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I did, however, have a chance to check my BP this week…10 pts lower on the top, 15 lower on the bottom, than it ws in January when I got my Chantix.

So I guess I’m doing SOMETHING right.

I’m guessing the reason for the meme’s popularity is that it’s fresh, new, and unique…because pretty clearly, nobody points at themselves in the real world.

Just last week, an acquaintance suggested that she hoped Tennessee’s gubernatorial candidates would, in an upcoming debate, address a question she’d e-mailed for consideration. What, she wanted to know, did they plan to do to fix the fact that Tennessee is the 2nd fattest state in the nation?

Apparently it is up to government to fix us. We’re broke, it seems…fat, lazy, piles of lard…and the gubmint must remedy this.

Just this morning, USA Today says the evil egg companies have resort[ed] to blaming the victim for the recent salmonella outbreak.

“Somewhere along the line, consumers have to be responsible for what they put in their bodies.” Consumers who don’t cook their eggs all the way through “are taking a risk on themselves.”

No way.

How dare the evil big company suggest that you might possibly be responsible for what food you ingest. Why, they even have the unmitigated gall to recommend that you follow common health guidelines in preparing your food! Why, they’ve even go so far as to print them on the cartons!

Bastards.

Wall Street Journal’s in on the act as well. This morning, they’ve taken it upon themselves to warn the poor victims of the world that some credit cards aren’t subject to the CARD Act

Professional cards aren’t covered under the Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, or Card Act for short. Among other things, the law prohibits issuers from controversial billing practices such as hair-trigger interest rate increases, shortened payment cycles and inactivity fees—but it doesn’t apply to professional cards

You see, the problem is:

“A lot of consumers really don’t know the difference, and some of the wording on the offers can be ambiguous,” says Beverly Harzog of Cardratings.com, a consumer-education website.

Oh my. Consumers don’t know the difference, and the wording of the offer is vague and ambiguous.

So hey…just go ahead and sign an offer you don’t understand. Put your signature to an unclear contract. By all means, apply for credit under terms you can’t distinguish from one another.

It’s really quite alright…the gubmint will protect you, and punish the evil companies trying to make a profit.

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We are a nation of simple mindeed blamers. Everything must be someone else’s fault. We are victims, incapable of making decisions in our own best interest, and unwilling to accept risk of any sort. We have no thumbs.

We are disgusting fatbodies.

I have just one question for each one of you…

In the very short time you are given on this Earth, you have but one true posession…one tangible asset that is yours and yours alone from the moment you enter the world…

Your life.

Why is it that you are so EAGER to give up control of and responsibility for it?

Why do you all want to be slaves?

From http://www.hamell.net/?p=435

I’m still a disgusting fatbody…but now I’m a disgusting fatbody who can pretty reliably run a mile.

So…thought maybe I’d run down a few of the different solutions I’ve seen or tried over the years, give out some links, and offer a bit of commentary.

YMMV (Your money may vary) of course.

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Spreadsheets:

I mist have tried a dozen different spreadsheet templates…and never wound up using any of them. I DID, however, use bits and pieces and ideas from several of them.

This blog post over at Christian PF lists 10 different free budget spreadsheets to get you started. Each is linked for download as well.

Of particular interest over there is the “Debt Reduction spreadsheet”. It’s a handy way to give yourself a visual image of your debt snowball. It shows you a plan, a table of outcomes based on various strategies, and even prints a payment schedule.

My favorite, however…and the one from which I generated many of the ideas in my own spreadsheet, is the “Detailed personal budgeting Excel sheet” near the bottom. This is actually a link to MyMoneyBlog’s “Within Your Means” budgeting tool…a fairly complex and detailed budget spreadsheet, but one that can really open your eyes…both to budgeting ideas and spreadsheet usage.

Financial Software :

Outside of spreadsheets, there are dozens of pieces of software running around that can help as well.

I’ll stay away from the “major” players like Quicken and MS Money, and instead comment about a few of the lesser known alternatives.

Quite popular amongst the “geek crowd” is GNU Cash, an open source double-entry accounting system. It’s light, fast, and available for dozens of OSs, including Windows.

One drawback is that GnuCash’s budgeting functionality is somewhat limited. Indeed, if you’re feeling just incredibly geeky and bored, you can read the nearly 10 year long history of budgeting functionality and debate in GnuCash on their wiki.

Ace Money is another popular solution. It has a “Lite” version that is free, but only allows management of one checking account….quite enough for many folks. It does budgets, tracks spending, imports bank data, the works.

Personally, I found its user interface didn’t seem to ‘flow” the way I thought financial software should…I felt I was doing things “out of order” quite often. The software IS pretty functional though, and offers quite a bit of the same functionality that larger, more expensive packages do. Certainly worth a look.

Finally, there’s a couple of fairly inexpensive alternatives with free trials.

There’s PearBudget, which is an online budget making tool. It helps you sort categories out into fixed monthly expenses, variable expenses, “once in a while” expenses, etc, and then prioritize and shuffle them around. It also let syou enter expenditures, tracks your spending, compares actual spending to budgeted plan, and makes suggestions. It even helps you plan your savings.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of keeping my budget online, but the system itself is quite capable, and at $3 a month (with a 30 day free trial), it’s sure inexpensive.

Finally, there’s YNAB (You Need A Budget). YNAB is about as packed with features and abilities as you can want. It is a full blown “Quicken alternative”. Of course, it costs just about the same as Quicken…go figure.

I mention YNAB here for one very simple reason…the one feature that sets it apart from Quicken is its focus. both do essentially the same things, but YNAB views personal finance from a BUDGETARY standpoint, rather than a TRACKING standpoint. Quicken tracks what you do, and tells you about it. YNAB asks what you’d like to do, and tells you how good (or bad) a job you’re doing at it.

Note the difference here…Quicken is STILL telling you…after the fact…what happened to your money. YNAB is asking you to tell your money where to go.

Certainly, both pieces of software will do a fine job of managing zero based budgets, don’t get me wrong…but for YNAB, it’s a focus and starting point.

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Having said all of this, I should probably end by saying that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with simply writing down a plan on a piece of paper, and sticking to it. Remember….our grandparents (most of whom were far better at money management than we are) managed money this way. Shoot, if they had a register with neat lines and columns, that was pretty fancy.

Having software add, subtract, calculate, chart, and graph things for us is all well and good…and in my case it appeals to my inner geek. None of this matters, however, unless you understand the very basic point of it all…

You are not the government. You actually have to live on what you make.

Let’s set Republican/Democrat/Independant aside for a minute…the parties, or even the platforms, really don’t matter for the purposes of this post. The fact this post is about the Republican primary is merely incidental to the fact that Channel 5’s article was about that particular primary.

Here in the 6th US Congressional district of Tennessee, there are 6 Republicans vying for their party’s nomination for the US House seat available in November. You may see the complete list at VoteSmart.org if you wish.

One of the candidates is a successful area businessman, who was born and raised here in middle Tennessee. He’s faced financial trouble, learned to overcome it, and turned struggles into a thriving and respected local business. He is opposed to the spending, inflation of government, and reduction of liberties that have marked the past 2 administrations.

Another candidate is a graduate of a local university, holding a masters in Public Administration from MTSU. He’s active in local councils, is also a successful and respected businessman, and has previously demonstrated a knack for balancing budgets and living within ones’ means.

Yet a third is a slightly less well known local journalist, whose coverage of area sporting events at the high school level has set a new standard in many smaller communities. His platform includes family values, and judeo-christian ethics.

Now…I won’t (in this post anyway) preach about which of these folks I might or might not have voted for this morning, or why. Again…who SHOULD, in my little opinion, win that seat is NOT the point of this post. The point is this…

All three of those candidates have 2 things in common.

1) They are not professional politiicans. None of them have ever held an elected office.
2) They aren’t mentioned in this news coverage.

Go ahead..skip to 2:15 of the video. The reporter will stand right there and tell you…yep…here’s the top 3, here’s how negative they’ve been…ok, moving on…

People…THIS is why places like votesmart.org exist, and why they’re so important. These 3 assclowns made news SPECIFICALLY because of how negative they’ve been.

Maybe that’s not what you’re interested in. Maybe you don’t WANT to vote for a backstabbing, mud slinging, career politician. But MSM won’t tell you you have options.

You know WHY we’re in the mess we’re in? it’s not because “the democrats did this”, or “the republicans did that”…it’s because POLITICIANS are birds of a feather…the kind of slime that does what these assclowns do…both to get IN office, and then to STAY there…IS the kind of slime that put us in the shape we’re now in.

And it’s YOUR fault. MY fault. OUR fault.

We vote for the “lesser of three evils” because we don’t BOTHER to learn that there are fully TWICE AS MANY OPTIONS as MSM leads us to believe. We are led around by our nose rings, unwilling or unable to think for ourselves, relying instead on the television to tell us who we can vote for, and what they believe.

People…get off your metaphorical ass.

Do some research.

Find out who’s running…what they ACTUALLY believe…what they’ve voted for, or said, or written, or published, or endorsed…

Find out where they work, what they do, who they are.

You’re selecting the people who will serve as YOUR voice…who will act as YOUR executives…who will guide YOUR community, YOUR state, YOUR country….

Please do us all a favor, and demand more information than a 30 second sound bite that fits neatly between this year’s hard hitting expose on internet safety, and the plug for the latest reality show.

Thanks little rover…ya done good.

2009’s bank closures were a piffle compared to this year.

Yesderday’s activities by the FDIC brought the 2010 total to 108.

That’s right…108 banks have closed in 2010 alone…and it’s not August yet. Last year…the worst since the S&L crisis of the 90’s…had seen only 69 banks closed by this time.

Significant here is the causes the article mentions..largely defaults on commercial loans/property, the result of businesses closing down ‘in the recession”.

But wait…there’s a problem here. We’re supposed to be in a “slow but susteained recovery”, aren’t we?

Think about that…during a “recovery”, fueled by billions of dollars of non-existant capital “thrown from helicopters” into a flagging economy for the EXPRESS purpose of keeping bankrupt companies afloat, we’ve got companies closing at such a rate that:

1) 10% unemployment is the norm.
2) SO many commercial loans are going unpaid that a RECORD number of banks are closing.
3) Consumer confidence and durable goods orders are DOWN during the second busiest time of the year.

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What’s going to happen somewhere in the next 6 months or so is going to make 2008/2009 look like Disneyland.

I’m still a disgusting fatbody, but at least I feel as though I’m doing something about it now.