Jeff Stalnaker

I mentioned a while back that I was trying to help my mother with her finances. Her major problem is one of debt. For years, she has literally lived on borrowed money and time. In my feeds today, I came across an excellent post at Dumb Little Man that details 20 or so guidelines for lifestyle changes and techniques for effectively diminishing debt. It covers all sorts of angles for attacking debt from living frugally to coming up with new sources of income.

Change your attitude: Like everything else in life, getting out of debt is heavily dependent on your attitude. Switch to a “Can Do” attitude. Stop giving into the victim mentality, or self-doubts of whether you can do it, or procrastination or whatever it is holding you back. Start attacking debt and don’t stop until its all gone.

While some of the tips seem a little contrived, I’d say this is a must read for anyone who is or wants to start working to eliminate their debt. I’m currently on track and seeing my debts dwindle. If I continue to follow good advice like that found in this post, I should be debt free (aside from the mortgage) in as little as 2 years!

So, here it’s been over 2 full weeks since I made the pledge to keep things moving around here without a single post… My apologies. If you’re like me, and most others, you’ve spent some time in the last couple of days thinking about the past year, what is coming in the new year, and promising that 2008 will be the year that you actually follow through on all of the resolutions you keep repeating year after year. I admit I’ve done the same. This morning, though, I came to another realization. I’ve determined why I think I continually fail to execute my resolutions.

The resolutions that I repeat every year (get in shape, quit smoking, be more organized, etc.) are all not simple actions. They are lifestyle changes. Making changes in your lifestyle largely depends upon changing your priorities and outlook on life. What I’ve realized about my life is that the changes I need to make take place and effect a much longer scale of time that I am typically concerned with. Most of the time, I am focused on the next coming event…. the next project, the next action, the next vacation, the next holiday, the next immediate goal. So focused is my concentration on this next event that I often fail to see how that affects my larger vision. I get the distinct feeling that if I could think in terms of my larger vision all of the time, I could eliminate the tendency toward laziness and convenience that is the downfall of my noble resolutions year after year and put priority on the changes to my life that will make a long term impact and keep me from repeating the same things in 2009.

So with that, I declare the most crucial of resolution statements for 2008. This will be the year that I focus on my vision of the future; this year I will focus on the big picture and lend priority to my long term goals.

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Now playing on iTunes: Madness featuring Sway & Baby Blue - Sorry
via FoxyTunes

Digg turns up a link to … well … a list of links. A blog post at LifeRemix recaps 100 links to tips and tricks to having a better life. From productivity to eating healthy to saving money this list has it all.

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The Dumb Little Man brings us a list of tips for living clutter free…
“Devote a little of your time to tossing clutter from your life, and keeping things relatively clutter-free, and you’ll be rewarded with much more pleasing living spaces, with a less stressful life, and with better organization and productivity….

10. Systems. Once you’ve purged clutter from your life, it will inevitably start to creep back in. To keep from having a cluttered life again, you need to set up systems that will keep the clutter to a minimum. Examine how you do things, how things come into your life, and see if you can create a simple system for everything: chores, laundry, paperwork, email, RSS feeds, yardwork, errands, work projects, filing. And then write down your systems, step by step, and try to follow them. If your systems are set up right, you will continually purge clutter you don’t need.”

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A little over a week ago my wife and I closed on our first home. As we are still moving in, I’m already finding that my Todo list, collection of worries, and stress levels are growing bigger and bigger with each passing day. Still, despite all of the issues and annoyances, I’m glad we did it and am excited about finally having a place of our own. In that spirit, I am going to start a new category here to track all of my around the house projects, tips for new and would-be homeowners so that, at the very least, others may learn from my toils and troubles. Stay tuned.