The Official YCN aka Young_Chitlin News Thread
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http://www.wired.com/2014/10/absurd-creature-week-vicious-duck-beats-? -anything-moves/Everyone, meet the steamer duck. The steamer duck is one bad mother. See those orange nubbins on its wings? Those are keratinized spurs, which the steamer duck has evolved to wallop the living cuss out of any creature hapless enough to cross its path. (See that red stuff on the duck's head? Yeah. That's blood.)
Photos featured by kind permission of Arthur Grosset.See more of his photography here
Over at Absurd Creature of the Week, Matt Simon recounts a disturbing instance of duck-on-duck violence, involving a pugnacious male steamer duck, an unfortunate shoveler duck, and an onlooking female steamer:
From time to time the steamer would drag the shoveler under, then resurface and continue beating the tar out of it as the female watched. At one point he shuffled over to her, but after 30 seconds returned to his victim and punched the poor critter 15 to 20 more times. "He then released the limp body of the shoveler," wrote Nuechterlein, "pecked at it, and released it again." At last he returned to the female for good, calling to her while she stretched, and the two flew off together. The shoveler eventually regained consciousness, and though seriously crippled, struggled to shore. It died 15 minutes later.
This is the avian version of Bloodsport, only without all of the terrible yet somehow endearing acting. The four species of steamer duck (so named for their penchant for flapping and running along the surface, kicking up water like steamboats) in South America are famous—at least in ornithological circles—for their brutality, getting all up in the grills of not just other steamers, but also other species in scrums lasting as long as 20 minutes.
Why the ducks are so aggressive is unclear, but one hypothesis is that steamers have evolved to be violent not only to chase off threats and competition, but tomake an example of them:
Says Nuechterlein in the paper describing the fight between the steamer and the shoveler: "Possibly observational learning is important, and holding a 'public beating' enhances the effectiveness of territorial displays." And that, my friends, may be the only time "public beating" has ever appeared in a scientific paper.
[img]http://ir0.mobify.com/project-wired/http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/? -660x438.jpg[/img]
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Florida Woman Stabs Boyfriend to Protect Pet Turtle
According to The Palm Beach Post, a 53-year-old Florida woman is facing criminal charges after, authorities allege, she stabbed her boyfriend for threatening her turtle.
From the Post:
[Marie] Seymour and her boyfriend were drinking when he said he would harm her turtle and allegedly came after her, according to her recount of the events. The turtle’s name was not released.
“The turtle’s name was not released.”
The boyfriend was treated at a local hospital, while Seymour was taken to jail for booking. The boyfriend told police that he did not want her to go to jail.
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Meanwhile in France.. monkey got tased by cops after stealing candy
A French monkey went on a week-long chocolat ? in Marseilles last week, terrorizing school children and eluding inspectors in the best animal crime to hit France since the Pink Panther.
Authorities think the petit brat was raised illegally and then abandoned in the city as an adult. He apparently subsisted solely on Kinder chocolate bars, a burgeoning addiction that landed him on the wrong end of a taser when citizens reported the enfant terrible had been biting and scratching children outside their school.
Local police described their week tracking the sneaky, furry baby.
"We were given the location, but the time we got there he had left every time," a Northern Division investigator told La Provence, according to Googlé.
Police were finally able to capture the sugar fiend when they managed to taser him into submission.
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Ohhh he look like "I'm sowry... I lubs the candy"
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I actually saw that lol^
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Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to announce hiring freeze, school funding revamp in state of state address
Associated Press
PHOENIX - Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey will announce a statewide hiring freeze and a proposal to get more money into classrooms in his state of the state address to a joint session of the Legislature on Monday.
In an interview with The Associated Press in advance of the speech outlining his policy goals, Ducey also said he plans to challenge the Legislature, attorney general and school establishment to settle a long-standing legal dispute over school funding.
Watch Gov. Doug Ducey's State of the State address LIVE on abc15.com and ABC15 Mobile .
The state Supreme Court has ruled schools were shortchanged by the Legislature during the recession and a judge then ordered the state to boost funding by $331 million this year and similar amounts going forward. That same judge is now considering back payments of about $1 billion. The two sides are considering settlement talks and plan to meet with a panel of appeals court judges Monday.
Ducey also said he wants a requirement for high school students to master U.S. civics to be the first bill on his desk, fulfilling one of his campaign promises that students have a basic understanding of U.S. history and what it means to be a citizen.
Ducey is facing a $500 million deficit in the current budget year and a $1 billion shortfall in the 2016 fiscal year that begins July 1, and the hiring freeze is the first step in his plan to make government more efficient.
"There will be exceptions for child safety, there will be exceptions for public safety, but we're going to rein in the bureaucracy," Ducey said.
The classrooms-first initiative is part of a plan to shift state spending from support to actual classroom teaching. Arizona schools spent 54 percent of their available operating cash on classroom instruction in the 2013 budget year, more than 7 percentage points below the national average, according to the most recent state Auditor General's report. That lower spending translates into larger class sizes.
The remainder of the school money goes to administration, which is lower than the national average, transportation, food service, building maintenance and IT systems.
Ducey said his plan is aimed at reducing what he calls "duplication and replication" in those support services among the state more than 230 school districts.
"You're talking about numerous transportation systems, food service systems, IT systems, janitorial systems, plant maintenance systems," Ducey said. "We're going to work very hard to incent efficiencies in this system while putting more dollars in the classroom."
The auditor's report, however, noted lower overall state support was one reason for the drop in classroom spending, and for resulting larger class sizes. That's because it's harder for schools to cut other costs.
Ducey also is expected to announce plans to eliminate waiting lists are top-performing schools, but he declined to provide specifics on that issue, a key campaign talking-point.
The Republican governor, who took office last week, said he would provide more specifics on his proposals in Monday's speech and in Friday's release of his state budget proposal. He's been working with Republicans who hold majorities in the House and Senate on his budget proposals, but would not say if a budget deal was close.
In an interview last month on the legislative session that opens Monday, Senate President Andy Biggs was hopeful a deal could be done quickly. A real message will come if Biggs is present when Ducey unveils his budget proposal.
"If you see us standing there behind him, the legislative leadership team and some of the other legislators, and we're there and in a unified mode, then I don't know why we can't solve that budget on a fairly rapid basis," Biggs said.
Cutting $1 billion from the current $9.2 billion budget will be a major challenge, and Ducey has promised not to raise taxes. The estimated $500 million shortfall in the current budget will likely be filled with money from the state's rainy-day fund. In the 2016 budget year starting July 1, that $1 billion projected shortfall could come from spending cuts, shifts of spending and other so-called gimmicks.
But Ducey said the plan is to trim government, with the goal of presenting a truly structurally balanced budget in the 2017 budget year.
"We've got to get through these six months of 2015, we've got 2016 to get our reforms and improvements there and we'll look for structural balance in 2017," he said. -
Why Some Grown Kids Cut Off Their Parents
Could their estrangement be caused by how we raised them?
By Elizabeth Vagnoni
The truth is — I am estranged from my two adult sons.
The truth is — I love my sons and I miss them every day.
The truth is — I can’t understand how in the world this has happened.
The truth is — saying you love them and miss them is not enough. There is much more to say, but you need a conversation — you need actual interaction, not just silence.
For me, the estrangement began over what I believed to be a misunderstanding. Since then, I’ve been on a journey of understanding, or at least trying to understand.
Since I have been met with silence when trying to understand my children’s point of view, however, I have turned to studying estrangement. I have researched every article I could find on the topic, presented at conferences and co-authored a paper about estrangement. I started a private social network for those who are experiencing the same thing, and one thing is clear — there are literally thousands of stories just like mine.
These are stories of love, though sometimes hearing parents tell their stories, a reader might understand why an adult child would need a breather.
The Rise Of Narcissism In The Young
Parents tell stories of ill-spoken words, of misunderstanding, of unhelpful interference from others. Much of what they describe, while conflict-laden and uncomfortable, doesn’t seem bad enough to have caused estrangement. The scenarios don’t appear to warrant a total cutoff. At least not according to the way I was raised. I hear that phrase a lot, too.
Most of the parents I talk to are boomers, who share similar values and beliefs, including thoughts on how parents should be treated. The similarities I’ve seen in stories about how they lost contact with their children created a new direction for my research — our culture.
Specifically, I have directed my focus to the rise of narcissism among younger people. The topic is hot right now.
The book, The Narcissist Next Door, was released just last month by Jeffrey Kluger, science editor of Time magazine. Kluger writes: “Parents spend a lot of time ensuring their children have high self-esteem. You need a healthy ego to climb to the top of your profession. But when does self-regard become narcissism?”
Narcissism has been long been associated with the notion of entitlement, which typically suggests a lack of empathy, a feeling of superiority and a tendency to overreact to criticism.
So I wonder.
Children At The Center, Adults On The Outs
In previous generations, no one worried about a child’s self-esteem. In the past, elders’ experiences were valued and their children listened to them. Estrangement did happen, but it appeared to be reserved for parents cutting off a wayward child — the “black sheep” of the family.
After WWII, Dr. Benjamin Spock entered the scene as one of the first parenting experts trying to understand children's needs and talking about family dynamics. Spock gave parents what he considered the best recipes for a healthy happy child. He believed that parents should be more flexible and affectionate with their children and should treat them as individuals. Previous conventional wisdom had been that child-rearing should focus more on building discipline.
So maybe the seed of children cutting off their parents started with us. We boomers were the first generation with parents who were ultra-concerned about making sure their children had a “better” childhood than they had.
A common story among parents who have estranged adult children is how much they had focused on their children, how much they did to make sure their children had all the best advantages, made them the center of the family universe — and often how they treated them more like an equal or an adult than a child.
With more permissions, more social pressures and changes to the traditional family structure, I believe the shift in parenting that started back in the ‘40s needs to be examined.
Has a change in parenting style led to the rise of narcissism in subsequent generations over time, resulting in the ability of adult children to cut off their parents without much thought or concern for the consequences?
I believe that a culture of “self-esteem” — give everybody an award, change dress sizes so larger people feel smaller, allow teens to be disrespectful to those in authority — has set the tone and created a possible outcome I don’t think anyone expected: the idea that it’s OK to cut off contact with your parents.
When something, or more specifically, someone, no longer supports the view you have of yourself — get rid of them!
Problems Must Be Resolved
According to a survey of estranged people conducted through my website, out of 907 respondents, 82 percent of the adult children who are currently estranged from their parents acknowledged their parents’ past efforts to provide for them, but only 58 percent of those respondents report having any desire to have a relationship with the parent they are estranged from.
At the same time, 76 percent of the adult children say that being estranged has affected their well-being (even though it appears to have been their choice).
My sons consistently refuse to reply to my emails and let my calls go to voicemail, or barely speak if they do answer. They accuse me of being a terrible person, but won’t elaborate about exactly what I’ve done. Well, sometimes they do, but it doesn’t make sense, at least to me. For example, it’s hard to be part of the birth of my grandchild if I didn’t know that I was going to have one!
All this started because of a personal email they felt entitled to read on my computer.
If they are like the adult children who responded to my site’s survey, they are probably suffering, as I am.
Relationships might feel better when there is no contact. But, as Dr. Murray Bowen, credited with the most original new thinking about family systems since Freud and who coined the phrase “emotional cutoff” observed, the problems are just tucked away through estrangement, they are not resolved.
The only way to move forward is to get to resolution. To talk. To find common ground. To forgive.
Elizabeth Vagnoni's career in advertising let her work on campaigns like AT&T's Reach Out and Touch Someone and DeBeers' Diamonds Are Forever. Now, she's teaching and writing about estrangement, while trying to bring peace and hope to those who have experienced this loss.
http://jezebel.com/clueless-mom-doesnt-get-why-her-kids-hate-her-1679546713 -
Brazen Mom Bills a 5-Year-Old for Missing Her Son's Birthday Party
By Jay Hathaway
A five-year-old U.K. kid who missed a friend's birthday party at a ski and snowboard slope over Christmas break received a bill for $24 from the birthday boy's family. The invoice was slipped into Alex Nash's backpack at nursery school and brought home to his parents, who couldn't believe it wasn't a joke.
But Alex's dad, Derek Nash, confronted the birthday boy's mom and found out she was serious about charging him a £16 "no-show fee" based on a conversation they'd had before the holidays.
"She saw me and asked if Alex was coming to the party. At this time I agreed and said that Alex was looking forward to it," he told the Plymouth Herald.
But Alex's plans changed, and he ended up spending the day with his grandparents instead. Nash said he didn't have contact info for the birthday boy's parents, so he wasn't able to call and let them know.
"My partner looked out for [the friend's mother] to apologize for Alex not showing up to the party, but didn't see her" at school, Nash said.
And then the bill for a "child's party no-show fee" arrived home with Alex, stuffed in a brown envelope:
Brazen Mom Bills a 5-Year-Old for Missing Her Son's Birthday Party
After talking to Alex's teacher, who apologized for passing on the bill even though it's against school policy, Nash went to the address on the form to confront the angry mom over, again, roughly $24.
He told her that he was sorry about the cost of Alex not showing up, but he wouldn't be paying the money because of the ridiculous way she decided to ask for it.
After he left, the petty, passive-aggressive fighting over an ultimately trivial amount of money continued on Facebook—the Herald ran the whole conversation, which is embarrassing for everyone involved.
"I don't like fighting with people," wrote the mom who billed someone for no-showing to a child's birthday party. "This is not the first time Alex has not turned up to a party that he has been invited to, either ... the amicable way round this I believe would be to pay me the money and let a lesson be learnt."
"Like I said before, no money was mentioned when we spoke ... I am not a child, so please do not speak to me like I am one," Alex's mom replied.
Now the Nashes claim the other mom is threatening to take them to small claims court, a process that costs more than the paltry amount of money they allegedly owe her. It's the principle of the thing, I guess?
A lesson has been learned in this situation. Unfortunately, it's a stupid lesson, and it's the kids who've learned it from their bickering parents: Alex says his friend will no longer play with him at school.
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Report: Hillary Clinton Only Used Personal Email as Secretary of State
By Hudson huongo
According to a report published by The New York Times Monday night, Hillary Clinton exclusively used personal email while acting as Secretary of State, a possible violation of federal record-keeping laws.
The newspaper says Clinton never had a government email address during the four years she served as head of the State Department and aides made no attempt to archive her emails as required by the Federal Records Act, behavior experts found troubling.
"It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario—short of nuclear winter—where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business," said the National Archives' former Director of Litigation, Jason R. Baron.
A Clinton spokesperson told the Times that the former Secretary of State followed the "letter and spirit of the rules" in her use of email. However, the paper notes that Clinton's official emails were given to the State Department just two months ago, selected from tens of thousands of personal emails by Clinton advisors. -
NY's Rats and Fleas Could Bring Back the Plague, Party Like It's 1346
Mark Shrayber
In order for the plague to come back full force and ? all of us with festering boils, three things are needed: A carrier, a transmitter and a pathogen. It may be too early to panic, but a new study reveals that New York City has two of the three components necessary to make a really good Criminal Minds episode.
The study, published in The Medical Journal of Entomology looked at what the parasites living on the bodies of rats have been doing lately and is the first of its kind since the 1920s, according to Newsweek. Researchers found lots of different bugs all over NYC's rats, but the one that is most concerning is the Oriental rat flea, which can carry and transmit the plague, typhus and other bacterial infections.
From Newsweek:
Researchers collected more than 100 rats from five locations throughout Manhattan. Most of the Oriental rat fleas came from specimens found in a single residential building, in an unspecified area of the city.
But many of these rats from this one location were teeming with the fleas. When [Matt] Frye killed the rats and went to comb the parasites out, "they were pouring off the dead rodent," he says.
Pouring off. What a beautiful and not-at-all-terrifying way to describe the mass exodus of disease-carrying fleas off a freshly dead rodent. Good thing there's currently no pathogen, which is the third component needed to bring Europe 1346-53 to the future!
But, again, don't worry about the plague. The Oriental rat flea is globalized, so you'd likely find it in lots of places. Worry about this instead:
A study in October, involving some of the same scientists behind this research, found 18 previously unknown viruses in New York City rats, some of which are very similar genetically to variants known to infect people. -
Man Who Burned Face Praying Over Sizzling Fajitas Can't Sue Applebee's
By Taylor Berman
On Wednesday, an appellate court ruled that a man who burned his face while praying over a plate of fajitas could not sue the New Jersey Applebee's where the face-burning reportedly took place.
The Courier-Post reports that Hiram Jimenez seared his face at the Westampton, N.J., chain restaurant in March 2010 after he bowed his head over the table—on which a plate of hot meat had just been placed—to pray. According to court documents, Jimenez heard "a loud sizzling noise, followed by 'a pop noise' and then felt a burning sensation in his left eye and on his face."
Jimenez claimed he suffered "serious and permanent" injuries "solely as a result of (Applebee's) negligence when he came in contact with a dangerous and hazardous condition, specifically, 'a plate of hot food'."
A trial judge disagreed, as did a two-judge panel who heard Jimenez's appeal of the initial ruling.
The restaurant, the ruling stated, did not need to warn Jimenez "against a danger that is open and obvious."
"A danger that is open and obvious" is a good way to describe most food at Applebee's. Be careful praying there. -
http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/take-the-intelligence-test-that-thomas-edison-gave-to-j-1689489019
Questions
1. What countries bound France?
2. What city and country produce the finest china?
3. Where is the River Volga?
4. What is the finest cotton grown?
5. What country consumed the most tea before the war?
6. What city in the United States leads in making laundry machines?
7. What city is the fur centre of the United States?
8. What country is the greatest textile producer?
9. Is Australia greater than Greenland in area?
10. Where is Copenhagen?
11. Where is Spitzbergen?
12. In what country other than Australia are kangaroos found?
13. What telescope is the largest in the world?
14. Who was Bessemer and what did he do?
15. How many states in the Union?
16. Where do we get prunes from?
17. Who was Paul Revere?
18. Who was John Hancock?
19. Who was Plutarch?
20. Who was Hannibal?
21. Who was Danton?
22. Who was Solon?
23. Who was Francis Marion?
24. Who was Leonidas?
25. Where did we get Louisiana from?
26. Who was Pizarro?
27. Who was Bolivar?
28. What war material did Chile export to the Allies during the war?
29. Where does most of the coffee come from?
30. Where is Korea?
31. Where is Manchuria?
32. Where was Napoleon born?
33. What is the highest rise of TIDE on the North American Coast?
34. Who invented logarithms?
35. Who was the Emperor of Mexico when Cortez landed?
36. Where is the Imperial Valley and what is it noted for?
37. What and where is the Sargasso Sea?
38. What is the greatest known depth of the ocean?
39. What is the name of a large inland body of water that has no outlet?
40. What is the capital of Pennsylvania?
41. What state is the largest? Next?
42. Rhode Island is the smallest state. What is the next and the next?
43. How far is it from New York to Buffalo?
44. How far is it from New York to San Francisco?
45. How far is it from New York to Liverpool?
46. Of what state is Helena the capital?
47. Of what state is Tallahassee the capital?
48. What state has the largest copper mines?
49. What state has the largest amethyst mines?
50. What is the name of a famous violin maker?
51. Who invented the modern paper-making machine?
52. Who invented the typesetting machine?
53. Who invented printing?
54. How is leather tanned?
55. What is artificial silk made from?
56. What is a caisson?
57. What is shellac?
58. What is celluloid made from?
59. What causes the TIDES?
60. To what is the change of the seasons due?
61. What is coke?
62. From what part of the North Atlantic do we get codfish?
63. Who reached the South Pole?
64. What is a monsoon?
65. Where is the Magdalena Bay?
66. From where do we import figs?
67. From where do we get dates?
68. Where do we get our domestic sardines?
69. What is the longest railroad in the world?
The Trans-Siberian.
70. Where is Kenosha?
71. What is the speed of sound?
72. What is the speed of light?
73. Who was Cleopatra and how did she die?
74. Where are condors found?
75, Who discovered the law of gravitation?
76. What is the distance between the earth and sun?
77. Who invented photography?
78. What country produces the most wool?
79. What is felt?
80. What cereal is used in all parts of the world?
81. What states produce phosphates?
82. Why is cast iron called pig iron?
83. Name three principal acids?
84. Name three powerful poisons.
85. Who discovered radium?
86. Who discovered the X-ray?
87. Name three principal alkalis.
88. What part of Germany do toys come from?
89. What States bound West Virginia?
90. Where do we get peanuts from?
91. What is the capital of ALABAMA?
92. Who composed "Il Trovatore"?
93. What is the weight of air in a room 20 by 30 by 10?
94. Where is platinum found?
95. With what metal is platinum associated when found?
96. How is sulphuric acid made?
97. Where do we get sulphur from?
98. Who discovered how to vulcanize rubber?
99. Where do we import rubber from?
100. What is vulcanite and how is it made?
101. Who invented the cotton gin?
102. What is the price of 12 grains of gold?
103. What is the difference between anthracite and bituminous coal?
104. Where do we get benzol from?
105. Of what is glass made?
106. How is window glass made?
107. What is porcelain?
108. What country makes the best optical lenses and what city?
109. What kind of a machine is used to cut the facets of diamonds?
110. What is a foot pound?
111. Where do we get borax from?
112. Where is the Assuan Dam?
113. What star is it that has been recently measured and found to be of enormous size?
114. What large river in the United States flows from south to north?
115. What are the Straits of Messina?
116. What is the highest mountain in the world?
117. Where do we import cork from?
118. Where is the St. Gothard tunnel?
119. What is the Taj Mahal?
120. Where is Labrador?
121. Who wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner"?
122. Who wrote "Home, Sweet Home"?
123. Who was Martin Luther?
124. What is the chief acid in vinegar?
125. Who wrote "Don Quixote"?
126. Who wrote "Les Miserables"?
127. What place is the greatest distance below sea level?
128. What are axe handles made of?
129. Who made "The Thinker"?
130. Why is a Fahrenheit thermometer called Fahrenheit?
131. Who owned and ran the New York Herald for a long time?
132. What is copra?
133. What insect carries malaria?
134. Who discovered the Pacific Ocean?
135. What country has the largest output of nickel in the world?
136. What ingredients are in the best white paint?
137. What is glucose and how made?
138. In what part of the world does it never rain?
139. What was the approximate population of England, France, Germany and Russia before the war?
140. Where is the city of Mecca?
141. Where do we get quicksilver from?
142. Of what are violin strings made?
143. What city on the Atlantic seaboard is the greatest pottery centre?
144. Who is called the "father of railroads" in the United States?
145. What is the heaviest kind of wood?
146. What is the lightest wood? -
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Reports: Man Shot and Killed by NYPD at East Village Halfway House
By Brendan O'Connor
NYPD officers shot and killed a man as they tried to arrest him Saturday afternoon at a halfway house in the East Village, the New York Post reports. Police said the man was wanted on a robbery charge.
According to the Post, detectives from the 26th Precinct, in Harlem, tried to arrest Felix David, 24, at a facility for pyschiatric patients on East 6th Street between Avenues A and B.
Witnesses reported hearing a single gunshot come from inside 538 East 6th Street. “I think there was a scuffle and then the single shot. I heard that. Other people who happened to be right there said they heard a scuffle,” one told EV Grieve.
David grabbed one of the detectives radios and hit another detective over the head, the New York Daily News reports. One of the detectives shot David in the chest, and he was taken to Beth Israel Hospital in critical condition, where he died.
The detectives were taken to Bellevue Hospital. Their injuries, the Post reports, are not considered serious.
http://gawker.com/reports-man-shot-and-killed-by-nypd-at-east-village-ha-1700188674 -
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You Can Now Major in Pizza at A University in ManchesterManchester
December 4, 2015 at 5:07 pm
Written by Sienna Hill
Still deciding on your college major or thinking of going back to school? You can now fulfill your childhood dreams of becoming a pizza GAWD by majoring in pizza. Yes, pizza.
Manchester Metropolitan University is partnering with Pizza Hut to create 1,500 apprenticeships to those that hope to take their pizza obsession to the next level.
The program, which is expected to run over the next five years, will give students hands-on experience both inside the classroom and in the kitchen. Eager students will have the opportunity to learn all about pizza production as well as get experience in financial analysis.
According to Pizza Hut, the program will “equip [candidates] with skills for life, not just for working in a restaurant.” If we’re honest, making a dope pizza for your prospective employer would probably guarantee you the job anyways (or we’d like to think so).
Kathryn Austin, director of HR and marketing at Pizza Hut Restaurants, explains, “Over the next few years, we will work hard to provide our apprentices and team members with the best training and development so that we can equip them with skills for life, not just for working in a restaurant.”
Fingers crossed this program will make its way overseas into the United States. Imagine field trips to study the art of New York and Chicago-style pizza. Now that’s what we call education. -
On a budget? Still over-spending? Trying to figure out the best way to organize your money and spend wisely?
All it takes is setting up a simple system.
Grandma's way to handle money still works. People used to always use cash envelopes to control their monthly spending, but very few do in today's card-swiping culture. The envelope system is a key component of the Total Money Makeover plan because it works. Here are a few simple basics for starting a cash envelope system:
Budget each paycheck.
Budget is a ? word to most people, but you must budget down to the last dime if you're going to successfully implement the envelope system.
Divide and conquer.
Of course, there will be budget items that you cannot include in your envelope system, like bills paid by check or automatic withdraw. However, you can create categories like food, gas, clothing and entertainment.
Fill 'er Up.
After you've categorized your cash expenses, fill each envelope with the money allotted for it in your budget. For example, if you allow $100 for clothing, put $100 in cash in your clothing envelope for the month.
When it's gone, it's gone.
Once you've spent all the money in a given envelope, you're done spending for that category. If you go on a shopping spree and spend the $100 in your clothing envelope, you can't spend any more on clothes until you budget for that category again. That means no visits to the ATM to withdraw more money!
Don't be tempted.
While debit cards can't get you directly into debt, if used carelessly, they can cause you to over-spend. There's something psychological about spending cash that hurts more than swiping a piece of plastic. If spending cash whenever possible can become a habit, you'll be less likely to over-spend or buy on impulse.
Give it time.
It will take a few months to perfect your envelope system. Don't give up after a month or two if it's not clicking. You'll get the hang of it and see how beneficial the envelope system is as you dump debt, build wealth, and achieve financial peace! See ... simple!
Certainly, some bills may come in at different times of the month, so you'll need to adjust your written game plan to take it one step further. You need to plan the budget based upon your pay periods.
Say that you get paid twice a month. If you can write down which bills you plan on paying from each paycheck, you will not be left with a surprise bill. Spend each month's income and each individual paycheck on paper before it comes in.
Have some fun!
There's also no problem in adding for "blow money"—money to have a little fun with! As long as you and your spouse have agreed on it, you are fine. There should be no lying. Agree on your budget, agree on your fun money, and be open. Fun money can be anything you want it to be. There are no rules on that envelope, unlike money in the "entertainment" envelope that is used specifically for entertainment.
Start now! Get on a plan and organize your cash with a wide range of envelope systems.
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PSA: Take Your ? Lunch Break
Tracy Moore
There are two kinds of people who don’t take their lunch breaks: Martyrs and ? . Martyrs work through lunch so everyone can see how hard working and devoted they are. ? are either lucky enough to love what they do so much that they simply want to keep working, relaxation be damned, or are people who are too inexperienced or weak willed to use the time. You’re all stupid: Take your ? lunch break.
OK, OK, to be fair—if you’re not taking your break, it’s probably not your fault. Lunch has always been a slapdash affair since it took hold around the turn of the century. It’s an urban invention built around the fact that if you’re at work, you gotta eat, so make it as quick as possible and get back to it so you can stop losing the boss money.
What’s silly about it is that more than a century after its introduction, we work longer hours than ever, but fewer people take those breaks. Recent research found that only 1 in 5 people leave their desk or the office for a lunch break. NPR looked at the consequences of this practice, and it’s exactly what you’d guess: Sitting in one place all day long is bad for you—bad for thinking, bad for creativity, bad for productivity, bad for your body.
And here’s the thing: You don’t even have to eat during this break! Just take the ? break! As workplace psychologist Kimberly Elsbach told NPR: “You just need to get out. And it doesn’t have to be between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. to have a positive impact. It can be just going outside and taking a walk around the block. That in itself is really restorative.”
What’s wrong with us? Aren’t we hungry? Aren’t we tired? Don’t we just need to step out and grab a bite and look around for FIVE SECONDS and get some sun or fresh air before going back in, noses to the grindstone? Why are we so happy to deprive ourselves of this simple, everyday pleasure?
There are a handful of factors, according to NPR. We work longer, and more nonstandard hours, so there’s not common time anymore for everyone to hit the lunch counter. There’s a feeling that you’re supposed to be “forever available” at work now, too, which leads to a lot of desk eating.
And that feeling, more often than not, is vibes—the people at your work who make you feel like ? for doing it. Let’s examine that for a second, because I’m willing to be that once you take out martyrs, lucky ? , and the fearful, what you have left are either colleagues or managers, typically both, who just make you feel guilty for taking a break, who never take one themselves, who create a culture of not taking lunch that then becomes standard, or worse, rewarded.
Barring the last handful of years of my working life, that experience was the norm for me. The first half of my working life, I worked service industry and fast food jobs where a half hour break and two 10s were the standard. When I finished college and got a professional, salaried job that required a degree, I was ecstatic to finally land that hour long break I’d dreamed about—hell, I might even browse a magazine.
Instead I made the mistake of going into an industry with a salaried job at a corporation but where employees were treated like shift workers (hint to English or journo majors: Never go into the press release copy editing biz). Lunch was something you were “entitled” to and told to take but somehow still never got. And the worst part of it all was that it was only a half hour.
There is perhaps nothing more insulting in the working world than a half-hour lunch break at a professional job. By the time you order something at the downstairs cafe and find a seat, and are served the greasy turkey and swiss croissant, you have approximately 12 minutes to inhale it and get back to your desk.
It was, of course, exacerbated by this bizarre martyr culture fed by everyone. There was always more to be done! The work piled up! There were crazy deadlines! No one else could do it! Look at me, working so hard I don’t even need to eat!
The company rewarded this thinking with performance bonuses and free pizza and other things that made it clear that the standard of excellence was never taking your lunch break. Everyone bought into it and suffered horribly. We all gained weight, and twentysomethings were routinely diagnosed with ulcers and various migraines, back problems, hemorrhoids and other ailments usually befalling older workers.
I wanted to complain! I did complain! But the standard had been set, and not going along meant you were lazy. It was my first job out of college and I did what I was told.
Eventually I escaped that industry, and have never looked back, instead moving into jobs where I was treated like an actual adult who required sustenance to continue producing. Lunch is now what it should be—maybe just a few minutes when I’m busy, but maybe longer when I’m not. But that’s not really the point: It’s getting a break when I need the break.
So start Monday. Go today. Take your ? lunch break. Don’t sweat it. Don’t feel guilty. If anyone gives you guff, ignore it. And trust that although it can feel like the only office-approved way to look productive, it will burn you in the end. Plus, the office will get by just fine without you. As Spatola wrote at HuffPo: “The world will not end because you ate a salad outside.”
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http://lifehacker.com/six-basic-personal-finance-facts-people-constantly-get-1753499820
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/six-basic-personal-finance-facts-people-should-know-and-constantly-get-wrong/
Quite often, the “facts” that people tout when it comes to personal finance aren’t quite facts at all. Sometimes they’re just opinions stated with authority, or they’re based on incorrect information or assumptions. Is it any wonder there’s so much confusion when many finance principles are counter-intuitive?
This post originally appeared on The Simple Dollar.
I get a pretty healthy number of questions from readers each week (usually by my personal Facebook page), many of which find their way into the weekly “reader mailbag” article.
While most of the questions are pretty interesting, I do find a lot of patterns in the questions that people ask me. I see a lot of people who struggle with a mountain of student loan and credit card debt in the early years of their professional lives for example, a situation that really hits home for me.
Another thing that I see regularly is questions from people confused by some aspect of personal finance because they have one fundamental fact or another about the situation completely wrong.I’ll give you an example: perhaps once a month, I’ll get an angry message from someone telling me that I’m selling snake oil by telling people to earn a little more money in their spare time and that I need to tell people to keep their income low to avoid all of their money being taken by taxes.
What rubbish.
Here are six key financial facts that people consistently get wrong. They use these facts as assumptions not only for questions that they ask me, but for how they behave in everyday life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9fI5M6_XVk
https://youtu.be/bBD_LTPjYVQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUtEeWPW37c