That didn’t take me long to screw up and miss a day with writing here. It’s been  what – a week, if that since I started to count the days on how to get out of debt in 1000 days.  I have an excuse though:

I took a day off

One reason I avoid the day job like the plague is the lack of freedom. Frankly, I don’t know how you folks that do the 9-5 do it. I know it’s all time management and when I go the grocery store on the odd Saturday I understand  how you guys get things done. All of you  are at the grocery store with me, or so it seems. Now, I’m not dissing you 9-5′ers, it’s just that I’ve never had the pleasure of that experience. I’ve been gainfully employed a few times in this lifetime, so it’s not the work that’s foreign to me, but rather the schedule. I’m used  to working nights or afternoons but never days. One of the benefits of working for yourself  is you can take a day off and go ride your motorbike, which is what I did.  And  while I was thinking and riding  I realized motorcycling is one of the more cost efficient hobbies to have if you do it right.

If you buy a new motorcycle and are making payments because you had to have the new bike this doesn’t apply to you but for most others, a used motorcycle is pretty good value. I bought my 88 Suzuki in 1992 for $2500. I have had it for 18 years this summer.  I could sell it tomorrow for $1000, maybe a bit more but I could realize  one grand for it I think fairly easily. That means it has cost me less than $100 a year to own the motorcycle. I have had no real big dollar repairs to it , a new tune up in the spring and I just replaced seven year old tires on for all of $300. Including gas, insurance , depreciation and the whole nine yards, that’s not too bad a cost for a whole lot of fun over the years.

Now, like any hobby you can choose  to spend a lot, or  do it on the cheap –  but I was out last night with friends and save for $10 for  some cheap chinese food and maybe ten dollars in gas I sure had a whole lot of fun.   I didn’t need to go out and spend $100 on some tourist trap or expensive hotel . I went out, had some good food with good friends and had a wonderfully warm motorbike ride home in the middle of  july when the air is so thick that even at night you could taste it. All this to say,  over the years I’ve had a lot  of fun on that bike, and the expense was ten bucks of gas and a large black coffee at the coffee sh0p.

Today’s takeaway: Good fun does not have to be expensive. And it’s nice to be outside. When you’re in debt or have any worries at all about money I find it’s easy to let the worries consume you and your day. But life is just fine without money. My friends and family like me for me, not my net worth. Yes, one should strive for debt freedom and live frugal, make more – spend less and so on. But that doesn’t mean you can’t go for a walk and spring for an ice cream cone on a hot summer night. It’s all about balance. Save on the stuff that’s not important so you can spend on what is important. That’s really all there is to personal finance.

End of the week update

About a week ago I  started my 100 hubpage challenge as it’s an easy way to write for the web. You don’t have to set up individual websites and  I think it’s a great way to stretch your mind and learn about new topics. There’s also a chance you’ll make a buck or  two along the way too.

I have written 22 hubs so far on a variety of topics, so I’m  about  a quarter of the way through. What I’ve found is it takes a week or two or even  more to get any search traffic to them and I haven’t seen any income from them yet either, and that’s OK. This all takes time to happen I don’t expect writing 20 articles for a website and retire. But it’s a good way to test some stuff and get some data back so you can figure out what topics are more popular than others. So I’m right about on schedule for getting the 100 up in a month. By the time I get the last article written, I should see some hits and traffic to the older 22 articles I did get done this week.  At least, that’s the plan. But even if I fail specatacular at this it will be  a lesson learned.

Until next time..

Welcome to Day 245.  I  had to stop and sit down when I realized I have been fighting this debt freedom fight for 245 days.  In just another 100 days I will have had this site for  one  year and  although some progress has been  made I  want  to make more and I think that recording the days might help me pull up my socks a bit.

The good news is I still have 755 days to redeem myself and get out of  debt

I have come a long way and I have a lot more focus on the debt freedom plan, or should I say I still have focus. Who knows if I work hard enough I can be out of debt in 1000 days and I’ve got 3/4 of the time to do that.

So now that we have this wee bit of administrivia out of the way, I want to talk a bit about coupons. I’m a coupon convert. Or I’m becoming one anyway. slowly.

Folks, this is FREE money.. You’re going to spend the money anyway and you need the toothpaste or shampoo anyway, so you might as well save some money. The manufacturers are paying you to buy the stuff you need  it makes sense to try  it and  see. And even if you don’t want to use coupons at very least get to know what stuff costs.  After a while you get to realize that raspberries at 5 bucks for about a dozen is not that great of a deal, but three boxes for four bucks might be a better  bargain.

Managing your  debt all comes down to education, and what the market is. Let’s use real estate for an example. If you just move to town, and have no idea on the better neighbourhoods are, you might think that the price alone on a house would be the best bargain. But if you wake up to drunks on your driveway and your car broken into every morning than your cheap house might not be such  a deal. The same goes with anything you are in the market to buy, steaks or houses it doesn’t matter.

Saving money  on anything whether it’s groceries or gardening equipment becomes a lot easier if you are a smart shopper and spend the time to research. And that’s all using coupons really is – is a bit of research. You can do as little as check the weekly flyers to just get a feel on the groceries and the pricing or you can go all out and clip coupons and organize and alphabetize.Whatever works, is fine. As long as you save money and you’re comfortable with your savings.

It’s no sense being debt free if you’re miserable  with the life to get there. It’s easy to read and preach about how if you live poorly now you will rejoice later when you’re debt free. But if you would rather put a gun to your head than clip just one coupon than don’t clip coupons. But find what works for you, and do it.  If you find that you can live on a dollar a day that’s great do it. But if you find that $100 a day is more your style but it will take you a bit longer to get out of debt, that’s OK too.

Personal  finance is personal and everybody’s story and comfort level with frugality is different, but there’s no harm in at least trying some frugal stuff to see if you like it. I don’t know that I will become a coupon expert but I do know that if I need something I will look for it on sale before I buy it or see if there’s a coupon readily available.

And if you shop online searching for coupons online should be your default strategy. How much effort does it take to search for a product  in a search engine and  type the word coupons and see what comes up.  You are just spending money needlessly  if you don’t do the research to find the best deal you can.

And that’s all the use of coupons is: It allows you to get the best deal on the best stuff available today. For less.

Two Hours.

That’s what it took me today to bang out  five articles today for my 100 hubpage challenge. At this rate I will have 100 articles written about three weeks from now and  the first ones I have written today should start to see some traction as they have time to age.  This is going to work, I can feel it.  That graph I shared yesterday is for an oddball product too and it’s far from popular and the topics I have chose should be relatively easy to  get some people’s eyeballs to.

And this is all it is. I’ve been studying and testing and trying this and trying that and spinning my wheels but all I really need to do : apply myself to this little  project.  You don’t track the money, you track the effort and the money will come. Ater a while you have  some data from your efforts. Thats’ what I love about  this online stuff is that in a lot of ways, it’s just math and time. Throw some mud at the wall and figure out what sticks  and do more of that. Along the way you find more stuff that makes climbing the mountain easier and easier over time.

And that’s why I don’t want to give up on this and the debt freedom challenge. Because I know I can do this.  Yes, there’s going to be disappointments along the way, but if  I keep on keepin on… I’ll win  :)

I used to think that the one with  the most toys wins, but that’s no winner. That’s  a guy with a lot of maintenance and storage costs. My new motto is the one  with the most experiences wins and this debt reduction plan of mine is just one of many stories to tell.

I’m tempted to start counting the days as I’m finding that if I write stuff down and make a list it gets done.  If it’s in my head? ya, no so much. I’ll have to research when I started this site and figure out where I am . I know there’s time  left  - about two more years to apply myself and make more money to pay off the debt.

All in all a pretty good day. I’ve yet to add it up but I think through various sources today might have been a $50 or so day, which is a welcome change from the .32 cent  day the other day . It’s still early days and the earnings can change that much from day  to day. But the trick is to count the work and the average on the work  over time. But I have to tell ya, it is disappointing on those .32 cent days. But if I can average $1 per month for each published article somewhere, then I only have 2,995 articles  to  go to earn $100 a day. Sound Crazy?  Maybe, but  that’s half the fun.

This is my 145th post.

Let’s assume  an average of 400 words per, and that’s 58,000 words written here on this website about getting out of debt.

Want to know how many people read all this awesomeness yesterday? just 17

That’s not exactly a positive ROI, is it? That’s a whole lot of time spent for very few people and I tempted to give up on this site as there’s been days when  I write about haircuts or my dentist appointment or some other mundane sillyness. I could argue that it’s only been six months, that all this takes time, I’ve chosen the  most competitive niche to compete in and so on and so forth.

Now it is true that  when i started this site I never imagined that getting out of debt or helping others get out of debt  would be so profitable,  but it is. And see those ads over there to the right? I’m bound by the terms and conditions of the Google Ads program to share what I make per click but let me tell you it’s a lot more than what I’d get if I were selling kitty litter boxes (actually pets is another tricky niche to compete)

So here’s what I’ve been thinking:  I don’t do a very good job at the daily updates, because day to day, the debt doesn’t change much if at all. In fact, it probably goes up due to interest (sigh). and because  there’s nothing to tell daily, I have decided to back off a bit in the posting of updates, unless there’s some news or something I want to share.

One of my focuses these past few months have been to get a few other websites up and running, and even thought it’s only July, the back to school and holiday season is around the corner and the more traffic I can get  for some sites I have that are starting to show some promise now in July, I will have a much better chance of making more money and getting out of debt sooner.

But this doesn’t mean I’ve given up on this site, I just wanted to share that the update schedule will be when there’s either news, or  I’ve found something to write about that will bring more traffic.

And speaking of traffic, others sites will tell you different but I have found, and proven that you can build it, but they won’t come. (see above, about 145 posts and 17 visitors).  But if you build it a bit, and then promote it  some, or even a lot, not only will they come, but they will come back and they will click ads, buy my ebook for only $97, or  whatever other way I find to squeeze money out of.

I also want to use this site as a test to try some promotional techniques. It’s really simple this website stuff. Make ONE page, and then promote it until you get some traffic  to it. It didn’t take me a whole heck of a lot of effort to be the kitty litter king. All I had to do was write the article. And as there was ZERO competition, a few weeks later I start to sees some traffic for this word. Not a lot, but as I’ve proven people search for kitty litter boxes and end up here.

But what I’d like to do is have them  end up here for the terms get out of debt, and debt reduction, or find a job or get a job to get out of debt. You get the idea something that sees more than 17 a day and maybe a few clicks or dollars made along the way.

So. All this to say: see you around. The new schedule is that there’s no schedule. I think by doing this, I can spend more time promoting better content that will actually have value and not just  my news on my latest haircuts.

Speaking of which: I’m still tracking my grocery spending. It’s only halfway through, but it’ll be interestting to see the month end numbers. I’m WAY down on latte spending this way. Because if I buy a latte, I have to write it down and report  it.