I’ve never thought much about the financial savings of not having a TV in the house. Yet the gradual savings add up… and may lead you to a savings account of well over a million dollars.

An article on TheStreet.com illustrates the savings of no television that could turn you into a millionaire.

NPR is doing a nationwide project called StoryCorps where people are invited to share their lives. For forty minutes, a person can interview a relative or friend, have the information stored in the National Archives, and most importantly, walk home with a personal copy of the recording.

Ever since my dad and I decided that I would interview my grandma the day after her 90th birthday celebration, my dad has been urging me to record my memories before they become as fuzzy as memories are to my grandma.

Share your lessons on money

My grandma didn’t know much about her own money; my grandfather cared for the books. He died years ago, and I can no longer ask him about his experiences and lessons. Today, such disparities are few. You know about your money, and you know the strengths that are bringing you more money. Start keeping a record of your lessons.

The sad truth is that most of us don’t have living grandparents or family members experienced with wealth over time that we can talk to. It’s pretty hard for them to look back even if we have such people around.

You don’t have to have wealth now to record your experiences. In fact, that’s not the perspective future generations can truly learn from. The mission at Aridni is to walk our readers through our lessons. Have you ever seen a book or self-help program that truly starts at the beginning? Seems like they’re always skipping a step—like you already have the million dollar idea or something! These books sell a philosophy; they don’t offer frankness during each step of wealth building. A personal connection who wants YOU to succeed (not another book sold) offers far more useful nuggets.

I learned a lot from my grandma and family traditions that day. I only wonder how much more I could have learned if she’d written them down when she was younger.

How to write your financial journal

1. Address the journal entry to someone close to you so that you’re more likely to write personal thoughts. I start with: dear friend.
2. Talk about where you stand with your finances today
3. How did you get where you are today?
4. Where do you hope to financially stand in the future? Why?
5. What are some ideas and plans you have for obtaining that goal?
6. What are some smart decisions that you have made?
7. Any mistakes?

I used to wake up each Monday morning feeling relaxed and refreshed. Now all I can think about is taking a Monday off just so that I can catch up on life. Seems like the battle is always the same these days—do you value time or money?

We’ve got two options: keep doing stuff like cleaning the house and doing our taxes or hire someone else to do it. The question is: which is of more value in your life? Your time? Or your money?

During college, the scarcity is unquestionably the money. Time can run in abundance. Then you graduate, get a job, finally gain a little money to do things… and discover that you have no time left.

I’ve always thought that the greatest parody in life is how much we work and work when we’re young and capable so that when we’re old and out of energy, we can stop working. Vacationing in the Alps sounds pretty cool. But when you’ve got the energy to hit the slops and all of the other wild opportunities, you don’t have the money or time. Meanwhile, my grandma could fit a few fancy vacations to the Alps into her life… if she had the energy to travel outside the state lines.

Some British professor apparently came up with a time versus money formula:

V = (W ((100-t) / 100) / C

V = value of an hour
W = your hourly wage
t = your tax rate
C = how much it costs to live in your area

This formula makes sense to me until I think about the cost of living around here… then the equation gets skewed. I’m not sure what the definition of C is. Guess I need to add “figure out this formula” to my to-do list. Any ideas?

In any case, you probably have a good sense of what your hourly value is because it’s what other people pay you for your services. First decide which is more important—your time or your money and how much of each you have to spare or are willing to give up. Housecleaning, yard work, and taxes probably hit the top of your I-hate-to-do list. Pay someone else to do them for you? Hmmm.

Brilliant idea: If you like to do the things that everyone else hates, you can land some big money. Think insurance, tax law, or poop scooping. How many young guys start up lawn mowing services? How many of these guys let the businesses grow beyond their interest in mowing lawns to their interest in running companies? They hire other young guys to mow while they make money.

The balance, of course, is making sure that you don’t run out of money when you hire out the work! Yet I am willing to bet that most Aridni readers don’t confront the time/money situation like this. For us, the feeling of being exhausted holds more value that the feeling of being poor on paper.

So how do you manage to balance your time and your money?

How often do you find yourself wandering to your computer to login to your e-mail? Do you walk by the computer, only to stop and check to see if anyone’s written? You’re curious, and it’ll only take a second.

The problem, of course, is that you and I open that e-mail account far too often. E-mail isn’t an urgent form of communication, so why are we willing to drop everything else to use it over and over? Nothing communicated to you by e-mail is a life or death situation. So how do we curb this addiction?

You have to break the pattern:

1. Make a schedule.
Being curious isn’t reason enough to check your e-mail. I’m willing to bet that an easy 30 minutes a day is lost to curiosity, which usually results in a fairly empty inbox. Decide how many times you’ll check your inbox. Be as strict with yourself as you need to be.

Check a specific number of times each day. When you’ve reached your limit, you’re done.
Open your account on a specific schedule like once in the morning, at lunch, and after work.

2. Limit the number of e-mail addresses that you use
Every time you check your mail, you’re spending twice as much time as you check multiple addresses. I used two addresses and cannot check one without checking the other. By combining the two, my wasted curiosity instantly decreased by 50%.

3. Replace e-mail checking with purpose
Remember that every minute matters. E-mail is abused because it’s easy. We all feel a sense of victory after something is achieved; e-mail is the fasted way to cross things off of our list.

It doesn’t always work. Architects and construction companies cannot communicate the fine details of a drawing over e-mails. They’ll be back and forth for hours without achievement. You and I grew up on instant messengers; we know how efficient these programs make our communication. Online chatting has made me a faster typer… but at the cost of how much time? I can still talk on the phone faster than I can type an e-mail.

Do you ever crawl into bed, thinking of all of the things you should have done during the day? Had you not checked that darn e-mail so much, could you have crossed off something on that list?

4. Define that purpose
When you’re away from a computer, do you think of checking your e-mail? No–only when the computer is nearby. Many weekends, I don’t check my e-mail because I simply don’t have access. So far, I have never opened my e-mail program to find something important that required my immediate attention. During the week, I don’t have anything needing immediate attention, yet I keep checking anyway.

When you do have access to the computer, focus on things that matter more in the long run: passive income, net worth… family. It’s easy to keep walking when you have something that is more pressing on your mind.

You don’t check your post office mailbox over and over, so this week, try to reduce the temporary victories you get in checking e-mail.

Yeah, some people will get mad when you don’t respond immediately. Let those people know that urgent communication with you cannot be addressed in this manner. Tell them to do what your mother does–pick up the phone and call you.

Quite some time ago I wrote an article about an email that I had received. It was a fairly interesting email as it was quite detailed about my life, my goals, and my ideas. The knowledge that this person had about me was so complete that it was almost eerie.

There was quite a bit of lag time in the email. It took quite a bit of time from when it was actually sent until I received it. It was a little over six months before it showed up in my inbox. In this world that is completely absurd. Emails used to take a minute or two, but now they are nearly instant.

In this email, the writer wanted to make sure that I was staying on track. I was held accountable for every idea and project of mine. If it wasn’t done, why not? If I wasn’t working on it, why not? Some of the ideas were ones that I had forgotten about and abandoned long ago, even if they were good ideas.

If you haven’t figured it out yet (or don’t remember from the last post about this!!), the email was from myself. I used a program that allows you to write emails and send them off to yourself at a future date.

Even if you leave Aridni and forget all about it within the next week and then go check out the site and forget all about it. A letter written to yourself and from yourself will certainly help you put your life into prospective.

Before you leave your computer and forget this whole article, go check out futureme.org and write your future self a letter.

Do you remember the last time you decided to set up some New Year’s resolutions? I’ll go out on a ledge and assume it was roughly a year ago. Now exactly how long did that self improving quest last? If you’re like the majority of people you set up your resolution and soon drop it within weeks. By the time you see a coin stamped with the year 2007, your mind will be the so far away from resolutions that they won’t pass through until we’re getting ready to set up the set for 2008.

So what exactly is the resolution solution? How can we keep our resolutions to improve ourselves for this New Year?

The best way to stick to your resolution is to make resolutions that you can stick with.

Instead of making a drastic resolution that you know you won’t be able to keep, why not make something that actually has a fighting chance.

If last years failed resolution was, ‘I will stop smoking.’ Perhaps you should make this year’s resolution be simply, ‘I will smoke 5 less cigarettes a day”

Frustrated because you can’t stick to your resolution to stop eating junk food? How about go with something along the lines of the 90-10 eating rule. Ninety percent of the time, eat foods that are okay for you. The other ten percent of the time you can eat grease burgers and fries. You know, the tasty stuff.

So when you resolve to improve yourself this year, make it something that you can achieve.

What are your resolutions?