Fee IRA, rather than my remaining 401k over at Vanguard that pulls in a negative to date. I was hoping to wait it out, then decide what to do with it. The economy has to be recovering, right? At some point? The stocks have to bounce back up right?

It seems to me that consumer confidence will never recover to where it was once in early 2000. Or at least, it may take 20-30 years like it did in the great depression. People will continue to save for many years to come. People will continue to distrust the stock market after getting so burned.

So then, what are our choices for investment? You certainly have to get creative. I can’t wait to find more unique and innovative opportunities like Lending Club and SmartyPig. They combine social media tools with great earnings and allow individuals to connect online.

What creative investments of 2010 do you know about? Please share in the comments!

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Amazingly, I am nearing the 1 year mark since I began this journey and this blog toward financial freedom. I have made a lot of progress, and yet most of it has been geared at an awareness that I can and will learn what I need to learn to be able to succeed and thrive financially. Nonetheless, one of the most important aspects of gaining financial freedom, passive income, is still a far away goal for me. I have finally started earning close to $300/mo in my retirement savings account (converted to a Roth IRA this year as well!). I have it split between a Mutual Fund and Lending Club. This is a huge success. However, that is money for later. I don’t have as much to invest right now into Lending Club or other investment vehicles that earn passive income. So, what I need to invest in is the business building online goals that will generate sales. This is where I feel that I am falling behind where I had hoped to be from last year.

Though I have been convinced again and again of the need to produce products and services that create wealth through recurring sales, getting to the point has been difficult for me.

I have done a few experiments and found that it is indeed possible to make passive income online through automated sales systems. I haven’t made a lot, and I’ll tell you why. I haven’t been able to narrow down my focus. I’ve written about this before, but it is a key area of weakness for me. Multi-tasking all the time in my lifestyle has made me rather scattered at times.

With the help of some great online goal tools, I have set some very specific goals for 2010-2011 for where I want to grow my business. Guess what? They are not what I am spending my time on. What am I spending my time on? I’m either working the old-fashioned way, hour by hour, or doing personal things like cooking, cleaning, being with family, etc. I have broken out of tradition by going out on my own, and not working directly for a corporation, but I have lost some steam in my passive income generating business efforts. All of the free time I do tend to have lately, I have been, well, enjoying. I’ve been gardening and being with my family. Not bad things at all. However, I do feel that I have gotten side-tracked and I want to schedule back in more time to really pursue these interests.

I’ve managed to make exercise a part of my routine despite many failed prior attempts, so there is no reason why I can’t schedule in some real business building time.

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• November 30, 2009 -- Free Financial IQ Quizes

Since I began this journey, I made a commitment to myself to continue to check in and work on improving my knowledge and application of financial matters. Boy is it exhausting!

Today I finally squeezed in finishing some of my legal documents – I now have a Living Will, a Power of Attorney for Medical stuff, a Will, and a Memorial Planner Information. I still need to spend a little more time on the concept of Estate planning, but I’m not in a huge rush yet as I don’t have that amazing of an estate.

So, let me take a moment to celebrate, YIPPEE!

Okay, I still have to get them all notarized and filed away safely. Sigh, another financial TO-DO.

Next Up on my Financial To-Do List This Month:

1. Look into refinancing my home. I just took it off the market as it is not selling. I have an inquiry into my mortgage provider to see if its possible to refinance after you take your home off the market or if they have some type of waiting period. Rates are certainly low, so I do hope I can. Seeing as I have had a major career shift, and the value of my home has probably gone down significantly since my last mortgage, it should be interesting to see if its a real financial possibility for me to re-fi. Crossing my fingers.
2. Convert my Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA at Vanguard. I’m willing to pay tax consequences this  year if it means that I get to move my Traditional IRA Funds (that were previously my 401k when I was a corporate gal) to a Roth IRA.
3. Set up a Roth IRA at Lending Club. I’m going to roll at least part of my Vanguard money to Lending Club. My experiment with Lending Club panned out to be an awesome choice that I can really support. I am excited to find an investment opportunity that doesn’t make me want to cry and pull my hair out unlike my experiences with Fidelity and Vanguard.
4. Get life insurance. I can’t believe I still haven’t gotten around to this. Need to get it done – I’m going to opt for the $500K policy I think. But I do need to do more research into this area.
5. Snore. Okay. I find this stuff painfully boring and awful. Thank you to this website for reminding me to stay on track with it. It’ll be worth it one day right??!!

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With the volatility of the stock market, I have been interested in other investment opportunities. They can be hard to find.

So far, I am very pleased with the peer to peer lending model offered at Lending Club I can honestly say that its simple to set up and use, and is providing me an average return of 15% so far. I’m so impressed in fact, that I would like to invest in this option rather than my 401k. At least for a bit.

Diversification always sounds like a good idea, but it isn’t lately in both real estate and no matter what stock or fund I seem to choose. But peer to peer lending feels good because I’m helping out someone with consolidating their debt, and I’m earning a little interest for doing it. A win-win.

Plus they give bonuses often for your investments, as well as for referring friends and family.

UPDATE: 1 year later – I have successfully been investing in this for over a year and am very happy with my returns (over 15%) and the tool itself. I really haven’t found any other worthy investment that is easy to get started and earns this kind of return. If you know of anything besides the volatile stock market – let me know! I am eager to continue to invest in things like this.

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In responding to a comment on this site, I noticed a sentence that I wrote a few months back that still resonates strongly with me:

As Americans, the only way to get out of a recession/depression is to face our fears, and start doing, not just saving.

So many of us have been burned by loss of jobs, loss of their home, loss of their health care, etc that people are struggling to get by and losing hope. But we cannot lose hope as a collective. What our happiness, our lives, our families, our economy and everything around us needs is for us to have HOPE, motivation and drive to move things FORWARD.

If you are frantically saving and paying down debt, good for you. I’m not saying that’s bad. But getting your finances in gear is not all that is needed to make your life, and all of us as a collective’s lives better, what is needed is to start DOING.

If you don’t spend any money, the economy can’t get any better. Spending, in the right ways, is a very good thing. Spending and doing creates jobs and wealth in an economy. We just need to be more conscious about WHERE we are spending our money and what impact it has on our lives. Put your energies into putting your thoughts and what you might want to do and making them a reality. You will never know what could be unless you try.

I am now a firm believe that where your energy goes, results show.

If you’ve lost your job, see it as an opportunity to DO. Check out this video: http://www.lemonademovie.com/

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• April 6, 2010 -- 5 Months in, I’m a Lot Closer to “What I Want”

Rolling Over a Traditional and Roth 401K Plan

I have 2 types of accounts in my 401k from my previous employer – a tranditional 401k and a Roth 401K. After doing some research and weighing my options, I have decided to roll over my 401k into  Vanguard due to the lower fees and a variety of investment choices. I still do not feel educated enough to trust my 401k funds to a fully self-managed account with individual stocks and bonds, so the fund option is still appealing to me at this stage in life. Hopefully, one day I will have the time and knowledge to invest more specifically and strategically. For now, I plan to put some research into the  funds, diversify wisely and monitor my investments.

How a Roth 401 Works

Some organizations allow you to invest all or a portion of your “after-tax” dollars in to a Roth IRA type of 401K, called a Roth 401K. This can be good for some investors because the earnings will not be taxed at withdrawal. The withdrawal rules can get tricky, with options such as the 5-year rule, but I do not plan to withdraw (or otherwise called a distribution) any time soon.  There are many more things to consider to fully understand the Roth 401K, and it does vary in rules from the Roth IRA. I recommend going to Roth401KInfo.com as a starting point for information or consulting your financial advisor. Another interesting point is that employer matching funds cannot be contributed to the Roth 401k – they have to go to your traditional 401k. I didn’t even realize this. Apparently the laws allowing Roth 401Ks will be re-evaluated in 2011, so they may not be available forever.

Here Are My Steps to a Complicated 401k Rollover

1. In order to roll over my 401k, I had to sign up for 2 new accounts at  Vanguard, both a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA. The folks at Vanguard were quite helpful on the phone.
2. I then had I believe 3 different phone conversations with someone at Fidelity discussing the process of rolling over my Roth 401K. At one point, he was convinced that the earnings on my Roth 401k would have tax implications because of my rollover. He said because I didn’t have the account open for at least 5 years, the earnings could be taxed. This made absolutely no sense to me as the whole point of a Roth 401K or Roth IRA for that matter are that you put after tax dollars into them in order to NOT have to pay taxes on the earnings in the future. Or at least that is MY understanding of them. A rollover should still be a tax-sheltered process and should not count as a distribution. After much debate, he agreed with me and initiated the request.
3. Mailed documents have been sent to me that I now have to send to my former employer for approval. I find this odd since I no longer work there, why would they care about my rollover?
4. After these documents have been processed they go back to Fidelity and then Fidelity will cut me checks for the rollovers addressed to my Vanguard account.
5. I have to send the checks with a cover letter and instructions that I create to Vanguard in order to process the funds.
6. I then will have my money in a Money Market fund temporarily that earns basically nothing until I figure out what funds to invest in.
7. I invest my funds into a new portfolio, in 2 different accounts, the Traditional IRA and the Roth IRA.
8. Then, now that I am self employed, I figure out if I want to contribute to my new Vanguard accounts on a regular basis or find out more about SEP and Keough plans.
9. Pass out from exhaustion.

If you find this of interest, here’s a few resources on Roth IRAs and 401K rollovers:

• http://www.roth401kinfo.com
• http://banking.about.com
• http://www.investopedia.com

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Day 161 of my First 365 Day Journey to Financial Freedom

On day 1 of my 365 Day Journey towards Financial Freedom, I charted a short list of what I wanted in order to find a more ‘sustainable’ happiness.

In reviewing my list, I am proud to say that I am a little, or maybe even a lot, further along in my journey than I would have predicted. This blog, and my dedication to not lose my drive and focus, have helped me stay on track and get inspired. This transformation of my life is real, and I want to thank those that are reading and following me along in my journey. I hope some of my stumbling thoughts have helped you.

Let’s take a look at what I said I wanted and if I am now doing or feeling these things:

Excerpt from First Entry Oct 26th 2009

To begin my journey, I wrote a list of some of the key answers to the question: ”What do I want?” Here are my answers in no particular order:

I want to be FREE to move my life forward

Through much reflection, I’ve learned that freedom is really a perception. Though I felt very stuck for many years prior to starting my journey, I was only as stuck as I allowed myself to be. Things don’t always move or change as fast as I want them to in order for me to feel more free, but many things have changed. Most namely, I quit my FT job and I am choosing to pursue my own business! That is a big step for me toward my freedom.

I want to get my POWER back

The main thing I was looking for was an inner confidence in what I am and what I will add to the world. In my journey so far, I’ve learned that success is almost entirely based on your confidence, attitude and sense of purpose.

I want to WRITE

I am writing – a lot! I’m writing on this blog, I’ve written articles that have been published on Wisebread and in magazines, and I’m in need of a lot of how to guides and documents for my new business. I also cannot wait to write a series of ebooks on SEO & usability and other web marketing tips I’ve learned along the way.

I want to LOVE what I do for a job

Guess what – I now do! I didn’t love the politics where I used to work, they impeded on me enjoying my work. The design and business building of what I am doing is super fun, but my passion is lead generation and marketing. I was discussing it with my husband and realized its a matter of an inner desire to help others combined with a need to influence. Successful online marketing is all about beauty, simplicity and influence. Beyond this, I am looking forward to getting into the health industry once I have started being more successful with business building.

I want to feel comfortable and at PEACE

Not quite there yet. I move at such a fast pace, and I have a 2 year old for goodness sakes. Finding time for balance of mind, body and spirit is always a bit of a struggle. Still an important goal for me however.

I want to take CONTROL of my own destiny

I feel that I am doing this much more than I used to, though many things always still seem up in the air. I have realized that you can only control things so much, and after a certain point you have to trust and believe that things will shape themselves for you.

I want to spend more QUALITY time with my family and activities I want to do

I don’t know that I am spending MORE time, but the time I have with my family is better spent with me happier. Step in the right direction.

I want to find SUSTAINABLE happiness

Sustainable? Not yet. Happier? Yes.

I want to live an INTENTIONAL life

I think everything I am doing is getting me much closer to this. The largest thing that I have to do is manage my most precious asset, time, as best as I can and filter out what is and is not a priority toward my intentional living.

So, overall, I think I am a lot closer than I expected to getting where I want to be at this stage in my life. Hooray!

Related Posts

• June 23, 2010 -- Stop Chasing After Happiness – Choose Happiness

One thing that has suprised me so far in my journey to financial freedom is the laborious process for signing up for certain types of accounts to manage and improve my finances.

Since I started this blog, I have been reading and learning a lot, but actually opening accounts has been a bit of a nightmare. Noneless, I’ve had success and ease with a few of them:

Awesome & Easy Financial Accounts I have Opened So Far

SmartyPig Savings Accounts – I am so impressed and in love with this simple banking model.

1. The process to open the account was so easy and all online.
2. I have many simple savings account goals set up
3. I have small but recurring transfers being sent to my specific savings goals
4. I earn 2% interest
5. Not to mention if I should choose to buy a gift card with one of the savings goals (ie wedding season!), I get a bonus cash back.

529 College Invest Account with Vanguard

1. I opened this account entirely online and funded it through ACH from my daughter’s expired CD.
2. I diversified the options of investment allocations
3. I’m planning to monitor it on a monthly basis.
4. I have recurring transfers set up, which will increase slightly automatically annually. Done and done.

Key Bank Business Account

1. This was the best website I could find in my local area for information on the full features of a free business account, rates, fees, online tools, etc
2. The online sign up process was simple
3. I didn’t like having to wait 7-10 days for the follow up paper work
4. Other than that I am happy with this account so far.
5. Added bonus is they are going to give me a few hundred bucks promotional money

What I’ve Learned About IRAs & 401K Rollovers

IRAs are not very easy to open online. Also there are tax implications with converting to a Roth from a Traditional, rollover processes, etc. I have more to learn here before I’m done.

I’ve opened a TradeKing account and tried to figure out how to transfer my Traditional IRA over and then convert it to a Roth IRA. There was a $50 charge to do that and they said I had to re-apply all over again. So, I am in uncomfortable territory here and its making me go slower.

Additionally, I considered rolling over at least a portion of my former employer 401K to Lending Club. I really want to get started with LendingClub as well as some very well researched stock trading. LendingClub has something in its documentation with its partner company for IRA’s, Entrust CAMA, about a $150 annual fee that I’m not too happy about. So, I need to read over the documents for IRAs and fees with a lot more attention to detail before making a decision.

But I’m still a novice, scared investor. The 529 is easy because its fund based, but I of course will pay management fees. I’d like to not have to, but I don’t want to be a super active day trader either.

So, all in all, investing and investment accounts are scaring me, but I don’t really want to go pay an advisor, so I’m going to have to overcome this fear and figure it out sooner than later!

How do you overcome your lack of knowledge with investing in uncharted territory?

photo by: ndevil

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Use Your Calendar to Schedule Out Blocks of Time

I use a very simple, but extremely effective, method of planning out my day that has helped me immensely when I worked in the corporate environment using Outlook’s calendar feature, but also will be an essential part of my success as an entrepreneur.

I wanted to share it with you, because whenever I have told others about it, they find it very different and a helpful way to organize their time to be the most efficient.

Schedule Out Your Time Visually – Here’s What I Do:

I plan out my week ahead of time, by putting blocks of time on my calendar labeled with “tasks” or “big picture” labels for what I need to accomplish. I have been consulting long enough now, that I have a sense of how much time it takes me to accomplish things. Though it is not fail-proof, it works. This time management technique also helped prevent me from having my calendar TOO filled up with appointments and meetings when I worked in the corporate world. Not that it completely prevented it, but it helped others respect my time when they looked at what I was doing on my calendar to schedule appointments.

Schedule Out Your Time Visually – Here’s What You Can Do:

1. Determine how long on average it takes you to accomplish your work in 1/2 or 1 hour increments
2. Schedule your time out ahead of time in blocks on your calendar (Use tasks or simply appointments)
3. Adjust as required

To some, this concept may seem to simple or maybe you already do something similar. We all manage our time differently. There are many advanced task options, categories, and other time management options in Outlook and other office clients that help immensely as well. This technique that I listed above has been the single most helpful way to manage my daily work load that I have found. Now, to manage multiple clients and multiple time frames for projects, I use a project planning tool.

A Note on Monitoring Your Email Inbox

One last thought that I have heard  from many works wonders in freeing up your time to be more efficient with the workday.

Only check your email at certain intervals in the day.

Let’s say you block off 15 minutes in the morning, before lunch, after lunch, and about 1-2 hours before you leave. If this is a possibility for you, it can extremely help you focus your time and stop allowing for constant distractions.

What other techniques do you use to organize your calendar?

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Overcome Fear to “Win Some or Learn Some”

Today is my last day at my job, and I am taking a step into the unknown. For the last four years, I have worked at the same full time position. In my last post, I outlined the logical and emotional reasons for making a decision on what to do next with my life and career. I also explained that, if all fear was pushed aside, I would choose to follow my heart and do my freelance web design and online marketing, as well as build other business ventures.

The fearful side of my still keeps saying, are you crazy? In this economy?  What happens if you fail? How do you know you will succeed?
And of course, the truth is, I have no idea what is coming next. All that I can do is keep my mind in the right place, and put my best foot forward.

Fear and doubt have a tendency to sneak back into your mind at the most stressful and insecure times in your life, when what you really need are feelings of confidence and strength.

For me, though I still experience feelings of doubt and fear, I am now able to recognize my fear as a trigger for the fact that I am out of my comfort zone, and that this will be a good learning and growth period of my life.

The Steps You’ll Need to Overcome Fear and Doubt:

1. Recognize the emotional trigger that caused you to feel fear, doubt, etc
2. Accept that there are some logical reasons for the feelings
3. Acknowledge that, though there are some reasons that you are feeling fear, there is also the strong possibility that things will go the way you want them to
4. Accept uncertainty and the unknown as a constant part of life
5. Think positive and be confident in your decisions
6. Move forward with your best foot forward
7. Mission Accomplished: Fear is Overcome

What are the Possible Outcomes of Pushing Past Your Fears?

1. You Get What You Hoped or Even Something Better
2. You “Fail”, but You Learn From Your Mistakes and Move On

Or, in the words of Jason Mraz: “You Win Some or Learn Some”

I’ve made my decision to give it a try. I have the ability so I am going to take a 2 month test period to see if I can truly build my businesses to support my family.

Here’s My 2 Month Plan:

• I already have a few new and a few big projects lined up, including my other recurring work for clients.
• I am going to re-brand my business, which is currently called AGR Web Designs, to Lead Online Marketing. This will include moving from a sole proprietor model to an LLC, a new website/branding/blog, etc strategy, marketing and better packaged offerings. I have also started to get better with software for my invoicing an estimates (I may to a post/review on those tools)
• I may also do a bit of additional part time work during this time as I build my business
• I will continue to build my timeline/planning templates business
• I’m considering building another small site that focuses on wordpress and/or thesis design, as this market is really booming and I enjoy working in that area

I am afraid, but I am also very excited. And though it is a slightly uncomfortable place to be, it makes me feel more alive and happy about my career than I have been in the last 4 years.

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Well, its official. I have turned in my two week notice at my current position and I am pursuing other options. We have enough of a padding to last long enough for me to sort this out. (My fear is talking there)

I’m very happy about this first decision and I have lots of options. Nonetheless, I am very much struggling with this life decision. The lucky part is that I can actually make this choice with the career path that I have in web design and online marketing. Here are my options:

Option 1: Accept a FT Corporate Job - The “Logical” Choice

Pros

• Steady income to support my family, benefits (health, dental, paid time off)
• Opportunity for learning from others and new environment
• Career growth potential
• Escape from the cubicle and florescent lighting

Cons

• Not enough time to do my freelance work, be a mom, take care of the house, etc
• Potential to be ‘more of the same’ in terms of politics and personalities
• 401 K hasn’t been a reliable investment vehicle for retirement

Option 2: Accept PT Work + Freelance/Businesses - The “Tempting” Choice

Pros

• Flexible hours, variation in work
• Ability to pursue many projects and avenues (web, businesses, writing)
• Pontenial to be happier by feeding my creative outlets, feeling of acomplishment
• Ability to help many small businesses and increase networking
• Ability to be there for my daughter more, especially when she is sick

Cons

•  Inconsistent income, no protection from month to month, no paid time off
• Have to work at ensuring I have additional work
• Location of jobs may vary, though remote is very possible in my industry
• Administrative duties increase, have to take care of own taxes, health, investments
• Might be lonely working alone majority of the time

I want to live every day as if it was my last. I want this thing called life to matter. And I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to do that if I can’t do more of the things that I want to do with my time. Having a little 2 year old means that I don’t have any ‘down time’. The time I have is absolutely precious.

But whether I’m following my heart and whether I’m taking care of my responsibilities might be two separate things. I am the sole bread winner right now in our household. Is this just a timing issue or is it the right time to make the leap?

I’ve made a hard choice which is to quit my job to start to really craft the life that I want to lead. But now I need to get more specific and really play out what my life will look like depending on what path I choose.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned it is that there are no black and white answers. I’ve  also learned that people are willing to be flexible working with you if they truly value what you offer.

Often times its fear that prevents us from taking a leap. If I can get past the fear, what choices would I make?
Option 2 hands down. Can and should I overcome this fear?

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Dying  Your Hair at Home without it Turning Green or Orange

Rainbows Might be Pretty, but Its Not What I Have in Mind!

This post is for the ladies, but if you’re a guy, send it to your friends, girlfriends or wife, they’ll thank you!

First off a note: Use this ‘advice’ at your own risk. I take absolutely no claims for your own use or misuse of hair dying products. This post is simply a few tips I’ve learned that have helped me save some money without compromising my style too much.

I have experimented with dying my own hair for years now, and I’m not going to lie, I have had some green and orange experiences.

For the dying products that I use, I like to go to Sally’s and get the professional grade products. They are very cheap, and if you know how to use them much much much more affordable than the boxed kind at the super market. Plus, the boxed kind often don’t work or leave you with the orange/green issue.

If you have golden toned hair, use products with gold in the title. If you have more grey or ash colored hair use products with ash in the title. I personally avoid all ash related products as they without a doubt can turn my hair green. I’d prefer orange to green anyway.

When things typically go wrong and leave you with orange or green hair is because you are trying to do something too drastic to your hair, your hair is over-dyed, or you aren’t using products that go well with your hair. If you get products at Sally’s ask them to help you find what goes with your hair type.

There are so many chemical factors that go into dying hair, this is why many people would prefer to go to a stylist, they don’t want to mess around with their hair and potential side effects. I forgo this to save money and take the risk. I have it down pretty well at this point.

My Most Recent Results. Not too Bad.

Using the Wella hair dye products with the developers at Sally’s has been consistent for me.  Typically I use a 1:2 ratio. One part dye to 2 parts developer. For doing highlights, I can get away with using just 1/2 ounce and 1 ounce developer. So that ends up costing me about $2 or so per time for the dye and developer used. The developer works this way: 10% will do more deposit and less lift, so its good for dark colors. 40% will do more lift so its good for lightening hair. I typically use the 40% developer for adding golden highlights to my hair.

I use a cap for highlights and then cover my head with aluminum foil. I sometimes add heat with a hair dryer to speed up the process. It can take anywhere from 10-30 minutes to get the results I want with lightening. I check often to see how its doing.

Its always good to do a sample on your hair before doing the full thing. This will prevent many many problems.

The typical rotation that I like to use to save money on hair expenses is this:

Month 1:

• Professional Hair Stylist: Color, 3/4 Highlights and Cut. Cost: About $145 + Tip
• Wash with slightly nicer than lower end Color Enhancing Shampoo / Conditioner. Deep Condition Once / Week. Cost: $15-25

Month 2:

• Semi-permanent hair shine or rinse wash to enhance the color. Cost: $5-10

Month 3 or 4:

• Do my own hair highlights with sally’s products. Cost $5 (Once you’ve purchased all the products needed, its very inexpensive to continue, but you will need to buy a brush, cap, plastic gloves and the color/developer at first)

Month 5 or 6:

• Semi-permanent hair shine or rinse to enhance color. Cost: $5-10
• Hair cut. $30-50

Month 7 or 8:

• Depending on how it looks, its back to the salon or I’ll do it myself again.

You get the gist. Again, this system isn’t perfect, but it helps me to save a lot of money without compromising on my style.

photo by mogret

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• May 11, 2010 -- 2 Months Later – A Look at Non-Corporate Life

In my pursuit towards financial freedom, I have been able to narrow down my goals and realize key elements that I want to focus on for my career and life style.

I have now managed to categorize and budget my expenses, long term and short term savings accounts, and I have begun to understand tax rules and how they affect investment accounts and options.

Nonetheless, I still find it difficult to determine the order and priority to assign to saving, paying off debts, investing, and business start ups.

There are so many competing philosophies on this topic, and I believe that there truly is not any one answer. Most advisors and financial ‘gurus’ will base their recommendations for you based on your risk tolerance, age and stage in life, and other factors. Lately, many advisors are much more conservative in their recommendation that you save and save and save your money for emergencies.

Here’s a look at what our short term plan is to balance all of these categories:

Save

Short Term Savings for Spending: I am doing a better job of setting aside small amounts towards short term savings goals including a wedding gift fund, a car maintenance fund and a tuition fund for my husband’s college.

Long Term Savings: We also are saving towards longer term savings goals such as our contingency fund, software business expenses and my daughter’s education fund.

Pay Off / Reduce Debt

We are selling out house in an effort to reduce our debts and get to a level where we are more comfortable with our savings options. It hasn’t sold yet though (bummer!). I’m also looking forward to renting and not owning for a while so that we have a bit more flexibility with where we live.

Besides this, I used some of our tax refund to go towards our car loan. One of our goals is to pay off our 7 year car loan in 1.5 years. That will involve some aggressive payments. According to the calculator I used something like paying $150/month more than what we owe. I am considering setting up a bi-weekly payment also for this to help reduce the balance and interest paid. This will allow us to begin paying off our new student loans for my husband’s college expenses. They aren’t huge, but we’d like to be able to make that transition. So, paying off the car loan debt is definitely a focus for us.

Invest

I invest in my 401k, but it mostly depresses me to follow it. No matter how I allocate it, it vastly under peforms the S&P 500 index fund.

Beyond that, I am in the process of transitioning my Traditional IRA to an online brokerage. I also am opening up a Roth IRA, but realistically won’t be able to contribute to it until our home is sold.

I’ll be moving my daughter’s certificate to a 529 College Invest plan in April.

Building Businesses

I don’t plan on building just one business, I plan on having multiple, including the consulting business that I already operate. I want to focus my efforts on business opportunities but once they are developed and running well, I would like to diversify and branch into other businesses (hopefully product based) for multiple income streams. This is not an overnight thing, but I firmly believe that this is possibly the most valuable thing I could be spending my time and some amount of investment on. Plus, I think this is what America needs right now. More start up small businesses, more entrepreneurs to get things moving.

As much as I am happy to be making efforts in many financially-savvy categories, I do still struggle with balancing and prioritizing them. I’d love your insight on this.

photo by calliope

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Since I began this blog I have narrowed down my focus towards determining that I want to start more businesses that are product rather than service based. I have now taken that leap with my new, still working out the kinks website; ontimelines.com.

Based on the wonderful feedback from this website, I have realized an area that I really want to focus on further and offer help to others: Planning and organizing. I love the simplicity that a time line can offer for planning and visualizing your goals.

In the short term, this site will offer custom, beautiful templates for PC and Mac office tools for everything from wedding planning to childhood milestones to fitness scheduling. The site will include packages of timelines, checklists and plans for every day use. My long term goal is to offer an online tool as well.

So, you may notice a slight decrease in my blogging on this site, but it is not because I am not working on my journey to financial freedom, I am just redirecting some of my efforts into action!

If you have suggestions on what to do or add, I’m happy to hear them.

Happy planning!

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Photo from Apple.com

Alright, this post is just a shameless plug for my iMac on the Leapord OS X. But really, this computer has allowed me to use so many organizing and helpful tools so that I can expand both my business and improve my use of time. I know this is a bit off topic, but I just have to share some of the reasons why my Mac has made it possible for me to progress my quest for organizing, budgeting, and overall happiness since I have owned it.
For years I have wanted a Mac. I just never was ready to take the leap until Parallels (and Boot Camp) arrived. I bought my first laptop mac, but was quickly scared by my failure to get Boot Camp working and quickly returned it and went back to the comfort of my PC.

Now, I know that most Mac converts already know this stuff, but a lot, and I mean a lot, of PC users don’t. So, I’m going to share my version of what you’re missing out on if you still own a PC.

Photo from Apple.com

What PC Users are Missing:

• I can use my mac and PC software at the same time
• I don’t have to buy or install virus software all the time, that comes with the mac worry free
• I don’t have to worry about backing up my files. I just plug in an external hardrive and Time Machine does all the work without me thinking about it. If you want to revert, its actually FUN to enter into the time machine which looks sort of like a star wars show and go back in time to a previous edition of a file, etc.
• Built in video, fun tools, iPhoto, and so much more. I’m not kidding, the list goes on and on with the features that PC’s are leagues behind on.
• Expose is awesome to be able to view multiple windows that you are working on at once and the dashboard widgets are also an easy and simple way of keeping your workspace clean, but allowing for quick access to widgets of your choice.
• There are many applications that come standard with the Mac and many free or cheap ones to install that just run, there is very little to do to get your apps running.

Trade Offs – What Will I Loose if I Switch from a PC?

• Old software that isn’t compatible may not work. Its unlikely though. You can get Parallels to work with XP or a newer version of windows, which works with most old software.
• Add on software tools do have an upgrade cost associated with them, such as Parallels. For some reason Parallels tells me I don’t have enough 3D video memory for optimal performance, which surprises me as I got my mac not 6 months ago.
• You have to adjust to folders and icon sorting, as well as a slightly different way of using applications, but the newer version of PC operating systems like Windows 7 and Vista are moving in that direction anyway.
• That’s all I can think of off hand. You can still use Microsoft Office if you are addicted to that. However, I have also become a large fan of iWork and the Mac Office tools. UPDATE: Please see the comments below about compatibility issues if you are an avid Microsoft Office and software user. You may not be able to make the switch if you are, because it just plain wouldn’t be worth it.

If you can, I say ditch the PC. Its worth it.

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There are many savings and investment vehicles to choose from when it comes to saving for your children’s college. They range from ESAs to CDs, and in some states, you can invest in a 529 savings fund.  I have been confused and intrigued by the 529 College Savings Plans since I had my daughter, but have made it a goal to start one by April 2010 when her CD expires. I’m not clear what states these are available, but they are where I live in Colorado.

529 plans are more than just savings accounts. These state-sponsored college savings plans were established by the federal government in Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code to encourage families to save more for college. They offer unique state and federal tax benefits you can’t get from other ways to save, making them one of the best ways to save for college. – College Invest

Benefits of 529 College Savings Accounts are Numerous:

• Possible state tax deductions from contributions
• Savings are tax-free
• High contribution limits
• Withdrawals and account options are flexible for your needs

Why not invest in something stable for my daughter and get a little help at tax time? Here’s a summary of what I’ve learned about what’s available and how to select a 529 College Savings Plan.

There are 4 plans to choose from. Some of the plans available, such as the one from Vanguard, offer a range of investment options for your funds with varying levels of risk. The main concern I have is that I would rather have a stable return with little risk, and have the tax incentives than have a volatile savings plan for my daughter’s education savings.

Great Resources:

• Smart Choice College Savings Plan eFirstBank.com – Offers a money market and a 1 year savings option.
• Vanguard’s Direct Portfolio College Savings Plan – There are options for all risk levels, use their Risk Tolerance Allocation Tool to find out your level
• Scholars Choice College Savings Program – Offers a variety of investment options through Legg Mason Global Asset Allocation, LLC. and thier financial advisors only.
• CollegeInvest Stable Value Plus – A partnership with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of Connecticut (MetLife) to offers a guaranteed fixed income college saving option
• Comparison of the difference between 529, Coverdell Savings ESAs, UTMAs and more for 2009. Compare College Savings Options. [PDF]
• CollegeInvest.org – Full Detail on the 529 Program Options

One thing is certain, don’t bank on your children getting a scholarship, start saving today. As parents we don’t have to do everything for our children, but what we can do makes a huge impact. I know it did for me, as the help my parents have given me has been invaluable.

Please note, this post is not to be considered financial advise. I do not take any responsibility for your investment or financial decisions. Please see my policy for more details.

UPDATE 3.29.2010: Yay! I finally opened and funded this account for my daughter through the College Invest website. It took me about 20 minutes to fill out the application, decide if I wanted to also enroll in the UPromise (shopping cash back that is directed and linked to your 529 account), and read over all of the documentation. I opted for the Vanguard fund after all, as I allocated a diverse mix of investment elections and plan to monitor it over time. I also set up a small recurring monthly transfer that will increase yearly by a certain amount. Progress!

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I am curious if life is made up of Either / Or choices or if it is truly possible to have a life full of ANDs. I’d like to believe it is possible to keep adding ANDs to your life, yet I know that at some point your plate gets full and you have to take things off.

So, what do I mean by leading an AND life versus an OR life?

Do you agree with this statement?:
In life, you can either have a fulfilling career or a great marriage or you can have children.

Or do you agree with this statement?:
In life, you can have a fulfilling career and a great marriage and you can have children.

There are only so many ANDs you can add to your list. Yet how do you know when enough is enough? Is it possible to just get more and more efficient with your time to the point where you can have all the ANDs that you want?

Here’s some of the financial top gurus family status:

Suze Orman – No Kids

Robert Kiyosaki – No Kids

David Bach – Unknown (Please let me know)

Dave Ramsey – 3 Kids

Okay. Point conveyed. Is it possible to reach any sort of financial freedom when you have the responsibilities, be it financial, time, energy, love, that you have to devote to your little ones? I’m not sure. I hope so. However, it does bother me a bit that many of the top advisers on financial education and wealth don’t have a family. Suze Orman recommends investing in your retirement before sinking too much to save for your child’s college, but that is a very difficult choice to make in my opinion. As parents, you often have the instinct to take care of your children as much as if not more than you take care of yourself.

Its difficult for me to listen to some of these gurus talk about how to get rich because I feel they are already too far removed from me and my life. Not to mention my age group. I prefer to read many of the blogs out there at the moment.

I have a little toddler and the question that has entered my mind lately is just that: can I have this AND that, and to what degree. Can I truly find balance? Right now, it seems that all that I am doing is adding to my plate, with out enough focus, and I am not taking enough away.

What do you think? Is it possible?

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A recurring theme that I have heard and read from ALMOST ALL of the books on wealth and prosperity involve one consistent thought: Documenting and staying focused on your vision.

This is taught in many ways. Some people prefer to clip pictures together from magazines, etc to have a visual representation of their future desires. Personally, I want to write it down, them set goals and visual representations through things such as timelines to chart and hold onto my plans.

Many businesses write their vision in the present tense, to add weight to the vision. I am consciously not going to do that, as it doesn’t jive in my head. I’d rather write about the future in a clear and precise outline format.

So, Here Goes. Hopefully this will also give you some ideas for getting started as well.

1 Year Life Vision (Personal & Business)

• Work to find preferred neighborhood to live in for at least 5 years
• Continue to learn and improve relationships with my daughter, husband, family & friends
• Feed my mind with wisdom and knowledge
• Transition to additional entrepreneurial business ventures (product vs service based)
• Begin to focus on health industry as I have realized that this is where I want to focus my life’s work

3 Year Life Vision (Personal & Business)

• Move to neighborhood close to jobs in our field and with good schools
• Have second child
• Transition to PT work after 2nd child, with focus on entrepreneurial ventures
• My husband will have a successful personal / athletic training practice
• Continue to work on balance of mind, body & soul
• Develop solid business relationships with a broader range of colleagues

5 Year Life Vision (Personal & Business)

• Spend more time being a mom
• For business, we’ll begin to think bigger. Invest in larger business opportunities in health industry.
• Increased efforts towards balance of body (more exercise & diet choices)

10 Year Life Vision (Personal & Business)

• Move to somewhere humid near the ocean with lots of greenery. I want to walk on the beach every day.
• Increased efforts towards feeding the soul (meditation, gardening, down time)
• Continue to learn and build business ventures in health industry

All of these tie in with what I have been blogging about so far, getting your mindset in the right place, getting organized, and setting goals. Oh, and my free and simple timeline template is a great tool for visualizing your plan. Next, action, action and more action. Followed by planning, monitoring, and adjusting as you go and learn.

What does yours vision look like?

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I had the privilege of listening to a thoughtful free webinar by “conscious” entrepreneur Max Simon in which he interviewed Vishen Lakhiani on the concepts of creating a wealthy mind. He also spoke about how to turn a business from performing so-so to really reaching a ‘turning point’.

Some of the most insightful points of the audio (available for free below) were the following:

• The biggest mistake that most marketers make is that they have a lack of understanding of what Eugene Schwartz says is called “Market Sophistication”. Market Sophistication is the not the same as the buyers life cycle. The traditional marketing concepts that I was taught in my marketing undergraduate work was regarding reaching your customers at certain stages in the buyer life cycle: awareness, interest, preference, adoption. Instead, Market Sophistication refers to the stage that the buyer is at in terms of their awareness of the types of messages already available for a particular product. If it is a relatively new product, your message needs to be much different than a message for an much more saturated market. For a saturated market, you will have to offer much more to differentiate yourself. I love this concept and it gives me a lot to ponder in my marketing efforts.
• Succeeding in life, whether it be in wealth, health, relationships, etc is really all about your MINDSET. We all know this, yet it is entirely different to consciously, day in and day out, make sure our mind is in the right place. It is so easy to let it veer off in the direction of doubt, uncertainty and loss of focus.
• By setting a clear purpose and vision for what you want to do with your business, you will be able to focus your efforts and achieve much better results. Seems obvious? Large businesses do this, but you can apply this concept to your small business OR your personal life, and achieve great results as well. (Goal tracking tools help with this)

No matter what business you are in, if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, you can’t avoid needing to also learn the tricks of the trade of marketing. Personally, I love the ever changing dynamic of the marketing world, and the endless possibilities that are presented by the concept of reaching your market in the best, fastest and most efficient ways.

In my opinion, much of the laws of attraction and success can be boiled down to these 3 things: Confidence, Purpose & Marketing.

1) Confidence: Free your mind from doubt, fear and worry. Doubt is the #1 thing getting in your way towards success. Hold true to your intuition, but do not let doubt cloud your belief in yourself.
2) Purpose: Define and hold true to your purpose and vision for yourself and your business efforts
3) Marketing: Brand yourself first, your business second. Your personal brand will get you farther than all the efforts you can put into your business. Start with yourself, then build from there.

Listen to the recorded webinar, and let me know your thoughts.
The audio is also available here: http://www.getselfcentered.com/turningpoint/replay.html

Related Posts

• January 12, 2010 -- Does Opportunity Come to You or Do You Have to Create It?

Review of The Best Online Goal Tracking Tools for Personal Use

There are many online tools available for keeping track of and measuring progress on your goals. Many corporations have started to incorporate goal systems (Success Factors is one example) and S.M.A.R.T. goals. Not all goal systems utilize this method, however, it is widely accepted as an excellent way to achieve results with your goals. The following is a look at how to measure your personal goals and a review of some of the best online tools for measuring your goals.

So, what are S.M.A.R.T. Goals?

S – Specific (the more specific the better)
M – Measurable (The criteria that you will use as measurement that you have completed a goal, such as getting your degree, etc)
A – Achievable (Do you currently have the skills and resources needed to reach this goal?)
R – Relevant (How does this goal tie to your passion or purpose?)
T - Time-dimension (When will you aim to start and finish the goal, will there be milestones to reach along the way?)

Many of these goals start with the questions (that you then fill in the blank for):

• Why do you want to achieve this goal?
• Next ask yourself, what specific benefits will come with achieving it?
• When will you achieve it by? (time factor)
• How you plan to achieve the goal?

There is a growing philosophy that if you share your resolutions or goals with others, your friends, family, or a social community can help encourage you to stay on track and keep your goals alive. The same often holds true for other areas in life, such as getting in shape, isn’t it more fun to do when you have a friend that will meet you at the gym and hold you accountable for sticking to your work out goals? So, some of the online tools focus on the social sharing element of goal tracking.

Best Online  Goal Tracking Tools of 2010:

GoalsOnTrack.com Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars $48/year subscription

This simple, easy to use tool does a great job of allowing you to track your goals, visually chart your progress and see reports, create specific action plans, manage daily tasks associated with your goals, track specific time spent, as well as keeping a journal for your additional thoughts and inspirations that you want to capture. You can assign visual pictures with your goals, set overall categories with specific goals beneath that category, and assign any type of progress metric you want to show your measurement (dollars, percentage, etc). It follows the S.M.A.R.T. goal model. You can print out your goals, your daily tasks, and really use this tool to get on track. You can set email reminders, import and export your tasks to CSV or for iCal format, and much more. Just check out their full list of features on the site. This tool costs money, yet I believe its worth the investment if you want a full suite of highly effective goal tracking tools.

SuperViva.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Free
SuperViva is a social sharing goal or “life” tracking site that allows you to create  goals to share or keep private. SuperViva was created in 2006 (runs ads and accepts donations to support it). It allows you to set up weekly reminders to check in with your list of goals. Super viva offers something closer to the SMART goal method by allowing you to group your goals, set specific goals within an overall list, assign what “Life Dimension” your goal applies to (Personal, Family, Finances, Community, etc) and also set the start and completion dates, priority, effort needed and budget needed. You can mark a goal as completed, on the backburner, or remove it. There is a section to find ideas from the community and ‘get inspired.’ Nice overall concept for a free tool, however, I find it difficult to navigate and you cannot visually see and chart your progress on a goal.

Goalmigo.com Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Free

Goalmigo is also a social sharing goal tracking tool. You start by adding your goals, and adding who is going to help hold you accountable or your ‘Supporters’ for your goals. You enter your completion date, and can set up reminders in day, week or month increments. A great feature is that you can assign a tracking log (they have some already listed such as weight, calories, etc). You can assign tags to help you to share your goal in the social environment. Once you set your goals, you can mark them as complete and also add milestones in your “Log” which display in a bar chart format. Beyond that, you can visually see a reminder of how long you have remaining to complete you goal such as “One Month Remaining”. You can also add notes to your goals. There are ads on this site, but otherwise its a pretty clean and user friendly interface.

eLifeList.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Free

eLifeList is another social sharing tool which allows public or private goal tracking. What’s awesome about this tool, is that it has very useful categories and goals already entered in it. I’m not sure if there are from the community or were created ahead of time, but they can help you get started. You can add descriptions, photos or videos to your list, and also set reminders to be sent to your email. The site is pretty user friendly, though some of the features you don’t edit until after you’ve set the goal, such as reminders. I would think you’d create everything when you are creating the goal. You can mark the goal as complete, and see a progress indicator (from 0-100%) of how far you are toward reaching your goals. From the design of the site, it appears to be focused on a younger demographic (perhaps college students?). Overall, it does the job for simple goal tracking.

LifeTango.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Free
LifeTango is a very clean and effective goal tracking tool. As the other tools, you can choose if you want public or private goals. You can sort by priority, date, and other categories. You have to manually update the progress you are at in your goal by a percentage from 0-100%.  Ongoing, periodic goals are considered “Tasks” and are tracked using their “Task Tracker” (as opposed to goals that you want to assign a specific due date for). And example of a Task Tracker goal would be to workout every day for 1 year. You would then set these recurring tasks and mark your progress daily. They assign stars that you click on to indicate that you have completed your recurring task goal (kinda cute like when you were a kid and got stars for getting something done). There is also a fun little sticky note for “reminders”. Overall, I like this site for their Task tracking but I think it is a little confusing for tracking larger picture life goals.

Stickk.com – Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Free

Stick is a tool meant to motivate you to stick to your goals through the use of accountability with other people and putting a bet or monetary value at stake if you don’t meet your goals. It is much more focused on coaching and pushing you to achieve your goals than any of the other tools. You start by setting a goal (Referred to as a Commitment Contract, much more formal and committed sounding!), then setting the ‘stakes’ or what’s at risk to complete it (You literally have to pay out money to your selected charity or person if you miss your goal deadlines), then you ‘get a referee’ or a person in your life to to push you meet your goals, and you can also add friends to help you achieve your goals. Many of their pre-set goals are around losing weight, quitting smoking, or other life-changing habits that it often takes a ‘coach’ to help with. However, it can be used for other goal tracking as well. You can set the category, whether it is a one-time or recurring event, get reminders and view your progress. Oh, and you don’t HAVE to set a “Stake” of financial value, you can still use this tool without the pressure of a stake. For many people though, I can imagine that this method (fear of losing your money!) works great for actually getting them motivated and on track. This is by far the most unique of the tools I’ve seen.

GoalsTogether.com Rating: 2 out of 5 stars Free

This free social sharing site offers the ability to create and track your goals, and share them with the community. You can choose to have private or public goals. You can search for other goals for people in the community. It allows ‘basic’ goals which are manually updated for progress, and ‘checkpoint’ goals which you set the checkpoints or milestones needed to attain the goal at the beginning of the tool. When you have completed a task in the goal, you mark it as complete by checking it off, like you would on a to-do list. Overall, I would say that this tool is very basic, and not all that useful for the serious person trying to implement a SMART goal process or anything much more than a task list. There are ads on this site.

43Things.com Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars Free
I saw this mentioned often as a goal tracking site, but it really isn’t. This site is really just a simple social site to measure trends for goals and resolutions with the answer to 1 question: “What do you want to do in the year 2010?”. To me, it seems similar to Twitter and many other social sharing tools, so who knows if it will be used a lot. Cute idea, but not that helpful for achieving your goals.

Which one to choose?
You decide. Just keep in mind, when searching for a goal tracking tool, I would recommend determining if you simply want to have to do lists, or if you are ready to have specific goals with associated tasks. Goal tracking is about all of the small tasks (from your TO DO Lists) that add up to one overarching goal. Sometimes, you may have random TO DO’s that don’t really seem like they fit into any goal, but you feel that they have to get done anyway. Go ahead and add them to the list and perhaps even do them, but first consider: WHY am I doing some task if it doesn’t help me reach any of my goals? This can lead to the type of self reflection that will ultimately help you to reduce the amount of mindless, or purposeless tasks that you are doing, and help you to find the best use of your time.

Let me know your thoughts on these tools or if there are some great ones that I have missed.

Random Posts

• February 17, 2010 -- Launch of my New Business, OnTimelines.com
• November 30, 2009 -- Free Financial IQ Quizes
• November 12, 2009 -- Who Am I Writing For?
• November 24, 2009 -- Review of Free Credit Score Analysis Tool: Credit.com
• October 29, 2009 -- Shopaholic? Put a Halt to Retail Therapy

Science has proven that people who express their gratitude daily are 25% happier and significantly healthier than those who don’t—and doing it takes as little as a minute a day! – Gratitudelog.com

GratitudeLog.com is a fun social site that takes the basic concept of short updates from sites such as Twitter, and applies it to a specific concept, Gratitude.

You are able to mark someone’s comment as “Awesome!” or reply to it. You can follow people and they can follow you. Beyond that, you can send people “Appreciation” gifts (for free), which are simply little icons with a thoughtful note (like you can send on Facebook).

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• People on this site really seem to respect the type of content that can be posted and shared, you will find inspiration from what other’s are saying!
• It can integrate with your Twitter account to post your updates
• There is something both cool and scary about publicly sharing your personal thoughts on your gratitude for your life

Cons:

• The list of updates on the main page shows those that you follow’s comments, but I find it somewhat difficult to navigate as a running list.
• If someone isn’t a member of this site, you can share a gift with them, but you can’t really interact much further than that… So, I suppose they’ll have to join!

I have made a pledge to myself to login and put something that I am thankful or grateful for every day. So far, day 5, I’m doing pretty good. Reflecting on what I am grateful for on this site has been  great, but the best part is that I am starting to expand that further into other aspects of my life through out the day. My husband and I have made a commitment (thanks to a posting I saw on this site) to express something we are grateful for to each other every day as well. Already, this starts off or ends the day with a smile.

No matter your religion, your spirituality or your place in life, it is without a doubt helpful to give thanks for what you have in your life that you appreciate. I am convinced that a commitment to maintaining a pattern of expressing my gratitude will play a key part in keeping me motivated and maintaining my perspective.

Related Posts

• June 23, 2010 -- Stop Chasing After Happiness – Choose Happiness
• January 6, 2010 -- 5 Steps to Happiness with a Personal Finance Twist

I’m new-ish to the personal finance/weathly mind blogging and as much as I like some of the hugely known PF blogs I enjoy reading from perspectives of ‘smaller’ PF bloggers because they aren’t necessarily experts, but instead on a similar journey to mine. I thought I would share some of the interesting personal finance blogs that I have found so far for you to check out yourself:

• Automatic Finances – Writes about saving, ‘automating’ your finances so you don’t have to worry about certain things, personal finance and spending. I liked a recent post about how to follow the entire personal finance blogosphere through sites like Tip’d and PFBlogs.com
• Frugal Zeitgeist – Writes about saving, setting goals, finding happiness, and the realities of life with debt. Having just recently educated myself about what zeitgeistism (if that’s a word) even is, I am intrigued to learn more of what he has to say.
• Fiscal Fizzle – This blog offers a ‘spicy’ and very educated perspective on personal finance. He has a unique perspective of discussing principles, simplicity, critical thinking and ‘money paradigms’, or thinking of money through different perspectives. I recently found this blog and am very impressed.
• FreeFromBroke – A very honest perspective on saving, raising a family, and affording life.
• SteadfastFinances – Covers a lot of topics from banking to frugal living and real estate. Very insightful writer.

These are just a few fun ones to check out. Let me know what other blogs are growing in popularity in the personal finance world. Or better yet, submit your PF blog to me to check out!

Random Posts

• October 11, 2010 -- Review of LearnVest – Personal Finance Tools for Women
• November 13, 2009 -- Advice for the Young, Fabulous and Broke from Suze Orman
• January 1, 2010 -- Review of Conspiracy of the Rich Book by Robert Kiyosaki
• November 4, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tool: Passpack.com
• February 4, 2010 -- Many Popular Financial Advisors Don’t Have Kids

I’ve noticed a lot of blog posts and a growing movement on Twitter and the blogosphere about the topic: “move your money.” (See the site: MoveYourMoney.info). Full disclosure: I work for a local credit union in my area, and I prefer the credit union not-for-profit business model. I typically try to avoid any direct reference to where I work because that’s not what my journey is about, its about my personal finances. However, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the concept of “going local” with anything you buy, including where you choose to bank. To me, going local is an important part of making conscious decisions and choosing where and how to spend your money. Choosing to shop local has many benefits which I will explain in a moment.

This particular movement is coming from consumer’s anger at the big banks for being bailed out and spending OUR tax dollars for often times wasteful and frivolous purposes. Many people, including big names such as Bill Maher (watch a video from Maher), and Suze Orman are endorsing and making public statements about going local and moving your money. They believe that if enough people actually do this, it would mean that we are actually doing something big to INFLUENCE change, one individual at a time.

I have not always been a large proponent of ‘spending local’. I admit that I still (shamefully) have a BofA credit card. I don’t always remember to shop at the farmer’s market. However, the more I start to learn and educate myself about the current financial system in America, the more that I learn about the awful things that are put into my child’s toys that are from China, and the more that I truly understand the impact of shipping my hard-earned dollars out of my local community, the more I realize that choosing to spend your money local is one of the most useful things you can do for YOUR local economy and the stability of those around you.

So, if you are already choosing to shop local, or if you are considering taking it one step further, start to think of other places that you can make the choice to spend local and invest in your own community instead of communities outside of your influence.

Here’s a few suggestions for spending & keeping your money local:

• Go to your old town, specialty shops, or craft fairs for buying gifts, these stores need your support
• Stock up at the farmer’s market from local growers
• Look for local produce at your regular grocery store
• Choose a local bank or credit union (find a credit union) to save and borrow money from
• Consider going thrifty – to thrift stores and garage sales to buy things that you don’t need brand new (Better yet, swap! Check out SwapMamas.com for local swap options)
• Consider a Staycation this summer – there are many uncharted territories in your state to be discovered, its often less expensive to stay in town on your time off, and you spend local
• Eat at locally owned restaurants instead of big chains

You don’t have to give up things that you love to go local. And you don’t have to do all of the items on my list. Mainly, all that I plan to do and suggest you try, is to think twice about the options for where to spend your money, and consider making a more conscious choice when you do decide to spend.

Random Posts

• December 4, 2009 -- Tips for Sticking to a Budget
• October 29, 2009 -- Shopaholic? Put a Halt to Retail Therapy
• November 14, 2009 -- Top 3 Barriers in My Journey Toward Financial Freedom
• July 1, 2010 -- My Best Investment So Far: Lending Club
• October 30, 2009 -- Review Free Online Budgeting Tools: Yodlee MoneyCenter

Best Envelope Budgeting Software: You Need a Budget YNAB 3.0 for PC or Mac

Just when I thought I had it all figured out by using online tools like Mint, I repeatedly saw mention of one of the top rated budgeting software for download on your PC or Mac, YNAB 3.0 (You Need a Budget). YNAB is a budgeting software that incorporates the envelop method of budgeting. This may just be the next step for me in advancing my money management and control of our finances. The tools that I am currently using are easy to import my financial information and great for big picture trending, but we still haven’t really done well at isolating how to break some of our patterns and stick to our budgeting goals.

One of the goals of this tool is to help you get off of living only paycheck to paycheck. This is accomplished through the “YNAB Buffer” or by organizing your money in a way that you are able to save enough to off set one month of bills.

Your YNAB Buffer is the equivalent of one month’s income which, once saved, will allow you to use paychecks received during the current month for the following month, removing you from the “Paycheck to Paycheck” cycle.

This tool is not for the faint of heart. It is for people that are truly committed to managing the budget and investing the time and energy necessary to do so. When your are ready to get serious, give this tool a try.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Type of  Tool: Downloaded Budgeting Software for PC or Mac, imports .OFX, .QFX or .CSV files (Download from your online banking)

Price: $59.95

Compatiblity:
Windows 7 / Vista / Vista 64 / XP / 2000
Mac OSX
Linux

Pros:

• Simple, user friendly interface includes “Accounts”, “Budgets” and “Reports”
• Intuitive categorization
• Flags for follow up
• Excellent reports for trending with ultimate control of what you are looking at and exportable to Excel or to Print
• Helpful how tos section and blog for getting started
• Helps set up and manage your funds for one time expenses
• Helps save for larger 1 time expenses
• It can help you track EVERYTHING you spend – even cash which I hate because its usually disappears without a trace.
• Very helpful for people with variable income
  

Cons:

• Getting started can take a long time to set up. Unlike some other tools (Mint.com) that auto categorize the majority of your expenses, you need to manually categorize all of your expenses, at least at first.
• Cannot auto-import your information, you must download it and import it into the tool (This could also be seen as a PRO for some that are weary of the online only methods for security reasons)
• Not as full featured as Quicken or MS Money for investment and business tracking

Screenshots:

Random Posts

• November 23, 2009 -- Review of Free Credit Score Analysis Tool: Credit Karma
• January 29, 2010 -- Having a Clear Life Vision
• October 13, 2010 -- Could I Really Retire at Age 65?
• December 21, 2009 -- Be the Change You Want to See in the World
• November 10, 2009 -- Sometimes its Okay to Lose Focus

Do not wait for an opportunity to be all that you want to be; when an opportunity to be more than you are now is presented and you feel impelled toward it, take it. It will be the first step toward a greater opportunity. There is no such thing possible in this universe as a lack of opportunities for the man who is living the advancing life. – Wallace Wattles

Do some people just have it easy while others always struggle to get ahead?

In the past, I’ve often felt jealous or a bit resentful when I look at certain other people that seem to have everything in life fall into their lap. I always thought that wealth, jobs, boyfriends, and the works seem to just naturally happen for some people more than others. Social and economic factors are certainly a big part of why people have opportunities in life initially, but beyond that, when you are truly on your own, what makes opportunity happen?

Recently, I had a realization. Ever since I’ve started writing my blog, and putting myself out there more in the world, I have had small but steady opportunities start knocking on my door. Its what I wanted, but I didn’t really know what to expect or believe that it would happen. We’re not talking a big book deal or achieving financial freedom in 2 months. Its a different sort of opportunity that I am CREATING. I’m connecting with amazing new people from all over the country. I’m sharing stories. I’m offering up what I’ve learned for someone else to hopefully gain some insight from. For instance, my simple but useful free time line template is now getting 5-15 downloads a day in just a short few weeks of its existence. It makes me feel great to give something useful to a lot of people that will help them plan. It inspires me to do and give more. Giving is definitely addictive.

Lately, I have had a much more positive outlook on my life because I feel like I have gotten my power back. No more white flag, no more self-pity, I am taking control and doing something every day to make a difference, education myself, set goals and make tiny steps in the direction I want to go in life. I am making more conscious financial choices in spending, saving, budgeting, and in what I spend my free time doing.

I’ve realized that opportunity, though it may seem like it just falls into some people’s laps, is usually a result of a few key things:

• Having the right attitude and mind set to SEE the opportunities when they appear
• Taking ACTION – Small steps are better than nothing at all
• Putting yourself out there, meeting people, networking
• Offering something(s) of true value to others
• Having confidence in yourself, your purpose(s) and going after what you want

So tell me, are you one of those fortunate that have had opportunity come to you, or have you had to do something different to find it?

Related Posts

• January 28, 2010 -- Confidence, Purpose and Marketing: Ingredients for Success