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I just ran across this article over at CNN Money. The article highlights 10 families that have chosen to quit using their credit cards in an effort to get out of debt. Each of the families has a similar, yet different story, but simply no longer use their cards. Overall the article isn’t as much of an interesting read because of the validity of cutting out credit cards, it’s worth reading the “Methods” and the “Glitches“…

• Article Link: CNNMoney.com - They cut out their credit cards

The Glitches: When Matt tried to buy a $5,700 PC online with a debit card, he ran into his $2,000-a-day spending limit. Because he has good credit, his bank lifted it.

Uhm…. OMG?!?!?! He’s got me speaking in internet chat-acronyms. Why in the sam hellmans mayonnaise did he need a $5,700 pc?

The Method: They closed their accounts, drew up their first budget and spent the next four years erasing the debt. “If we want something, we pay for it in cash,” says Suzi. “If we can’t afford it, we do without or wait.”

I would be leary of this. Even if you aren’t planning to use the cards, keeping them helps you keep a longer credit history. A shorter age will hurt your FICO score which will still have a negative effect on your finances even if you don’t want to use credit cards. Higher mortgage rates, car insurance rates, etc…

I guess I’ve always considered having credit cards a blessing because of the rewards. I’ve never even considered carrying a balance and I don’t have a spending “problem”. So, for me to say that these people’s decisions are wrong, just isn’t fair. However, I just hope that they are able to fix the root of the problem and not the byproduct, which is the overspending.

What do you think? Is it the ease of using a credit card that gives people trouble or some other issue surfacing in the form of overspending?

As I mentioned in my previous post, Birthday Dinner Savings at P.f. Changs, my wife and I have been using Paul McKenna’s “I can make you thin” tips for about 2 months now and it has made a very huge positive change in our lives. We saw his mini-series on TLC and I am hoping that they will rerun it, so we can tape it for the friends and family members that didn’t get to see it.

I want to preface this post by saying that what Paul teaches is not a diet. It’s not a “quick weight loss” plan. It is quite simply just retraining yourself to eat in a much better way.

The foundation of Paul’s system, which is the part that we decided to try, has four rules. I am listing them below with links to Paul’s web site where you can read more about them if you like.

Four Golden Rules:

1. When You Are Hungry, Eat
2. Eat What You Want, Not What You Think You Should
3. Eat Consciously And Enjoy Every Mouthful
4. When You Think You Are Full, Stop Eating

Now, I know the rules sound very “self helpy”. We are all accustomed to hearing things like that when we hear or read about diets. In fact, you might even be thinking right now…

Sure, there are these rules, but what am I not allowed to eat? - Or - Ok, those rules are too easy, what is the catch?

There is no catch. There is nothing to buy, there are no pills to take, there isn’t even special food you have to add to your normal diet. However, I want to elaborate a little bit on each of the rules, because the rules themselves don’t really explain how you will benefit from them.

So, here goes…

It sounds so simple. I used to think that’s what I always did. I would go get some food when I was hungry. However, I have since come to realize that I wasn’t truly hungry. I thought I was hungry because I was bored or because it was “that time of day”. Truly eating when you are hungry means that your body is telling you to eat, not your emotions.

Real hunger is slow to surface. You’ll go from being a little peckish to thinking of eating soon to being actually hungry. Emotional hunger is instant. I’ve found that now that I am able to easily distinguish between the two types of hunger that emotional hunger is more like an epiphany. “Hey, I want some potato chips!!!”. That groundbreaking thought comes from emotional hunger. The type of hunger that is normally brought on by watching TV or reading a book and it’s the emotional eating that adds on those extra pounds.

This is a classic no-no in the diet world. More often than not you are given types of foods or even specific foods that you should eat. Well, that can end up being why you don’t stay on the diet. If you are really eating what you want, then you won’t be left feeling like you have deprived yourself of something. That feeling of depravity is what can, and often does, lead to binge eating.

If you have ever dieted, you may have had this thought before “Well, I did good today and didn’t eat any sweets. So, now I’ll treat myself to some cake”. It’s that kind of thinking that can easily turn into you eating half the cake and totally negating any benefits you gained from the day of avoiding the sweets.

This was one that my wife and I were both guilty of; We were shovelers. We would eat very fast. Neither of us knows why it happened, but that’s the habit we had and we formed that habit long before we ever met each other. Subconciously, our minds had decided that eating was like racing and the first to finish wins. The problem with this is that you aren’t giving your stomach time to give you the signal that you are full and by the time you get that signal, you aren’t full, you are stuffed.

Eating conciously also means; don’t eat in front of the TV, don’t eat in front of the computer, don’t eat and focus on anything other than eating. It’s that focus that allows us to savor our food. Since, we’re eating what we want, it should be rewarding to take time to chew each bite and taste all of the flavor. It should also not be a problem to put the knife and fork down between bites. This will help you to focus more on your current bite and not have you chewing while loading up your fork for another “throw down”.

The whole idea behind this rule to help you enjoy your food more and to help you slow down while you eat, thus allowing yourself to pick up on the signal that you are full.

It’s amazing how easy it sounds and it really is easy, but it takes using rule #3 to get there. If you are eating conciously and savoring each bite, you will quickly notice that your stomach is telling you that you are full much earlier than before. I am still amazed at how a man of my size (6′3 and 294 pounds) can eat less than a whole plate of food and be satisfied. This is after years of always having seconds.

The other part of this rule is to recognize the difference between being full and being stuffed. Being full means that you and your body are satisfied. Being stuffed means that you actually feel like you’re bulging and you may even feel a little sick. It’s the classic “Thanksgiving Meal” stuffed feeling that is important to avoid and if you are eating when you’re hungry, eating what you want, and eating conciously it is very easy to stop well before that feeling would hit you.

That is all we have done. We haven’t made drastic changes to our lives. We haven’t taken up extreme jogging, started eating only lettuce, or began taking questionable diet pills. We simply decided to stick to the four gold rules and here are my results:

When we first saw Paul’s show on TLC, my wife and I were intrigued for different reasons. She really wanted to lose some weight and I thought it’d be great if we ate less, because eating costs money. Little did I know that I would be telling people here that I have lost:

I’m down to the last hole on my “good belt” before I will have to go buy another one. I also wouldn’t be able to keep my pants up anymore without that belt. We have tons of leftovers that we never used to have and my work lunches are now always really good leftovers and not just sandwiches or something I could throw together quickly.

However, the single most exciting part of the whole experience to me has been how I am enjoying food so much more. No more shoveling and feeling bloated, no more late night “snack attacks” where a bag of chips seems to never last long, and no more wondering when I will finally have to start shopping at Big and Tall stores. It’s just a wonderful feeling and I’m sure you can tell by the overly jovial tone of this almost “infomercial-like” post of mine.

In closing here, I would just like to say that if you are currently trying Paul’s rules or you are interested, please feel free to post a comment about it. I would love to hear from you. It has been a great experience for my wife and I and we really hope that the habits we have formed will stick with us for years to come.

Check out these other PF bloggers who have written about Paul’s program

• NCNBlog.com - “A New Weight Loss Program - And A Quick Stroll Through My Blogroll”
• FiveCentNickel.com - “Midweek Roundup - Start of Soccer Edition”

I don’t know why, but for some reason I continue to be compelled to start doing monthly net worth updates on the blog. It has certainly become pretty commonplace for personal finance blogs to have net worth info, yet I keep going back and forth over it. The way I see it, posting net worth information would allow others to provide commentary that could be really beneficial. However, my wife is not really thrilled with the idea that our finances would be posted online.

So, what’s a guy to do?
As I see it, I have a few different options here:

1. I can continue to not post net worth info. I guess this would be the easy thing to do. There’s no rule book for personal finance blogs, so there’s no rule saying that a PF blog stinks because it doesn’t have monthly net worth updates. On the contrary, I simply think it would be neat to add it.
2. I can add the net worth information. This will require some pretty lengthy discussions with my wife on how I can be reasonably sure that having the information online doesn’t make us any more vulnerable to fraud or identity theft than we already are. However, at the end of the day, if she just isn’t comfortable with it, then I definitely won’t be adding it.
3. I can develop a more general net worth update process. Using a more generalized set of criteria and information outlay, I could still pass along topical information without actually talking numbers. My initial thoughts were that I could post the percentages of net worth change and then wax poetic on why that change happened and what could be done to correct or continue that event.

In the end, I just keep coming back to thinking how it would be a nice addition to the blog and how it could certainly prove beneficial. What do you think?

Are net worth updates on a blog all they’re cracked up to be? Do you enjoy seeing the info and reading about it or is it just a post you tend to skip while strolling through the blogosphere?

I love my wife. We’ve been married for a little over two years now and I can honestly say that she is the best thing that has ever happened to me. However, as with all couples, we are two different people who make decisions for different reasons anticipating different outcomes. This post is about one of those decisions that she made that sounds more like it came from me, but I had no piece of the decision making process.

Spill it!
Well, admittedly my wife is frugal, but not as frugal as I am. So, sometimes when she makes a decision deeply rooted from a frugal mindset, I am taken aback. This just happened to be one of those times. About a 2 weeks ago, we were discussing her upcoming birthday and I was asking her for ideas about what she might like.

I fully expected her to have a very short list, but nonetheless a list of a few things she had been wanting. Since we have both lost some weight recently, I thought she might actually like to get some new clothes. Well, here’s the kicker. She asked if I would just not get her anything because she would like some new clothes, but only once she felt like her weight loss had stabalized a bit more, so she wouldn’t be buying “iterim” clothes that wouldn’t fit her for all that long anyway.

Ok, so maybe that didn’t blow your mind, but it did mine. That decision wasn’t just frugal and well thought out. It was indicative of a mindset where the joy that is derived from losing weight doesn’t automatically transcend into the entitlement of making quick reward purchasing decisions. This is the kind of stuff I do all of the time, but to have her make that same type of choice just floored me. I am planning to elaborate on more ideas like this in a post very soon and this is the situation that spured my motivation. I am just so proud of her that I decided that it deserved its’ own post.