Budgeting the easy way

12 Jan

I’ve given fair shots to Mint, Quicken Online, and pretty much every other personal finance tool that pops up.

But for our regular checking account, a spreadsheet that acts as a register going backward and a budget going forward is our perfect solution. We’ve kept it current for five years running.

All deposits are there going forward — as are recurring bills and budgets for groceries, gas and other expenses each month.

When we spend in a budget category, we decrease the remaining budget balance for the month when we add the expense.

Simple yet effective.

Interviewed by currencytim; lots of road noise

1 Dec

Last month, my good friend Tim McAlpine flew down to Austin to take a roadtrip with me to surprise DeAndre with his new job, gear, and Prius.  En route to Waco, Tim flipped his recorder on… twice.  We thankfully got the second take.

If you want to hear me say some pretty off-the-wall stuff including yelling at a reckless driver at the Flying J truckstop, give this podcast a listen.

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4% Less

1 Dec

I swore I wouldn’t do it again.  Too many bloggers clamoring for his link love.  Too many times I’ve quoted him before.  (Not to mention that interview almost three years ago now on Open Source CU that BTW never got any friggin comments).

But I can’t help it.  I have to — yet again — swoon over something said by Seth Godin.  His post: “The Sad Lie of Mediocrity”:

Doing 4% less does not get you 4% less.

Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less.

That’s because almost good enough gets you nowhere. No sales, no votes, no customers. The sad lie of mediocrity is the mistaken belief that partial effort yields partial results. In fact, the results are usually totally out of proportion to the incremental effort.

Hear, hear.

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So much

27 Nov

Today Ava turns six months old.

So much to be thankful for this amazing Thanksgiving.

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“What do we do?”

6 Nov

It must be the first question answered during a website design.

Re: web design, Tesla Motors gets it. Confederate Motor Company doesn’t. Sure, I’d love to park either of those companies’ machines in the garage, but I can’t make it past Confederate’s mission statements to their products.

Ask “What do we do?” before the first wireframe is sketched.  If you can visually explain to a visitor why he should (or shouldn’t) be spending time with you, you win.

For Confederate, the answer to that question shouldn’t be: “Rebel.”  The answer should be: “We build motorcycles.”

You only have a split second.

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October in a tweet

3 Nov

One website launch; Young & Free Texas campaign finals (congrats, DeAndre’); gigs in South Dakota, at TCUL Marketing, and SWOMfest ’08.

Are you having fun?

26 Sep

Without fail, my CEO asks me each time I see him, “Are you having fun!?”

Today, our Microsoft Surface developer unit got installed.  We have crazy ideas and we have developers itching to turn those ideas into reality.

I’m having fun.

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What Ike taught me about social media

19 Sep

I started our corporate blog shortly after arriving at TDECU but didn’t announce it internally or externally.  I’d make occasional posts but there was no traffic.

In fact, I didn’t care about generating traffic; I cared about content.  I felt that seeding the blog with compelling posts was a necessity before a huge launch.  And I was planning to coordinate the launch with the rollout of our new corporate website.

Then last week, that little blog went from less than ten visits the prior day to over 1,000 the next.

What happened?

It became useful.

It became our instantaneous communication line to our scattered communities.

Now, we have contributers posting across our organization – not being assigned to blog but asking for ways to contribute to the conversation.  

Also just in the last week we’ve been using other social media (namely YouTube) and both integrating it into the blog and the landing page of our corporate website.

What Ike taught me is that when you’re doing something special offline, there’s no faster or more effective way to get the word out online than through social media.  (Not that I didn’t know that already, but it was nice to be proven right.)

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Social Media Best Practice: Real world first

16 Sep

If you’re not first doing something compelling in the real world, don’t bother getting into social media.

Why? Social media simply extends conversations that should be happening “off the grid.”  If nobody talks about you with their mouth, don’t expect Google to love you.

Old-mentality marketers wanting to jump on the bandwagon focus too much on the “media” and not enough on the “social.”

Make tomorrow memorable

15 Sep

I’m guilty of having too few memorable days.

You know, those sort of “hey, remember that day I _____?” days that will resurface in my brain next month, next year, or during a round playing golf for life for free at The Villages, Florida’s friendliest hometown.

Tomorrow is a to-do list of things I didn’t have time for today.  That’s not memorable.  And I’m the only one who can fix it.  I have 24 hours.

And… go.