by admin

10 ways to lose your money

10 ways to lose your money without gambling, giving it away, or even really spending it.

Keep special note when I say ‘even really spending it’ — Really spending it means you go to a store to deliberately spend money. Although losing money generally requires some spending. So let’s talk about some of the ways you can lose your money.

1) The first obvious way is to actually lose it. Forgot where your wallet was, or dropped some bills in the space between the door and the floor of your car. However you won’t ever purposely lose money.

2) The next way is to break larger bills into smaller ones. Nothing eats at money faster than breaking a large bill. It’s like ice; you break it up into small pieces it melts quicker. So your money would melt quickly too.

3) When you go grocery shopping, buy items that is not on your list and that are not on sale. These are usually fattening items that are really tasty, but usually kind of expensive (at least for what they are, for instance you could spend 5 dollars on a 2lb brick of cheese, or you could buy that artisan cheese for double the price and half the size). Items not on your list mean you didn’t budget for them (assuming you budgeted at all), and so can end up costing you more money by the end of your shopping trip.

4) Don’t follow a budget. That’s an easy one; I mean just spending willy-nilly means that you ultimately will spend more than you should. If you’re using credits cards this could eventually lead to bankruptcy, which could be considered the ‘Monday’ way as if it’s too large your lawyer will get you to pay much less. Of course this is usually after the credit card company has soaked you dry for interest, in which case you don’t actually pay less, but going into bankruptcy does lead into a stopping point.

5) Don’t balance your check book. If you don’t know how much money you have in the bank, you can lose the money by overdrawing your account. Especially if you have a fee associated with overdrawing or a fee when your bank account contains less than a certain amount of money.

6) Along with the credit card suggestion above is interest. If you use a credit card with a high enough interest then your late payments will simply bleed you dry of money. So use a credit card with a high amount of interest and make those payments late. You’ll soon be losing a lot of money that way.

7) Subscriptions. That’s right, let’s start with magazine subscriptions. While it does entail some spending, subscriptions is the kind of spending that doesn’t really feel like you’re spending it and more like you’re losing it. Especially magazines you don’t even read. Like that issue of ‘Cat Fancy’ you don’t read but only got because your Ex-Wife was into cats. Especially subscriptions that were for someone else but for one reason or another you’re still getting.

8) 900 numbers. Yep, joke lines, or something a little naughtier (that we won’t go into). They’re a big source of losing money. Especially if you have a teenage daughter and who likes to call the number of her favorite pop-star and I don’t mean personal home numbers. Actually I don’t know that people actually call those anymore, but you never know. However you’ll be bleeding money.

9) Cable TV and Internet. I actually group fiber optic service, and satellite, under the heading of cable TV as well. TV specifically. Let’s face it, some of us don’t watch TV all that much, but we buy cable just so we can catch that show that’s not on broadcast, or some movies or something. This usually costs a lot of money. Also internet, although internet is of more use nowadays, it can be losing money if you’re not using the speed you’re paying for. Why not go all out for all the pay channels and HD channels, and then go to a video kiosk or the library for your movies, or go all out at the speediest internet you can buy.

10) Finally have a family. I’m not against families, but the one thing they do well is take up money. In fact have a family and you’re guaranteed to lose money on at least one if not all the ways I’ve enumerated above. Especially if you have daughters. Mobile phones are killer in a family full of women.

So if you want to lose money without gambling or giving it away, or even really spending it (but actually spending a little bit), then use the tips I’ve shown you and you’re well on your way.

Until ‘Monday’

by admin

Learn to play video games without actually playing any.

The title is a bit of a misnomer. You can’t really learn to play without actually doing it. However you can learn enough about certain video games to be able to talk with your friends as if you did play them. Do you want to know all the secrets of a game, or how some people manage to beat hard levels or whatever, and then watch a video on the game in question. There are always videos made of your favorite games.

We’re going to take a short vacation from the ‘Monday’ philosophy and actually attempt to learn something. You heard that right, learn. I take it you want to learn about the video game in question, to that end, I propose you take down some notes about the game video you’re watching. This may be the only or at least one of the very few times we’re actually attempting something productive, but since video games are fun, and watching video games are better than actually spending the time to play, I figured it won’t hurt you too much.

First thing you’re going to want to take note of is how long the game takes to play. Usually if the video is what they call a ‘longplay‘ video then the whole game is played, and you can either write down the length of the video or the length of all the levels put together to get a good idea.

Next you want to see where people have the most trouble. Most people aren’t video game playing wizards and will mess up frequently and in fact on their own videos. Some are geniuses and like to document that with video, however, you probably want to watch the ones that mess up as well, after all this is research.

You want to note the interface. Granted you aren’t playing, so you may not know how the controls work, but then again if you’re researching the game, you know what platform and thereby what controls are being used for what. You want to note what kind of information is being shown on the screen. Is there a scoring system, levels, health, what kind of weapons? Is timing required, or is it story driven?

Some video games are known for their great stories, and some are not. So basically you want to watch and note the story. Maybe there’s not much of a story, and the story is really in the game play.

Now armed with this knowledge you can go into the game itself and play the whole game finding all of its secrets knowing just where people had trouble so you won’t have that trouble. I said the title was a bit of a misnomer. Well actually that’s not correct. You can learn to play games by watching videos of them, but you have to apply the things you just learned.

Since this is ‘Monday’, I’ll probably just watch the videos and pretend I played the game. Just make sure if you tell your friends you played the game that they haven’t watched the same videos as you have. That would be rather awkward.

Until ‘Monday’

by admin

Stickman Comic Strips – No Talent Required

AllKillerNoFiller Laziness 90x300 Stickman Comic Strips No Talent Required

This should qualify as a stick man

Today’s article is going to be a short one. We’re talking about comic strips. But not the kind you have to have years of art school or a lifetime of study to draw correctly. Two words: Stick Men. That’s right; you don’t need any formal art training to draw stick men. In fact you probably played hangman at some point in your life, maybe when you were very young. In it you spell out a word by trying to select the proper missing letters and when you choose incorrectly one more piece of the ‘hangman’ is drawn. This is a stick man at its very basic. Now you have all the training you require, however, the talent of humor is beyond the scope of this article. The ‘Monday’ way of course is not to try to be funny but just draw stick men in little boxes sequentially as fast as possible and have that be the post for the week. So without further ado, this week’s ‘comic’: (To your right)

Note: Due to the hectic work schedule and general productiveness of us here on “I’ll Do It On Monday!” we regret to inform you that this week’s comic strip was not drawn by us. (Really it means we’re so dang lazy that we got someone else’s comic strip instead. Don’t worry we have full permission. Trust us we’re professionals.)

Please note the comic on the right is from All Filler, No Killer by Leo Loikkanen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Until ‘Monday’