Stay In Budget With Mvelopes

Many moons ago, when I was but a wee freshman in high school, the school district I attended decided to add a “life skills” requirement to our course load. The big attraction for many of us students was that it incorporated sex ed, but it also instructed us in potentially useful talents, such as budgeting. Not surprisingly, I aced the sex ed component of the course, but my performance in the finance & budgeting categories was less than stellar. Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone in my disregard for financial enlightenment. Fully 36% of Americans report that they do not use a budget to manage their family’s expenses, according to Consumer-Action.org. (I personally suspect that this percentage is much higher, based on my observations. This deficit in basic financial planning isn’t limited to the less-educated, either. I know several college-educated people that don’t understand basic household budgeting.)

Conceptually, I understand budgeting and would like to utilize it in the traditional sense. If I dealt in cash, I think the envelopes method would work well for me. (In the envelopes method, cash is divided up into several paper envelopes set aside for certain categories, such as groceries, entertainment, utilities, etc. Money is then spent from the envelopes, making it much easier to know exactly how much money is left for any given “category.” ) My almost exclusive use of cards makes this method impractical for me, though. (I realized yesterday just how infrequently I deal in cash when I remarked to the grocery checker that one of the tens I had must be a new design. Not so, he told me – that design had been around for at least six months. )

I’ve tried using Microsoft Money, but I find their tools to be cumbersome, as the information is compared against the budget after the money is spent. What I need is something that will help me not spend money that’s been earmarked for something else. That’s why Mvelopes sounds pretty appealing.

Mvelopes brings the traditional envelope method online, allowing one to designate money from their funding account to “envelope” spending accounts. They also offer transaction retrieval from over 11,000 financial institution and free online bill pay for up to 15 bills. (Additional bills are .50 each.)

A 30-day trial is offered, but it requires that you provide your billing information beforehand, which I typically don’t mind since most places offer a monthly plan. However, the shortest term available from Mvelopes is quarterly, at $39.60 (US) per payment. Other billing options include the two-year plan at $189.60 (US) and annually at $129.60 (US).

Tags: budget, finance, personal finance, bills, bill pay, money, envelope method, spending

SparkPeople.com Helps with Weighty Matters

SparkPeople.com, a free, online weight loss and fitness application, might truly be the best thing to hit the Internet in a long, long time. SparkPeople launched in 2002 as a FREE way “to help millions of people reach their goals using health and fitness as a springboard to success” but somehow I’ve only found it now, four years later.

SparkPeople was founded by Chris “Sparky” Downie, one of the architects of Up4Sale.com, and Ebay’s first acquisition right before it went public. Presumably this left Chris pretty comfortable financially, and he was able to start development of SparkPeople.com, his long-time passion, when he left Ebay three years later.

SparkPeople boasts a clean, if somewhat dated, design and an intuitive interface, but the sheer amount of information may overwhelm some people. Even though SP advocates taking your time and getting to know the site, it took me over a month to work up the desire to wade through all the information.

A wizard makes the initial set up quite easy, and once your current weight, target weight, fitness level, and nutritional preferences are entered, a meal plan and nutrition and fitness targets are generated. (A note on the nutritional preferences: While I found the options to be quite flexible, i.e. vegetarian, low-cholesterol, etc., I was disappointed that low-sugar/diabetic choice wasn’t offered.)

SparkPeople is so feature-and-content rich that it would be impossible to accurately review it in anything less than a volume the size of War and Peace, so this examination will focus on just the highlights.

Nutrition
In addition to a comprehensive food database that contains over 10,000 entries, including fast-food and name brands, SP includes a food journal to track your daily food intake. From this input, SP will calculate your total calories, fat, carbohydrates, and any other nutrient you’d like to track. If you’re not near a computer at mealtime (who is?) and you own a camera phone (who doesn’t?), you can email a photo of your meal to your account so you can enter an accurate accounting later. Both the food journal and meal planner are flexible and allow you to add your own foods and meals. In addition, a bank of healthy recipes is included and can be added individually to your meal plan.

Motivation & Goal Setting
Goal setting and staying motivated are an integral component to the SparkPeople concept. As mentioned in a SparkPeople article, most diets just tell you what to eat and don’t even address the #1 roadblock to weight loss – lack of motivation. SparkPeople.com counters this obstacle by teaching users to start small and develop effective diet strategies. A thriving user community provides support and encouragement along the way.

The points system provides additional motivation, and of course, the comprehensive progress reports offer great feedback.

Exercise
SparkPeople boasts an impressive library of fitness articles. In addition, there are illustrations and videos that demonstrate the proper technique. Exercises are categorized as beginner or advanced and require little, if any, equipment. (Medicine balls, Swiss balls, and a towel are the three props utilized.) Exercises can be tracked in the fitness log, and like the food log, users can use the prepackaged exercises, or add their own. Reports can be generated from the log results.

Community
This is where SparkPeople really excels. Personalized pages, a la MySpace, allow users to chronicle their weight loss, post photos, and blog. Lively message boards provide a positive place for users to offer encouragement and tips to each other, while the journal feature sets aside some virtual quiet time for reflection. There’s also a Diet Buddy forum where users can partner with another user with similar goals.

Tracking/Reporting
Track nutrition, fitness, and weight goals using SparkPeople’s extensive collection of printable reports, including weight, measurements, water intake, exercise frequency, and goal setting.

All in all, this is by far the most useful fitness site on the web. If you’re looking to lose weight, you can’t go wrong here.

Note: If you do decide to join, consider listing me as your referrer. Even though there’s no reward as such, I really am coveting that next level’s icon (think of it as profile bling) and SparkPeople awards 10 points for each member referred. While you’re at it, add me (daniesq) as a friend. No points are offered for adding friends, I believe, but I’d welcome your company!

Tags: health, fitness, nutrition, exercise, tracking, reports, diet, weight loss, SparkPeople

Leaving Las Vegas

I’m seriously considering moving from my Blogger account to a WordPress setup. It’s not because I have to re-publish my entire blog every time I add a new post, or that Blogger sometimes won’t even let me add a new post. Not playing nice with other blog software annoyed me and not being able to extend Blogger exasperated me, but that’s not it either. No, what’s really got my panties in a wad is not being able to edit my posts after they’re published.

Invariably, I discover a mistake immediately after publishing the post – and re-publishing the entire blog – that needs to be corrected. But Blogger says it can’t find any previous posts. Not a one. Gone. Into the ether. Vanished. However, my errors have managed to hang in there and are out on the Internet for all the world to see, in perpetuity.

Tags: Blogger, WordPress, blogging software

There’s a Word for It

If you’re into word games, then you’re going to love PlayBabble.com. The premise is simple – form words of four letters or more from the grid of 40 letter tiles. However, the word has to be formed from adjoining tiles and the letters must join in the proper sequence. Oh, and you have twenty-four hours to do the puzzle before a new one is posted. This is harder than it sounds – I recommend that you play with a dictionary nearby.

PlayBabble comes in two versions; free and Pro. Pro users, of course, get more features, such as a stats panel (to view your ranking in the community), an online profile, a personal icon, and a graphic of your country’s flag.

Like all good online games, a chatterbox is available so you can “talk” in real time to other players. However, if you’re antisocial, you’ll be fine with the free account. (I use the free account. I don’t want people chattering at me while I’m wracking my brain for a word that starts with C-O-M-F and uses either an “e” or an “s” for the next letter.)

There are a lot of small features, too, that make the game more interesting, such as a points per word feature and a look up the definition icon next to each word you enter. (Although I would presume that you knew what the word meant if you entered it.)

Note: For other games like this one, visit http://www.allwords.com/Word_Games.php.

Tags: games, word games, PlayBabble, Scrabble, Boggle

A Water Bottle You Can Drink To

Forgoing the lattes is starting to pay off. A little over two weeks out and I’m down six pounds. I dared to try on a pair of pants that hasn’t fit me in a couple of months, and they fit! I was ecstatic and proceeded to dance around the living room, frightening the cat so badly that I think she’ll need therapy.

One of the hardest things for me to do while dieting – aside from getting on the treadmill – is drinking enough water. Even though we have no fewer than six gallons of Ozarka in our kitchen, I still seem to forget to drink water – or anything else. So you can imagine my interest when I read about a new, “interactive”, water bottle. Billed as the “water bottle that nags you”, HydroCoach calculates the amount of water you need,  the amount of water you consume, the time it takes for you to drink your water (so you can pace yourself), and your average water consumption. Although it isn’t as quite interactive as the Shockulate Vault that delivers a mild electric shock to would-be diet cheaters (or my personal favorite, the device that delivers a similar shock to snoring spouses), it does seem like a neat idea. Not neat enough for me to part with $30, the suggested retail price, but still – neat.

Now if they would come up with one that would nag my kids to clean their rooms, they’d have my money in a heartbeat.

Technorati Tags: HydroCoach, water bottle, diet, hydration

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Hiveminder Gets It Done

I’m back after a long, restful weekend, only to find that Blogger is having issues. I’m not able to see any of my previous posts, but it does look like it will let me create a post, so hopefully I’ll be able to tell you all about Hiveminder, a free web service that helps you keep track of your tasks. There are other task tracking services on the web, but Hiveminder is certainly the most feature-packed, and I’m really surprised that more people don’t know about it. This might be the best-kept secret on the web.

In addition to the requisite task list features (priority,due date, notes and comment), tasks can be grouped, assigned, and even hidden until a specific date. Moreover, Hiveminder supports dependencies, a feature that should make this app a real standout, especially with all the other task features. Another standout feature is the ability to tag tasks, and to search for tasks using a tag cloud. If you’re working collaboratively, there’s also a history view to track the changes to each task.

Entering tasks is easy and can be accomplished several ways. My favorite is the “brain dump”, a huge text field that allows you to enter multiple tasks to the to-do list as you think of them. Details can be added later, if you wish. Tasks can be entered individually, of course, and even by email. (Hiveminder assigns a random email, however, paid accounts will be able choose the email address they want. ) You can be reminded of your task as often as you want using email, iCal updates, ATOM feeds and plain text or HTML files.

Another neat feature is the task review. Basically, it cycles through your entire list of tasks and requires you to assign an action to it (hide for a month, done, assign it to someone else, comment on it, or do it today) before it will move on to the next one. This essentially forces you to deal with your list, a sort-of “Getting Things Done” methodology.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention another entry into the online task management space, Bounty paper towels own Honey-Do list. While not as feature laden as Hiveminder, it is cute and accomplishes basic to-do list functionality with style. A simple form allows you to add tasks, priorities, a small note, your signature, and a choice of four backgrounds. The list can then be emailed or printed out for your honey. (Thanks to Emma Sometimes for the heads-up.)

Tags: task to do list dependency chores gtd