Andy Hough

The Dollar Double Cheeseburger is Ending

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This is the last week that the double cheeseburger will be on McDonald’s menu.  The price will be going up to $1.19.  They will be coming out with a new $1 sandwich called the McDouble.  It is basically a double cheeseburger but with only one slice of cheese.

The double cheeseburger was a favorite of mine and  it probably contributed to much of my weight gain.  I think I’ll be passing it up now for the McDouble though when I’m buying food at McDonalds.  And that probably won’t be very often.  Since I get a free McDonald’s meal every week I do not plan on going there other than for my free meal.

A dollar double cheeseburger was a frugal choice for eating out.  When you consider that you could eat cheaper and healthier at home though it probably wasn’t a very good choice.

Surviving Christmas

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Christmas is not my favorite time of the year.  Last year I wrote about how I had managed to mostly  opt out of Christmas.  I am not going to be so lucky this year.  With the addition of a GF this year I’ve also picked up several more Christmas obligations.  We will be attending four different family Christmas gatherings.  My GF will be doing all the additional Christmas buying (except for my gift for her of course) so I don’t have much more obligation in that sense.  I’d still rather receive no gifts and give no gifts but in order to stay sociable with family and friends I have to participate in Christmas at least on a minimal level.

Goals Review and December Goals

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At the beginning of this year I made three goals for this year. They were to incur no new debt(other than student loans), improve my blogs, and to lose twenty pounds. The year isn’t over but I’m going to wrap up these goals now. The first goal was easily met and I don’t plan on incurring any new debt ever again. The second goal was also met. This goal is somewhat subjective but I have increased my readership on this blog from under 100 readers to occasionally over 300 readers. I’ve also increased my online income overall by an even bigger percentage. I feel it is fair to say that I’ve improved my blogs. The third goal will not be met. In fact I will most likely end up with negative progress on this one. With the holidays coming up I will likely gain weight rather than lose it. This goal will be revisited next year with a specific plan for losing weight.

I’ll be out of school for most of December so that is a great time to get stuff done. I’ll be setting a couple of goals for myself and hope to get more done than that. My first goal is to write an article a day for either Associated Content or eHow. That should give me a good idea of how much time I should spend writing for these sites in the future. My other goal is to build two static websites. I’ve had the ideas and the domain names for these websites for several months now but haven’t gotten around to building them. I don’t have time to start another blog but I’m hoping that once these sites are up they will produce a little income and rarely need to be updated. I’ll probably add to these goals before the month is over but I need to do these at the very least.

FBN Roundup- Half Marathon Edition

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I ran a half marathon yesterday. My original plan was to run a full marathon in October but a lack of training made that unlikely.  I scheduled the half marathon this month instead.  I still didn’t do very much training but it was enough to finish although at a very slow pace.  Here are some of my favorite posts from the Frugal Blog Network and beyond this week.

Almost Frugal gives us childproofing your house – the frugal way.   I don’t think I’ll ever need to do this but these sound like some good tips.

Frugal Babe refinished a coffee table.  This is an interesting coffee table. I wonder how much it cost to make it.

Frugal Zeitgeist talks about frugality and simple living. This is an explanation of what frugal means to her.

Not Made of Money shares five personal finance gifts for under $25.  These gifts will continue to give.

The Frugal Duchess gives us some ways to winterize your home.  She probably doesn’t need to winterize her home too much since she lives in Miami.  This is solid advice though.

And from beyond the FBN I also liked Not the sort of person who… from Wisebread.  This is a great examination of why people choose not to adapt certain frugal behaviors.

Keeping Urges From Becoming Splurges

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My method to keep urges from becoming splurges is to give in to my urge but in a controlled manner.  This makes my urge go away but doesn’t have the same negative consequences as a full-blown splurge.

Here is a recent example.  I’ve been a little depressed lately and being depressed makes me want to gamble.  This doesn’t make much sense because I lose money when I gamble which makes me even more depressed.  Irrational as it is, the urge to gamble exists and has to be dealt with.  My solution was to take $100 to the casino and gamble it away.

It does suck to waste $100 like that but I know if I ignore my urge I’ll eventually give in and go on an unplanned bingge – which would likely cost me much more than $100. After losing the $100 my urge to gamble was gone and my mood has gradually started to improve.

This method has worked for me for years.  After going backwards the past couple of years the time between giving in to my gambling urge is gradually increasing again.  This is probably because now that I’m with my GF I’m much less prone to depression.  If you want to try a variation of this method for your own urge please note that it only works if you know that you will only give in to the urge as planned.