As such, this site will be reinvented soon to be more appropriate to what I do these days. I’ll try to retain archives of the high-traffic areas for reference (and just in case anyone’s still looking for iPhone lookalike themes for a 4-year-old BlackBerry…really, I’m shocked at how many people are). In the meantime, for anyone dropping by because you’re e-stalking me, just keep in mind this site is horribly out of date!

I’m proud to announce that the first iPhone app I’ve worked on, TextTumble, is now available for sale in the App Store! TextTumble is a unique word game that challenges you to spell words using falling letter and picture tiles. Check out the web site for a video and a link to buy the game.

For quite some time, a business partner and I have been working on the first product for our new venture together. My Magellan Media business partner and developer Chris wrote a great post on his personal blog about all the gory details of the development process, so I’ll leave that to him (definitely read that, it’s a great article). I do need to offer my own perspective.

In late summer of 2008, shortly after the App Store first opened for business, several ideas for possible apps began germinating. A lot of my thoughts coalesced around a word game, because they’re both entertaining and ever-popular (at the time, the developer of a crossword app was making several thousand dollars a day), and because it wouldn’t require 3D graphics, a degree of difficulty that was higher than I wanted to get into for an initial effort. I wanted a game that was somewhat unique, and I started thinking of combining several classic gameplay mechanisms into something different. Combining ideas from Boggle, Tetris, and Scrabble, TextTumble was born. The basic idea is simple: spell words with falling letter tiles.

But I needed someone to develop it, because while I dabble in code and can handle building a web site, I’m really not an expert. I started bouncing ideas off Chris Zelenak, and he immediately saw the potential in my nascent concepts and began adding the perspective of a much more experienced gamer. One of the coolest parts of the game was all Chris — the pictowords. These are tiles that have pictures on them which represent various synonyms — a picture of a cat could represent cat (obviously), tom, tiger, or puss, for example. Combining that single tile with one or more letter tiles and you can spell much longer words — and score much higher point value.

Neither of us having much experience developing games, and no experience developing for the iPhone at all, our initial timeline of a few months was quickly shot. As I said, Chris goes into much more detail on his blog. But the long and short of it is…I was not prepared for how much iteration it takes and how much time processes can take when you’re trying to make something good enough to sell. I didn’t fully think through every single point of interaction with the game before we got into development, and as a consequence we had to rebuild some things. On top of the technical and user interface challenges, I was trying to deal with all the legal and financial issues you face when you establish a new business entity, and trying to organize all those ancillary things that you need for a business to function and define some processes for us to follow.

As I learned, all that will evolve no matter what practices, tools, or tactics you try to establish, because very rarely in business is the first answer the right one. The key lies in being able to look forward and predict other possible answers and evaluate which course to take before expending too much energy on one path, and staying flexible enough that if you need to change something…you can. In our own small effort here, I have learned a great deal. I know Chris has too, and if and when we make another effort I know we’ll be able to make it happen more efficiently than before.

As it stands, we’re very proud of TextTumble 1.0. It’s something we built and it’s actually out there on the App Store! We’re confident in saying that among the 65,000 other apps in the App Store, ours rises above a good many of them in quality and complexity. That said, this is a tough nut to crack…getting noticed among sixty-five thousand applications, even though 98 or 99% of them are crap, is no small feat. We’ve submitted review requests to a number of iPhone-loving sites out there, and we hope to get a bit of traction that way in addition to spreading the word via our blogs and Twitter.

But we know we have quite a battle ahead of us. If you have an iPhone, please consider giving TextTumble a shot — and if you like it, tell your friends! We have lots of ideas and enhancements to add to TextTumble for future versions, so keep an eye out on the Magellan Media blog and let us know what you think!

I’ve discovered numerous opportunities and solved many problems by interacting with people on Twitter whom I may never have met otherwise. Never has there been a better example of this, however, than what has transpired over the last month or so: the investigation and removal of a negative item on my credit report because I complained about it on Twitter after the usual channels failed me.

My wife and I started house shopping (we ultimately decided to build; more on that later) so I obtained a copy of my credit report via AnnualCreditReport.com — the only (as far as I know) truly free and legit website to get you the copy of your credit report that you are legally entitled to receive once a year. (All those other sites, such as the one with the catchy jingles on TV, require you to sign up for a trial monitoring service to get your “free” report.) Lo and behold, my credit was perfect except for one thing: a collections account in the amount of $141 from late 2005, passed on to the collections agency in 2007, with the original creditor listed as “Comcast Chicago.”

My first thought — what the hell is this? First of all, I’ve never been late on any kind of bill, nor have I ever received any letters or phone calls about a past due account somewhere. Second of all, I’ve never lived in the Chicago market. And I’ve been a Comcast customer for years; don’t you think they would have let me know if I owed them money on some other account? So…how is this possible?

First I initiated a request for an investigation via the site I got my credit report from; I filled out the forms and stated that I had no knowledge of the collections account and I believed the information to be inaccurate. I got a message back from the credit bureaus several weeks later stating that the investigation had been completed and the account had been “verified.” Uh, sure. Now what?

I tried calling the collections agency listed on my credit report. That got me nowhere. To be fair, they probably have people calling all the time saying, “That’s not me, I swear!” At any rate, when I actually did get them on the phone, they could do nothing.

So I wrote to Comcast and stated my case. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, if you request an investigation from an original creditor and they cannot prove the account is valid or do not respond to your request within 30 days, it must be removed from your credit report. However, I missed the part of this law that says they don’t have to bother doing that unless you send certified snail mail that will “prove” you contacted them. I just sent an email, and after about 28 days (after I wrote in again reminding them to get back to me or else I would contact a lawyer), they wrote back and basically said “Sorry, we can’t help you with account issues via email.” Oh, thanks so much for taking a month to tell me that.

At this point, I vented on Twitter, specifically calling out Comcast for putting a negative item on my credit report for an account I never had. In no time, one of Frank Eliason’s crack executive customer service reps who seem to constantly prowl Twitter replied to me and asked me to email them. I told her my story, she apparently had words with some people, and put me in touch with another wonderful rep who would spend the next three weeks pushing to get my case resolved. Long story short, I had an account with a different cable company back in the summer of 2005 who, as this little investigation revealed, didn’t really cancel my account when I called and told them to just before I moved away…they just kept billing me at that address and never called me and asked “Hey, how come you stopped paying?” Then Comcast bought them, and eventually sent the account to collections. Comcast agreed the original technician I had spoken with to cancel the account screwed up, and since no one had ever called me and given me a chance to correct the situation they said they would have the collections agency close the account.

Well, today I got that letter. It’s a letter from the collections agency stating they have received notification from Comcast that the account is to be closed, and they have notified the three major credit bureaus. Considering this one detrimental account made the difference between a very good credit score and merely an OK one, I am extremely happy. If it weren’t for @ComcastBonnie and the ever-present @ComcastCares (Frank Eliason) watching out on Twitter, this may have never been resolved in time for us to save thousands on the financing of our new home. So huge thank you to them for coming through, and wish us luck building our new house! (Dedicated blog for that coming soon!)

I’ve been meaning to regain control of my email for quite awhile, but for some reason I had just never gotten around it until a few weeks ago. For years, I’ve had at least a half dozen primary email accounts that I need to check daily. I didn’t do any sorting — everything just came into each account’s inbox and stayed there forever. Clearly, this is not ideal.

The problem

You can imagine what that looks like when you’re trying to find something — an endless list of messages with no organization at all. I would most often use my mail client’s search function to find something, but that wasn’t always reliable and tended to result in a lot of hits I didn’t want. I often found myself sitting down to complete a project and wanting a series of emails that were spread over the past few weeks with various questions, concerns, and feedback from the client/stakeholder for that project. Finding those messages in an unclassified inbox was a nightmare. In addition, if I had near-term action-required emails (bring something to work from home tomorrow, pay a bill within the next couple days, or anything that required a response), they would get lost in the noise of less important emails. If I didn’t (or for some reason couldn’t) act on those emails right when I read them, I was at risk of forgetting about them.

The solution

The core of a solution was some kind of sorting methodology, clearly. But what to do? I needed something flexible, powerful, and mostly automatic — because if I have to manually sort a hundred emails every day, it will never happen. Most importantly: the Inbox is a sacred place. The only time a message should be in the Inbox is if it is unread or if it requires me to take further action.

Put it all in one place
The first thing I decided was that I wanted all my email going to one place so I could more easily parse it — I forwarded it all to my main GMail account, and configured that account to be able to send mail as those other accounts, so I can still send out messages under my various addresses from one place. I also moved from a desktop mail client — Apple Mail — and decided to work solely out of the GMail web interface, because of the way GMail’s labels and archiving work (not to mention that Mail and most other desktop clients I’ve used start falling on their face when you get tens of thousands of messages in them).

Filter it out
Next, I setup a whole bunch of filters — automated rules within GMail that perform various actions based on criteria you specify. They’re very powerful — I have various rules applying labels (GMail’s version of folders) to emails depending on such conditions as who they’re from, what keywords are in the subject or body, which of my various accounts the messages was originally sent to, or any combination thereof. I spent quite awhile setting up my filters and occasionally still add to them, but for the most part I’m happy with my filter setup.

Archive it
However, having all my mail in one place and applying those great labels still doesn’t solve one big problem — all my messages are still just listed in my GMail inbox. Important messages, despite being labeled, are still going to be surrounded by tons of noise. This does not jive with the Sacred Inbox directive.

One huge feature that most GMail users overlook is the “Archive” command. When you archive a message, it no longer appears in your Inbox — it’s still accessible via “All mail” or by viewing any label with which that message is tagged (or just by searching), it simply doesn’t show up in the Inbox anymore.

So what I’ve started doing is archiving messages when I’m done with them — anything that doesn’t require a response or to which I have already responded gets archived. When reading a message from the Inbox, the Archive button is right up there next to the “Back to Inbox” link…and it also takes you back to your inbox after it archives the email. So it takes no additional clicks, no additional work. I read the email, I respond if necessary, and if I’m done with it, I hit Archive and go to the next message.

I’ve also worked the archive command into some of my filters for emails I don’t need to see immediately. For example, notifications from Twitter get tagged “Notifications” and archived automatically. I like to peruse these emails a couple times a week to see who started following me on Twitter, but I don’t need them cluttering up my Inbox.

Results and observations

I’ve been operating this way (sort of my own version of Inbox Zero) for a few weeks now, and the difference has been amazing. I feel less overwhelmed by my email, it’s easier to find relevant messages when I sit down to accomplish a task, and I don’t forget to take action on messages that require it.

I was hesitant at first about switching from a desktop app to a web interface, but since GMail does a good job with keyboard shortcuts it makes the experience quite a bit more palatable. I also use Fluid to setup a dedicated GMail “application” on my Mac which always runs in its own window, separate from my regular web browser, and has a few niceties like an unread count on the dock icon and additional keyboard shortcuts.

If your inbox is an unorganized disaster and it stresses you out sometimes, consider some of these methods to reach Inbox Zero. It’s made all the difference for me.

I was digging through some old files on one of my hard drives the other night and came across what I believe is my very first web site design, from my early college days in 2002. I had cobbled together a few web sites before this in high school, but the mockup you see here is the first time I actually planned the whole design in advance with a graphics program (Macromedia FireWorks, in this case). Please keep in mind, this was done by someone with zero art or graphics training, so excuse the atrocious green! MRNonline.net was sort of a blog (way before there was all this great blogging software available), sort of a community site — I ran it for my friends off of a server in my dorm room for about a year, providing news and discussion forums. I wrote the whole thing from scratch using ColdFusion (the first dynamic web language I taught myself…that was the first and last time I used CF), and the whole experience taught me a lot. I’ve designed dozens of sites in the six years since, but this was what really kicked me off on loving web design. Sadly, it’s the oldest surviving piece of my work that I can find — I’ve been unable to locate a copy of the very first web site I built, which I believe was in 1998 or 1999, but I did that with FrontPage so seeing that code might prompt tears of agony rather than nostalgia.

It’s kind of fun to look back at where you came from, especially if what you find was done at a time when you had no idea that such work might be your career one day. This type of fun digging and nostalgia also reminds me of how important it is to back stuff up — due to a hard drive crash a number of years ago, I lost everything I ever wrote and created for high school. I don’t need that stuff, obviously, but it would be fun to have.

What kind of work do you have really old examples of?

This is the final part of a three-part series, Navigating the Financiapocoalypse. It’s intended as a get-started guide for people just starting down the path of actively managing their money.

Saving money in and of itself is representative of a longer view of life than someone who blows their whole paycheck every month. But saving for your retirement and other really, really long term goals is different from saving for your next car or vacation. Before we go any further in: I am not a certified financial planner, and I haven’t been doing this all that long — I can only tell you what I have found, and crunch some numbers as examples.

The sooner you start saving for your retirement, the better. Well, that’s obvious, you might say, but just how much better are we talking about? Let’s look at a couple scenarios.

Scenario 1: Dave

Dave graduates from college at 22 and immediately gets a good job with a starting salary of $50,000 a year. His employer offers a 401(k) plan with a 50% match up to 6% (meaning for every dollar he puts in, they’ll put in $0.50, up to 6% of his gross salary), but he doesn’t start in on it right away. Instead, he buys a new car, pays down some of his student debt, and generally just enjoys making and spending his money without worrying too much about saving it. A few years later, at 25, he decides it’s time to start saving for retirement. We’re going to assume he averages a salary increase of 4% per year, and has returns on the 401(k) portfolio of 10% per year (which is actually a little on the conservative side — this horrible year notwithstanding). So at 25 and making about $56,200, he starts putting 6% aside (which is matched 50% by his employer). Assuming all those things, he will have about $1.26 million in his retirement account when he’s 55.

Scenario 2: Will

Will also graduates from college and starts out at the same company in the same position as Dave, at $50,000 a year. Will, however, makes room in his monthly budget and starts saving 6% immediately, which amounts to around $250 a month at the outset. When he’s 55, he’ll have just shy of $1.55 million. In those three years Will was saving and Dave wasn’t, Will contributed about $9,300 — which made nearly a $300,000 difference in the end! If Will can be just a bit more disciplined from the very beginning and invest 7% (around $300/month), he’ll have $1.7 million — an extra fifty bucks a month at the beginning gets him another $150k by the time it’s all over.

Invest early, invest often

Getting started early clearly makes a big difference. You must force yourself to do it as soon as possible, especially if your employer offers a match — that’s like free money! I’m very lucky and my employer offers 100% match up to 6% of my salary — if Will’s employer did that, even with his original 6% contribution he would have more than $2 million by the time he was 55. With no employer match, it would only be about $1 million. How can you not take advantage of that? Like I said, free money.

If your employer doesn’t offer a 401(k) or other structured retirement plan, there’s still plenty you can do for yourself. Read about and setup an IRA or Roth IRA — those are tax-sheltered accounts that enable you save for retirement. The biggest difference is that a traditional IRA taxes the money when you withdraw it (in retirement, presumably), while a Roth IRA taxes it when you put it in. I’m partial to a Roth IRA because I’d rather pay the money now and get it done with while I’m (probably) in a lower tax bracket than I’ll be later in life, plus it gives me more certainty knowing exactly what funds I have in there — since Uncle Sam won’t take a bite out of them when I withdraw. That’s a pretty simplified view, but it’s how I remember the difference. You can read more about IRAs over at one of my favorite finance blogs, GetRichSlowly.

Stocks and mutual funds

Two words: Index funds. Billionaire Warren Buffet, one of the world’s richest men and a highly respected businessman, recommends only index funds for the average investor. Index funds represent market conditions as a whole and don’t tie you into a specific sector — protecting you from disastrous losses in the event a certain industry takes a big hit. Unless you’re going to turn into a professional money manager, these are really the way to go to ensure good long-term growth. On the whole, the stock market averages more than 10% growth per year, and index funds pretty much guarantee you’re going to get about that rate.

Buffet and other money managers I trust recommend against buying individual stocks yourself, because most people don’t know how to properly diversify — plus it takes a lot of attention to actively manage individual stocks. I sort of wish I had known about this a couple years ago — I opened an online brokerage account and invested in a couple companies. While I was up 20% earlier this year — far more than the 6% or so the whole market had been in the same time frame — the tanking in September and October hit that account hard, and I’m now down around 60%. It’s not a huge amount of money, I think of it as my “play” account or experimentation account, but it showed me how dangerous it is to not be properly diversified. I’ve accepted that I’ll need to not touch that account for a long time so it can grow back to where it was.

Crunch the numbers

Do yourself a favor: get familiar with the retirement benefits offered by your employer (if any) and head over to Bloomberg’s 401(k) calculator and run the numbers. Play with the contribution levels and watch that final number change. When you see what a big difference the small changes can make, it can help motivate you to start saving — or saving more than you are — as soon as possible. Don’t cheap out on this — you don’t want to have to spend your waning years working and worrying about money. Wouldn’t it be nicer to spend them traveling and spoiling your grandchildren? Of course! Contribute as much as you can, and fully take advantage of any additional benefits (like matching contributions) offered by your employer.

Learn more

There’s plenty of resources to learn about retirement planning online. Two of my favorite finance blogs, GetRichSlowly and FreeMoneyFinance, have loads of articles detailing some of the finer points of retirement strategy. But the basic strategy is simple: invest early, often, and keep increasing your contributions as you are able. You should think about how much you’re going to need to live every year when you retire, and use that to come to a total figure to aim for.

While this post was quick and broad and extremely simplified, I hope it helps some of you take a closer look at your retirement strategy. Too many young people don’t give this much thought until it’s too late — start as soon as you can, and as long as you hold a decent job and can make regular contributions there’s no reason you can’t retire a millionaire.

This is Part 2 of a three-part series, Navigating the Financiapocoalypse. It’s intended as a get-started guide for people just starting down the path of actively managing their money.

Even more important than how you’re spending your money this week or this month is what you’re doing with what’s left over. Americans are saving less than ever before, at a time when health care costs are rising and retirement plans (and the chances that Social Security will exist in 35 years) are dwindling. You do not want to get caught with your pants down later in life — start saving now. Save early, save often. In an economy like this, though, forcing yourself to save can be tough.

Set a goal

As I said in part 1, I don’t track every dollar of my monthly expenses. I do, however, kind of have a reverse budget — I don’t map out my monthly expenses, but I do keep an eye on my savings percentage. I set a goal — say, I want to save at least 30% of my take-home pay every month — and if I’m not meeting that goal, or not able to meet it comfortably, then I know I need to go back and re-examine my “right now” expenditures. Once you have a number to shoot for, you have to set some things in motion to achieve it.

Emergency fund

First off, over and above whatever big purchase you’re aiming for (house, car, vacation, etc), you should have an emergency fund. This fund should never be touched except for unexpected large expenses — a major car repair, a big medical bill, or as your safety net in case you get laid off. It should contain enough to get you through at least 6 months of necessary living expenses. If you cut back to the essentials and run the numbers, most people find this number to be between $10,000 and $15,000. Obviously, that will vary depending on where you live. Yes, that’s going to sound like a lot to some people, but it’s better to have that in place (and earning interest) than be ruined by credit card debt when something big and unexpected happens. People brush this off all the time and at some point regret it…do your best to build this fund up as soon as possible.

The big stuff

Once you’ve got an emergency fund in place (or underway), think about what’s next. A new car? A big vacation? A home theater system with all the bells and whistles? For my wife and I, the next big thing is a house. We know about how much we’ll have to spend to get what we want, and we know about when we want to spend it. Knowing that, plus we want to do at least a 20% down payment (to avoid the extra PMI that gets tacked on if you have to borrow more than 80% for a house), it’s just simple math to determine how much we have to sock away each month to meet that goal. It helps you quantify your sacrifices: “If I buy this new camera, that’s like setting me back a whole month on the house savings. Is it worth it?”

So what will you save for? Answer that question, and crunch the numbers. Give yourself a little extra padding too so you don’t blow everything on that one purchase. If you can save for big purchases in advance, you’ll save a ton of dough over your lifetime by not having to finance everything. My personal goal is to never borrow for anything again (unless there’s a 0% promotion on a new car) except for our house. Part of my savings plan includes monthly “car payments” — we won’t replace either of our cars for several more years, but it’s better to pay myself now — and earn interest — than pay later.

Paying in advance

Americans have become way too used to the “buy now, pay later” mentality. If you want to buy a $25,000 car, for example, and get a loan from the bank at today’s 6.83% interest, you’ll actually wind up paying $28,640. If you tuck away that same monthly payment for 4 years in advance in a high-interest savings account or CD (somewhere around 3% or 4% these days), you’ll actually only have to save a little over $23,000 to meet your $25k goal — that’s over a $5500 difference in price for the same car just because you were disciplined enough to save for it in advance. For a car, it will be a struggle to reset yourself to “pay before” from the “pay later” track, but once you do it, your monthly habits will be just like they are now — except you won’t be paying any interest. You may have to drive your current car longer than you wanted to in order to “get ahead” the first time, but it will be worth it in the end.

Make it automatic

None of this stuff is easy to do, of course. When you’ve got monthly bills and things you want to do right now, it can be tough to stay disciplined. But after seeing the numbers, don’t you want to be able to save? The best way to make sure you’re saving money is to do it automatically. There is simply no better way to do it. It becomes part of your monthly budget, and you get used to not spending that money. It is a very rare person who can save more without using automatic transfers.

I personally like ING Direct’s “Orange Savings” high-interest savings accounts. It’s not the absolute highest yield you can find, but their customer service is excellent and their web site is really secure and easy to use. There are no fees and no minimums for the Orange Savings accounts (unlike high yield accounts at most banks), so you have no excuse not to start right now. If you want to get $25 for free when opening an Orange Savings account with $250 or more, shoot me an email and I’ll send you a link. I’ll get $10 out of the deal myself. It’s ridiculously easy to set up an automatic monthly transfer from your checking account.

Do it now

Don’t wait. Go find a high-yield savings account and set up automatic monthly transfers right now. Even if it’s only $100 a month, do it. Procrastinating in developing your saving habits can hurt you more than you realize — remember, the money you don’t put in today is the money that’s not earning interest…and the interest you didn’t earn last month is also the interest that’s not earning its own interest this month! Yes, the beauty of compounding…take advantage of it.

Set up the automatic transfer. Get that emergency fund in place and start saving for your next house or car or whatever. Set up the automatic transfer. Having those plans and those funds in place will make you feel so much better than flying by the seat of your pants and loan payments. Did I mention set up the automatic transfer?

Good luck! Again, if you decide to go with ING, contact me and I’ll send you the link to get $25 free when you open your account.

Up next: thinking really long term…retirement.

This is Part 1 of a three-part series, Navigating the Financiapocoalypse. It’s intended as a get-started guide for people just starting down the path of actively managing their money.

Before you can do any saving, you need to get your spending under control. As I said in my intro to this series, however, this isn’t going to be a guide on how to be a total cheapskate. I’m not going to be the one advocating use of a coffee shop for Internet access and the sports bar to watch TV, or putting on six sweatshirts so you don’t have to turn the heat above 50. But there’s plenty of smart decisions you can make to reduce expenses while still maintaining a lifestyle you enjoy.

My thoughts on budgets

Lots of financial types insist that you have to have a strict budget. Maybe this is starting off on the wrong foot in a lecture about controlling spending, but I have a confession to make: I don’t keep a budget. (I have a guideline that I call a “reverse budget,” but we’ll talk about that in part 2). I do keep rough numbers in my head, but I’m not going to agonize over every dollar — it’s too time-consuming and too much micromanaging. I know what our typical monthly expenses are, and I try to keep them low. Beyond that, my energy is better spent on doing more active things to control our money. Besides, many of the people I’ve met who do dollar-by-dollar budgets are usually so obsessed with recording that last receipt in Quicken that they forget to enjoy life.

Controlling your “right now” money

So I don’t consider planning every monthly expense to be very important. The important part is making the best decision at the time you have to actually spend that money (or in the case of recurring monthly bills, at the time you sign up for the service), and while I’m not a proponent of cheaping out on everything, you need to be conscious of the fact that a few bucks here and there can really add up. Making your own coffee instead of going to Starbucks can mean $50 or $60 a month — that’s a cell phone bill. Bringing lunch instead of buying 4 days a week can save you over $120 a month. How many times do you think you’re really going to watch that movie? Rent it instead of buy it. Everyone’s heard stuff like this of course, but once you get used to asking yourself the questions, “Do I really need this right now? What is it worth to me?”, you’ll find that sometimes the answer contradicts your first impulse.

This sounds like simple common sense, but there was a time when I wasn’t so great at asking myself those questions — and many people are affected by the same “must have” impulses fueled by our consumer-centric society. That’s what got so many people deep into credit card debt — buying things they didn’t really need because they were told that just “wanting” it was enough justification.

Another way to save money on bigger purchases is to avoid those store-offered warranties. People who try to actually use those rarely have a story with a happy ending — and if you use your major credit card (paying it off immediately, of course) you often will get a double warranty anyway, provided courtesy of MasterCard or Visa. I didn’t follow my own advice on this just one time, and sure enough the store (Best Buy, in this case) tried to cheat me when I needed their warranty service.

Monthly bills

Cutting back on recurring monthly expenses can be more difficult, but it is possible. With the advent of so many online video sites (like Hulu.com for NBC and FOX shows; all major networks have something up now), many popular TV shows are available for free — completely legal, ad-supported shows. This has allowed some people I know to ditch cable TV or at least downgrade to a lesser package, freeing up $40 to $80 a month. Many have already given up their landlines in favor of cell phones, and energy-saving tricks like bumping the heat down a few degrees at night (when you’re under the blankets) and when you head out the door can really add up too.

One big one I think a lot of people need to look at is their text messaging portion of their cell phone bills — the rates are extreme (if you multiply the bytes and dollars out, AT&T charges $1,310 per MB! For comparison, most MP3s are 3 to 4MB and viewing just a couple web pages can easily cause you to pass 1 MB) and you might ask yourself if you could just send an email instead. Email is essentially free, while SMS is priced in the stratosphere — the U.S. Senate has even opened an investigation into the wireless companies for the exorbitant SMS pricing. I personally get by just fine on the lowest SMS plan — 200 a month. I use email for most communications.

Take a week (or two) and examine closely how much you use the cable TV, cell phone minutes, text messages, and anything else that you may be overpaying for. Watch out for package “deals” from communication companies — yeah, you can get cable TV, Internet, and phone for $99/mo, but do you really need the phone? They’re not always the best deal for your needs. Also don’t be afraid to ask your service providers for discounts. Some will offer a significant percentage off if you prepay for a year; some have specials that are advertised to new customers, but might be willing to give to an existing customer if all you do is ask nicely.

Finally, look at your bills. I’m admittedly bad about this, and I know some of you are too. I didn’t look closely at my cable bill for many months, and when I did I realized they were erroneously charging me for the CableCARD in my TiVo. A couple phone calls later and I was credited for 10 months worth of incorrect billing. Always check the small print and individual charges — big companies tend to make mistakes in their favor.

Simplify your stuff

Taking stock of what you own and eliminating “stuff” can help too. I embarked on a cleaning mission for my office closet a few months ago — the closet that contains the myriad of computer parts, gadgets, and other electronics I’ve accumulated over the years with the thought “Oh, I bet I could use that one day!” I sold a few of the things that were really worth something, gave some of it away, and trashed the rest. Not only did I clear some storage space, but I made a little money and — more importantly — it made me re-examine a few of my spending habits. A few weeks later when I ran across a similar little gadget to one I had given away, I thought to myself, “The last time I bought something like that, it wound up in the closet after just a few months. Maybe it’s not worth it.” Clearing out the cruft will enhance your mental spending discipline and reduce clutter (I hate clutter!).

It’s all in your head

What all this boils down to is using your head and training yourself. You have to be willing to stop and ask yourself questions before buying something, and you have to be willing to spend just a little time with your monthly bills to make sure everything’s correct and you’re getting the best deal possible. It’s hard to put an exact number on it, but since I started asking myself those questions and spending that time I’d say we’ve saved on average $250 a month or so. It might take a little sticky note in your wallet over the credit card (“Should I really buy this?”), or a conversation with your spouse for any non-essential item over a certain dollar amount, or (in extreme cases) freezing the credit card in a glass of water so you have to wait for it to thaw — and therefore, give yourself time to think between the impulse and the act of buying — but get yourself trained to ask that question.

But why cut spending? Up next, a very important and neglected subject: aggressive saving.

Given the number of conversations my friends and I have about finances and money management these days, I think a post of this nature is long overdue. Given my age bracket (mid 20s), part of this is just my demographic being new to managing money — once they get out of college and actually have some money, people tend to develop a new interest in managing it properly — but a big part of it, of course, is our current economic situation. More than ever, you want to make sure a buck goes as far as it can — I think it’s safe to say that’s a concern no matter tax bracket you fall into.

I’ve absorbed a lot of information from people who have been doing this a lot longer than I have, but of course I do have some of my own experiences to share. I’m not an expert, obviously, but if I can help anyone even a little then I’ll be happy. People not handling their money properly — either because of apathy, ignorance, or by the hand of misleading and disingenuous bankers — is largely what led to what many bloggers are calling the “financiapocalypse.” (That’s going to be the last time I use that word, it’s too hard to type!)

I almost didn’t write this because I’m not anywhere close to an authority on the subject — but then I remembered that the financial “authorities” and “experts” were the ones who got us into this mess! So maybe it’s time for real people to share what they know, and for every one of us to do what we can to be responsible for our own financial futures. Even with my wife in graduate school, a few student loans left over from my time in college, a car payment, a 120 mile per day commute, and all your other modern living expenses, we still manage to save a significant chunk of our income — and I want to share how we do that. I’ll give you a little hint right now: a big part of it is mental. So stretch that big muscle up in your skull and get ready.

This was originally going to be one post, but I quickly realized there is far too much to talk about. This is therefore the introduction to a three-part series that I will try to complete over the next week or two:

• Part 1: Controlling spending
• Part 2: Saving for what’s next
• Part 3: Growing for the future

In Part 1, I’ll discuss what we’ve done (and what you can do) to keep your monthly spending under control but still enjoy life. This is not going to be “How to be a total cheapskate” — I’m fortunate enough not to have to pinch pennies, but I still want to maximize value when I spend money. It’s all about knowing what to spend it on and what not to — and training yourself to ask certain questions.

Part 2 is most important to me right now since my wife and I are going to be buying a house within a year or two, and is also one of the biggest problem areas for most Americans. Disciplined saving is way too rare these days, but it doesn’t have to be hard — I’ll show you how to make saving part of your routine.

Finally, retirement and life-long goals in Part 3. This is yet another area for which many Americans are woefully underprepared — all at a time when healthcare costs are rising and retirement benefits are dwindling. But if you start early and — again — are disciplined about it, you’ll almost certainly have nothing to worry about.

I’m a gadget guy, so a lot of the discussion about spending decisions is going to be scenarios where I’ve had to balance the desire for the latest camera or computer against savings goals — but whatever your vice, the same principles should hold. While I go write for awhile, I recommend you poke around a few of my favorite financial blogs. These are normal people who at one point just decided to grab on and learn all they could about personal finance — and then started writing about it. Much of their advice is sound, and a great deal of what I’ll be writing about will be my own take on their opinions and recommendations.

• FreeMoneyFinance.com
• GetRichSlowly.org
• The Disciplined Investor

If there’s anything in particular you want to hear about, or if you have any tips and tricks of your own, hit up the comments!

In so many ways, we have witnessed a historic election. While the final numbers are still coming in, it is clear that, as Senator McCain said, “the American people have spoken, and spoken clearly.” He didn’t squeak by, or have the deciding electoral votes handed to him by a court. Barack Obama won the election decisively — current electoral numbers are 338 vs. 156. It is encouraging that in his wonderful speech, he made a point of emphasizing that it is his ultimate desire to be the president of every single American, and that he wants to reach out to those whose support he has yet to earn. I think he’s actually got the moves, character, and intelligence to back up his promises of bringing people together. President Obama will be as much of a uniter as Bush was a divider.

I have to hand it to John McCain…that was an extremely gracious and classy concession speech. His supporters didn’t exactly match his grace, but Senator McCain himself showed why he’s been so successful in the past — he really is an honorable man, someone who has sacrificed more for his country than many of us can imagine, and someone who ultimately can put what’s best for the country ahead of his own ambition. He’s just not the man for the job, but he threw his support behind our new president with wholehearted sincerity and patriotism. That’s what America needs, and I hope McCain is properly recognized for what will likely be his last great public act of selflessness for our country.

I hope people realize that despite the nasty mud slinging from the GOP at times, which I do not blame McCain for personally, we just witnessed an election between two good men, politics notwithstanding. I have no idea when that last happened. Now, America has chosen a leader who I believe will represent a dramatic shift in how our government works and in how Americans interact with their government. These aren’t typical times, and this is not a typical politician. He doesn’t want to exclude people, no matter what their political stance — a stark contrast to the Bush doctrine which sees anyone who doesn’t agree with them as an enemy to be squashed.

Let’s hope, for all our sakes, that President Obama brings all of this to the table and more. I hope that even the typically pessimistic can find some room for optimism with Obama’s “we/us/our” inclusiveness, because we really do need a president for everyone.