In case you missed it...
I’ve been working on a pretty interesting appellate brief at work. It’s interesting, challenging, and mentally stimulating. It’s the kind of work we always say we want. It’s also hard. Seth Godin refers to the time when things get hard as “The Dip” (and wrote a book by the same name). It’s a phrase I’ve liked since I first heard it, and I find myself trying to push through things sometimes by telling myself, “you’re just in the dip right now, Todd, push through this.” So I’m pushing through it.
The three things I decided to pimp in this post are all things that should make your life easier, in some small regard, either by organizing data for you (see number 3), saving you a couple bucks (see number 2), or by making it easier for you to make sure your stuff is put to good use when you’re done with it (see number 1). I’m calling it the 3 things you may have missed, because if you’re the kind of person that reads a lot of blogs (and maybe even if you aren’t), you’ve probably either used or heard of these tools. Or maybe I’m just suffering from the curse of knowledge, and assuming, as people subject to the curse do, that anything I’ve heard about you’ve heard about. Obviously that’s not always the case. Without further ado:
1. Freecylce.org – I’m including Freecycle because I just think it’s a pretty cool idea. That’s why I wrote about Pimp this Bum. The concept is simple, people form local groups in their area. When you have something you don’t want anymore, you post the group and let them know what you have to offer. If you see something posted that you’re interested in, you can let them know that you’d like to have it. ”It’s the whole, one man’s trash…” philosophy. It’s green, too. They don’t want you to throw your old stuff away, because someone else might still be able to get some use out of it. Of course, you could give your stuff away (or sell it) on Craigslist or a like site as well, but Freecycle seems to be more of a community thing. If you’ve ever used it, I’d love to hear about your experience with it. My community here in St. Louis has over 6000 members. I’m thinking about checking it out. I’ll have a better read on how much value it adds after I do.
2. Restaurant.com – I’ve written about this little number before, and I tell people about it every chance I get. So does my wife. Between the two of us, I think Restaurant.com owes us for all the word of mouth promotion we’ve offered to help tip their site. If you’re not familiar with it, Restaurant.com typically offers you the opportunity to buy a $25 gift card for just $10. There’s a caveat and a bonus. The caveat is, you’ve got to spend $35 at the restaurant. Some other restrictions may apply. I’ve seen some that can only be used during the week. Some restaurants won’t allow you to use the certificates on alcohol. For the most part, though, you can use them as you please. The other thing to keep in mind is that these are usually newer restaurants or places trying to get noticed. Your favorite place probably won’t be on there (but hey, try something new). Those are the caveats.
The bonus is, if you sign up for email updates from Restaurant.com, you never have to pay $10 for the $25 gift card. Every week, you’ll get a coupon code by email that gives you at least 50% off. About once every two months, the discount code will give you 80% off (just $2 for a $25 gift card!). The week of 9/9/09 it was 90% off, but that’s the only time I’ve seen that after using Restaurant.com for about 2 years. For what it’s worth, this week’s discount is 70% and the password this week is “pumpkin.”
3. Mint.com – The other day I was talking to a mother of four, and she said something to me to the effect of, “I don’t know where all the money goes. We live frugally. We drive old cars. My kids wear second hand clothes. We don’t do anything extravagant. And yet the money is never where we need it to be.”
Keeping and maintaining a budget is hard to do. I admire people that can do it. Mint.com isn’t necessarily a budget substitute, but it sure can help. It can definitely help you answer the question – “where does the money go?” Mint tracks your purchases and spending, and categorizes it for you and attempts to develop a budget. It will also send you alerts when your bills are due, and has several other handy tools.
The annoying thing about Mint is that at first you spend a lot of time re-categorizing expenses that were they haven’t categorized properly. Mint does get smarter if you stick with it. It ends up being something that requires almost no effort on your part. The best thing about Mint is that it’s free. So if you don’t like it, nothing has been lost.
Hopefully one, some or all of these things offered value to some of you. Thanks for reading.
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I second Restaurant.com .. it provides a good change of pace to eating out. And most restaurants are very receptive and don’t mind the coupon. I’ve tried 6 of these, and found a really good crepes place in downtown (STL). However, I wasn’t happy with Queen of Sheba. The place was empty — the proprietor seemed nice, but was pushing us for information about how we discovered the place, so I told him about the site (big mistake). He guilted my party about not ordering alcohol or other items to run up the bill.