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June 18, 2011, at 6:00 am If you're new to BFS, please subscribe to my RSS feed. It shows me a vote of support and keeps me motivated to keep your attention. If you have any questions or comments for me, please contact me and I'll get back to you asap. Thanks for visiting! My Favorite Posts this Week
Guest Posts on BFS
Thank you for the day off and for providing a fun post!!!
Staff Writing – Yes, it needs its own section now…
Thank You
A new sponsor has thrown in their support for Budgeting in the Fun Stuff this week. I would like to personally thank Merchant Warehouse for signing up with BFS – you can see their widget in the right sidebar. Partners like them, readers like you, and the bloggers that have taken the chance to hire me have all made it possible to become a full time blogger and freelancer by the end of this year! In fact, I am now on track to work full time from home by September, woot!
Thank you!
Giveaways
Blog Carnivals
If you are hosting a carnival that includes Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, please email me so I can include it in my roundup. Thanks!
Top 5 Referring Sites to BFS from Last Week:
- Yakezie
- Free Money Finance
- Get Rich Slowly
- Stupid Cents
- No More Spending
Feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.
As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my lurkers too. 
I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as me!
Also, check out my other blog, Crystal Clear Thoughts,
for my Weight Watchers Updates!
I started at 176 on January 4th and already hit my July 4th goal of 150!
I am now aiming for 140 pounds by the end of the year!
And please use About Life Insurance as a resource for everything life insurance!!!
Let me know if you do help out and I will be sure to return the favor!
June 17, 2011, at 6:00 am
Let me just start by saying that you all are very lucky I just don’t write about blogging full time and the Financial Blogger Conference every day. Those two things take up about half of my brain space every day. I only force myself to write about other things because I like you and don’t want you to get too bored with me. That said, here is my first post about how truly excited I am to be going to the Financial Blogger Conference 2011!
Financial Blogger Conference 2011
If you have no idea what I am talking about, the Financial Blogger Conference (aka FINCON11) is October 1st-2nd, 2011 and is being held near Chicago, IL. I will be flying in Friday morning and cannot wait to meet a ton of my fellow bloggers!!! I am most excited about meeting all of the people I have formed relationships with over the last year or more that I still haven’t seen face-to-face!
Acording to the agenda so far, there are some welcome events on Friday and the conference officially starts Saturday with a bunch of little meetings all day long, but I am most excited about just hanging out with other personal finance geeks like me! If I just spend the whole time just talking with other bloggers and forget to attend the actual conference classes, I will not regret it at all. It’s called networking, right?
I am already picking my outfit for the meet and greet Friday and what I will be wearing over the weekend as well. Yes, I know I hate most things to do with dressing up and picking out nice outfits, but I want to make a great first impression. Something that screams, “Yep, that must be Crystal, the energy driven, crazy blogging lady! I wonder where she’s hiding her empire…”
And yes, I know it’s just June right now, but I have to channel this energy somewhere.
I also have ordered premium business cards with my logo on them to hand out to any interested bloggers and advertisers. And I ordered a BFS tote bag to hold all of the paperwork conference are notorious for – advertising on the outside and useful on the inside too. 
Cost So Far
I will admit that this will be semi-expensive and I don’t care. Sorry to the uber-frugalites that read my blog, but yes, we pay for a biweekly housekeeper and yes, I will be spending a pretty penny to go to this conference:
Ticket – $90 (now $129)
Business cards and tote (and mousepad and pen for me) – $75
Hotel – $100 for 2 nights since I will be splitting a room, woot!
Roundtrip Airfare - $250
Taxi to and from airport – $50 total
Food – $100 should cover it all and I’ve had a few offers to buy me a drink or treat me to a meal already, hehehe! No, I will not hold anyone to post-advertiser hook up promises, lol.
Stuff – $100 in case I forget to pack something, want to buy someone else a drink or meal, or find some cool souvenirs.
So I am looking at about $775. I’m okay with that! I am budgeting for $1000 just to be on the super safe side. But I will remember to keep all receipts since this is definitely a business expense.
Waiting Stinks
So I pretty much have 3 1/2 months to just wait around at this point. Grrrr. I am so impatient. Mr. BFS would prefer if I stop talking about it incessantly as well. Double grrrr. It’s not my fault that I chatter when I’m excited…
I guess the overall point of this post was just to let you all know what is on my mind. If you are interested in going now that I made it sound like so much fun, you can still register. If any other bloggers out there are having the same impatience issues as me, let me know! Heck, I’m up for a pre-FINCON11 meetup – just let me know!
Are any of you really looking forward to this conference or some other big event? Please let me know I am not the only adult in the world that is so impatient for the fun to start…
June 16, 2011, at 6:00 am
This guest post about lottery myths was written by Miss Moneypenniless over at Totally Money, the new home of the Totally Money Carnival.
Before my new life as a personal finance blogger, I used to work for a large lottery operator. Cue mutterings and shakings of heads. Please bear with me. While the two roles appear to be polar opposites, the former kick-started the latter. There’s nothing like watching a single mother buy $50 worth of scratchcards in the middle of winter while her emaciated child walks around with no shoes on to make you want to help people make better financial decisions. While there are heaps of lottery players who do play responsibly, there are other players who see that lottery play slip and immediately suspend all reason and logic, parting with huge sums on the craziest fanciful notions. During my time at the lottery operator, I came across lottery myths that ranged from the whimsical to the just plain weird. Here are a few of my favourites…
1. There are ‘lucky’ numbers
Nebulous statistics drive some lottery players into a frantic frenzy. ‘The number 24 has come up for the past two weeks! It MUST be lucky!’
Ok. In the UK the lottery draw machinery and process are highly monitored, regulated and supervised by certified auditors. The machinery is tested to the fault and every ball is weighed ahead of every draw show by a university physics department. The balls have a limited shelf-life and are discarded after a handful of shows so the balls’ bounce isn’t impaired by overuse. Machinery malfunctions are frankly not possible and there is no chance that one ball will be selected over another due to its physical properties.
As independent statisticians have proven, lottery draws are statistically random. Yes certain numbers will crop up more than others but that is wholly attributable to the random process, which is entirely without design or predictability.
2. It will happen to me
One I have heard time and time again. ‘It’s only a matter of time’, ‘I know I WILL win one day’. Well statistically speaking no you won’t. The chance of winning the standard National Lottery game in the UK is 1 in 14 million. Let’s put this in another way. If you bought a ticket every week, you’d expect to win the UK lottery once in 250,000 years. Now compare this to multiple state lotteries in the USA and those hopelessly slim odds almost look favourable. In some multiple state lotteries the chance of winning the lottery is 1 in 120 million. According to one estimate based on data from the US National Safety Council, you’re 45 times more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to win a US multiple state lottery. And around 100 times more likely to date a supermodel.
3. There are ‘lucky’ stores
When I was working at the lottery there were 28,700 stores in the UK that sold lottery tickets. Now the UK is not a big place. Even in the depths of the most rural uninhabited no-man’s-land you’d struggle to be more than a mile from your nearest lottery terminal. And even if your nearest store is going to be tricky to get to, you can always buy your tickets online from the comfort of your own home.
And yet I knew a man who travelled to a store twenty five miles away three times a week to buy tickets from his ‘lucky’ store, despite the fact that the place of ticket purchase has absolutely no bearing on a statistically random draw. So here we had a guy who surplus to his weekly lottery ticket bill was also shelling out on gas for 150 redundant miles per week.
4. Buying your ticket seconds before the cut-off point will get your numbers to the ‘top of the pile’
Truly the most bizarre myth I encountered during my time at the lottery. I knew a couple who would spend every draw day evening sat in a supermarket car park. At 7.28pm on the dot, they’d dash into the store and purchase their lottery tickets speedily ahead of the 7.30pm deadline. Baffled by this bizarre ritual, I asked them why they did this. They felt that buying their tickets so close to the cut-off point would mean that their numbers were at the ‘top of the pile’ and were much more likely to be picked. At this point I felt that a rational explanation of statistical randomness would fall on spectacularly deaf ears.
Have you encountered any lottery myths? I’d love to hear from you!
Crystal’s Comments: As I have mentioned before, I do play the lotto once in a while and use a few bucks of my fun money to do it. Yep, I know the odds suck and I don’t have any weird luck beliefs, but sometimes I just have a bad day and decide to “buy a buck of hope”, lol. I also enjoy the tiny thrill of taking a gamble and daydreaming for a few days about being a multi-millionaire overnight.
The myths above made me laugh pretty hard since I have heard similar ones – but #4 takes the cake since you can watch the balls be drawn here in Texas like you do at a bingo hall…”top of the pile”…hahaha. Thanks for a great guest post Mrs. Moneypenniless!
June 15, 2011, at 6:00 am
As you can see from my daily blog checklist, I have been attempting to email a new reader every day. I have found that it is hard to pick that reader because almost all of my commenters are regulars. Don’t get me wrong, that is awesome! Thank you for commenting! Without those daily comments, I would definitely feel unloved and a bit useless, so you keep me going. So I have decided to personally email any reader from here on out.
That said, today’s post is to reach out to all of my readers – the commenters and the non-commenters alike. I’d love to know who is tuning in and be able to say thank you personally! So here are a few questions. Please feel free to answer only one or all of them. I am simply reaching out to find out a little more about all of the people who have helped me make this site a success.
- For my non-commenters, does the term “lurker” offend you? I use it in my weekly roundups and always wondered but decided you actually may comment if it did…BUT, I never really asked.
- For all of my readers, how did you find my site?
- What do you like the most about this particular blog? What keeps you coming back?
- What do you like least about BFS? What has ever popped into your mind that you decided would be nicer not to mention? Don’t worry, I can take it.
- What entices you to leave comments? I will be completely honest, the only way I get to know you is through comments and emails, which is why I try to answer all of them. Otherwise, I only know you as a statistic under “Visitors” at Google Analytics, lol. I know you are way more important than a simple statistic, so let me know how I can get you to speak up when you want. If you prefer not speaking up publicly, please remember that anybody is more than welcome to email me at any time at budgetingfunstuff *at* gmail *dot* com. Really.
Again, please pick as many questions as you want to answer and leave a comment below or send me an email if you ever have anything you’d like to say. Also, if you have any questions for me, fire away!
To my regular commenters, thanks! I do enjoy seeing you! To my non-commenters, thanks! Even if you rather stay silent, it is really nice to know that you take time out of your day just to take a look at my site.
June 14, 2011, at 6:00 am
About a year ago, I wrote a post about money and marriage problems that I’d like to update since my own financial circumstances have changed a little bit since then:
An article at Yahoo Finance brought up different money problems that arise in marriages. Here is what I wrote a year ago followed by my views now.
1. Paycheck Envy – I don’t know about you all, but my husband would dance a jig if I made more than him. If you and your spouse truly see your money as joint money, than who makes more wouldn’t matter, right? Feel free to explain something I’m missing…
For the last 3-4 months, I really have made more than my husband thanks to the combo of my day job and blogging. I can honestly say now that Mr. BFS doesn’t mind in the least. He hasn’t danced an actual jig yet, but he has done little happy dances when I give him money updates, lol.
2. Debt – I can understand fighting if one person keeps accruing debt while the other keeps trying to pay it off. In that case, I’d have to leave…I can’t stand lies and fighting joint progress feels like a lie of some sort.
I can also understand a general feeling of helplessness that leads to lashing out at each other. Both of these scenarios sound like a living nightmare to me. If hubby and I had high interest debt, I’d probably get a little pissy in general, but we’d sit down and make a payoff plan. Taking action sounds way better than fighting about it.
Wow, I was in a good mood when I wrote that. I’d be absolutely ticked if my husband was building up high-interest debt behind my back. I wouldn’t kill him, but yes, I would probably leave. If we built up that debt together, our bodies were switched out with aliens and we’d fight about it for sure…
3. Bills – The article says that fights occur because one person usually pays the bills and is unhappily surprised by the other one’s spending. I can tell you from a recent personal experience, this does happen once in a while for us. I’m the bill payer since hubby had no interest in the details, but that means that the weeks he splurges on fast food annoy the crud out of me. I am slowly learning to ease up on the control freak behavior…hubby is a patient man.
I have successfully backed off thanks to our fun money accounts. Anytime we decide to splurge, the extra comes out of the appropriate fun money account. We haven’t fought/argued/nagged each other over a bill for more than a year, woot!
4. Saving – A thrifty person married to a spendthrift is going to lead to problems. Even though hubby spends more than me, I can easily say he is no spendthrift. Thankfully. I just don’t see how it would work out very well. Does anybody have any personal experiences with this? Did any of those end well?
I still think it would be hard to make a marriage work with two people with obviously different priorities. No change here.
5. Investing – Okay, I can totally see this as being a little problem. I don’t personally care much about the specific stocks we are invested in, but I much rather invest in target date mutual funds than individual stocks anyway. Hubby rather invest more in high dividend equities. We have reached a compromise that works for us – my 401(k) and our Roth IRA are in target date funds and we have a Scottrade account for specific equity investments that my husband is in charge of. So far, this is working out really well. Have you ever had these types of issues? How did you work it out?
We’ve continued this compromise and even opened a 2nd Roth IRA that is invested in individual high-divend stocks by Mr. BFS. This is actually working very well for us – simple target date mutual funds for me and individual stocks for him. Yay for compromises that actually work!
6. Differing Expectations – This isn’t just a fiscal problem…if each spouse has different expectations, there will be fighting. Hubby and I met when we were 18. There is nothing more eye-opening than developing into an adult while being engaged for 4 years. We have learned over the years to voice our opinions and expectations instead of assuming the other one will just know. See, you’d think that would be obvious, but selfish kids do not understand that everybody doesn’t think the same way they do, lol. Ah, the importance of communication.
I stick to my original answer. Communication has been absolute gold for my marriage.
7. Secret Stash – This screams “issues” to me. I would understand squirreling away money for a surprise gift or something like that, but just having “backup” cash seems hinky. Again, if there’s something I’m missing here, please give me a heads up.
After finding another article about hiding spending, I have definitely decided that it’s disgusting. Hiding something for non-sweet reasons is a form of lying. It’s a betrayal of trust that would infuriate me.
What do you think? Any suggestions or comments about the above?
June 13, 2011, at 6:00 am
I have had several emails and comments asking how I keep everything straight with my day job, blogging, freelance work, my home life, and anything else I heap onto my plate. Here are the blog checklists I developed for myself to make sure I stay on track:
My Daily Blog Checklist:
- Comment on 4 Other Blogs
- Answer All Advertiser Emails for my blog and the 16 other Blogs I Work With
- Answer Rest of Email
- Check Yakezie for New Posts
- Make Sure BFS is at least 1 Week Ahead
- Update BFS Ads Excel Sheet
- Update BFS Expenses Excel Sheet
- Update Ad Excel Sheet for the Rest of the Blogs
- Answer Comments at BFS
- Check Twitter
- Check Facebook
- Staff Writing
- Personally Email a Reader
- Retweet at least 5 Posts from Other Blogs
My Weekly Blog Checklist:
- Make Sure Crystal Clear Thoughts is Updated
- Staff Writing for 6 blogs
- Retweet Staff Posts – Friday
- Answer Staff Post Comments – Friday
- Update “Crystal for Hire” page
- Update Threads at Yakezie
- De-Clutter Sidebars
- De-Clutter Email
- Look in the “Ad” email box and see if there is anything to check up on
- Review past posts for follow-up post ideas
Whew! I’ve had these lists for a week and have only made it all the way through a daily one once so far, but it is keeping me focused. I feel like I have at least been participating in the blogging world again. I was drifting along for a month or so and then I felt like I was just being pushed along for a month or so…just always catching up. Now I feel like I have a little control back and am loving it. I know I want to continue in my day job for at least 5-7 more months to build up some major padding before taking the leap to blogging full time, and hopefully this blog checklist will get me there with my mind intact, hahaha.
EDIT: I do have posts submitted to 5 blog carnivals a week as well, but I have hired Jesse Michelsen over at pffirewall.com to do that for me since I only was getting around to it every 2-3 weeks. I also leave 20 blank lines on both of my checklists to add in things that pop up…for example, I will be writing a blog post for the Yakezie sometime this week so that is written on a blank line on my weekly checklist.
What system do you use to stay on track? If you aren’t a blogger, what do you use to keep yourself on track with your own daily schedule?
June 12, 2011, at 6:00 am
Since I do plan on blogging full time by 2012 and even came up with my target number, this is the year for a HUGE push. These are the new goals to keep us on the right track!
Here are my Goals for July 4th, 2011:
Here is what we are shooting for by July 4th, 2011:
Alexa – Maintain a Ranking at or around 37,500
Visits – 60,000 total visits (I started BFS on February 20th, 2010)
Feedburner Subscribers – 500
Twitter Followers – 500
MozRank – 5.5
Today’s Update
Alexa – 35,272 (I have no idea why this is going up since I do have more visitors…)
Visits – 72,344 (WOOT! We’re still going!!!)
Feedburner Subscribers – 505 (WOOT!!!)
Twitter Followers – 548 (DOUBLE WOOT!!!)
MozRank – 5.05 (0.45 to go)
In short, the only goal left to hit is still MozRank and I don’t have much control over that one! Yay!!! We still have a month to go, so I will keep up with these updates simply to see how well we do overall. In July I’ll publish the new goal to be hit by the end of 2011. As always, thank you so much for being my supporters! I could not do any of this without you and I really never forget that!!!
The Saved Quarter Challenge Update
I joined The Saved Quarter Challenge this year and am aiming to save at least $21,000 by the end of 2011! That would be a tiny bit more than 25% of our GROSS pay from our two full time jobs.
Here’s how I’ve done this week for the Saved Quarter Challenge ($21,000 Goal):
I have better updates after the 13th of every month since that is when our billing periods end, but here is where we funnelled away money this past week:
- 401(k) – $80
- Blogging Income – $1000
That blogging income was a combo of a side deal, freelance work, and regular ads. We use that blogging account to fund our Roth IRA’s and I’m building it up with as much padding as possible by the end of the year to be a backup fund when I start blogging full time.
The 2nd Roth IRA is fully funded and the first Roth IRA will continuing getting the $300 automatically a month to finish it off. So from here on out, my blogging income will just be for building up padding.
The $21,000 goal is hopefully going to be reached solely through 100% true savings – 401(k), Roth IRA, emergency fund/savings, home and auto maintenance account, extra cash for investments, and blogging income.
Total This Week: $1080
We can save what we do because we live off of a little more than my husband’s salary as a school librarian ($38,000 take home pay). That means we save most of what I make ($26,000 take home pay a year) and all of our hobby job incomes (reffing for Mr. BFS and blogging for me). Reffing usually brings in $2000-$3000 a year and blogging is bringing in $15,000 or more a year (we’ve already hit more than $10,000 for January-May 2011).
Total to date: $20,208 guaranteed, $792 to go.
Since I am so close to hitting the 25% mark of $21,000, I have decided to push that goal up to 50% instead. I doubt we will actually be able to save $42,000 in a year, but I don’t mind trying! If I do quit my day job earlier than expected (January of next year), then this goal is definitely unrealistic, but I may as well aim high.
Additonal Info
I will continue posting monthly and yearly blog statistics and income updates, so stay tuned at the beginning of every month!
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here.
If you don’t already, you can follow me via RSS or Twitter by following those links.
To learn more about the Yakezie, the blogging group that has helped me in SO many ways, check out my Yakezie page! Feel free to email me if you are a Yakezie member or challenger and don’t see yourself on the list!
If you are interested in seeing how I went from an 8 million plus Alexa rank to about 50,000 in less than 8 months, you can see My Blogging Schedule, which breaks down everything I do related to blogging. If you want to see how I brought in $6000 in less than 10 months, you can check out How I Make Money Blogging.
THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING THE BEST READERS EVER!!!
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DISCLAIMER I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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