Buy Your Own Happiness financial stress by giving up a few things

Recent conventional wisdom states that if you really want to increase your personal happiness, you should spend your money on experiences rather than things. While this isn't a bad idea, finance blog Mr. Money Mustache suggests another strategy: just keep your money.

Saving sounds like a chore. A habit you're supposed to get into because it's good for you, akin to eating your vegetables or brushing your teeth. It's not something most of us look forward to. Mr. Money Mustache suggests quite the opposite is true: when you keep money in your account instead of blowing it at the bar, on gadgets, or on vacations, what you're really doing is spending it on peace of mind:

The average consumer now lives a life that is balanced upon the razor-sharp bleeding edge of just-in-time cashflow. Incoming paychecks are closely matched with a nearly-equal list of mandatory outflows. Rents, mortgages, loans, utilities, subscriptions, gas, and "fun money". If the inflow of money is cut off, even for such a trivial period as a single year (and let's be honest, in most cases a single week), the consumer slips on the blade and you have a whimpering pile of entrails on the floor complaining about how difficult life is for the middle class these days.

While most people assume that this is just a normal modern life, it is actually a life of incredible and completely unnecessary stress. Families with young children get torn apart, abdomens balloon, arteries clog, 45-minute commutes occur, cars crash, and crimes are committed, all because of the imminent financial doom that lurks over almost every shoulder. Even your average earnest, educated, hardworking high-income adult endures daily stress, decreased health, greatly reduced freedom and a generally less happy life, all over the very simple issue of an extended shortage of money.

Not everyone can remove all their financial stress by giving up a few things (as many parents in the audience can attest), but we all have some manner of choice. It's not always wrong to spend money on things if it can help your financial situation. Just keep in mind, when it comes time to spend your money, that your future financial safety is usually an available option.

How to Make Money Buy Happiness | Mr. Money Mustache via Rockstar Finance

Photo by Ramnath Bhat.

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My Job Chart Organizes their chores and rewards

Web/Android/iOS: My Job Chart takes the idea of teaching kids the value of money with a job board and digitizes it, also including the concepts of sharing and saving. Plus, it's free and cross-platform for added convenience.

It's easy to set up. Sign up for an account, add your kids to it, and then choose from a list of chores to assign to them, along with a deadline (recurring or one-time). For each chore or job, you also need to set points that your kid earns upon completion.

These points are the "currency system" that My Job Chart hopes will teach children more about money. Children are free to save, spend or share the points they earn. The "Save" can be linked to a bank account your child has. The "Share" can be linked to charities. And the "Spend" is linked to rewards like a bedtime story or anything they want from Amazon, which you get to add. The app encourages you to talk to your children about the benefits of saving, sharing and spending, and letting them then make a decision about what they want to do with their earned points.

Finally, there is a message board to help you and your family members communicate with each other so that everyone is on track with their chores and rewards.

My Job Chart | via Moneyning

My Job Chart (Free) | iTunes App Store

My Job Chart (Free) | Google Play Store

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"It Is Far Better to Have More Time Than Money"

It's easy to spend months saving up money for vacations, but as traveler Kevin Kelly reminds us, money's not as important as we think. Time is the commodity we should be watching.

Money can buy you all kinds of luxuries that make a vacation easier, but it can also cause you to miss out on all types of things. Kelly explains:

Here is what I learned from 40 years of traveling: Of the two modes, it is far better to have more time than money.

When you have abundant time you can get closer to core of a place. You can hang around and see what really happens. You can meet a wider variety of people. You can slow down until the hour that the secret vault is opened. You have enough time to learn some new words, to understand what the real prices are, to wait out the weather, to get to that place that takes a week in a jeep.

Money is an attempt to buy time, but it rarely is able to buy any of the above. When we don't have time we use money to try to get us to the secret door on time, or we use it avoid needing to know the real prices, or we use money to have someone explain to us what is really going on. Money can get us close, but not all the way.

This idea isn't anything new, but it's still a healthy reminder that sometimes it's best to just go on vacation without worrying about affording luxuries.

More time is better than more money. | Kevin Kelly via Shawn Blanc

Photo by David~O.

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Patent troll demands money for paying with a card online (yes, really)

Ngader

Whether it is a copyright troll or a patent troll, today’s society seems to have a troll for just about every general aspect of business life. To be fair, I am not talking about companies who make products and are protecting their rights. The following companies are ones who make nothing, research nothing and do nothing other than sue businesses through a Non-Practicing Entity.

Today, we have a new way in which people and businesses are being shaken down for basic business activities. If you are a business with customers who pay their credit cards online, Landmark Technology, LLC, can sue you for patent infringement. Yes, by paying with a credit card online, whether through your phone or computer.

As TechDirt notes, Landmark makes no products and offers no services. However, they own patent 6,289,319 which deals with ‘Automatic Business and Financial Transaction Processing System.’

Landmark has been suing people under several names since 2003 and has gotten tens of thousands of dollars by scaring small businesses into paying them for the ability to stay out of court. Recently, Lockwood has decided to sue Dunkin’ Donuts, Abercrombie & Fitch, Caesar’s Gaming, Hitachi and Harley-Davidson, Louis Vuitton, The Children’s Place, Rubbermaid and others.

Landmark has the same type of business practice that other trolls have in that they simply send demand letters and follow that up with a lawsuit. TrollingEffects.org has an example of a letter sent by Landmark to businesses that supposedly infringe on Landmark’s patents of “network technologies relating to Internet searching, bill pay, and business-to-business transactions.”

Hopefully, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gets the Senate to pass their version of the Innovation Act, which sailed through Congress late last year but has since been watered down due to lobbyists from, among others, patent troll king, Intellectual Ventures.

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Save Money on Your Summer Vacation by Renting a Room at a University

Did you know that some colleges and universities rent out their rooms in the summer? It makes sense for them because their lodging facilities are less crowded then—and it could mean big savings for you.

Frugal Travel Guy offers this tip of looking for summer housing rentals at universities around the world. Here's one example:

Not far from Paris's Orly Airport, you'll find lodging at Residence Universitaire Lanteri, Paris for around $65/night. Close to public transportation, breakfast is included as well as the option to purchase additional meals. Laundry facilities, activities room, TV, and internet are included.

Cheaper than a hotel and probably better than a hostel, often with lots of entertainment thrown in. (Drunken parties and obnoxious roommates not included, though.)

Cheap Summer Lodgings at Universities | Frugal Travel Guy

Photo by Lana Dyck.

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Vulfpeck Releases An Album Of Absolute Silence On Spotify To Make Money

Funk band Vulfpeck is showing everyone what growth hacking is all about — exploiting weaknesses to promote your work. The band recently released a new album on Spotify called Sleepify. It consists of 10 songs comprised entirely of silence. Each song is 31 or 32 seconds long. Not coincidentally, Spotify pays royalties when someone listens to a song for more than 30 seconds.

In a video, the band explains that it wants to try something new for its next tour. In order to raise a bit of money, Vulfpeck is counting on its fans to stream its songs on Spotify. But playing an album on repeat is just not that efficient.

Vulfpeck asks its fans to stream the newly released album on repeat while they sleep. It’s a way to generate a few dollars in royalties every night and a great way to show one of Spotify’s loopholes.

Whether a song lasts 3 minutes or 12 minutes, the band gets the same royalty payment from Spotify. According to Spotify itself, labels and publishers can expect between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream. Then, it depends on the deal between a band and its label.

You can see on Spotify that Sleepify is distributed by Vulf Records. Vulfpeck is probably behind this label. This way, the band gets all the royalty payouts. For seven hours of sleep, you can stream 840 times 30-second tracks. With an average payout of $0.0072 per stream, the band can expect around $6.05 per fan per night. Nothing to be ashamed of.

If the band is successful enough, Vulfpeck says it will go on a tour without charging admission. Spotify provides analytics as well, letting Vulfpeck pick its tour dates depending on where Sleepify is popular.

And what if it doesn’t work? It’s still a great promotional stunt for the band. Let’s just hope that Vulfpeck is the exception, not the rule. Otherwise, Spotify will have a hard time generating profits.

Via The Guardian

Plan to "Buy Your Time" in the Future, Instead of "Saving Money"

S

Many of us have some kind of plan in place to save money. With all the names and schemes we give them—401(k), Roth IRA, retirement fund, etc.—it's easy to forget that most of our long-term savings have one goal in mind: to buy us time.

As finance blog Work To Not Work points out, most of our savings goals are to buy us time later. Not just retirement, either! When you save up to go on vacation, your goal is that you will be able to spend the money without having to pay back that time with more work:

The way that I view it, I don't own my time, and that is the most important thing to me. Money is a way for me to acquire my own time. Right now, my time has to be spent making money so that when I do take vacations or want to do something I can afford to take that time off of work. Once I reach financial independence, I will have successfully bought my time for a price I deemed fair, I am then free to spend my time on whatever I want to do with it. If I die with a lot of extra money and a few extra decades of being able to choose what I wanted to do, instead of working at a job. Then I think I'd be happy with that.

...I think it's fun to know how much an hour of my time will cost me. Knowing that I just put $2,000 into savings equals over 3 weeks (17.3 business days) of retirement seems like a great measuring stick to me.

It might not be that functionally different from what we do now, but knowing the reason we save can help us keep the motivation up. The practical way to try it out would be to calculate how much time your monthly savings buys you in the future. Then, instead of "saving" $100, you can say you're "buying" a few hours of time of not working in the future.

I'm Buying My Time | Work To Not Work via Rockstar Finance

Photo by 401k Calculator.

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