Category: Money

Money Doesn’t Buy Pleasure – Alan Watts

During my various studies to find out the true meaning in life. I have came across a lot informational videos on the subject. One speaker that I am fascinated with is Alan Watts.

There are hundreds of motivational and inspirational speakers out there and all of them are very good at what they do, but not one of them comes close to the true understanding of human nature, reality and well being like Alan Watts has.

Please close your eyes while this great lecturer speaks. Let every word, phrase, and sentence be properly absorbed by your mind and understood to its fullest extent.

I hope that you find this enlightening and helps to clearly define your path to happiness.

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I’ve Still Quit – Day 8 – Everything Stinks

So it has been a full week without tobacco. I have still been taking hits off of the vaporizer for the past two days. That is kind of disappointing to me because I wanted to be completely nicotine free.

This is only the first step. I only have one thing of nicotine vaporizer juice and I don’t plan on getting anymore when it runs out. I’ll probably even sell the vapor device on kijiji.

I don’t know if it is unhealthy or not but my concern is that it is still addictive. I don’t want to have to rely on anything to get me through the day. I will only use my pure unbreakable spirit and willpower to get me through.

I actually have quit many times. For a few months it seemed like I tried to quit on an almost weekly basis. The only problem with that was, as soon as I got back to work I walked into a stressful situation and my main coping mechanism was to light up a butt.

programmers motivation

It is kind of sad to think about all of the money that I wasted in the past as well. I figure that it is about $5 per day for the past decade that iv’e spent on cigarettes. 5 x 3650 = $18250.

I don’t think that there is an emoticon that can properly display my complete disgust with myself when I consider those numbers. Whats worse is that it was a low estimate. Iv’e been smoking for longer than 10 years. It is only for the past 10 years, I have had a steady source of income.

It’s pathetic to think that I am more worried about my finances than my health though. I have seen the entire world realize that they cause cancer and I just kept on happily smoking those coffin nails.

Thanks for reading this little blurb that I had to get out. Writing it has helped the cravings to pass. I wonder how long it will be until I stop thinking about the habit that I have carried with me for more than half of my life.

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Day Three – No Tobacco

DISCLAIMER: I decided to not edit this at all. I want it to properly convey the frustration that I was feeling while on my third day without cigarettes and nicotine.

I have finally decided to take the plunge. To dare to dream and finally rid myself of this curse that has haunted me for most of my life. I have chose to quit smoking cigarettes and to stop any form of nicotine consumption all together.

This is not really a choice that I was willing to make. I had spent many happy years consuming this carcinogen and a moderate rate. I had probably attempted to quit smoking about 20 or so times over the years. It would seem as though I was getting ready to quit quitting.

It was only when I realised how to overcome all of my excuses would I ever be able to quit this horrible addiction.

I had to quit my job. The only excuse that kept me tied to the coffin nails was that my job was highly stressful and i needed them to help me to calm down during the day. Now that was a valid excuse, did have a extremely stressfull job. I had dozens of people bringing me hundreds of problems everyday.
I quit that job three days ago and as i write this it is my third day without any kind of tobacco or nicotine replacement.

It has been a new experince for me. I don’t know if hell exists but if it does, i would be safe to thik that this is how the people in hell feel all of the time.
to be perfectly honest, the first two days were hell.

It can be described as twitchy confusion interspersed with hostility and undirected rage. the third day is just confustion. I guess it isn’t all that bad because I still have the ability to drap this machine out of storage and hack out a quck story about my struggles.

I do feel better though. Not physically better, but mentally better. I feel that this is probably one of the most important things that I have ever done in my life. I know that with this major accomplishment out of the way, I can achieve anything that i set my mind on.

Physically, i feel like crap. My lungs feel like they have hardedend up, i am having to constantly clear phlegm from my throat and i can barely work up the energy to do anything.

I still managed to get a few things done today though. I suppose that this will be the discipline practice that i need to focus and implement all of my intent towards attaining my dreams.

I have been getting all sorts of good, unsolicited advice from people. The one bit of advice that is consisten from everyone is that I should stay away from the things that compliment cigarettes. Things such as coffee, beer, sex, driving and big meals.

Its solid advice but I have been tempting myself with beer and enjoying delicious coffee everymorning. I did get a Timmies that nearly brought me to tears when I didn’t have a butt to go with it. The beer just loosesns me up and makes me more courageous. Strengthens my willpower. I haven’t had any big meals to consume in the past few day to test my resolve and as far as an after sex smoke is concerned, I might have sex again. I hope that I have sex again and when that day comes, i will be prepared to reinforce my willpower and stay nicotine free.

I am trying to organise my thoughts about the situation as much as I possibly can but for some reason i find that my mind is slightly more muddled than usual. I will be publishing this peice unedited in order to properly portray how my emotional state is affecting my ablity to properly convey a scentence.

Thank you for spending the time to read this. I hope that you have never chose to smoke cigarettes and that you will never ave to go through the horrendous experience of quitting.

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Irresponsibility and Easy Credit are a Dangerous Team.

Two hands holding a piggy bank, orange color.For a long time there has been a problem. This particular problem is worse than  a gambling addiction, worse than a shopping cart hitting your brand new car in a shopping mall and much worse than my fantasy football picks could ever be. I am talking about irresponsibility. This is a problem that affects everyone. Irresponsibility takes many forms and faces but in this case, I am talking about financial responsibly.

There are hundreds of different ways to get loans and credit and this means that there are hundreds of ways to get yourself into a lot of trouble with all of this easily attained credit.

Where I live, a law was recently passed that forced credit card companies to show how long it would take to pay off a credit card if you were only making the minimum payments. I actually have one beside me right now, lets take a look shall we?

$723.56 + $14.00 min payment = 18 years and three months to pay for the principal. At 19.5% interest per year, that would mean that I would be paying the bank $855.98 in interest charges. All of this information leads me to conclude that, if I was not able to make a $500.00 payment right away, I would be being robbed. This is the worst kind of robbery as well, the legal kind.

I keep on talking about my own situation, but what about yours? How can you avoid getting swindled by banks slinging easy credit like it was free candy at christmas?

It all comes down to you. You have to make the decisions to not buy things that you can not afford. Do you really need that faster processor? That is what I put on my credit card. I knew I could pay it off over two months, so paying a bit of interest on it wan’t a big deal to me, but what about your own situation? You are going to have to get creative with your accounting and frugal with your cash if you want to pay off the credit cards and gain financial freedom.

Remember that even though credit cards are easy to get, it is up to you to be responsible with them and not pay the banks money that they don’t deserve.

 

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The Financial Reason To Quit Smoking

Orange Cigarette ToiletSo I know that you’ve heard, about ten million times over, that you should quit smoking. All of those advertisements and statements that you’ve been bombarded with, all are concerned with with your health, but did you know that if you quit smoking you have the potential to save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, and you can also live longer and live a healthier life.

 

Now let’s think about this for a second, how much do you really smoke? If, like I used to you smoke about half a pack a day your health is not going to be as seriously impacted as it would if you smoked two packs a day, like my stepfather used to. Currently, where I live a package of cigarettes costs about $10. That means that I’m spending five dollars a day on cigarettes. If you multiply that five dollars per day times 365 you get a grand total of $1825 per year. Now the average smoker, will smoke for about 40 years and that only half a pack a day they can be expected to spend roughly $73,000 over their lifetime.

 

Now lets think of what you could gain by using this money as an investment, over forty years you could possibly quadruple it or maybe even octuple it. I’m not a financier at all, but I know that smoking is basically taking your hard earned cash and burning it. You may think that smoking is relaxing and it is worthwhile because it calms your nerves, but the truth is, billions of people around the world do not smoke. Somehow, all of these people are calm and relaxed without the aid of cigarettes.

 

So, $73,000. Let’s actually think about what you can acquire with $73,000 worth of cigarettes. Firstly, you take $73,000 and just give it to a tobacco company. Or, you could take that $73,000 and give it your government. Did you know, that tobacco is one of the most heavily taxed items. I know that the government where I live continually increases taxes on this luxury item at a rate of approximately three dollars per pack. Which is, as you know, 33.3%.

 

I don’t know about you, but if I was paying 33% income tax, I would probably lose my mind, unless of course I was making some astronomical seven figure income. Then, I don’t think I would mind is much.

 

$73,000 is only the cost of smoking half a pack a day. There are many people out there who smoked two packs or more per day. Two pack a day habit is extremely disgusting. As a former smoker I still don’t mind the occasional whiff of tobacco, unlike some people who lose their mind and think that they will immediately get cancer as soon as they smell someone’s cigarette. A two pack a day habit will cost you $292,000 over your lifetime. That is currently the cost of a new home. Not just a regular home, but a nice home, or a regular home and a car. They could also buy you a nice house and a college education. The things that you could buy with $292,000 are infinite.

 

So with that in mind, you should realize that not only are you going to live longer if you remove cigarettes from your life but you are also going to have more money to spend during that longer lifetime.

 

 

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Money – Everything In Moderation

Three Check Boxes with think plan act written next to themMoney is something that is a constant worry on the minds of most people. It is a grating long term stress that can lead some people to do pretty drastic things. The worst thing that money makes people do, is spend 40+ years at a job they hate, in rush hour traffic for two hours each way, only to have their bosses embarrass you with their sheer stupidity. I can not think of anything worse than that scenario. Unless you consider theft, murder and other crimes for money worse.

Everyone knows that the love of money is the root of all evil, but did you know that you can live on very little cash per day. When you think about spending $300 a month to finance a $15 000 car divided over 30 days, it only equals $10 per day. That is not all that much in the grand scheme of things. A mortgage however, is a whole different story. A mortgage might cost $1000 a month and divided over thirty days it would be $33 per day. Food, as long as you are not eating at restaurants very often could be another $300 a month, or $10 a day. Other expenses, like internet, cable television and hydro can be another $10 a day as well. All of this adds up to $63 dollars a day. It equals pretty much a full time employees earnings at minimum wage.

The point that I am trying to make here, is that you don’t need to stress yourself with a long commute and a decent job, when all of the basic essentials can be had with the simplest of laid back slacker jobs. It is time to start enjoying the easy life.

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You Don’t Need To Work Anymore

Thanks to the internet, if you have the right knowledge, you can make a residual income and never need to work again. Thanks to modern algorithmic changes to everyone’s favorite search engine, this task has gotten a whole lot more difficult. I am planning on making a guide about exactly how it is done, so sit tight and I will be releasing it soon.

The basic plan to making an online income is as follows:

  1. Get yourself a website
  2. Learning a little bit of HTML is useful
  3. Make awesome content about a very specific topic
  4. Make content on a regular basis, at least once a week
  5. Promote the crap out of your site but don’t spam.

It all seems easy, but if it was, everyone would be doing it. The thing about making money online is that you need to invest a lot of either time or money into your endeavors. You can spend all of your time promoting your content, building it and creating attractive social media campaigns, or you can just pay some one else to do it for you. If you choose the right subjects to write about, and invest a lot of your time into it, you will eventually start making a few cents a day. Not enough to make a difference, just enough to encourage you to do a lot more.

So if this is something that interests you, keep watching the MONEY tab, because I will be releasing all of the “secrets” that the “experts” want you to waste your hard earned cash on.

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Ten Great Ways To Waste Your Money

Money is wasted by the billions everyday. You probably already do some thing that are a massive waste of cash, I know I do. Some excellent ways to waste your hard earned dough include:

  1. Smoking – Heavily taxed and $5 a day for a year equals $1825 per year. Just light your money on fire but don’t forget to breathe the smoke in while you do it.
  2. Gasoline – I know it is necessary to get yourself to work, but if you are driving a large SUV by yourself everyday, you know that you are wasting a ton of fuel.
  3. Eating Out – Fast food and restaurants are a great way to socialize with friends but the cost of that lifestyle is astronomical compared to eating at home or bringing prepared meals with you.
  4. Credit Cards – Carrying a credit card balance and only paying the minimum is similar to just going to the bank with a wad of cash and handing it to them. I just found an old bill of mine with $788 owing. The interest was $16 and the minimum payment was $15. Do the math.
  5. Pay Day Loans – This is just legal loan sharking. They charge massive amounts of interest and will just take your pay cheque as soon as you get it. If you are in a situation that requires money right away, like rent, i’m sure that instead of taking your bank information and proof of employment to a pay day loan shop, you can just take it to your land lord and prove that although the rent is going to be late, they are definitely going to get it. Remember to remind them that waiting an extra week for rent is a lot less hassle than kicking you out and finding a new tenant.
  6. Gambling – The house will always win at this game. For every story that I have heard about people winning at the casinos, I have heard dozens of stories about people loosing. I actually have a story about winning at the casino. The bar was near the big spinning wheel game and for about three hours I would get up between drinks put some cash down and buy the next round. It was great! But that is my only winning story. I have probably spent thousands on lotteries and scratch tickets and never won a thing.
  7. Designer Anything – If two hundred dollar jeans make you happy, then you have some serious self esteem issues. It is said that then more possession you own, the more your possessions own you. If luxury items are something that you feel that you can not live without, I would suggest that you buy knockoffs and tell your snobby circle that they are real.
  8. Replace When You Can Repair – This means that instead of spending thousands of replacing your toaster, dishwasher, or any thing else, you should just take it apart and see if you can fix it. I saved my neighbor from having to purchase a new mower by flipping it over and tightening a couple of bolts.
  9. Fines – Parking illegally, speeding, building without a permit, and other misconduct are all completely avoidable. You know you shouldn’t be doing them and the tickets are so damn expensive. An easily avoidable expense.
  10. Time – I know that time is not really something that you can waste money on. But it is still something that you can waste. I thought it was important to add it to the list because [Time = Money]. It is true that the more time you spend, the better the returns. Just think about investing time into playing the guitar or any other instrument. If you put enough time into some thing, you are going to have a bankable skill that is going to be in demand by someone. Unless it is something like watching television, which can still be banked as long as you are writing reviews about shows or some other idea like that.
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