Love is all you need

One of the things that most personal development blogs seem to lack, is a section on love. I read a lot of bloggers talking about how they feel bad about taking their wives out to dinner or something, just because it caused them to overspend a little. I think this frame of mine is completely asinine, since love is pretty much the only reason why we're here on earth, so I'm going to be adding a section to this blog regarding several different components of love, and my own personal experiences.

How to get over balding and itchy / dry scalp.

If you're anything like me, you've been worrying about male pattern baldness since you were sixteen years old. My father was bald, his father was bald, and his father was bald. Same goes with my mother's side (my mother has quite a large forehead herself!)

The best things you can do are the following:

1. Stop worrying so much about it.

Whatever happens, happens. You don't really have much control over genetics, but one thing you can do to slow down the process is to reduce your anxiety levels. Stress is a common cause of accelerated hair loss, so relax, take a deep breath, and realize that the average person loses 50-100 hairs a day. Don't worry.

2. Avoid scratching your scalp.

I know I'm a huge hypocrite when it comes to this tip, since I'm having trouble not scratching my dry scalp right now. This can lead to scarring and scalp damage, which simply makes you lose hair faster. I'm going to try never to scratch again!

3. Don't wash your hair every day.

When we soak our hair entirely in water, and then start rubbing and pulling it all over the place, it simply isn't good for the health of our hair. What I recommend is washing your hair every other day, and start using dry hair/dry scalp shampoo and conditioner. When washing it, try not to scratch the scalp, but rather, use the tips of your fingers to gently massage the scalp.

4. Make sure you intake enough essential vitamins and minerals.

Not drinking enough water and not getting enough A, B, C, and E vitamins can hamper the normal oil secretions from your sebaceous glands. Make sure you get enough healthy nutrition or else your hair loss will definitely get worse.

5. Don't overheat your head using hot water or the blow dryer.

This one is very straight forward. Water that is too hot will damage the hair, along with using the highest settings of a blow dryer. Air drying is best, but if you must blow dry, use a lower heat setting.

6. Avoid using sprays and styling creams.

This is another example of products that may lead to damaging your hair. Regular contact with the chemicals and additives in these products can lead to dry scalp, building up residue.

7. If all else fails, laugh about it.

Sometimes there's nothing we can do about what mother nature will do to our bodies. We can get ourselves healthy and fit to try and focus attention to other parts of our bodies, but the best thing you can do is have a good sense of humor about the situation. If you act like your balding is nothing but a negative source of energy, other people will too.

Don't allow yourself to mentally stagnate

Sometimes when we create a daily routine for ourselves, things can start to get a little boring. For instance, I've created a daily schedule of waking up around 8 or 9, writing for an hour or two, eating breakfast, go to work, come home for lunch, exercise for an hour, rest a little bit, go back to work, and come home to either practice music, read, or watch a movie.

Though I've come to enjoy my little daily ritual, I've started to notice that I'm becoming increasingly bored with my life. It's nice to be dependent on myself for entertainment and contentment, but really, I need to change things up a bit or I'm literally going to go insane. Boredom is the cause of so many vices in life, and we need to try to stave it off as much as possible.

Here are a few things I'm going to try and do to stave it off entirely:

1. Switch this blog to my own personal domain, and create a few side project domains in the process.

-- One of the things I want to do with this blog is generate enough traffic to create a large enough user base where I can start putting ads up around the blog. That isn't the only reason I've started to blog, but to be perfectly honest, it's a nice goal to work toward. It motivates me to post every day, and it helps me exorcise new information for blog entries since I have true inspiration to do so.

Of course, the whole point of journaling is to keep written track record of my thoughts, goals, and inspirations, and so far, it's been a wonderful wonderful thing in my life. When I talk about my vices in this blog for all the world to see, it makes me realize how stupid I've been at times in my life, and makes me more accountable for my actions.

Anyway, creating my own personal domain would help direct traffic here, versus to blogspot. I've been thinking

2. Start up a new sport.

- Recently I've entertained the idea of playing tennis regularly (the last time I played was ten I believe). Not only would it help put all the exercising I'm doing to good use, but it would help me get out of my room for once (and stop breathing in all this carpet fuzz), and have an activity that I could use with friends to socialize.

I'm sorta tired of all the friends I have that just want to sit around a television and stare like zombies. Ever since I came back from university this seems to be more of the norm than not. However, if I were playing tennis with some of these zombies, it'd probably inspire all of us to not only improve our health, but our mental/physical coordination as well.

3. Write letters to old friends.

-My aunt used to tell me to show the people that you love how much you love them (in fact she still tells me this). Especially as we get older, you never really know when a friend or a relative is going to pass away, or at least, be out of your life for a good long while.

Take this opportunity to compile a list of people who truly matter to you in your life, and take time out of your day to write to them. Everyone loves to get letters from people they care about, so don't feel anxious or paranoid that they're going to think you're silly for writing to them. As long as you are being honest and genuine, anyone will appreciate a letter coming from you.

Let them know what you've been up to, new interests you've taken up, new projects, or even complain to them a little bit about what frustrates you. A friend is a friend is a friend, so don't be afraid to pour your heart out.

4. Learn to play a new song on an instrument.

- One of the biggest reasons people stop playing instruments is because they become impatient with the progress they're making and stop playing altogether. I know I did this in my youth, and I really regret my own impatience with myself.

We all like to be good at something, so when we see so many rock stars on television or in the movies, we want to be like them right away. Little do we know that most of the people who are famous, aren't even all that good at what they're playing.

I'm not going to be preachy here and act like I'm a master of anything. Only recently have I gone back to piano (my keyboard is currently broken which is driving me crazy) and picked up the guitar again, and only recently have I rediscovered the frustrations of trying to learn an instrument from the beginning.

However, with daily practice you really start pushing through, and you become proud of the accomplishments you make on your instrument. It starts becoming a fun hobby rather than a chore. There is always awkwardness in the beginning (I'm still going through it, and I'm sure I always will), but once you break through that awkwardness it becomes a really rewarding activity.

Also, we all know about those guys who go to parties with guitars strapped to their backs and play kumbaya 24/7 just to impress the ladies. Don't start playing just to mimick those guys. I hate those guys. Enjoy playing an instrument just for the sake of making yourself happy. If playing music doesn't interest you deep down, don't do it. But if you've always felt yourself wanting to play an instrument and feeling musical on the inside but not on the outside, you really do owe it to yourself to pick one up.

Don't be afraid to experiment with different instruments until you find one that you really enjoy playing. Just because everyone else plays guitar doesn't mean you have to. If you want to play the bassoon, play the bassoon. If you find happiness playing the djembe, play the djembe. It's up to you.

5. Actually start doing the chores that you've told yourself you'd do a million times over.

This one is pretty self explanatory. For the sake of discussion I'll list some of mine that I've had for myself the past week (I always seem to address myself as "you" in my writing, which I'm thinking is sort of a nasty habit to distance myself from my goals) :

-"Vacuum the damn house, since you're breathing in all that damn carpet dust lately".

- Buy an air purifier.

- Research comics for your upcoming November 4th comedy show (I'm starting one up on Thursdays at the restaurant that I work at, and November 4th is the first show. Given the fact that it's September 22nd, I really need to start finding an opening act, or be content with the fact that I'm probably going to have to open. Start working on a routine now, and start trying to promote the show in a week or so. Get into contact with the other two comics that are performing ASAP!)

- Practice writing Mandarin, starting with the dishes we use at the restaurant.

- Get some groceries and plan out a diet in accordance to the workouts you've been doing.

I suppose that's about it. In future posts I will keep adding to this list of things you can do to stave off boredom (I forgot to mention one more for myself - create videos to explore the acting side of me). Hopefully this list inspires you to do some of the things you've been meaning to do, and avoid creating a sickly stale routine each day.

Best.

Always try to put aside a certain percentage of each paycheck into Savings.

When we don't put aside any money into our Savings, we end up doing our future selves a major disservice.

I look back on my younger self and I always think to myself, "if only I had saved a quarter, or even a tenth of what I had earned, I'd be in such a better financial situation right now." The good thing is that if you're in your 20's or 30's, now is the perfect time to start saving. Even if you are in your 40's or 50's, it's not too late to save. You really don't want to end up being in your 60's and 70's with no money in the bank to live off of. It's honestly a miserable existence.

My recommendation is to try and put a certain percentage of your savings into an untouchable savings account. 10% seems like a reasonable amount, but if you have any excess money floating around in your budget, I recommend saving that as well. You never know what might happen down the road. And even if you have an idea, you never know if you want to change your mind about what you want to do with your life. And when you figure that out, it'll be nice to have a little money in the bank to help you achieve your goals.

Super savers choose to put 20, 30, even 50% of their monthly budget into savings. Of course, this simply isn't possible for the most of us, but if you can, you should really strive to save as much as possible. I'm 23 right now, and even though I could've made a lot more mistakes (i.e. credit card debt), I still made some that I really regret. I gambled a lot of my student loan money away, and I used that loan money as excess money to eat out with, when really I could've been saving thousands if only I had been more frugal. Of course, that's what being young is for - to make and learn from your mistakes.

Remember - if it's not too late for you to start saving, then you're doing yourself a wonderful favor by starting right now. Tell yourself that the money you've saved is untouchable and you'll soon find that your Savings account will grow more rapidly than you think.

Don't confuse frugality with cheapness.

Yesterday morning I was looking through my book collection, and I realized there was utterly nothing there that I wanted to read. This led me to a few decisions I could make:

1. Do nothing at all and give up reading as a hobby until I could get some books for free.

2. Re-read books I had read before and sacrifice a significant amount of mental stimulation.

3. Just cave in to my impulses and buy a few books to read.

I thought about doing the first two, but as I scoured some of my old books I realized they just didn't do anything for me anymore. Maybe sometime down the line, but as for right now, at this very moment, I need to read something new or else my mind will remain completely stagnant. I need to read something that's relevant to our times and not to people 50 or 100 years ago.

So, I immediately decided to scour ebay and amazon for cheap novels, and spent $24.34 (including shipping) on three.

This is where the main point of this article comes in.

If you feel like you are sacrificing the things you truly enjoy just to be frugal, why be frugal at all? Are you simply saving money just to save money? Or are you trying to save money to eventually improve the quality of your life?

Now I'm not saying that you should go out and buy impulsively, it took me a little while before I decided to cave in and buy those books. And when I did, I was sure to look for the best deals online rather than go straight to the retail bookseller, which probably would have cost me about double the amount I spent online.

If you're a guitar player and you need to buy new strings, don't just wait around miserably playing your jankcity guitar over and over again, that won't be fulfilling at all. Go buy some new strings, but be sure to get the best deal you can on them. What I'm preaching here is to balance frugality with happiness, or else you will end up a miserable old miser with no hobbies and no passions to spend his/her money on. People who live without passions are practically the living dead, so be sure to develop the hobbies you enjoy while you're still young (or at least, during the precise moments you are passionate about them) or else you will simply lose the love of what you are doing.

Or, at least, it won't be as strong.

Remember, time is as valuable an asset as money, perhaps even more important. If you don't spend time doing the things that you enjoy, and you simply just want to save money just to say you have money, you aren't truly living.

Be frugal, and be happy.

Get your dumbbells at walmart!

I just wanted to quickly tell people looking for cheap dumbbells to try walmart. Unlike me, who is a totally idiot for spending 98 dollars on dumbbells at big five, you should get a much cheaper deal by shopping at Walmart. You'll be glad you did.

Sleep well

One of the most important ways to increase effectiveness is productivity is maintaining a healthy and consistent sleep pattern. When we don't take care of our bodies and choose to sacrifice crucial periods of rest, we decrease our ability to stay focused and work efficiently.

I've had a really messed up sleep schedule for probably the past three years. Not only do I feel it has contributed to depression and anxiety, I feel like it has made me more prone to do things I ordinarily wouldn't have done. When you get caught in a spiral of self-destruction, it's much more difficult to get out of it when you're sleep deprived, compared to when you're mentally alert and awake.

Recently I bought a memory foam bed topper, and I have to say, it's really the bees knees (sorry). I just haven't had a better night's sleep in quite a while, and I feel like the memory foam has actually helped me achieve longer periods of deep sleep. Maybe you already sleep like a baby and you don't need a bed topper, but if you do, Costco is offering $40 off right now on their website:

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Productgroup.aspx?Prodid=11307126&search=memory%20foam&Mo=56&cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-US&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Sp=S&N=5000043&whse=BC&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=memory%20foam&Ntt=memory%20foam&No=2&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1

Sorry for promoting such an expensive item, but it's sort of done wonders for me, and $40 off is $40 off. I think the long term trade off for better sleep versus money saved in this instance is one where we will have to take the hit to our wallets for potential gain in the future.

Anyway, my main point here is to do everything you can to maintain healthy sleep habits, because if you don't, you'll definitely start feeling incredibly unhealthy and unproductive in the future.

best

Stop Wasting Time

After writing my previous post on trying to stick with one thing at a time, I realized that the best way to focus your efforts on the things that you enjoy (along with the things that make you money), is to stop wasting as much time as possible.

I'm not going to lie, I spend a ridiculously high amount of time on Facebook, Gmail, and Yahoo sports, constantly refreshing the same pages over and over again hoping something new will pop up again. Not only do I think Yahoo Sports is a poor sports website, I'm realizing that following sports as a hobby is such a time waster that I should probably stop looking at sports pages for the rest of my life.

Facebook and Gmail can be effective ways of maintaining contact with your friends and family, along with meeting people from the past that you want to connect with in the present, but they can be huge time wasters. My recommendation (and I'm trying to strictly adhere to this myself) is to only check these sites once a day, or better yet, once every few days. Unless you rely on these tools as ways for emergency contact, try to avoid spending more time on these sites than necessary. You'll suddenly find that you have (who am I kidding? I'm still trapped in the game!) a lot more time to do the things that you enjoy, along with the things that give you the most fulfillment in life.

If you feel yourself idling and staring into space for minutes, hours, or days at a time, simply ask yourself this question - "What can I do right now to better my life or achieve my goals?" That simple question will get you focused and on track for the day, and hopefully willy motivate you to stop wasting time playing monopoly online for 9 hours in a row to start working on that entrepreneurial project that you've been wanting to start forever. Those nine hours spent playing monopoly could have easily been spent on your own money-making efforts, or at least something that will give you more satisfaction with your life.

I'm not saying it's necessary to eliminate every single break from your life, as they are necessary to avoid being incredibly stressed out maniacs, just try to limit the time you're not being productive because you probably will regret it in the future. I know I do!

best

-G

Money Saving Tip #2 - Stick to one or two hobbies at a time

One money mistake that I've made throughout my life is picking up a new hobby without fully exploring its potential and quickly moving on to a new one. For instance, throughout my life I've picked up piano, guitar, drums, violin, ukulele, DJ-ing, electronic music making, card games, tae-kwan-do, magic, the list goes on and on.

However, I've never really developed my full potential on any of these things, and I'm filled with regret about it. Lately I've realized it's best to actually stick with one instrument or one hobby or one whatever and to grow with that particular hobby than to be a "jack of all trades". I'm not saying that you shouldn't explore all the things that interest you, but if it means abandoning your efforts in another area that you previously enjoyed for no good reason, I feel like you should stick with the original thing.

Lately my three hobbies are writing, exercising with the P90X program, and guitar. To be perfectly honest, I've only been on a strict schedule doing all three for the past three days, but so far I've been feeling great about it.

My advice to you is to try and stick with one or two hobbies instead of branching off into a million. Not only will you get more fulfillment out of what you are doing, but you won't have to spend money on a DJ-Set that you'll never use or that set of golf clubs that just sit in the corner collecting dust.

My personal tip is to wait three-four weeks to see if you still want to buy that new instrument or that sparkling new tennis gear, and notice how often you don't actually want to do those things. I want to reiterate that I'm not saying you shouldn't explore your options, I just don't want anybody to make the mistake of abandoning previous projects just to take on new expensive ones.

Money Mistake #1 - Never loan money to people who you don't absolutely trust will pay you back

I learned this mistake early on in my college years.

I was playing poker quite a bit and was actually winning. I had about $5000 in cash sitting in my dresser, and I had become a well known regular at Casino de Montreal.

Eventually, people I didn't even know started to ask me for money. I declined of course, until I finally met this guy Ramon De la Cruz who became sort of a buddy to me. He didn't ask me for money at first, and in fact, set up poker games in his office to try and help me hustle weaker players.

One day Ramon knocked on my door, saying that he needed $1200 to pay back some debts. I told him no at first, but eventually caved in and gave him the full amount. As he was leaving, he said, "man george, one day I'll give you five THOUSAND for being so nice to me," and left. I noticed this sort of sick smile on his face as he was leaving, as if he had won a contest or something, and I knew immediately that I had been hustled. I would never see that money again.

Eventually, I saw some other people at the casino who had lent money to Ramon, ranging from $800 to $4000. It was a sad, sorry thing to be a part of, but hopefully my story can help others from making the same stupid mistakes.

In recap,

-Don't spend time around low-class people willing to cheat you out of your money

-Even if it isn't gambling related, don't loan money to people who you don't absolutely trust.

-Don't get addicted to something where you'd be so desperate for money that you'd be willing to scam people out of their hard earned cash.

I personally wish I hadn't wasted so much time in those stupid casinos, but more importantly within the context of this post, I wish I hadn't been so trusting of people who really did nothing to deserve it.

'Til next time.

My Story Part 2 - the College Years

As I was transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, I pretty much made every money mistake there is to make. I took out high-interest student loans, smoked a bunch of marijuana, drank alcohol, played poker, did hard drugs, spent money eating out, and even lent large sums of money to people who would never pay me back.

My first mistake during these years was starting to smoke pot. If I could tally how much money I've blown on marijuana during my life, it'd probably be close to $10000 or so. It's sad, really. What started off being an innocent habit at an 8th a week ($50) quickly spiraled into double, triple, and even quadruple that. Combine that with the fact I was losing around $50-100 a week or so on poker, and you've got a person who pretty much spent all his money on things he couldn't really afford.

Since I was stoned all the time and truly aimless at life, I dropped out of my second year of community college. I told myself I needed some time to decide where I wanted to transfer, but really I just wanted to smoke all the time. If I had finished that year of college, I could have had an additional 24 or so credits that I wouldn't have had to pay for when I went to Montreal for University. Instead, what ended up being an innocent time of "trying to find myself" turned what really amounts to an $18000 student loan debt.

When I did actually transfer schools to Montreal, all I wanted to do was continue smoking pot all the time. I barely did any of my homework, and I never really accomplished any of the personal goals I wanted to since I was high all the time. Not only did it affect my financial life, it also affected my personal life. I had no social life whatsoever. So basically I traded both positive experiences and financial gain for self-destruction and personal angst.

I told myself that this was simply the life of a writer, but really that was just BS. I had the ability to make myself happy, and all the tools around me to do so, but I chose to pick the self-destructive route.

These days I'm trying my hardest to make the most of my time and my energy, and I suppose it's good that I made all those mistakes earlier in my life, because I have fuel to make up lost time and to try and live my life to the fullest.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll have more to share down the line (positive stories, I hope).

Headache avoiding tip #1

NEVER OVERDRAFT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT!

Keeping a minimum balance in your bank account can keep you from having to deal with all those annoying overdraft fees.

When I was younger, I always thought I could get away with charging small amounts to my debit card when I only had around $20 left. What I seemed to not realize was that, there were always charges from previous purchases that hadn't cleared in my account yet, and that my account was pretty much around zero all the time.

So, what ended up happening was that I would buy a $6 sandwich or something, but my account really only had $5 left in it, so I'd overdraft my account by a dollar and end up having to pay a $35 overdraft fee.

The worst part?

Sometimes I'd have multiple purchases waiting to be posted on my account, so not only did I overdraw my account once, I did it two, three, four, or five times, resulting in multiple $35 charges! It was an extreme headache looking at over a hundred dollars worth of overdraft fees. Those two to five dollar purchases were suddenly becoming my worst nightmare, as the fees grew exponentially.

My advice?

Try to keep a minimum of a hundred dollars or so in your checking account at all times. When it gets that low, try not to use your debit card to purchase anything, just to be safe. Start using cash for all your purchases from then on, or just try to avoid spending anything until your bank account has a bigger safety net around it.

Of course, if you are already a frugal penny pincher, this rule doesn't apply to you. This tip is mostly for college students or recent grads who haven't learned to save money all that well yet. Honestly, it's better not to spend anything when your bank account is that low because really the headache you'll get from multiple overdraft fees really isn't worth that $5 lunch you just bought.

More tips later.

-mm

Gambling - the ultimate money-losing vice.

Since gambling is such a big problem for many of us, I'll go into my story of gambling right now, in hopes to inspire any of you out there who are going through a similar problem.

I started realizing the joys of winning at games of chance when I was young. I would play games like Mahjong with my relatives, and enjoy them immensely. Little did I know how much luck had to do with winning these games. Every time I won a round, I chalked it up immediately to skill. That's probably when the seed was planted in my mind that I somehow had the ability to manipulate chance in my favor.

My father was (and still is) a big gambler, and I remember how he would lose thousands and thousands of dollars on blackjack, paigow, and sports betting. I didn't understand what table games were when I was younger, but I did understand that you could bet on sports. Whenever a big event was on tv (I was a big basketball fan in my youth), I would bet a dollar or two with my friends at school on the outcome of the event, and I always paid when I lost. I didn't understand the idea of a spread. I was betting with kids on things I knew nothing about, and in retrospect, I wish I hadn't learned any new information on how to "improve", because that's when I dug myself into a deeper and deeper hole.

Around 16 or so, the poker boom had just started. I remember watching the World Series of Poker on TV in 2003, and thinking to myself how cool the game was. I loved the fact that you could get into someone's head and bluff them off a big pot. Though I didn't really understand the strategy of the game then, I was hooked immediately.

Over the next few years, my love of poker grew exponentially. Friends of mine started having tournaments every Friday, and I would go and play to my hearts content. Sometimes I'd win five or ten dollars, and sometimes I'd lose the same amount. I was already a compulsive gambler and I had no idea. I thought I was doing something harmless to pass the time, but really what I was doing was that I was wasting both my time and my money on something completely asinine.

After reading several books on poker (as many as I could, actually), and losing $50 here or there online, I decided to make it out to the casino. I would drive two hours both ways to Jackson Rancheria, and play NL Holdem ($200 buy in) to my hearts content. I was also smoking quite a bit of weed at the time, so basically my life consisted of nothing but getting high and going to play cards. Thinking back on it, I hate feeling like I was probably one of the loneliest people I knew, and that the only thing I could do to feel good was get high or go gamble. I probably made that drive up to Jackson twenty or thirty times, and whenever I did win, I'd end up losing most or all of that money back the following week. If I didn't lose it at the casino, I'd inevitably lose it online.

When I moved to Montreal for university, I was pretty lonely too. Suddenly I was in a whole new place completely alone. The gambling thing started to reign over me. Casino de Montreal had just opened up a poker room, which meant that players all over the province would come and lose a bunch of money just because the novelty of playing poker legally was so great. Up until then it had been illegal to host card rooms, which meant that not only were people willing to play, people who had no idea how to play the game were willing to play. I made a killing the first month I was playing, and slowly built up a bank roll of about five thousand dollars.

I remember I hardly ever wanted to focus on class (and even if I didn't gamble, I'm pretty sure I would have filled my time with something non-academic related. I pretty much think being in class is pure agony), so I would spend most of my time locked in my room, smoking doobies and playing poker online. I always lost online, and I seemed to do very well in live games. I think the reason for this is that when I'm all alone and left to my own devices, I'm very susceptible to cave in to the pleasure centers of my brain that release the most euphoric chemicals. Or rather, I was addicted to the highs and the lows of gambling (and drugs), and didn't have the self control to limit myself. When I was in the poker room with other people in front of me, I was scared to do anything stupid, but when I was at home all alone, I took chances I never would have since the only person who knew about them was me.

And even when I did win money live, I remember it was hardly ever a positive experience. I remember one night after winning a thousand dollars out of a drunken Russian man who had no self control himself, I came home to an empty freezing apartment and slumped against a wall and started to cry. I'm not sure if I was just tired from the lack of sleep, or if I was genuinely lonely as all hell, or if I just felt bad I had taken money from someone as depraved as I was, but I knew I didn't feel good. But the next morning I went right back to the tables. It was all I had for a while during those Montreal summers. Not a friend in the city, the only thing I liked to do was play cards.

This continued on and on for a while, and I eventually ended up not going to the casino as often, and started to do harder and harder drugs. Ketamine, GHB, and Coke (coke being the big one - I was addicted to that for a few years to be honest). It was terrible, I mean really awful. If I wasn't gambling, I'd go buy a six pack of Alexander Keiths and do a bunch of coke just to get through the night. I recognized I had a problem, but I didn't actually stop doing drugs until my last month in Montreal. Though I'm happy I quit, I'm forlorn at the idea that I missed so many social opportunities while I was in that city, and that all I did was stimulate the neurons in my brain telling me that I was supposed to feel good (which stopped happening after about a year or so of this).

Anyway, so I just moved back home a couple of months ago, and I realized quickly that my degree in Creative Writing was not going to get me a job anywhere. I had this dream floating around in my head that I could play poker to finance the production of my first film, so I started to deposit money online. I've probably lost $800 - $1000 since I've been back. I've been to the casino twice, losing $400 and $300 respectively. The last time I went to the casino, I looked at all the dreary faces around me and came to the realization that that was the last time I'd ever go play cards again.

I just didn't want to end up like any of those people, and I knew that I was young enough to stop going. It's been a couple weeks now since I've gambled whatsoever, and to be honest, after that day, I realized that it's such a worthless sinkhole of time and effort, and it fucks with my emotions in such a negative way, that it's not even worth pursuing anymore. I have too much time left in my life to squander it all on something as stupid as gambling. Even if I did make money (which I probably won't since I'm so emotionally fragile these days), it probably wouldn't have been satisfying work in any regard.

These days I'm writing in the mornings, exercising in the afternoons, and finally living my passions of playing music at night, watching the films I like, and trying to stimulate my mind as much as possible. I've realized that when I'm not doing anything to stimulate my mind, it's difficult to do anything I enjoy. It's hard to be creative. Though my social life could use some improvement, I'm taking strides to improve in those areas as well, signing up for different classes in my community, and taking the time to call old friends.

The reason I mention these things is because in order to quit gambling, you really have to change your lifestyle completely. You can't live for the short-lasting feelings of happiness only to feel miserable for most of the time. I wanted to fill my life with things that made me feel good about myself, and one of the things that makes me feel good about myself is knowing that the money in my savings account is no longer in jeopardy due to my stupid vices.

It's been a long journey recovering from addiction of multiple vices, but I think I'm finally on the way to living out the life I've been wanting for myself for so long. In a way I'm happy I made all those mistakes in my youth, and although I wish I could have that time back, it makes me happy to think that I'll never (I really mean that actually) be tempted to do binge on these stupid vices again in my life. I'm still only 23, and I have a lifetime of making positive choices ahead of me. Some people aren't so lucky, and I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to really make it right this time.

Well, that's about it. If any of you have questions or comments feel free to post them at your leisure. Best of luck and have a wonderful rest of the week.

My Story Part 1

Ever since I was a little kid, I was obsessed with money. Both my parents lavishly spent on me, and I seemed to have a pretty good allowance. My mom would give me $5 every day for lunch, and sometimes she'd give me a little bit extra if I was going to stay at childcare after. Most of the time I only spent like 3 or 4 dollars and save the extra dollar. I liked to save money at an early age, but I also liked to spend money.

By the time I was 12 or so, I had the ability to save a hundred dollars or so every month. Except, I wasn't really saving it because any time I had the opportunity to blow the money on a video game or spend the money at an arcade, I would do it as soon as I got the chance. And, since video games cost $40 or $50 new, most of my money was gone immediately.

These days I rummage through my garage and think of how much money I actually wasted on those things, and how I wish I spent that time doing something a little bit more constructive with my time. But really, I'm glad I got it out of my system then so I wouldn't become a 23 year old video game playing junkie like so many of us.

This trend continued until I was seventeen or so, except that I had branched off into buying books, cds, as well as video games. This wouldn't have been so bad, except that I was getting these things at the worst prices available. I'd pay full retail for all these items, instead of trying to look up better deals online. At an early age, I had learned to be a bad consumer. I could've gotten all of these items at much cheaper rates, if only I had spent a little more time researching.

I'm not blaming my past self for doing any of these things, I mean really, I was just a kid. I just want to point out the fact that no matter where you are in life, you have the ability to save money. If you're 34 or 57 or even 12, there are always opportunities out there to spend less than you have to on things that you enjoy.

In my next installment I'm going to talk about my formative years, and the copious amount of vices that I developed during this time. Not only did these things break my bank account, they seemed to have a negative impact on my emotional health as well.

Mixed Money -

Mixed Money - My story of money in my 20s.

Hi. My name is George, and I'm 23 years old. Throughout my life, I've been trying to earn and save money but ultimately I always seem to fail due to poor money management. Whether it's reckless spending on entertainment, material goods, or mindless vices, I haven't been able to keep an adequate amount of money in the bank long enough to be satisfied with where I am today.

I've started this blog in hopes of documenting my financial progress as I transition into my adulthood. This won't simply be a "money-making" blog, but rather, will be a journey of self-discovery and a story of coming of age in a world where the ability to earn and keep money seems to be one of the most important skills a person can develop. I finally want to destroy all my bad financial habits, and discover a life of financial independence.

In order to do so, I'm going to have to be completely honest with myself. Over the next few days, I will document some of the money mistakes I've made so far, and the penny-pinching techniques I've been trying to employ lately in order to save as much money as possible.

I'm a recent college graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, and hopefully, you can join me in my quest to both eliminate my debt, and to start living the life of financial independence that I've always dreamed of.

Let's face it, living at home at 23 is bad enough, but if I want to be 25, 26, 35, or 46 and able to live my own life and take care of the ones around me, I need to start working at it right now.