No More Harvard Debt

Day 196 | $67,506 paid | $23,211 till freedom

My good buddy from grad school–my former partner-in-crime–is in town for the week. Craig’s the Entertainment Director at one of the major phone companies (e.g., Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc.), and he’s in town to make sure the SxSW event he planned goes off without a hitch. 

He invited me to hit up SxSW with him–first to the Bravo tent where he had a connection, then to the event he was putting on for work. We haven’t seen each other in a couple of years, and it was great to catch up. It was an awesome night of reminiscing, talking about future plans, and drinking for free.

We talked a lot about the student loans, and like me, he graduated with $100k, but he’s gotten it down to only $90k so far. He’s paying about $700/month and will be doing so for the next 12 or 13 years since he got a 15-year note. He didn’t know about my little challenge–we’ve done a horrible job of keeping in touch–but when I told him, he was completely shocked that I was able to make so much headway on it in such little time. His shock then turned to inspiration after I explained to him how I did it. He’d been trying to save up around $100k and potentially start his own business, but now he’s thinking about paying down his debt first so he can avoid the interest.

Interesting sidebar: Pedi-cab drivers were out in droves last night, and whom did I run into? Joel, the guy who trained me to be a pedi-cab driver!  I was walking down the street and I recognized his distinct whistle from the training over six months ago during that one night back in September. I flagged him down to say hey, and it took him a moment to recognize me. Once he figured it out, he tried to get me to pedi-cab during the upcoming week for SxSW, saying I could make around $700 a day. I declined–I was still seeing a lot of empty pedi-cabs last night, and I don’t even have a bike.

Residuals: Landscaping Customer
I got an interesting note in my inbox today:

Gentlemen,
You were recommended by a neighbor of mine. I would like to discuss a landscape project and hopefully receive a quote. What do you need from me?
ABC

Now, typically, Michael and I would have been ecstatic to have received an email like this, and we would have quickly dashed off a note to get this guy’s on-site consultation on the  calendar as soon as possible so we could quote him, book him, and execute the job.

Instead, my email went a little something like this:

Hi ABC,
Thanks for your interest. I’m afraid we’re exploring other avenues at this time and are not currently providing landscaping services. Should we resume operations, we will reach out to you immediately. Best of luck.
Thank you,
 XYZ

We’re no longer in the business of giving free consulting advice, which is what our business had come down to during its last few days. The unfortunate part of this is that this guy might have been the real deal, but we’ll never know.

Loose Ends
On Friday and Saturday, I took the time to edit past blog posts and add a progress tracker to every post. You can see it at the beginning of this post: It’s in gray-color font and calls out–at the date of the post–how many days of the challenge have elapsed (e.g., Day #196) and the debt remaining “till freedom.” My hope is that it will give folks who are new to this blog  and read some of the earlier posts a better sense of where I was at any one point in time. So the header tracker is real-time and the trackers in each post are historical.  

I also took the opportunity to re-read a few posts, and I wanted to take a moment to clarify I couple of things.

1. I reported that Fadi was selling the motorcycle he bought from me because of the starter issue. He actually ended up buying a different brand battery and that has appeared to do the trick. He now tells me how much he loves the bike every time he sees me.
2. At first I said I was going to pass on Luke and Faith’s wedding, then after going to Natalie and Navneet’s wedding and being so moved, I said I wouldn’t miss Luke and Faith’s wedding for the world. Well, I didn’t update the blog when it happened, but I actually RSVP’ed in the negative to the formal invitation when it came in the mail a month or so ago. The emotion I was feeling from Navneet and Natalie’s wedding that made me want to go to Luke and Faith’s wedding had worn off by the time I got their invitation in the mail. For the sake of my financial goal, I guess I’m glad there was a cooling-off period. So the words I said I would have to eat from the post where I lashed out at folks for telling me to go to the wedding and see my family for Christmas will not have to be eaten after all.

Sam Is Here
Sam got here yesterday! He’s completely moved in and set up. He walked into the kitchen with his phone held out in front of him while I was making my meals for the week. He was video-chatting with his girlfriend and he introduced me to her, then he walked around the house showing her his new digs. After the call, he brought me his phone and showed me a message he had typed to me: “Nice house. I really love it!” That comment brought a smile to my face. Sam had sent me $910 in the mail in February without even seeing the house or meeting me, so I’m glad it’s met his expectations.

Having Sam here has showcased a really helpful side of Patrick. Sam doesn’t have a car, but Patrick has been extremely helpful by driving him around. Last night, he took Sam to get sheets for his bed and other odds and ends, and today, he took him grocery-shopping. Patrick knew when he recommended that Sam live here that he didn’t have wheels and that Patrick would need to chauffeur him around, but he still made the suggestion for me to take Sam. I think Patrick is happy that he has somebody around that he can communicate with.

So we’re back to a full house, but of course, the volume level has stayed about the same–which is to say, pretty darn quiet. And the guy who can hear is the minority in the household! I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel a little awkward this morning when we were all in the kitchen together fixing our breakfasts and they were signing to each other. I had no idea what was going on and sort of felt like an outsider. In fact, I probably felt how they feel every day when they’re out and about in the hearing world.

Man, I really need to take some ASL classes!

More DIY
I wrote in Keeping Up Appearances that I’d have to buy some blinds for the living room after paying off my student debt because the  current blinds were sagging in the middle due to broken support rod. I finally got sick of seeing the sag every day, so I got my ladder out and investigated to see if there was anything I could do about the problem in the interim.

The support rod was actually two pieces of wood joined together by a finger joint, and the finger joint had become unglued. I unscrewed the two wing nuts holding the blinds up and took them into the garage for an operation. I broke a fresh paint-stirring stick in half that I had gotten for free at Lowes awhile ago, put a piece on each side of the rod positioned both pieces over the break, and attached the whole combo with three zip-ties. Voila! A splint for my blinds. And no more sag.

And this isn’t just a stop-gap measure, either. The valence obscures the repair job and makes it completely invisible. So that’s a fifty-dollar expense that I’ll completely avoid–now and after NMHD.

Bonus Decision This Week
This week is kind of a big deal: my boss tells me what I’ll be getting in terms of a bonus in my paycheck at the end of the month. I last mentioned the bonus in the Month 6 Progress Report and said that it could make or break my entire challenge. If it’s $8k after-tax, I’m golden and on track to meet my goal. If it’s significantly lower, it might be time to start looking for extra work–I might have to take Joel up on his offer, after all.

Drum roll, please! I find out on Wednesday.

Day 186 | $67,506 paid | $23,211 till freedom

If nothing else, I’ve bought some time. Check it out–a snip of a screenshot from my homepage on the Federal Student Aid website.

I can wait over three years until I make my next student loan payment. I won’t, of course, but it’s pretty cool to see that I could if I wanted to.

Landscaping Business Shuttered
Michael and I gave two on-site landscaping consultations to a couple of potential clients several Sundays ago–it was in the middle of the cold, rainy day, and we were out in people’s yards helping them design their landscapes. Including the commute, the whole ordeal took a few hours, and I had to cancel plans to do it.

After the on-site consultations, Michael and I then developed the formal quotes. He did the graphical designs and I costed them out in terms of materials and labor, then we sent the quotes over to the potential clients for review.

All in, I’d say we spent about six to seven hours each to build both quotes.

We took the pictures in the left column and included the pictures in the right column in the quotes.

Customer 1:

Customer 2:

 They both replied back fairly quickly, expressing interest and asking follow-up questions to which Michael and I replied immediately.

We never heard back from the first client. The second one emailed us yesterday. Choice excerpt below:

Yes, I realize it is long term but I can’t afford the big chunk of money right now. I understand the labor is extensive, and to haul away…I can appreciate & understand you have to make money. No doubt about that. However, I have to be smart, and stick to a budget regarding my yard. I have come up with other options..getting my supplies at Whittlesey in Round Rock and doing it myself with help from family & friends.

Whittlesey? Interesting…that’s exactly where we get our supplies. So let me see if I’m understanding this correctly: We went out to her yard, spent an hour with her and her husband walking through our plans for how to design and xeriscape their yard, then sent them pics showing what we could do, along with a description and quantity of materials we would have to purchase, and they said thanks, but no thanks, we’ll do it ourselves?

Sounds like in our zest to sell her on our services, we enabled her to hire cheaper labor and contract the job herself.

I’m trying to stay positive, but I feel robbed.

This was our fourth free quote we’ve given somebody with no return. I can’t say for sure that all of our prospects have chosen to use our designs and hire cheaper labor on their own, but between the hours spent on providing fruitless quotes and the fact that I’m looking like I will meet this NMHD challenge on time, the weekend landscaping gig–if you can even call it a gig since we only did two jobs–has lost all of its luster.

Were we completely out of price position? Were we unprofessional? Was it obvious that we were amateurs, that this was a weekend job? Or were our quotes simply way too informational, making it too easy for the customer to contract the job themselves?

I called Michael up last night after getting that email, we talked it over, and agreed to shut down the business.

I don’t regret any part of this experience. This business did generate a profit over its short lifetime, so there were no expensive lessons, other than the opportunity cost of my time, and even that time was well spent. I still remember how excited Michael and I were building the business–creating the site, putting up flyers, fielding customer calls, etc. There was a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and it was a lot of fun.

I’ve learned a lot. When I was shoveling dirt into a wheelbarrow after putting the finishing touches on the completed landscape of our first job, I got a sense of what it would be like to work for myself, and the feeling was AWESOME. I have no doubt I’ll be back to try something else at some point.

Surplus Check
I got a $112 check yesterday from my mortgage company due to a surplus on my escrow. Killer! It offsets a decent chunk of the $255 ticket I got hit with last week.

Meet Andrew Schiff
A recent WSJ blog post introduces readers to Andrew Schiff, a New Yorker who thinks he has a problem: his $350k salary is making it hard for him and his family to get by. The article and accompanying video are simply fascinating.

Schiff lives in NYC and makes $350k/year as a marketer for his brother’s Connecticut brokerage firm. Despite a salary that is high by almost all measures, he claims in an even more fascinating Bloomberg article about bonuses that he’s struggling to make ends meet.

His version of “making ends meet” is renting a duplex in Brooklyn, paying the $32k/year tuition for his daughter’s private school, and paying for his summer rental. (But hey, as he puts it, it’s not like the summer rental is in St. Barts or anything.)

He feels frustrated because when he was growing up, it didn’t require being super-rich to afford these kinds of things; he feels like he’s been robbed of his dream.

Here’s a clue, brother: cut back your expenses and/or get out of New York City! I lived in Hell’s Kitchen for three months in 2008 and rented a 400 square-foot bedroom out of a woman’s apartment for $1,100/month. Hardly affordable, especially compared to the $1,400 mortgage on my upgraded 2,000 sq ft 3bed/2bath Austin house that was built in 1998. And that figure includes property tax and insurance!

Yes, New York City is expensive. No, you can’t afford everything you’re currently trying enjoy. Quit your whining and get outta there, and/or cut out the summer rental and private school!  

Hey, bud, I’d love to live in downtown Austin, but I can’t afford a $400k+ 2-bedroom condo. So guess what? I guess I’ll keep living in my shack in North Austin and try to get by.

This is the absolute epitome of keeping up with the Joneses. From the Bloomberg article: “ “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

Uh, gee, I don’t know…swing by in a cab and pick them up?

The other article, the Bloomberg article, opens with Schiff standing on a highway in a traffic jam, screaming profanities. He explains, “I’m not Zen at all, and when I’m freaking out about the situation, where I’m stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it’s very hard.”

No, you’re not Zen at all–not in the way that I try to be Zen, anyway.

And you say you feel like a rat in a trap on the highway during that traffic jam? I’m sure you do. But guess what? Even after you get out of that traffic jam, you’re still a rat on a treadmill. Time to get off, dude.

The reporter adds his own commentary in terms of the negative public perception of Mr. Schiff: “Americans are generally still fine with people getting wealthy. What they don’t tolerate is people making a salary that puts them near the 1% and complaining that it’s not enough. What Americans resent is not the wealth…it’s having a level of wealth and complaining it’s not enough, especially in these tough times.”

Ouch.

That reminds me of a post I revisited on my own blog recently: “My S2000 just died. Pic of the rides [Murano, motorcycle, and S2000] below. All are paid off, but as of this weekend, only two are operational. When I’m not riding my bike, I’ll have to drive that brown thing…ugh. This sucks.”

That “brown thing” was my perfectly good Murano. Geez, talk about tone deaf. The WSJ reporter point out that while Schiff’s comments are completely valid among his circle of friends–just as mine would be–the wider population doesn’t share that same appreciation as his fellow Wall Street friends might. Likewise, based on a scathing comment I got, my complaint also rubbed some people the wrong way. I actually cringed at the post myself when I read it the other day, and that was before reading the Schiff article. I was clearly in another world when I wrote it.

Leading by Example?
I can now count two buddies of mine at work who have decided to accelerate their student debt paydown, and they attribute their newfound missions directly to me.

After I was done talking shop with a colleague at work, she asked me something completely unrelated–whether she should take the $400/month payment plan for 25 years or the $800/month plan for 10 years to pay down her $70k of student loans. Believe it or not, she was seriously considering the former plan.  This question led to a conversation about how much she spends on her rent: $1,700/month to live in a single bedroom apartment downtown. Ouch.

I advised her to go rent a room out of a house and go with the $800/month plan. She didn’t like that idea very much, saying that she was 28 and thought she had arrived–it wasn’t “fair” that she should have to live with somebody else. “The  thought of having to share a washing machine sickens me.” I just laughed and shook my head when she made that comment.

I told her that I had gotten sick to my stomach thinking about the sacrifices I would have to make before I took the plunge in late August last year. With $67k down and  $23k to go, though, I can almost see the freedom I’ll have once I become debt-free. I did my best to paint this vision, this feeling for her.

She has some financial rehab to go through, but I think she’s going to decide to do the $800/month plan.

Do you remember how I told you I’m in a WhatsApp chat group with my four closets friends here in Austin? Adnan sent this pic out over the wire a couple of weeks ago and told us he was thinking about trading in his Lexus for it. He even took the car home for the weekend, which is a tactic some dealerships use to close their toughest sales.

He told us he’d be financing a deecnt chunk of it, and he wanted our advice on whether to buy it or not. He said he’s wanted a 911 ever since he was young, he didn’t think he could have one once he starts a family, and he wanted to feel accomplished.

Everybody told him to go for it except for me.  A lot of people aren’t sold on early retirement–I’m still not sure I am–and they don’t really want the concept shoved down their throats. So I didn’t pull that card. I just told him he could always get it later when he’s in a more financially stable situation (i.e., can pay cash for it).

I also told him that he didn’t need a car to feel accomplished.

That was a couple of weeks ago, and he still hasn’t bought the car. I don’t know if it’s because of what I said or because his girlfriend doesn’t want him to get it, but he’s held off so far and hasn’t brought it up in awhile.

The latest hullabaloo in the chat group? Refinancing mortgages and going for 15-year notes. All four of my friends own their own homes (and live alone), and the latest buzz is that they know a mortgage broker who can refi them into a 15-year mortgage at a super-low rate.

Bravo, boys. Bravo. Now we’re talking about some smart financial decisions. I’d probably be in on this, too, if I weren’t in such a cash-poor position.

Now, one of the guys did mention the other day on WhatsApp that he’s going to watch the Formula One race in Shanghai on 4/15 followed by trips to Hong Kong and Macau. So much for frugality! He did ask if anybody wanted to join him and nobody confirmed. I’m not going to get carried away and say my friends are turning into a bunch of frugal dudes, but it’s definitely interesting to watch it all unfold.

Day 183 | $67,506 paid | $23,211 till freedom

…and taxes.

I’m getting $1,872 back from the Fed! And the Federal E-file  was free! And of course, Texas has no state income tax! So many wins, I don’t even know where to start.

I was budgeting to get about $1,300, so this is a big win. I actually owed about $600 based on my W2 alone, but I swung it in the positive direction by about $2,400 by adding in my donations, mortgage interest, property tax, and the $4,500 loss I  realized when I cashed in my stocks at the beginning of this challenge to put a $20k+ dent in my debt.  It would have been nice to claim my student loan interest, but I’m over the income ceiling.

Doing this year’s taxes was a considerably more complex process than it was last year when I just had a W2, mortgage, donations, and some interest and dividends from stocks. This year, I had Turbo Tax guide me through the steps for taxing the (nominal) income the landscaping business earned in 2011 and the not-so-nominal rental income from my roommates as well as the write-off from the realized losses on the sale of stock.

When all was said and done, I had Turbo Tax PDF my tax return plus key calculations and worksheets:

• Form 1040: Individual Tax Return
• Schedule C-EZ: Net Profit from Business (Taxpayer)
• Schedule D: Capital Gains and Losses
• Form 8949: Capital Gains and Losses
• Schedule E: Supplemental Income and Loss
• Form 8582: Passive Activity Loss Limitations
• Form 4562: Depreciation and Amortization
• Schedule D AMT: Capital Gains & Losses AMT
• Qualified Dividend and Capital Gain Tax
• Capital Loss Carry Forward Worksheet
• Tax Payments Worksheet
• Schedule E Worksheet (multiple)
• Carryover Worksheet

All told, the PDF came to 25 pages this year as compared to 12 pages last year!

I could have gotten closer to $2,600 if I hadn’t claimed my rental and side business income. And believe me, I was very, very tempted not to. After all, why in the world should the government benefit from my having to deal with roommates? How did they facilitate those transactions? What right do they have to that money? Of course, it’s the same reason they have the right to my salary, but I’ve become so ingrained to pay income tax on my salary that I’m used to it. In the case of my rental income, it’s just harder for me to justify it.

However, there’s no Walden Pond in sight and the law’s the law, so I begrudgingly entered the $3,400 or so of rental income and $428 of business income in 2012 and took a ~$750 hit.

I honestly don’t know the reason for being 100% honest on my tax return. It would have been simple to score some extra cash by just not telling the government about my rental and side biz income. The odds of getting audited are so, so small. However, this blog does expose me to slightly more risk than if I were just paying down this debt on the downlow and not making a public broadcast out of it. Did that scare me straight? Or was it my own moral code?

Or was it the MBA Oath, the creation of which was led by my sectionmate, Max Anderson, that I signed back in 2009, shortly after graduation?

The MBA Oath is similar to the Hippocratic Oath. Max, recognizing that business leaders, like doctors, have the potential to do real harm to people’s lives, figured business leaders should also have to make some sort of professional promise to do no harm. And thus, the MBA Oath was born. It’s basically an oath for business leaders to not be complete jackasses, and to view their business and the world at-large through a balanced set of lenses: profit, ethical, and legal.

For me, signing it was a no-brainer.

But am I living the MBA Oath? I bring a flask to bars on the weekends. Assuming that the flask holds five drinks (8 oz @ 1.5 oz/shot), and an average drink costs $5 in an Austin bar, then I’m “stealing” $25/weekend. I typically go out once a weekend on average. So far, I’m at week 26. So I’ve “stolen” $650 from bars. And I still have at least another 8 weeks to go, so let’s just  call it an even $850.

I  laughed off the flask practice when I started it by waving my hands and saying that the bars could afford some leakage after all the thousands of dollars I’ve paid them over the years: 52 weekends * 4 years * 5 drinks/weekend * $5/drink = $5,200. But is that fair? Can the government afford to experience some leakage if I don’t  claim my roommates’ income? Does $850 over eight months make a difference to the likes of Dogwood and Ranch, who gross thousands in a single night? Probably not. Does my $3,400 in taxable rental income make a difference to the US government, which takes in a billions in taxes every year?

This logic is fine fine on a certain level, but if everybody does it? Anarchy.

And what about the Netflix account that I’m using? It’s definitely not mine. So, what is that, another $20/month, or at least $160 total?

I’ll have stolen a solid grand or more by the time is all said and done.

I wrote in the About section of this blog that I would “do everything in my power–short of lying, cheating, and stealing–to pay down this debt in the next ten months.” Well, I don’t believe I’ve lied or cheated, but I’ve clearly stolen. I’m not proud of myself. I’m not going to stop right now, but I definitely won’t be using my flask after my debt is paid down. And I’ll tip extra.

Speaking of Netflix
Never in my life have I watched three seasons of any hour-long show in as little time as I’ve watched the first three seasons of Breaking Bad. Oh, my goodness. Now that is some solid, solid viewing pleasure.

Once again, questions of self-awareness loom large here: I don’t know if I like the darn show because it’s action-packed and something mind-blowing happens in every episode, or if it’s because I identify–on a certain level–with the protagonist, Walt. For the uninitiated, Breaking Bad is about a chemistry teacher who has a wife and a kid and is diagnosed with cancer. Without savings of any sort to leave behind to support his family in his seemingly-inevitable death, he cooks meth–but not just any meth. No, he cooks the purest of the pure, so pure that it carries a premium in the otherwise commoditized trade. 

While Walt’s moral compass is clearly lacking calibration, a part of him can be forgiven due to the selflessness of it all. A certain element of this permission we grant him, however, is pressure-tested when he starts cooking on an even grander scale after he goes into remission.

Harvard grad flasking it up in the bars and sharing a Netflix account to pay off his student loans early vs. otherwise-upstanding chemistry highschool teacher cooking meth for personal gain. Shoot, sounds like AMC needs to add a show to their network. Call it  Crimson Criminal or something cool like that.

I should probably take my name off the MBA Oath. Max, strike me from the record. I better call Saul.

I’m 29
My birthday was fun–my friends and I went to Kasbah, Hangar, and Haven on Saturday night. Good friends, good times.

My 28th birthday was a bit more of an affair: bar-hopping with 15 of my closest friends in a black stretched Hummer limo with a decent bar inside.

Did I have any less fun during this year than last? Not really, it was just a little more low-key. I was still with friends, and I actually had a greater appreciation of the free drinks this year than last. I’ve always been a grateful person, so when my friends bought me drinks last year, I was still very thankful and appreciative. But this year, those feelings were definitely amplified.

That being said, I’m really looking forward to when I can give again. They say that giving is better than receiving, and I have to agree.

The Positive Attitude
It’s amazing how easy it is to have a negative attitude after having one for six months or so. A positive mindset is a muscle like frugality. I’ve gotten pretty good at flexing my frugality muscle and it’s gotten extremely strong, but the muscle for my positive outlook on life? Sadly atrophied. However, I’ve become acutely aware of the tone and level of optimism in my thoughts and words lately, and I’ve already substantially changed up my mindset. I already feel a lot better, and I can feel people react positively to my positivity. It makes a huge difference. As my friend told me shortly after I posted Affirmation, “It’s amazing how contagious a positive attitude can be–only done by the courageous.”  So true.

And on that note, I’ll end with a section that hopefully does not become a staple of this blog. This section is and will always be titled “Challenges and Setbacks.” I will briefly list things that are bothering me in my challenge to pay off $90k in ten months or setbacks I’ve experienced that threaten to impact my ten-month timeline. In an attempt to maintain a positive attitude, I won’t elaborate or dwell on them. I’ll acknowledge them, share them with you, try to focus on the positive, and move on.

Challenges and Setbacks
I got a call from the lawyer I retained to handle a ticket I got back in February 2010. He finally talked to the prosecutor who said he’ll dismiss the first moving violation (unsafe lane change) for $255 and let me take Defensive Driving ($20) to dismiss the second moving violation (speeding).

I really shouldn’t have shown off in front of my Porsche-driving boss (and a cop I didn’t even see) when I was on my motorcycle heading north on Mopac, three days after the end of the three-month suspension of my license for getting four moving violations in six month.

The Bright Side: At least the lawyer’s  fees were paid back in February when I hired him. And it appears I’ve finally gotten over my speeding addiction. I haven’t been pulled over once since getting that ticket–I went from getting pulled over six times (a couple were warnings) in six months to not being pulled over in twelve months.

Day 181 | $67,506 paid | $23,211 till freedom

I just paid the Fed $5,645 from my February income. Slowly, but surely, I’m chipping away at the remainder of my student debt. I’m down to $23,211.

Here’s how February played out:

• Starting Cash:$2,500
• Starting Student Debt:$28,723
• Income:$7,893
• Expenses:$2,748
• Cash Paid to Debt: $5,645
• Accumulated Interest: $133
• Ending Debt:$23,211
• Ending Cash:$2,000
• Total Assets:$56,922
• Total Liabilities:$23,211
• Net Worth: $33,711

Predicted student debt at end of June:($5,635)

In other words, I’ll have a surplus of $5.6k at the end of June at my current rate of paydown. In fact, according to the projections, I’ll be exiting May with my debt completely paid down and a surplus of $1,467. Anything can happen in four months, of course–from a smaller-than-expected bonus to an unexpected disaster–so I’m not going to bank on any of these projections for now.

High-Level Analysis
I spent $249 over my budget, but between my birthday cash (I’m now 29) and cashing in some BofA WorldPoints, I offset that overspend by $75. This was also my lowest month of spend, coming in at $2,748, which is $122 lower than my previously lowest month, January, at $2,870.

I lowered my cash buffer by a full $1,000 in December from $3,500 to $2,500 because I just didn’t see the value of holding that much cash. Well, I’ve grown even less risk-averse, and I’ve lowered it another $500 from $2,500 to $2,000. This reduction allowed me to pay down an extra $500 in February. The way I see it, I’ll be getting $850 in rent checks on the first of the month, and the only expense I have to pay immediately is my $1,441 mortgage, which my checking account is debited for on the 1st. As long as I have enough to cover that and a little more, I should be fine. All other expenses incurred during the month go on my credit card and don’t have to be paid off till the end of the month. Sure, I might get laid off or experience a disaster that requires some sort of cash payment before I get my next paycheck, but I think the odds are small.

Assessment of Expenses and Revenue
I want to take a moment to assess my spending habits on a line-item basis. Progress-to-date is detailed in the spreadsheet below. Click once to open and once to zoom.

Analysis: Expenses

• Insurance – $0 — After months and months of $171 insurance payments, I’ve sold off my second car and took collision off the S2000, and I’ve paid enough towards the once-high premium in previous months that I slid by without owing a single dollar on the remainder of the policy life. I thought last month was the last month of the policy, when I also paid $0, but it appears that I also got hooked up in February.
• Internet — $51 — Fixed and within budget.
• Cell phone – $85 — I budgeted for $86, so this is in-line with expectations.
• Mortgage — $1441 — Fixed and within budget.
• Haircut – $13 — TGF was running a special–$7.99 haircuts! Sweet! I gave a $5 tip.
• Energy — $32 — Same story as last month: I budgeted for $100, so this is a huge win no matter how you look at it. This is due to the colder months and the fact that the energy-sucking AC hasn’t been on.
• Water — $118 — I budgeted for $100, but this is actually two months combined into one–the bill for last month arrived after I closed fiscal January. So $118 is not bad ($53 + $65 = Jan + Feb)
• Gas — $35 — A loss relative to my $22 budget. This has gone up due to the cooler winter months and is being offset by a lower electricity bill since I haven’t been running my AC.
• Entertainment — $217 — A loss relative to my budget of $50, but better than last month’s $380.
• Groceries — $444 — A loss relative to my $280 budget. I’m speechless. Moving on.
• Lunch at work — $18 — This is comprised of two meals out. For the first meal, I didn’t have time to make my lunch for the following day, so I had to buy it at work. For the second meal, my entire team, including my boss, went out for an end-of-quarter lunch, and I would have been conspicuously absent. So I went.
• Fuel — $165 — A win relative to my budget of $160. $5 over ain’t no thang.
• Drycleaning – $33 — A loss relative to my budget of $20, but that $20 assumed I’d be ironing my shirts during NMHD, which I’ve so far refused to do.
• Car – $5 — A loss relative to my budget of $0, but better than the $1,500 I would have spent to replace the convertible top instead of paying $5 to duct tape it.
• Unbudgeted — $91– This is comprised of $44 Turbo Tax, $38 to replace my watch battery, and $10 to park downtown for a video shoot I did for my job. The $38 to replace the battery was a foolish spend, and I felt like an idiot paying that much, but I was running late and just wanted to get it done instead of looking for another jeweler.

My expenses for the past six months averaged $3,105, while my expenses during the 15 months prior to NMHD averaged $7,754. I’ve been spending $4,652 less per month, on average, since I started this challenge.

Analysis: Revenue

• Salary — $6,248 — a win relative to my budget of $6,200. The excess is simply due to the inaccuracy of my forecast calculations regarding tax and expenses like health insurance and Social Security.
• Roommates — $1,320 — a win relative to my budget of $850. This should technically be $400 because my first roommate is leaving and she already paid for her last month’s rent back in September. However, the replacement roommate already paid his first and last month’s rent as well as the security deposit, so I experienced significant upside. He won’t pay anything in March, however, so that’s when I’ll feel the pain.
• Birthday — $165 — Happy Birthday to me, and thanks to my parents and sister and grandma!
• BofA WorldPoints — $160 — I’ve spent $20k with my credit card during the past x months and took the opportunity to cash in my accumulated points.

March Outlook
March is going to be a pivotal month and will set the tone for the rest of this journey: it’s bonus season. I’ve been assuming $8k after tax for my bonus, a figure that allows me to exit May with my loans completely paid down one month early and a surplus of almost $1,500 assuming I keep my expenses in line (which, as you know, I really can’t). Anything substantially below the $8k, and even June is at risk. Anything substantially higher, and my end-date gets pulled in even more.

The bonus is determined by both company and personal performance. I got more than $8k after tax last year, but the company’s performance and my personal performance were both very high. This time around, while the company performance has once again been good, my own performance has been a mixed bag: it was great while I was in my former role, but it has been only decent in my new and highly complex role that I’m still ramping in. I was in my former role for the first three quarters of the year and in my current role for the last quarter, and the personal component of the bonus is usually determined by the last couple quarters’ performance, so to say I’m anxious to find out what it will actually be is an understatement. I’m hoping for the best.

Here’s the full ten-month outlook (click once to open, once to zoom):

Day 175 | $61,994 paid | $28,723 till freedom

As each week unfolds, I keep track of observations and experiences about my NMHD challenge so that I can blog about them on the weekend when I have time. A fairly major component of each blog post has typically been pretty formulaic: “Oh, my frugal life is so hard! I had to sell this or that/look at all of these expenses I’ve deferred/I couldn’t afford to go to this or that event. Boo hoo!”

When I finally found some time to write a post this weekend, I looked at the items on my “to-write” list:

• I’m in a chat group on a smartphone app called Whatsapp that’s comprised of me and my four closest friends here in Austin. For the past two weeks, somebody from the group has thrown out a lunch invitation almost every single day, and at least one of the other guys has accepted it. Some of those days I actually had a smidgen of free-time and could have really used the break to relax and catch up with the fellas, but instead, I ate lunch in front of my computer to save money.
• A girl I met a few months ago was in town from San Antonio and wanted to meet up, and I literally considered not meeting up with her because all I could think about was, “How much is this going to cost me?”

When I sat down to blog this evening, I planned on elaborating on my thoughts and feelings on both of these topics. I started with the lunch situation and tried writing about how it was so frustrating to have to turn down the invitations, but for whatever reason, I just couldn’t get fired up about it. So then I moved onto the dating situation, and once again, no motivation–this is old news; this is nothing new. Am I going to rehash the fact that I’m having trouble with dating on the cheap? Yawn.

I don’t know why, but the other day, I was thinking about what things were like during my pre-NMHD life. I mean, there’s a very, very clear delineation between my life before NMHD and my life during NMHD–sort of like B.C. vs. A.D. on an obviously much smaller scale. I started thinking about the attitude I used to approach my life with before NMHD. I wasn’t always positive, but I at least paid considerable attention to trying to have a positive attitude. When I started NMHD? I threw that positive attitude out the window. I knew it was going to be a grind, so I subconsciously decided that there was nothing to be positive about. I adopted that same attitude when I wrote blog posts–my intention was to give readers a gritty, true-to-life account of a guy going all-out to pay down his debt in a ridiculous timeframe. It would be a no-holds-barred, a no-punches-pulled account, and that included throwing away my positive attitude. “This is going to be tough, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”

And what a stupid thing to do. At a time when I needed a positive attitude the most, I instead became a very negative, very cynical guy. “Woe is me” became my new mantra.

Now, there was a time in my life (high school through grad school) when I had a negative opinion on having a positive attitude. I had always heard that having a positive attitude is critical–my own mother is a huge advocate and lives accordingly–but I thought that people with positive attitudes weren’t realists. I thought they were just fakes avoiding the hard truths of this world, brainwashing themselves into believing in illusions. I thought they were all in for a harsh surprise when life would eventually blindside them all. I remained steadfast in my cynical attitude.

Some time shortly after grad school, something changed. I decided that I was being silly. I decided to relax and be more positive, more optimistic. It  sounds odd, but I really can’t identify the impetus for this attitude shift.

Having a positive attitude became a focus of my life, and for awhile, I had to force it, I had to pretend. Tricking myself into thinking everything would work out whenever I ran into a problem, putting blind trust in myself to figure things out, not second-guessing myself and expecting the worst at every turn–it wasn’t easy to do at first. But once I figured it out, and it became automatic, life brightened up considerably. Taking pressure off of myself went hand-in-hand with this new mentality. I had been putting a lot of pressure on myself to be professionally and socially successful, but I chilled out, and I decided to trust in myself and believe that things would work themselves out. To a certain extent, I actually became happy-go-lucky–something I never, ever saw myself becoming. But let me tell you something: going through life happy-go-lucky is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than going through it as a Debbie Downer.

And then, when I kicked off No More Harvard Debt, that still relatively new, still somewhat fragile attitude withered in the face of paying down $90k in ten months. My positive outlook shriveled up and blew away on the winds of my heavy sigh. For the past five months, I’ve approached my life more Debbie Downer, less Pollyanna. (BTW, what are the male equivalents of these characters??)

Well, starting today, it’s back. While paying down what is shaping up to be $66k by the end of this sixth month hasn’t been easy, the truth is that it hasn’t been a tremendous hardship, either.

That being said, I don’t have line-of-sight to knocking out the remaining $24k in four months. My savings are gone, many of my major assets are gone, and I’m looking at only $4-$5k in debt paydown per month. Barring a huge bonus, I could very well fail in this endeavor.

But I’m going to revive my positive attitude in my everyday life, anyway. I’ve reached a point where I’m going to stop being angry with myself for issuing this challenge to myself in the first place, and then making such a public spectacle out of it all. I’m going to live with a firm belief in myself and with hope that I can get through this and that everything will work itself out. I’m going to do my best. I’m going to accept my situation and be at peace with it. No, things are not  great right now. No, this isn’t how I want to spend my money–I don’t like putting every last penny towards my student loans. No, I don’t like selling this or that/holding off on buying this or that/not going to this or that.

No, things are not great, but they’re not terrible, either. And they could be a hell of a lot worse.

And in some cases, like selling the Murano and motorcycle and roadbike, it was absolutely the right thing to do.

I might have to fake the attitude at first, but it’s better than going through life gloomy all the time.

I’m done with living with a negative attitude, and this inevitably needs to be represented in my blogging. I’m done with complaining. It doesn’t do anybody any good. And while it might make for some humorous reading, I’m just not going to deliver that anymore. If something is so bad that it’s hilarious, then yes, I’ll post about it, but only so that we can all have a good laugh at it. Otherwise, I just don’t want to dwell on it.

So what becomes of this blog? I posted in mid-Janunary about how this blog was making me miserable because it forced me to dwell on my hardships and sacrifices. I half-jokingly threatened to shut the blog down, and there’s definitely still a part of me that wants to do just that and complete the remaining 4.25 months of debt paydown in blissful obscurity. However, I do think the blog still serves a purpose as people continue to cite it as an inspiration, so it will live on. The difference between that post in January and this post is that I really will keep things more positive, which wasn’t my position in January:

“I would like to say that I’m going to try to keep things more positive, more on an even keel, but I don’t want this blog to be some idiotic, artificial, fluffy, evangelistic piece of crap. I want it to be real. So I’ll probably keep whining from time to time.”

High-level, I think the content and the tone of the blog need to change. Focusing on and writing about the sacrifices and hardships simply isn’t good for my mental health. And anyway, at the end of the day, they’re not that big of a deal.

(Well, let me rephrase that. For a certain audience, these sacrifices probably seem like a pretty big deal. But for other groups of people (e.g., starving children in Somalia), the fact that I sold off my second car, motorcycle, and roadbike probably wouldn’t garner a whole lot of sympathy.)

I will likely continue to track “sacrifices and hardships,” especially the ones that have financial implications and pose a risk to my timeline, but on a line-item basis only; I simply cannot elaborate on them anymore.

I have 4.25 months left to pay off my student loan debt. May they be glorious, glorious months.

Talk soon, friends.

Day 166 | $61,994 paid | $28,723 till freedom

When Sarah told me a week or so ago that this is her last month of living in the house, I marked Feb 20th on my calendar as the day to post up a Craigslist ad and start screening out the weirdos in the hopes of finding a clean and neat and normal roommate. A few days ago, I told (er, texted) Patrick to let me know if he knew anybody looking for a room. I didn’t think anything would come of it, but yesterday he told me that he knew somebody from his college who was moving to Austin in March to intern at the same place as he. I got the name and number and gave the guy, Sam, a call.

An automated voice picked up and told me to wait for a “videophone connection” or something to that effect. It dawned on me that Patrick’s friend was also deaf. And that’s totally cool–having Patrick here has been great. He’s clean, neat, and normal–exactly what I want in a roommate!

I worked through an interpreter to sign Sam up for March 10th through the end of June. He’ll be sending me a check for $910 (pro-rated for March + last month’s rent + security deposit) near the end of this month, and he’s already digitally signed the contract.

I feel good about this not only financially, but on another level, too: it indicates that Patrick is happy enough here to recommend it to his friend. So while things didn’t work out with Sarah, it’s not indicative that there’s something wrong with the house or the way I run things around here.

Back on Facebook
Yep, I’m back. I reactivated my account, deleted all of my albums, all of the hundreds of posts on my wall (except a few choice ones from back in the day), left all of my groups, went offline on the chat application, turned off all of my other applications, and published the following status update:

Six weeks later, and I’m back! I didn’t miss FB at all, but I do want to be part of the global directory. Cell and email are listed–don’t hesitate to use them or message me on here.

That’s all factual. I didn’t miss it, and I do want to be reachable–I hate it when somebody sends me an email about something one of my former classmates is doing (e.g., attending Davos, appearing in a news article, etc.) and I can’t find their email address to send them a congratulatory note.

I rejoined on Monday, and since then, I’ve spent about fifteen minutes on the site. That’s far, far better than the hour or so I was spending on it every day up until my exit six weeks ago.

Moderation–that’s really what it all boils down to. Will I be able to demonstrate it? Sometimes quitting something cold turkey is easier than trying to do something in moderation. Going cold turkey on Facebook for awhile was good for me, and probably easier than scaling back would have been. I needed to turn it off and just be without it for a bit. Now I’ve seen what my life is like without it and I prefer it that way, but I also want to make myself accessible, so I’m rejoining in hopes that I can moderate my usage. So far, so good. But it’s a slippery slope. Look at one article on a news feed, then another, and sooner or later, I’ve spent ten minutes on the site looking at other people’s lives and not living mine. Blech.

Speaking of Facebook
The other day, Stan did me another solid and sent me an article on PEhub.com abou an interview with Richard Watts, an HBS  grad running a wealth management practice in Santa Ana, California. Watts is intimately involved with his clients’ personal lives as he helps them manage their immense fortunes of $100M+. As the Facebook IPO ushers in a new group of multi-millionaires who are used to living middle-class to upper-middle-class lifestyles, Watts has a few key pieces of advice to offer up that I’ve paraphrased below.

• The wants of clients with newfound millions turn into needs as the comparison peer group changes. The 100-foot boat that brought so much initial happiness is no longer big enough compared to the Joneses’ 200-foot boat.
• Entering a new class of wealth opens up all kinds of opportunities to spend money on extravagant activities. It’s easy for clients to go overboard and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a hobby to the point that they lose touch with the reasons they were so fond of that hobby in the first place.
• Parents shouldn’t give their children elaborate gifts. They take away the lessons the child would have learned if he had been forced to buy his own car, as well as the ensuing satisfaction of achieving the goal on his/her own. “There is really no child that gains from having things gifted to him or her.”

The key take-away from the article is simple yet arresting: “Live like you don’t have the money. It will ruin your family if you don’t.”

New Hobby
I believe I’ve found a new favorite hobby: Reading the personals in the back of Harvard Magazine. I was flipping through the latest issue the other day and stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove. From the Jan-Feb issue of 2012, I bring you the ladies of Harvard:

SLENDER, SEXY PROFESSOR AND POET, outgoing and warm. Seriously pretty; engaged in literature, politics, and outdoor life. Irreverent academic; major fan of high-end art–with a weakness for TV Shows about perilous sea voyages and high adventure in the Arctic. Tortola for sailing, hiking in Vermont, biking by the  Charles. Unsystematic passion for wildlife: any old bird will do. Paris walks, Patmos, NYC, hidden (and flagrant) New England. Favorites include: DeKooning’s Wild Women, Tolstoy on tape, Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome?; Rialto, West Side Lounge, sushi outdoors at Mac’s Shack in Wellfleet. Looking for a future of kisses and conversation with some like-minded guy, 55-70. Boston area; ?@gmail.com.

Passionate photographer, former Silicon Valley CEO, current director public boards. Slim, athletic, really attractive, fit. Casual elegance, lively smile, generous heart, irreverent wit. Excellent traveler, true friend, creative, innovative, charitable, open. Adventurous, fun and funny, never full of herself. Easy-going, curious, model–finds writing this somewhat over the top. Movie-goer, animal-lover, news-junkie, lousy dancer, hiker (New Zealand, Basque Country, Marin County–probably would do Machu Picchu–too precipitous). Favorites: books on iPad, Stanford continuing ed and basketball games, cashmere sweaters, great restaurants with friends, walking my Border Collie, African safaris, rafting/camping Alaska, photographing wild animals everywhere, revisiting Europe. Seeks active, articulate man 56 to fit 70, prefers Northern CA man but open–intelligence, street smarts, financially stable. ?@gmail.com, 650-***-****.

Too good to resist: striking natural beauty–sexy, sophisticated and completely real at the same time. Slender, lean, really cute. Adventurous, curious, artist, low-key humanitarian, trailblazer. Fun, athletic. Not a false note. Light of heart, open with unassuming playful smile. Nature outdoors-lover. Appreciator of beauty, creativity, spontaneity; delights in exploration, discovery, Maine Coast, Cinque Terre, Whistler. Passionately loves skiing, hiking, sailing, New England, photography, architecture. Great cook, great conversationalist but not both at once unless you’re up for mojitos in your coq au vin. Crazy about making a difference, giving back…youth at risk, local agriculture, teaching art. Seeking adventurous, verbal, secure man, 45-60, values generosity, authenticity. 617-***-****. ?@yahoo.com

Smart and beautiful, intellectually curious and athletic. Consultant/educator–tall and slim with natural radiance, warm demeanor, genuineness of character. Adventurous yet calm, listens well. Expressive, affectionate, divorced, 5’8″. Laughs easily, thinks deeply, politically liberal. Interested in social change, literature, politics, nature, beauty. Midwestern roots, international outlook, lived in Spain. Actively enjoys skiing, hiking Rockies or Whites, Mozart sonatas (but can’t play despite years of lessons), Sunday Times, snuggling at home. Comfortable having tapas in Barcelona or roughing it in the backcountry. Seeks healthy/active man, 60s-mid-70s–warmth and intellect bent. Boston area. ?@aol.com. 781-***-****.

Class, class, class. I would literally date any one of these women if I were older, but I seriously doubt that I could afford them. Maybe what we actually have here is a potential sugar mama opportunity??

If I ever go on Match.com or eHarmony any time soon, I’m recruiting these ladies to write my entire bio–they have some serious talent in the personals-writing department.

This one’s a bit bizarre/funny:

Professional, loving Jewish-Italian family, Brookline, MA, with mature, beautiful and accomplished daughter age 21 seeks applicants for position of son-in-law. Must be at least 21, family and career oriented with great expectations. No political tests though occupants of Zuccotti Park need not apply. Applicants and/or parents send resume to ?@hotmail.com.

And the fellas…

Male executive, Yale degree, thoughtful, accomplished, fit, very youthful late 60′s seeks nice, sensitive, warm widow (or other single) comfortable with ideas who finds humor in whimsy and banter. NY metro area; often in Boston. Likes travel; advance apologies if schedule prevents timely response. ?@gmail.com

Ivy League alumnus, mid-30s seeking an interesting/intelligent woman to have a baby with. ?@gmail.com.

It’s funny to see how different in language, tone, and length the male personals are from the female ones.

Groceries Receipt

I was complaining about my groceries spend the other day, and Nate said I should post a receipt for analysis. So here you go.  I still had some milk, potatoes, and vegetables in my fridge left over from last week, so this isn’t even a typical week’s receipt, and yet multiplied by four weeks in a month it comes to $340, well over my goal of $280/month.

Looking at this more closely, I should stop complaining and just take my budget up. I don’t want to switch to a Ramen Noodles diet, private brand cereal really doesn’t taste as good, store brand shave gel really doesn’t work as well, and I like Axe and breath mints too much to not buy them.

BTW, give Axe Music a sniff next time you’re in your local grocery store. Holy moly. Some dude sprayed it in the locker room a few months ago and I had to ask him what kind it was. Sort of awkward, but well worth it.

Day 159 | $61,994 paid | $28,723 till freedom

Boom! Sixteen dollars! I’m RICH!

My Dad always stuffs everybody’s Christmas stockings full of scratch-offs, but this time, since I wasn’t in town during the holidays, I had to wait (extremely anxiously since I could feel a big win was headed my way) for my parents to actually send them to me. The 20 tix finally arrived a couple of days ago. As you can see, two were massive winners.

This will put a huge dent in my debt. I’m psyched.

Bank of America Sucks
I was getting gas last night and my credit card was declined, so I had to use my debit card instead. I thought it was a fluke, but when I went to pay for groceries this evening, the credit card was once again declined.

So I called the number on the back of it when I got home. After 12 minutes of waiting on hold, an account manager picked up and, after getting my information, told me that my card had been reported “compromised” on Jan 10th, put on hold, and a new card had automatically been sent out to me and shipping would take five to ten days.

Umm…what?

I’ve been using the card regularly since the 10th–it was only yesterday, three and a half weeks after it was allegedly “put on hold,” that it was declined. And the replacement card that was supposed to arrive in five to ten days after the 10th? That definitely never happened.

WTF, BofA?

I got a little snippy with the account manager and pointed out all the problems with the situation. Why could I still use the card well after it was supposedly put on hold? Why had I never received a new card in the mail? Why had nobody called me to tell me the card had been compromised? Hell, even an automated courtesy email would have been a nice…courtesy…and wouldn’t have cost them a  cent!

She basically ignored all of my questions and told me she would have a new card out to me within five to ten days.  Umm…Fail. This is my only credit card, and while I have a few thousand in my UBS account, I don’t have a debit card for it. The only debit card I have is for my BofA account that has about $300 in it, and I don’t have a transfer mechanism set up between UBS and BofA.

She replied that she would get a card out to me by Tuesday and waive the $15 expedite fee.

Gee, thanks a lot. Way to go the extra mile for me.

I don’t know whether to be more confused by or angry with the situation. It’s so bizarre!!

First Roommate Is Peacing Out
Sarah’s six months are up at the end of the month, and she has elected to leave instead of extending her contract like I offered. I won’t comment on the circumstances that led to this decision, other than to say that it’s probably for the best (hint, hint). Unfortunately, it does mean that I won’t be getting her $450 rent payment this month since she paid first and last months’ rent in September, so that will leave a huge, painful gap in my February finances.

I am giving two landscaping quotes this weekend with Michael, so hopefully those turn into some lucrative jobs this month.

The Amish Project
Tell me you guys have seen this.

Two words: Holy. Crap.

For those of you not interested in clicking the link, it’s a video created by a guy who went 90 entire days without Facebook, email, Twitter, LinkedIn, and texting.

Incredible. The video is completely moving.

Here’s the article where I heard about it. Awesome stuff.

As the loyal readers already know, I left Facebook on December 23rd after I read a Harvard Business Review article about Facebook being a “den of comparison,” a huge waste  of time, and a huge cause of superficial relationships. I did miss it for the first week or so, but I’m well over it now.

The gentleman behind the story, Jake Reilly, took things to a whole new level when, in addition to giving up Facebook, he also gave up things like texting and email. I admire the hell out of him for it. That’s awesome! It terrifies me to think of what would happen to my social life if I were to go down that road. It sounds like he was at first miserable when he disconnected,  but he eventually hit an inflection point and ultimately thrived and didn’t even want the stunt to end when the 90 days were up.

It makes me wonder if I’m going to start thriving in my current situation, and if I won’t want it to be over, either, when  I make my last loan payment. I guess it doesn’t technically have to be over–I can keep being frugal, but there will be less of a clear goal for me, so I might not be as motivated.

And I wouldn’t say I’m currently miserable, but I don’t know if I’m as positive about my current stunt as Jake was about his while he was doing it.

Is it a coincidence that this article surfaced during the same week that Facebook’s filed its $5B IPO?

By the way, if that figure outrages anyone, first take a chill pill. Then realize that we have nobody but ourselves to blame.

Get Paid to Save
A very considerate and well-read friend of mine from HBS, Stan, reads my blog regularly and sends me related articles from time to time. This week, he sent me  two very relevant articles. The first one was about a company that will actually pay you points not for spending money, like credit cards do, but for saving and paying off debt.

Awesome.

I personally won’t be doing this because I’m not a fan of sites like this and others where my account information is on a site other than the site of the bank it belongs to.

But I do like love the concept.

How Much Entertainment Can One Hundred Bucks Buy in Austin?
A lot, according to this article.

Stan sent me this article written by Seth Kugel who describes his weekend in Austin where he experienced a good chunk of Austin for only $100. He doesn’t eat or drink quite as much as I  typically do, but I do appreciate what he’s done here. That said, I’m trying to spend $50 on entertainment over four to five weekends, not twice that amount in one weekend, so this will probably be more applicable to my post-NMHD life when I’ll be a little less frugal.