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Education

Inspiration: How to Project

Courtesy of my new friend Mike Arnold, from the UK, educational and inspirational posters (I love posters) for how to do things. How can you go wrong with something so graphically brilliant that tells you what to do? Come to think of it, the Brits were the ones who came up with “Keep Calm and Carry On”, which is about as direct as it gets.

As readers know, Aunt Toby does not do a lot of product flogging here — but these are actually limited edition posters, signed as well. So, you get your directive AND your art at the same time.

How to Project

Close – But No Cigar: New Credit Card Legislation Does Not Go Nearly Far Enough

Aunt Toby has written before about credit cards, their use, abuse, and the almost preternatural ability of people to create large weights of debt with which they can NOT continue to conduct their financial lives. Atkins for Plastic Thank Shopping

One thing I have not written about is how I feel about credit card companies targeting people who not only are not in a position either psychologically or financially to take on debt, but the effects of people such as these groups who end up with huge amounts of debt at times in their lives when they can least afford to have it.

These people are college students. (more…)

Time: It’s All We’ve Got

I was reading a blog the other day (Aunt Toby reads far, far too many blogs) and the writer was discussing the fact that her hours at work had been cut back to 4 days a week. She did not discuss what that was going to mean to her family in terms of the change in income, but what else she might do with the time.

And it reminded me that there are certain truths to life and one of them is the old saw about ‘Time is the currency of our lives’. All we have is time. All we sell, no matter what our skills are, is time. We only have 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week. And we only have a certain amount of that during which we not only want to work, but can physically work. So, therefore, time IS money. (more…)

Cheap and Good: No Excuses Weightlifting

Today, Aunt Toby wants you to think of our little meeting place here as Kitchen Counter Gymnasium. We’re going to talk today about getting more strength into our lives … at home.

So, you say you don’t have the money for a gym membership. Okay – Aunt Toby is good with that.
And you say you have never lifted weights and are just a little bit scared of hurting yourself. Yep – I’m with you there too. And you say that it’s not something you worry about really.

Just hold it right there, bucko. (more…)

What do you know?

This weekend, the DH, our son and I went to see the newly released film, ‘Defiance’ with Daniel Craig, Leiv Schreiber and Jamie Bell, which is about the fantastic and almost unbelievable story of a family of brothers who escaped to the woods in Belarussia in 1941 and managed to save over 1000 Jews from the Nazis by hiding underground, creating a series of communities in the woods, and frankly stealing and attacking the German army and collaborators wherever they found them. One of the most interesting scenes in the film is one where a great number of Jews from a town are rescued and are asked, while they stand in line in front of a make-shift registration area in the woods, what they know how to do. A watchmaker demonstrates that his skills can be turned to repairing a rifle. Others announce themselves as nurses, dressmakers, boot makers and so on, worthy additions to the Bielski Brothers’ ever expanding world. (more…)

The Light at the End of the Tunnel — and how you and your family can get there faster

moneyOK – everyone comfy? Want more coffee?

We’re back in the kitchen (because that is where the food, the heat and the good seats are). We’ve talked about (to review, in case anyone is taking notes here and no – there are no essay questions on the final) saving money, starting a garden, “doing one thing” to improve your situation, and finding out who your network is.

Today, we’re going to grasp the wriggly monster with both hands: The country is in the toilet. Really. The news gets worse every day. It looks as if we are “staring down the barrel of a gun” and “hitting the wall” – simultaneously. (Being able to do both at the same times is going to take the skills and physique of a contortionist, but I digress.)

And now Elliot Spitzer gets out there and basically says that all the money that has been used to bail out the banks and AIG was wasted – like we didn’t know that already.

But he did talk about something that we WILL talk about which is:
“government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation, not in a failed business model…”

What I want you to do, right now (and you know I am all about the “right now”) is to take that phrase “government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation” and replace a couple of words so that it reads like this:

“personal investment in the long-range competitiveness of ME” or “family investment in the long-range competitiveness of family members.” (more…)

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