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September 2nd, 2004

cjsmith: (b&w fancy rob)
Thursday, September 2nd, 2004 11:27 am
This is mainly for my own notes. I know I figured this out once before, and because I vaguely remembered it, I spent way too long scanning my memories in a vain attempt to find what I'd written down before simply figuring it out again.

http://www.livejournal.com/syn/raw.bml has a plaintext list of all existing feeds. This can be searched for the web address you want.

Hey Rob! [livejournal.com profile] calnhobbes_es: Calvin and Hobbes in Spanish.

(Can you believe there's a whole community where people ask each other "hey, is there a feed for [foo]?" It's at [livejournal.com profile] syn_quest.)

Now to put this in my memories.
cjsmith: (cjlo joe1)
Thursday, September 2nd, 2004 05:35 pm
A week or two ago I happened to come across a GREAT magazine article on how to save money without going so deep into penny-pinching that you give up. Its main premise was that you can do much more with less effort by attacking the big bills first: look into refinancing your house, shop around for a better rate on your car insurance, etc. (Lots of etc. that I can now no longer remember.) If those aren't enough, THEN penny-pinch.

Just now I googled for that article and can't find it. Oh well. I did find some penny-pincher links along the way:
How to Save Big Without Feeling Deprived
Article in The Oregonian with several Web addresses on stuff like home maintenance, cheap cooking, and frugal stuff for parents

These are all great ideas, but my favorite is still the discipline of tracking where every single penny goes. Payments by credit cards are included, as is every check I write and anything on automatic bill pay. (I'm not as good at this as it sounds. It's still useful. It would be more useful if my records were more complete -- after all, the less "visible" payments are the most insidious.) With a chunk of data in hand, I can look at the categories and compare them. Stuff JUMPS OUT at me. I swear my spreadsheet has little neon signs: "Restaurant Lunches Are Expensive!" It's like getting a budget-wise article custom written for my own life.