Cutting Expenses

I found this great article on things you can do to cut expenses. I went through all my monthly bills and was able to save several hundred dollars by canceling things like Netflix, changing my DirectTV plan to have them honor the intro rate, etc.

The following are some ideas on how to cut your expenses in order to “generate” some additional cash that should be used first to pay off debt and then to invest.

Why pay off debt first and then invest? It’s all about interest. Basically you pay creditors more than you can make investing. For example, you may owe $3000 to a credit card company at 12% interest, but want to have some cash in a savings account for “just in case”. If you pay off the credit card you can always charge the amount if you have an emergency – DON’T charge if it’s not an emergency (see wise use of credit cards). But, if you keep a balance on the credit card, you’ll be paying 12% interest, as opposed to getting 0.3% in the bank (as of March, 2005). The difference is 11.7%, which is what you’re paying to “feel good” about having money in the bank. You ain’t makin’ no money, you’se spendin’ it, in fact, you’se wastin’ it.

In other words, Interest: them that get’s it, gets it, them that don’t, don’t.

Here are some ideas for cutting expenses, some of them are simple and you may already be doing them:

Eat out less. Don’t stop completely, but you’ll save money by eating out less. For example, a family of 4 eating out at MacDonalds (“cheap” food), will spend upwards of $20 for one meal. That same family can have hamburgers, fries, and cokes for less than $10.
Hamburger: Lean ground beef patties (already made up), $2.30/lb – 2 pounds=$4.60
Lettuce: $1.49 each
Tomato: 6oz, $1.12
French fries: $2.49
Total (assuming you have ketchup, mustard, salt, etc.) $9.70
This is shopping at an expensive grocery store, and you’ll have some things (fries, tomato, lettuce) left over for another meal. If you buy some foods at a discount warehouse you’ll save even more.
Now, if you save $10 for just one meal a week, you’ll have an additional $40 per month to put towards paying off your debt
Shop at warehouse stores, but only for those things that will “keep”. If you don’t have a large freezer, don’t buy lots of stuff that has to be kept in a freezer. Only buy those items you can use before they expire. Buying a case of tuna, for example, can save you 10 to 15 cents per can, and if you eat two cans a week, that’s $10 per year – not much but it all adds up.
Change your diet. I don’t mean change everything, just a few things. Eat more vegetables, they’re less expensive. Choose the store brand instead of the name brand – if it’s actually less money. Reduce your intake of food if you can.
Rent a movie instead of going to the movies. A family of four will spend $32 to go the movies, before buying drinks and snacks. You can rent a movie for $3, buy popcorn for $3 and a couple of 2-litre bottles of coke for $2, saving at least $20. And you can watch the movie in the comfort of your own home, and put the kids to bed if they fall asleep during the show. This doesn’t mean that you never go out, just that you can save $20 a week if you go out one less time per week.
Take the kids to the park instead of buying them a video game.
Combine trips and errands, saving gas and time.
Track how much money you spend on “stuff” each day. If you go by the corner store on the way to work to get a donut and coffee, maybe you can buy some donuts at the grocery store, and make your own coffee. Buy soda at the grocery store, instead of individual cans or bottles at the corner store. A 2-liter bottle of Coke is $1 right now at my local grocery store, but a 1-litre bottle at the corner store is $1.59. It’s not a lot, but it adds up.
Every time you spend money, whether it’s cash from your wallet, using a debit card, credit card, or writing a check, ask yourself a couple questions.
Do I really need to buy this now? or can it wait?
Is there something I can buy for less money that will fit the bill?
How am I going to pay for it? Don’t take it from the amount you’re using to pay off debt
If you ask yourself these questions, you’ll be less likely to fritter money away.
Carpool
Close off the rooms in your hose and shut the heating / cooling vents to those parts of the house you’re not using.
Put up window insulation wrapping. This is a clear plastic that you put over the windows, it creates an insulation area between the room and the outside, reducing energy costs.
Insulate the house – this can be a large expense, so analyze it well before doing this.
Use less expensive methods of heating your house – a fireplace if you have free or cheap wood available for example.
Don’t get a new (or used) car until the old one is paid off and will cost too much to repair – and then pay cash for it.
Reduce, re-use, recycle. Wherever possible use less of whatever it is you’re using. And then use it again for something else. If you’ve exhausted it’s uses, recycle it. The local grocery store gives a 5 cent discount for every bag you bring in to re-use, for example. Use grocery bags as trash bags. Don’t use paper plates or cups. Use the backs of paper to write on.
Keep more organized. If you can find something, you won’t go buying another one.
Turn off the lights in the rooms you’re not using.
During the summer, open the windows at night, close them and the shades during the day. This will keep the house cooler, and save energy.
Get a programmable thermostat, or turn the heat / air conditioner off (or down) when you’re not in the house.
I’m sure you’ll think of more ideas that fit your circumstances as you start to implement these ideas. The point is to start thinking about money as you do the things you do. You don’t have to become a tightwad, just think about ways to save money throughout the day.

Cool iPhone Hack

If you are like me, I spend a lot of time dialing into conference calls from my iPhone. Sometimes it would be nice to pre-program the conference bridge number along with the pin number and save that information as a contact.  When you dial a conference number, you need to have a pause before you enter your pin number. By the way, the same rule applies if you are using a calling card or any other process where you need to add additional digits after you dial a number. To enter a pause, you would use a comma. The  problem is that the keypad on the iPhone does not have a comma. So I decided to figure out a way in which to configure a number and paste it to my keypad and then save it to my contacts using the notepad on the iPhone.

Use Skype as a Home Security System

I use Skype quite a bit and noticed one day that it has the ability to auto-answer incoming phone calls and enable your web camera. One may ask, why would you ever to do this? You can use this feature when you are away from home on vacation so you can dial in to your Skype account and then watch live video of your house. Since Skype is free and most people have a web cam, then this is a perfect solution if you wanted to set up a quick and dirty remote web cam security system.

So if you had multiple computers, you can set up multiple Skype Accounts such as gregnbrown_livingroom or gregnbrown_frontdoor, etc, you would dial in to whatever account you want to view. Of course, you will want to set up your profiles so that only you will be allowed to call into your account and disable anyone else who is not in your contact list.

The Airplane Propellor

One thing that I have found fascinating about the propellor is the way that it is shaped. Its shape represents a symbolic icon in flight and aviation. No matter what color, what size, what material the extractated twist of the blade from the blade tip to the root is undisputedly recognizable by anyone inside or outside the aviation community.

Investigating beyond overall look of the propellor is even more enthralling. The propellor is actually shaped like a wing. if you were to study the form characteristics of the blade to that of the surface area of a wing, you will quickly discover  similarities. Specifically, from the leading edge on top of the prop and the would exhibit the same curvature and design features, more rounded, where as the bottom, is a more flat surface. This is because, like the wing of an airplane, the prop is also responsible for generating lift. Looking further, the root of the prop blade is noticeably  more twisted, giving it iconic view as we discussed earlier.  The reason is because in order for lift to occur, the pressure on one side of the blade needs to be lower than the other side. Air traveling over the top of the wing has a greater velocity than the air below the wing, thus lower pressure resulting in life. Since the wing of an airplane is typically uniform and all surface area’s are impacting the air at the same velocity, lift is equal. However, unlike a wing, the propellor takes on different characteristics.  The propellor is not traveling through as much air evenly across the entire suirface. Namely, the tip of the prop is traveling through more particle of air than the root of the prop. The tip is covering a greater radius, than the root. Therefore, in order for the root of the prop to generate the same amount of lift as the tip of the propellor, it needs to have a much greater higher angle of attack, creating more lift.

Dropbox – Can’t live with out it

With all the solutions out there around cloud computing, I would have to say these guys are the best. What Dropbox allows you to do is have a folder on your computer that contains a local (cached) copy of your data. Your real data is copied up to your Dropbox account. You can have your shared folder mounted on as many computers as you want and access the same data, keeping everything consistent. In addition, you can share content from your Dropbox account to other users so they can have access to the files you allow them to have access too. This sure makes it nice when you are working on a project and you want to be able to collaborate with each other online in real time with out emailing documents back and forth, flooding your inbox. It also has versioning control, so when two or more people are editing the same file, one on person saves it, it will save it with the file name-the user name of the user.

Once a file is modified, it is then synced locally to your computer’s Dropbox folder so you have access to it while you are offline. If you do edit it offline, it will then sync the file back to your Dropbox account once you are back online!

Do you have Robot Insurance ?

Weekly Tweets

• I love watching aviation training videos from the 80′s where the pilot is wearing a corduroy sport coat, tie and has a brief case. #
• Studying for the Commercial Pilot Written Exam #
• http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html #
• Apple to announce iPhone 3.0 software. let me guess…no copy/paste, push still won’t work, 200 email limit and we won’t see it until Oct. #
• @izzyvideo Ha! Seeing is believing my brother, seeing is believing! #
• Just went up in the C172, did my Bi-Annual. Touch and Goes, Stalls, Slow Flight Emergency Procedures. Starting on my Commercial Pilot. #
• Great day in Denver…touch and goes on 17R, 1000ft marker each time #
• Here is a simulation of a plane ditching in the Hudson. http://tinyurl.com/d9497w #

178 Seconds to Live

How long can a pilot who has little or no instrument training expect to live after he flies into bad weather and loses visual contact? Researchers at the University of Illinois did some tests and came up with some very interesting data. Twenty student “guinea pigs” flew into simulated instrument weather, and all went into graveyard spirals or rollercoasters [a tribute to the U of I flight training program??]. The outcome differed in only one respect – the time required till control was lost. The interval ranged from 480 seconds to 20 seconds. The average time was 178 seconds — two seconds short of three minutes. 

Here’s the fatal scenario. . . . . . . 

The sky is overcast and the visibility is poor. That reported five mile visibility looks more like two, and you can’t judge the height of the overcast. Your altimeter tells you that you are at 1500 feet but your map tells you that there’s lcoal terrain as high as 1200 feet. There might be a tower nearby because you’re not sure how far off course you are. But you’ve flown into worse weather than this, so press on. 

You find yourself unconsciously easing back just a bit on the controls to clear those towers. With no warning, you’re in the soup. You peer so hard into the milky white mist that your eyes hurt. You fight the feeling in your stomach. You try to swallow, only to find your mouth dry. Now you realize you should have waited for better weather. The appointment was important, but not all that important. Somewhere a voice is saying, “You’ve had it — it’s all over!” 

You now have 178 seconds to live. 

Your aircraft feels on even keel but your compass turns slowly. You push a little rudder and add a little pressure on the controls to stop the turn but this feels unnatural and you return the controls to their original position. This feels better but now your compass is turning a little faster and your airspeed is increasing slightly. You scan your instruments for help but what you see looks somewhat unfamiliar. You’re sure that this is just a bad spot. You’ll break out in a few minutes. (But you don’t have a few minutes left. . .) 

You now have 100 seconds to live. 

You glance at your altimeter and you are shocked to see it unwinding. You’re already down to 1200 feet. Instinctively, you pull back on the controls but the altimeter still unwinds. The engine is into the red and the airspeed, nearly so. 

You have 45 seconds to live. 

Now you’re sweating and shaking. There must be something wrong with the controls; pulling back only moves the airspeed indicator further into the red. You can hear the wind tearing at the aircraft. 

You are about to meet your Maker; you have 10 seconds to live. 

Suddenly you see the ground. The trees rush up at you. You can see the horizon if you turn your head far enough but it’s at a weird angle — you’re almost inverted. You open your mouth to scream but. . . . . .

. . . .you just ran out of seconds. 

Think about it before you press on into marginal weather. 

Weekly Tweets

• Teaching myself to play the Guitar #

Flight up to Fort Collins

My buddy Cory and I took 64332 up to Fort Collins today for a couple of hours and shot the ILS back into Centennial.

Here’s a quick video I made of the flight.