sacha chua living an awesome life

• PassionSaving shares ten money-saving tips: focus on getting over the $100,000 hump (yay!), add income tax when you consider costs, multiply by 25 to estimate capital needed for each of your spending categories, translate money into time, have short-term savings goals, focus on your goals, save for particular changes you want to make, think of saving as a normal thing to do, spend consciously, and be mindful of your limited savings potential.

  I started calculating the time cost of things when I came across that tip in Your Money or Your Life (Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez, Monique Tilford). I calculate my rate after I take out my savings and fixed expenses. To avoid getting confused about whether I’m using an 8-hour workday, a 16-hour waking day, or a 24 hour day, I calculate a daily rate instead. It makes it easier to stand in front of something and think: yes, that’s worth a day of my life; or no, I’d rather be financially independent a little bit earlier.

  Hat-tip to Lifehacker for the link!

• David of Money under 30 shares how he makes money blogging. He focuses on affiliate advertising. If I develop a blog as a part-time source of income, I probably wouldn’t want to deal with the hassles of filtering Google Adsense ads that I don’t agree with or that I find offensive, so affiliate advertising, information products, and/or services might be the way to go.
• David Seah’s diagram of work-life baselines nudged me to visualize my time and figure out more about my activity requirements. I don’t have the kinds of rules of thumb that he has, but maybe someday! So far, I know that I’ve got about 4 hours of discretionary time to work with on weekdays, and that sleep hovers between 7.5 and 8.5 hours. Going to bed at 11 means I’ll get up at around 7 or so, and that means I’ll be at work by around 8:30. An hour of tidying is enough to start laundry, sweep the bathroom, and put away clothes. Homework help and socializing takes around an hour, too.
• We’re always interested in good books to read, so I’m looking forward to checking out Katie Zenke’s recommendations for geeky books for kids. The comments are great, too.
• This rainbow layer cake looks great. It makes me think of Nyan Cat.

Lots of interesting posts turn up in my feedreader. I’m thinking of sharing highlights weekly so that I nudge myself to go back and review them, see what I’ve done with the information, and share the ideas with you.

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