Nellie and I recently celebrated our anniversary and enjoyed a delicious meal at HuHot Mongolian Grill in Logan, Utah.
If you’ve never been to a Mongolian grill, here’s how it works. You take a plate, pile it with your desired selection of fresh meats and veggies, douse it with sauces, then hand the plate to the chef. He then spreads it on his gigantic, circular Mongolian grill and cooks it before your eyes, then hands your hot meal back to you. You take it to your table and enjoy a fine, fresh stir fry of your own making.
If you want more, or want to try something different, when you’re finished, you go back because it’s an all-you-can-eat grill. I can happily report that Nellie and I did go back. We wanted to go back a third time but were stuffed.
The food was excellent. The service was friendly. If you’re looking for something different, I think you’ll want to give HuHot a try.
No, really. It’s true. You just have to spend smartly. And in a special way.
Over the course of your life, if you make what the average American does, more than a million dollars will flow through your hands. And yet so many of us don’t feel rich. That’s because money is like the Gingerbread Man. Turn your back on it, and it’s out the door, rudely taunting everyone as it flies by. And then it gets eaten by a fox. Such a waste.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Let me share with you THE best method I’ve found for managing my money. It takes tons of anxiety out of spending and saving. And, if you’re a Dave Ramsey fan, it is the one thing upon which everything else he teaches depends. If you’re not a Ramsey fan, it doesn’t matter. After getting a job, this is the first thing you must do to get rich.
Here’s the big secret. It has three parts:
1) Decide how much you’re going to spend on various things BEFORE you spend it
2) Make what you have left in each spending category EASY to track
3) Manage the things you can’t foresee
To do the first two parts, you’re going to create a special kind of spending plan. We won’t use the term “budgeting” because “spending” is so much more fun, and because that’s what we’re going to do anyway. To understand how to do this, you need to watch three videos.
Before you do, please know I earned a Masters degree in accounting. I’ve used Quicken for more than twenty years. Neither of those things has helped me manage my money like this simple method. If you’re looking for a better way to manage your money, this is it.
First, watch this video to get an overall idea of how this method works.
Note: you can use actual envelopes and cash for everything if that makes you happy, but you really don’t need to. The idea is to think of pre-allocating your monthly income to categories of expenses AND then having an easy way to track what’s left.
Now, watch this bubba explain how he does it.
But John, didn’t he say the same thing?
Basically, but he has a fun accent. Besides, it’s good to see another example. And please note again: you don’t have to use actual envelopes and cash, although many swear by them.
Finally, watch this one. No, it’s not just another repeat. There are some additional important ideas illustrated here.
This video brings up the idea of why simply tracking an overall account balance isn’t very helpful. It also shows you WHY envelope categories are–they make it immediately apparent how much money you have to spend for a thing. If you just use Quicken to track what you spent (looking in the past), you’ll run into troubles. Let me tell you, I know this from experience. We use Quicken, and have for years, and plan use it for some time to come because it makes taxes and bank reconciliation a snap. But Quicken only tracks what you spent. Tracking, as important as it is, is not the key to success. The key is pre-allocating BEFORE you spend. And then tracking so you know what you have left in that category. And making that tracking EASY.
The final thing you have to do is manage the things you can’t foresee because things rarely go exactly to plan. Unexpected things ALWAYS come up. Your daughter will crash the car. Your husband will get appendicitis. You will forget that you had a $200 school sports expense.
Okay, fine. Things happen. But how do you manage them if you can’t foresee them?
If it’s really small, you simply adjust your plan. For example, if you need $30 more in food, you can transfer it from fuel if you have some extra there.
You manage larger things by building up an emergency fund. Ramsey suggests starting with a $1,000 emergency fund and then trying to get two to three months of living expenses—about $10,000 to $15,000 for most people. Unexpected things WILL happen and cost your money. So build up some cushion to take care of them.
Finally, you manage the really large things by getting proper insurance. This is what insurance is for. The types of insurance you need include (1) homeowner’s or renter’s, (2) auto, (3) medical, (4) long-term disability, (5) long-term care (for those 60 and older), and (6) life insurance. You may add true identity theft insurance as well.
Okay, so that’s the overview. If you want to try this, here’s how you do it. It’s fairly easy.
STEP 1: get your head straight
Resolve that you will NOT use credit for anything. You will not spend any money you don’t have. You will not put another dime on a credit card, and this despite the fact that the plastic devil companies are begging you with offers almost every day to sign up for their cards. (Hum, I wonder how they afford all that junk mail.) If your monthly bills are greater than your income, then we have to fix that first. But the new law of the land is zero new debt.
Next, always remember to allocate your money to these categories first—shelter, food, adequate clothing, and adequate transportation. This means if you have a crunch month, you would NOT pay credit card bills before food, even if you work for Visa.
STEP 2: get your blank sheet & pencil
Get out a piece of paper and pencil (not a pen) or open an Excel spreadsheet. Whoa, that was an easy step.
STEP 3: list your monthly income
List your expected monthly income at the top from all sources.
STEP 4: list your spending categories
List your spending categories. You’re going to split them into two groups.
The first group goes right below your income and includes all of your recurring monthly expense/spending categories. Not the amounts you spend. Just the categories. Things like mortgage, electricity, phone, groceries, dining, etc. Make sure you include some entertainment/fun money.
The second group goes below your recurring monthly expenses and includes all of your major annual periodic expense/spending categories. Things like Christmas, vacation, clothing, kids back to school stuff, etc. And things you want to save for—a couch, iPhone, car, etc. Your emergency fund goes here as well.
Decide how much you will spend in each category this month. You should have 0 dollars when you get to the bottom of the sheet. Spend (allocate) every dime BEFORE you start the month. You’re going to do this at the beginning of each month. And you will probably have to adjust it a couple of times during the month.
You will probably have categories that don’t get any money this month.
You will also have categories that get money, but you won’t spend any of it this month. These are your periodic expenses. Your goal is to have the cash up front to pay for them, so you have to save for them. Remember, you are NOT going to take on any new debt.
For example, if you’re saving up for Christmas, you allocate some money for that out of this month’s funds and TRANSFER it to savings. Then it will be there when you need it. You could draw the cash out and put it in an actual envelope, but you don’t have to. Just as long as you keep a record of the total amount in savings and what it’s all supposed to be for, i.e. total savings in July = $1,000: $500 for back to school, $200 for Christmas, and $300 for my trip with kids to Six Flags in 2013.
STEP 6: mark the “watch” categories
Some of the categories you need to watch closely, and some you don’t. The ones you need to watch closely will be your “envelope watch” categories.
The categories you don’t need to watch as closely are those that are automatically taken out of your account each month. And those you will write a check once a month for. These things include mortgage, car payment, electricity, etc. These are NOT categories you need to use actual envelopes for. You can track it on paper or in the spreadsheet. Not much happens with these categories.
But there are other categories that you’re going to be spending throughout the month, and it’s easy to over spend if you don’t track them. Groceries, dining, entertainment, gasoline, a specific vacation, etc. are all categories that you make multiple purchases with each month and are flexible/discretionary and need to be watched closely. So while everything is tracked in a category/envelope on paper or on the computer, you’ll track these with either a real envelope and cash or a virtual one using that free software you saw in the third video or a piece of paper with a running category balance in your wallet.
STEP 7: have fun and spend!
Now go out and spend!
Before spending, check your envelope. Do you have enough money? If you do, spend and be happy. If not, save up for it or find a way to save money in another category and adjust so that you’re still spending the same total amount. Never spend what you don’t have.
If you feel you need something not planned for, well, you have to get it later OR transfer something out of another envelope. I just make myself wait a day or three, and usually the urge to buy, Buy, BUY! goes away, and I see I don’t “need” it right now. Or maybe a more affordable option presents itself.
If the kids want something, and you feel guilty you can’t give it to them, just tell them what’s in the envelope/category, and tell them they can save for it or choose something else in that category that will fit with what you have left.
If you’re tracking envelopes virtually or using the paper balance in your wallet, you MUST update your envelope AFTER every purchase so you don’t spend more than you have. If you find you just can’t seem to remember to do this, go to the cash method.
That’s it!
Of course, that’s not quite it because even though it’s easy, if you haven’t done this before, it might take some adjustment. Give yourself a month or three to get it down. Because when you do, it WILL produce great results and peace. It’s doing that for us.
If you feel you need more info, I suggest you read Dave Ramsey’s Complete Guide to Money. Here’s the first chapter to sample: Complete Guide To Money sample chapter.
Happy spending.
EDIT: here’s another video to watch: http://www.youneedabudget.com/. Then read about the method: http://www.youneedabudget.com/method. This one highlights the idea that you need to make sure you realize that things will happen that you cannot foresee. No plan survives contact with the enemy.
You read some reviewers because they regularly set you back in your chair with keen insight. You read others because their phrasing and voice are so delightful that you find yourself unable not to read, even when they venture forth into exciting areas like soup cans and lug nuts. I, alas, fear I cannot occupy either role when I tell you about the BBC’s 2009 mini-series production of Jane Austen’s Emma.
I cannot because have no keen insight into acting or film-making or film adaptations. I am not an expert on the late 18th and early 19th century England. I am not an Austen junkie (although you can be sure I intend to become one shortly).
Surely, as a writer, I could come up with some kind of amazing assessment. But I cannot because I am speechless. I am filled with a fine joy. I have spent nearly four hours with my wife and two of my lovely daughters watching a delightful tale unfold about the fates of a number of characters–some foolish, some arrogant, some quirky, but most of them splendidly human and noble.
This. THIS is what I go to story for. To be transported. To laugh. To cry. To hope and fear and feel suspense for another. To spend time with wonderful characters. To have lived just a little more while under the story’s sway.
Gush, gush, gush.
Such an unmanly thing to do. But to hell with that. I am a man who loves Jane Austen and shoot ’em up thrillers both.
And if you enjoy Cranford or Pride & Prejudice or Downton Abbey, then you will love this production of Emma too. You will want to own it.
Romola Garai plays the star role of Emma. I enjoyed every minute she was on the screen. I didn’t know who she was, but it appears she was in the 2006 Amazing Grace with Ioan Gruffudd. I might have to watch that one again just to see more of her work. Mr. Knightly, Emma’s lifelong friend, is played by Jonny Lee Miller who starred in Eli Stone, one of my favorite TV series. I loved watching every minute with him equally as well. There were some other familiar British actors; and more I hadn’t seen before. I thought they all did an excellent job.
As for the story, it’s about Emma, who believes she has an amazing ability at match making and prognosticating and very soon runs into to trouble because of it. It’s also about kindness, and generosity, and, most of all, love. Of so many varieties.
If you’re wondering what to watch this next week, order this one now.
I recently had the wonderful opportunity to interview Edmund Schubert, the editor for Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, about How To Write Magical Works: A Writer’s Companion, a collection of essays about the craft and the business of writing that he edited. Ed’s someone to listen to. But so are the authors whose essays fill the book: Faith Hunter, David Coe, C.E. Murphy, Misty Massey, A.J. Hartley, and Stuart Jaffe. Here’s what he had to say about this book.
John: Edmund, you recently edited How To Write Magical Words: A Writer’s Companion. It’s chock full of advice from some pretty successful fiction authors, and an editor who, having purchased one of my stories, has shown exceptional taste (grin). But there are a lot of how-to’s by successful authors out there. What makes this book different, do you think? What’s the special value this book brings to the table?
Edmund: I think the biggest thing that differentiates this book from others on the subject is its diversity of opinions. Most how-to books are written by one person, giving on perspective, but the truth is that there are many paths to success in this business. The Magical Words book was intentionally designed to replicate the give-and-take that exists on the MW blog. Sometime the MW writers agree, sometimes they don’t. The other thing that makes this book different is that it also includes some of the follow-up questions asked by readers of the blog, and the accompanying reply. That makes this book feel/read more like a writer’s conference than your basic info-dump book.
John: I think the concept is great. And the contributors have quite a bit of experience. I know you can’t comment on every essay in the collection, but are there one or two that stood out to you while editing?
Edmund: There were a few that stood out to me. One by Catie and one by David, both on the subject of money/advances. Those stood out to me because of how very blunt and honest they were about finances, and it’s information I think more people need to be aware of.
The other one that stood out for me did so for personal reason. Catie’s essay about Visualizing The Story made me feel so much better about myself as a writer and my chances of success, because for years I’ve been hearing all these other writers at conventions talk about how their stories are like movies in their heads and all they have to do is record the action and the dialogue, and I used to hear that really worry because at best I might see a slide show of of bits and pieces of the action, but I’m totally making the rest up. Hearing Catie say that she didn’t/couldn’t visualize the story that way either gave me hope.
John: I’m sure aspiring authors are going to be very interested in what Catie and David say about money. It’s also interesting that sometimes we writers hear other successful writers talk about how the invention process works for them, compare our process with theirs, and assume we’re lacking. In reality, the way we approach it might be just as effective. That’s one of the things I like about this book—it has multiple contributors. Let me ask one more question. You see a lot of stories as editor of Intergalactic Medicine Show. What are some of the topics addressed in this book that, based on the biggest issues you encounter in submissions, authors would be wise to carefully consider?
Edmund: Magical Words as a group have two mantras: the first is that there is no one right way to do this crazy thing called writing, and the second is the exception that proves the rule: the one and only true answer to everything is BIC. Butt In Chair. You put your butt in the chair and you write. You figure it out as you go along. And the more you write, the more the other advice you hear will make sense. You want to be a writer? Write. The rest is details.
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John sez, amen to that. And amen to this book. I really enjoyed the format and the insights shared. I never tire talking about craft and business with other writers. With over 100 essays and 313 pages, this book has lots to share. If you want to hear what some very smart and a few very published authors have to say about writing, you’ll want to pick up your own copy.
On Thursday I posted the top 200 YA novels of 2010. Today I’m happy to share the top 200 authors. You might be wondering: if we already have a top 200, why post this? Because yesterday was about individual titles. Today’s post is about authors. Some authors might not have any books that are checked out in huge numbers. But because they have a lot of books available, the numbers of checkouts they do have add up. Yesterday’s list showed you the volume for individual books. Today’s list shows you the volume for each author. You’ll see it does result in a different ranking.
This list is based on the same dataset as the previous list. And so while I can’t claim it represents the top YA authors for the whole United States, it does show who is being read in this neck of the woods. It’s a great list for those wanting to find YA authors to try. Please be aware that these are YA books as defined by the library, which takes its cue from places like Booklist and School Library Journal. Other books like the first three Harry Potters, Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven series, and some of Dashner’s stuff are considered Middle Grade and so do not appear on this list. Later, I might do a combined list.
There were 1,283 authors on the list. “Times Checked Out” is the sum of all the times any of the author’s books were checked out. “Number of Titles” is the number of different titles the author has that were checked out. “Avg Check Outs per Title” is the average number of times each title was checked out. “%” is percentage of total checkouts. Rank is rank. Another way to sort this would be by the Avg Check Outs per Title to see who’s getting the highest number of readers per book. But I’ll let you fiddle with that on your own. Again, I’m very happy to see a number of Utahans on the list. Kudos to the following (ranking in parentheses):
Stephenie Meyer (4)
Shannon Hale (5)
Jessica Day George (10)
Chris Heimerdinger (18)
Jack Weyland (38)
Lisa Mangum (55)
Mette Ivie Harrison (56)
Aprilynne Pike (71)
Brandon Sanderson (73)
Ally Condie (82)
James Dashner (94)
Bree Despain (110)
EDIT: 1/15/2011 12:57 AM. Okay, okay here’s the list by average checkout: Top 200 YA Authors of 2010, Part 2. A number of people drop off, new names appear, and positions shuffle.
EDIT: 1/16/2011 9:32 AM: Informed that Bree Despain is also a Utah author.
Leah Cypess says, “After selling my first story (Temple of Stone) while in high school, I gave in to my mother’s importuning to be practical and majored in biology at Brooklyn College. I then went to Columbia Law School and practiced law for almost two years at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, a large law firm in New York City. I kept writing and submitting in my spare time, and finally, a mere 15 years after my first short story acceptance, I sold my first novel, Mistwood, to Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins).”
Leah lives in Brookline, Massachusetts (right outside of Boston) with her husband Aaron, a researcher and doctor at the Joslin Diabetes Center, and their two daughters. She majored in biology, minored in journalism, went to law school, worked as a lawyer, and has just started to learn about hawking and hunting. She’s published a number of short stories, which are all available for free on her website.
I just had the opportunity to interview Leah about her writing process and books. Enjoy!
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JB: MISTWOOD, published by HarperCollins in April, 2010, is your debut novel. But is it the first you’ve written?
LC: Most definitely not. I wrote, revised, and submitted four manuscripts before Mistwood. (Technically, five; but I don’t count the first one, because it wasn’t very good, and I didn’t know what I was doing with the submissions process either. I was fifteen years old.) In fact, after getting the offer from HarperCollins, I acquired an agent, who asked me to send him a list of my previous manuscripts and their submission histories. The list was sixteen pages long.
JB: Holy cow, five novels and 16 pages of submission history. That’s a lot of dedication. And faith in the face of rejection. I’m intrigued. How did the sale of this novel come about? Was it just another submission to yet another editor or did you have some connection? What was different with this book?
LC: Both the faith and the sale were helped by the fact that I could see incremental improvements. My first novel received mostly form rejection letters, a couple of letters inviting me to submit further, and one revision request. My second received a lot of personal rejection letters, many more requests from various editors to submit future works, and one two-page revision request. The third made it to the acquisition committee at two houses. So I could tell I was getting closer, though it was still pretty dispiriting to think I might never make that final leap into publication. (After Novel #3 was turned down by both acquisition committees, even though it was being championed by senior editors in both cases, I had a couple of bad days.)
In the end, I think what was different about Mistwood was mostly luck.
It wasn’t my most perfect manuscript – there was a lot of revising to do after it was accepted! – but it was the one that resonated with the right editor at the right time. This was an editor who had asked me to submit future books after rejecting the query for Book #3, then requested Book #4 and written me a detailed and regretful email about why she didn’t feel it was right for her. By the time I sent her the query for Mistwood, she was obviously confident enough in my abilities to request that I email her the full manuscript, and to read it right away. After all those years, the acceptance for Mistwood came just a few months after I started submitting it.
JB: I’m betting your persistence and work made some of that luck. Work seems to be a little bit of magic all by itself and has been used by a lot of other authors I know. Hum (grin). So let’s talk about the book. You should know you made The Top 200 YA Authors list I just published on my site. It ranks YA authors by average number of readers per book. And while the list can’t purport to be anything but a reflection of the tastes of the area’s library patrons, I think it’s probably representative of what’s going on in my region. So congrats! The book starts right off with a bang. It’s about a shape shifter. I know shape shifters have been around forever, but most fantasy these days seems to be about vampires and werewolves. Tell us a little bit about the core idea of the novel and its genesis.
LC: That’s awesome that I’m on the Top 200 YA Authors list – thanks for letting me know!
I’ve been reading fantasy/science-fiction “forever” (I cut my teeth on the Edgar Rice Burroughs books my father had stored in our garage), so shapeshifters are just as familiar to me as vampires and werewolves.
The core idea of the novel is that of an inhuman creature grappling with the fact that she seems to be turning human — while trying to figure out why, exactly, this has happened to her, and who and what she truly is. (And, of course, fending off assassins and dealing with palace intrigue.) That idea developed over the course of writing the novel – I started out with a scene of men riding into a misty forest in search of the magical creature who lived there, with no clear idea of what that creature was or why they wanted her. Then I kind of made the rest up as I went along. (This writing process is one of the reasons the novel was revised nine times before being published!)
JB: I really liked the beginning. No wonder you felt compelled to follow the idea. And nine revisions! It sounds like you use drafts, as opposed to outlines or other tools, to help you discover your stories. Were these big revisions, almost complete rewrites?
LC: Thanks! I’m glad you liked it
I usually don’t rewrite scenes completely – most of my editing of already-written material consists more of snipping unnecessary parts and adding little bits and pieces. (Especially of description, which I tend to leave out entirely in the first draft.) But I do a lot of moving scenes around, deleting some scenes, and writing some new ones.
Though I don’t use an outline when I first write, I usually create one during the revision process so I can keep track of the jigsaw-puzzle my manuscript has become.
JB: That’s interesting. Well, I have just one more question for you. Tell us what’s coming next.
LC: What’s next is NIGHTSPELL, a stand-alone companion novel to MISTWOOD, which will be published in May 2011. It’s about a country where an ancient spell allows murder victims to return as ghosts to seek vengeance on their killers… and if they don’t manage that, they remain ghosts forever. After a couple of hundreds of years of this, the kingdom – Ghostland – has evolved into a place where the living and the dead co-exist, albeit uneasily. My main character, Darri, is a foreigner to Ghostland; she is a barbarian princess who abhors the idea of ghosts and is only there to rescue her younger sister Callie, who was sent as a hostage four years ago. But Callie has changed in those four years, and now has secrets of her own. In her quest to save her sister from herself, Darri will ultimately face a decision that will force her to reexamine beliefs she has never before questioned – and lead her into the heart of a conspiracy that threatens the balance of power between the living and the dead.
JB: Oh my bleeping heck. That just gave me a case of massive author envy. I was thinking about writing a ghost story just yesterday and thought, “naw, ghosts are all played out.” Curse you, Cypess!
Sheesh, talk about a parting shot. Well, I would ask about the next book, seeing NIGHTSPELL must be ready to go if it’s coming out in May, but I can only stand so much punishment. The good news, if I put my reader hat on, is that it looks like I get to put a tickler in my Outlook for this May. In the meantime, I going to suggest to my readers to give MISTWOOD a go. Thanks, Leah, for your time. I enjoyed the interview.
LC: Thanks, John!
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John sez: folks, I think I’m going to make interviews a regular feature. I just loved finding out more about Leah. It’s also interesting to see just how much work she’s put into this. I know that a good number of authors sell their first or second novel (see the Hines stats in the on writing section), but for a good number of others it’s later novels that sell. In either case, I think it’s clear that good old fashioned work makes up a big part of the secret sauce.
Ah, that was fun. But, dang it, I should have asked her about her lawyer and biology background. Next time.
The latest issue of Intergalactic Medicine Show just hit the net. Of course, I don’t have time to read. But how can I help myself when Mark Rainey’s “Somewhere My Love” starts with this line: “She lived in our town’s one and only haunted house.”
What a hook!
And soon I found myself reading a wonderful story about a boy and a teacher, who happens to be a witch.
But the kind of witch Rainey writes about is not some gal with warts and a black hat. Nor is she some kind of Alice Hoffman Practical Magic type.
She’s a Rainey witch.
And this tale is about a boy caught in her class in school. I loved it. It evoked perfectly how some teachers affect us boys. I haven’t read any of the other stories in this issue yet. But I can still say the measley $2.50 subscription for issue 12 is worth it if only so you can read this one story. Besides, even if you don’t have time to read it, scroll down on the TOC and you’ll see you don’t have to–you can listen to Scott Card read the thing to you.
Nellie and I recently celebrated our anniversary and enjoyed a delicious meal at HuHot Mongolian Grill in Logan, Utah.
Leah Cypess
The latest issue of Intergalactic Medicine Show just hit the net. Of course, I don’t have time to read. But how can I help myself when