Announcements

I am sponsoring another giveaway with several other bloggers. This giveaway will last from October 15-26. There will be a main prize of $25 PayPal cash and 5 smaller prizes of $5.

The theme of this giveaway is the importance of saving small amounts of money. Since I don’t make much money it is easy for me to see how saving small amounts of money is to me. Even if you make more saving small amounts of money is important. If you keep a budget or track your expenses you will see how quickly small purchases add up. The latte factor illustrates how avoiding small expenses can lead to big savings. The small savings you make today can lead to big savings later.

Click on the widget below to see all the different ways you can enter the giveaway.

I have joined with several other bloggers to host a snowflake giveaway. You have the chance to win 1 of 10 prizes of PayPal cash or Amazon gift card. The Snowflake Giveaway Project hopes to encourage blog readers to find ways to snowflake to help them reach their financial goal as quickly as possible, while also keeping them motivated to move toward the financial goals they have set. The giveaway will run from September 26 – October 5. Use the widget below to enter.

If you are a blogger and would like to participate in future giveaways, click here.

Now that I’m officially single it is time to get on with my life. Between the divorce and the comments on my last post I’ve taken a lot of lumps in the past few days. I’m not going to let that get me down though, and I am moving forward. I don’t have a complete plan yet because I’m not sure what all I want to do.

The first thing I’m going to do is get a job. My preference is to get a job as an attorney. Despite what has been said in the comments it is not easy to get a job in the legal field and I certainly haven’t turned down a legal job.
I have applied several places and I had one interview that I thought went well, but I haven’t heard from them yet. I’ll continue to search for legal work, but if I don’t have a job by the end of the month I’ll take a non-legal job.

I’m also moving to Kansas City. There aren’t many job opportunities where I’m currently living. All of the companies I’ve applied to have been in Kansas City. Even if I’m not able to get a legal job right away, I still think I’ll have a much better chance of getting one in KC. A change of scenery will be nice too.

One other thing I want to do is to increase my self-employment income. Although I don’t have a job, I was making thousands in self-employment income just a few months ago. If I can get back to that level and have job income as well I should be able to pay off my van loan quickly and replenish my savings. After that is done I could start on my student loans.

There isn’t much of a plan yet. Once I have moved and gotten a job I’ll work on setting goals and a plan to achieve them.

I recently read The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris and it had several ideas in it that I found interesting. One of them is the minimum effective dose. The book explains that the minimum effective dose is the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome. Applying the MED to exercise Ferris determines the least necessary to maximize size gain. According to him less than 30 minutes of gym time per week is needed. I’m more concerned with weight loss than size gain so I will test that at a later time.

For weight loss the book tells how a woman was able to lose 100 pounds with 20 minutes of exercise twice a week. The MED for weight loss is just 40 minutes of exercise a week. That seems easily achievable sounds so I’m going to do it and see how it works. She also had a slow carb breakfast. I’ve been doing that since I haven’t been able to stay on a complete slow carb diet, but just having a slow carb breakfast is easy. I’m not sure that will be enough for me and am thinking of switching to two slow carb and one carb meal a day. That will depend on my results with the current setup.

If the MED actually works it would mean I could achieve one of my major goals without too much effort. Since I like the idea of doing the minimum I’m trying to think of how to apply the MED to blogging. I’m not sure if the MED applies to blogging since you can do a lot of work before it ceases to be effective. Currently I’m not even doing the minimum so I need to determine what the minimum is. I’m thinking of setting a goal of writing one post a day. I have three blogs this is a minimal amount of writing for them. I’m still thinking of other ways to apply the MED to blogging. How would you apply the MED to blogging?