Budgeting isn’t fun. Very few people look forward to tracking all of their purchases, cutting back when they’ve overspent, and adjusting their budget from month to month to meet changing conditions. However, it’s a necessary chore, like cleaning your house or apartment, that you should do because it’s good for your financial health. But so is exercising and according to the Department of Health & Human Services, we as a nation aren’t doing such a great job at that.

When I first started working, I was a very diligent budgeter. I recorded every single expense in a document called a Budget Bible, built from a template my friend Melinda sent me. I budgeted to the penny, the most labor intensive of the five budgeting systems I once wrote about. I kept it up for about six months but eventually I grew tired of it. It was important to budget to get a better handle on my finances, but once I had a handle the daily routine was unnecessary. I went from the most diligent of budgeters to a non-budgeter!

So how do I get back on the wagon? How does a personal finance blogger reform?

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With the economy pretty much sucking, despite “green shoots”, I thought it would be fun to completely ignore it and turn towards the fanciful.

I want to know – what is your dream job? If nothing were off the table, what would you, beyond all other things, like to be doing? Is it finding a cure for a currently incurable disease? Is it playing in a professional sports league like the NFL, NBA, MLB, or NBPL?

My dream job would be as an astronaut. I would love to have the opportunity to go into space and do something very few people can do today, but millions upon millions will likely be able to do within the next hundred years. It’s the final frontier after all!

What is your dream job?

(Photo: pmarkham)

What if I told you that delayed gratification was the most important factors of success?

I bet you’d probably believe that it was plausible, but probably not likely. There’s probably something else in the mix right?

Well, while that may be true, Joachim de Posada, in this six minute TED talk, explains how delayed gratification was a good predictor of future success.

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Here’s a little video discussing the ins and outs of envelope budgeting, how it’s done (at a basic level), why you might want to consider it, and my thoughts on its effectiveness. I’m by no means an expert on envelope budgeting, but I do understand the basics, so I invite those of you who do use this on a regular basis to chime in with your thoughts!

Today marks the day that Zhao Danyang, winner of the 2008 Warren Buffett charity lunch, will be dining with the Oracle of Omaha at Smith & Wollensky steakhouse. Zhao Danyang, who runs the Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund in Hong Kong donated a whopping $2.11 million to the Glide Foundation for the opportunity to invite seven of his closest friends to join him and Warren Buffet.

Buffett has been doing these charity auctions for several years and it wasn’t until 2003 did the auctions move online. The proceeds benefit the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco non-profit that offers housing, job training, health and child care, and meals for the poor. In addition to the winner’s donation, Smith & Wollensky also donates $10,000 to the charity as well.

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Everything I’ve ever read about debt settlement has been extremely negative and, for the most part, ugly. It’s because debt settlement is designed for people in very dire circumstances.

A friend of mine recently got into the debt settlement business since he was working with a lot of individuals in weak financial situations. We spent the better part of three hours discussing how debt settlement worked, why debt settlement made sense to some people, and why the business had such a bad reputation. My friend is a stand-up guy, I trust him, and so it was refreshing to hear about the business, warts and all.

In this Foundation series article, I hope to pass on some of that knowledge to you.

Two weeks ago, I applied for an account at Ally Bank, the new rebranded name for GMAC Bank. Their rates have fallen in recent weeks but are still competitive, so I wanted to open an account to take advantage of certificate of deposit rates while they were still strong.

Ally claims the account opening process takes only 10 minutes, which, after my experience, is probably accurate if you don’t run into any problems (more on that later). It’s also important that you have all the information present, including but not limited to your social security number, your driver’s license, and any banking information for the accounts you want to link to your Ally account (ABA routing number, name, account numbers, etc.) It’s all fairly standard stuff.

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Stock options is something that has always both intrigued me and confused me.

Fortunately, I’ve become friends with some people over at TradeKing and one of them sent me a copy of The Option’s Playbook, written by their Senior Options Analyst Brian Overby . It’s a print version of their entire options education center, available to registered users of TradeKing (sign up for free by clicking here).

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$2.95 a trade.

That’s how much it’ll cost you to make a trade at OptionsHouse.

That’s pretty cheap. TradeKing is currently my go-to broker and they charge $4.95 a trade, 67% more than OptionsHouse. Zecco, which is free if you meet their stringent requirements, is the only one that’s cheaper and they can never seem to get their customer service issues resolved.

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Readers of Bargaineering probably are aware that my wife and I grow a garden every year. We live in a townhouse without much land so our garden consists of vegetable plants put into a variety of containers. Every year we grow tomatoes, eggplants, peppers (hot and regular), some spices (oregano, basil), and then some random ones we think would be fun.

If I were to do it over again, one option I would consider is building a square foot garden (inspired by Mel Bartholomew’s 2006 book by the same name), instead of buying all these containers. Container gardening is perfectly fine, but the containers themselves are often very expensive and they take up a lot of space. The pots themselves are usually wider up top so you lose a little space in that tapering. Square foot gardening avoids that loss and looks like a lot of fun. In fact, after a quick search I found that fellow personal finance bloggers Lynnae at BeingFrugal.net and Frugal Dad built their own square foot gardens already!

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