I decided to get back into the housing market, and today I made an offer on a home and it was accepted!! Now I have the inspection, appraisal, and a whole lot of paper work to get through.

I've checked out of the world of blogging recently - mainly reading Clarissa, the Grumpies, and Mutant Supermodel. Also some Brave New Life and Mr. Money Mustache. Clarissa has mentioned several times that being in the habit of writing is really important, and I am feeling that habit slipping away.

With the new commitment, assuming all goes well, I think this blog will be more important than ever for helping me keep my finances under control. I have a lease that doesn't expire until July, although my landlord is going to try to get someone to take over my lease before then, so for about 5 months I'll be paying the mortgage and rent. I have enough to cover it, but it'll still probably stress me out to have to pay so much each month.

Alright, off to fill out some paperwork.

Of course, the longer I put off paying this pledge, the more guilty I feel, and the more I owe at once. I think I just need to decide on an amount that I think I can afford this year, and tell myself its an unavoidable expense. Maybe an unavoidable expense that I don't need to pay until... say... July?

By the way, busy season is not a good time for budgeting. I end up being owed thousands in reimbursements at the end of each month, and it's tougher to keep track of with all of the traveling. I think I will post budget updates again in March, when I'm not traveling anymore. I am out of town again next week, back for a week, and then gone for the rest of February. It'll be March in no time!

I've been spending time thinking deep thoughts recently instead of blogging - do I want to commit to making it at my firm? Do I want to switch firms and try to get a bump in salary in a year? Do I want to do a PhD?? That last one is a tough question, and probably deserves a whole post of its own.

Anyway, busy season is keeping me focused on just working - which is actually much more interesting and fun when there is so much to do! I'm glad I'm not a senior yet though, because they are already slammed and stressed out... ah, a bright future ahead of me, right?

The artist of Dinosaur Comics attributes a lot of his success to this factor. For those unfamiliar with the comic (I'm a big fan), the concept is that the comic uses the same exact visual layout, but different dialogue in each strip. The author posts a strip every weekday, and has more than 4 years of comics, which all manage to maintain originality and hilarity. However, it's a comic than many people find weird and different, and not at all what they're interested in.

Twenty five years ago, Dino Comics would probably have been a 'zine photocopied and distributed in local used book stores. The comic likely would not have been popular enough with mainstream readers to ever get syndicated in a newspaper. Thanks to the internet, those of us who do like this type of comic can easily access it, the author has access to as many fans as possible, and no one who dislikes it is forced to read it (by having it show up in their daily newspaper.)

As an avid consumer of words, I love the access the web gives me to other people who like to put their thoughts down in writing on their blogs. It assuages some of my yearning for a world where we would still write handwritten letters to each other - really putting some thought in before writing. E-mails are a great way to stay connected, but they are more like a quick phone call than a letter.

So, what has the web allowed you to do that would be unimaginable without the far-reaching tendrils of the internet? What would you like to use the web for more in the upcoming year?

I'd like to use the web more to connect with people this year. I was better at developing lasting relationships with people online when I was 14 and the internet was a place where I could share my (awful) poetry and art and be inspired by other people who were interested in those same things. I guess I was ahead of my time then, haha. But I would like to get involved in more communities of things that interest me, and learn from them. All I need is a little time to practice my hobbies in, once I've learned more about them online...

Did you get everything you hoped for under your tree this Christmas? My sister and I had similar ideas - I made and dried homemade pasta as gifts, and my sister made chocolate truffles for all of us! We used almost the exact same type of containers to present our gifts in too!

I gave my mother a book on setting up her new vegetable garden, which will used largely by me as I'm supposed to be in charge of the vegetables. The book says we should plant in "early spring." Does anyone know what counts as early spring? In Georgia, the weather can be lovely and spring-like as early as February. Usually by the time busy season is over in April, the weather is getting almost uncomfortably warm already. Hopefully I can steal a few Sundays to get some planting in.

Tomorrow is my last day of holiday/PTO until April. (We don't get any holidays and are not allowed to take PTO during busy season - except for illnesses and sick children, etc.) I'm dreading it a bit, but I think it'll be fun once busy season begins and I start getting into the swing of things.

Have you been planning out your New Year's resolutions yet, or are you waiting for the holiday daze to wear off first?

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/carodeanroaddesigns/

I've had a huge fight in the past with fellow college students who got upset with me for not driving them home when they were drunk (they had to walk the mile back to their dorm.) I know of other people who happily shepherd their group of drunk friends to wherever they need to go, but I just can't be bothered to hang out with people who can't figure out how to get themselves home.

Responsiblity for other people

Mostly, it seems this is a problem around drunk people, but at what point do you think you are responsible for taking care of your drunk friends, and at what point do they need to start thinking responsibly before they get drunk? The worst-case scenario I've heard of is a group of friends I made when I studied abroad. The previous semester, they had been friends with another American exchange student. They went to a party one night with her, but when it was time to leave, she refused to go with them. They talked and tried to convince her, but short of picking her up and shoving her in their car, they didn't think there was much else they could do. So they left her at the party and she ended up getting raped that night. I don't think that she blamed her friends, but they carried around a lot of guilt for that night. For not going back to the party after an hour, and seeing if she would leave then for example.

How far does your responsibility for drunk humans extend? How well do you need to know someone before you find yourself their appointed guardian for making sure that they get home in one piece?

The students that *do* learn in this format are the ones who are motivated to learn, and would be able to learn it on their own from a book without the lectures anyway. One argument presented in the segment is that this model was fine when only an elite few would attend college and could take it or leave it. Now, many people go to college, and as a nation we *need* those people to come out well-educated - we can't put up with a system that only educates a few of the people who pass through it.

You can listen to the segment here (Link at the bottom of the page)

Or: Read an article summarizing the discussion here

My own opinion on that point is that today the government is paying for many of these people to go to college, and if we're going to invest money in them, we should make sure they come out educated.

The segment covers some interactive techniques that supposedly work better. The main issue is that the classes can't cover as much material in a semester. Even if students really come out knowing more than if they just learned 10% of the full curriculum, this is an issue for majors with rigid accreditation requirements, like Engineering.

Learning about how people learn makes me really want to be a professor, but then hearing about how difficult it was for any professors to implement these techniques in their classroom was disheartening.

Do you think that people who aren't interested in learning aren't going to get it no matter what? Or do you think alternative teaching techniques can result in better-educated students graduating from our universities. What about applying these techniques at the high school level?

The other part that makes training week difficult to keep up with is having multiple social events related to the training (since we have people from our out of town offices in town for training.) Then you end up being out even later, and leaving more work to be done on the other days.

I guess my point is - this is going to be a busy Saturday for me. Guess it's busy season again already!

Six Motivators for Productivity

Whether you work for a large corporation, a mom and pop company or even at home in your pajamas, your success depends on your production. Getting the job done is vital, if you are the world’s greatest author (with all unfinished books) who knows?  Regularly slacking off and not completing assigned tasks from your boss will quickly earn you a trip to the unemployment line. Of course, staying motivated and on task is often a difficult thing, especially in an era where the distractions seem to multiple almost daily. I am admittedly a procrastinator, but even I have found some little tools and techniques to trick me into buckling down and breezing through my workload.  Here are some of my ideas.

Schedule your Time

Working for someone else, your supervisor will set your working hours, and likely tell you what to do. However, if you work from home, the work/home lines blur, whether you are telecommuting or a freelancer. Balance is vital, so you must set “working hours” just as if you were going to an office, and respect them. Set yourself up a quiet space to work, and let family and friends know you are working. Try not to tend to home matters during your scheduled time, and even more importantly, STOP when your allotted production hours are up! This may seem counter-intuitive, but you must make time for yourself and your family to be at your best. Keep in mind Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Do you really want to waste days on a project you could finish and submit in just hours?

Little Bites

Staring at a mountain of work can be daunting, and it can be difficult to realize where to start. In this situation, I always remember something an old supervisor used to say: You cannot eat an elephant in a day. You can take small regular bites out of that beast, though.

Having lots of work is an awesome thing, and completing it timely is what ensures continued work orders. I now make a master list of all of the projects I am currently working on, and their deadlines. Once I have that, I figure how much of each project needs done per day, and I make a loose schedule. If I have extra time when my daily goal is completed, I continue until my allotted time is up --and often surprise myself by getting two or three day’s work finished.  (Now I know I can also pick up some additional work.)

Set a Productive Mood

Much like candlelight and flowers sets a mood for romance, setting the mood for productivity encourages it. My desk is near the window so that I can see outside-which is vital to my well-being. Music is another thing I need to be at my best. I cannot be cold, or I am totally undone. You get the idea, right?  Set your environment up in whatever way is most comfortable and least distracting for you and you will get the most done.

Regular Breaks

Get up and walk away from your work regularly. Short, five-minute breaks to do a few stretches, grab a cup of coffee, or walk on your treadmill can do wonders for your productivity. Instead of banging your head on your desk, get up and clear it on a regular basis and you will find that your focus is much better. Just keep your breaks short and get back at it quickly. I usually will work steady for two hours, with just five minute breaks, and then take a half hour to walk the dogs, make a sandwich, or check out Facebook before getting back to it.

Time Yourself and Kill Distractions

The internet is a wonderful platform, but it is also a major time sucker. Games, celebrity gossip, news, Twitter, Facebook, and all the shopping sites are great for down time—but horrible when you are trying to work. Do yourself a favor and stay away from them altogether during the time you should be working. In fact, if you can work without getting online, so much the better.

One great way to be productive is to set a timer for 20 or 25 minutes and work feverishly through that time. When the alarm goes off, you take a break. Do this for just one full day, and I guarantee you will get more done than you have in ages.

A great little, free tool I have found is Strict Pomodoro, which is a Google Chrome extension.  Not only does it time your work and break sessions, you also set up sites to disable while you are working. Is Facebook a problem? Not anymore!

Check it off and Reward Yourself

Checking off my daily tasks gives me a sense of accomplishment, so I love using a task list to track things. I have even downloaded a task list app for my Smartphone that synchronizes with Google, so I have my list even on the go. I prioritize my list, with the top three to five most important things on top, and I mark those that are in drop dead time--- in other words, get ‘em done, now! When I complete all of the important tasks, plus any urgent ones, I reward myself with something… it can be as simple as watching a favorite comedy show on TV, grabbing a Klondike bar out of the freezer, or taking a nice long bubble bath. Even better, when I have a full week of good days, the husband and I go out for a nice romantic meal.

Those are my little tips, now how about you? How do you motivate yourself to be productive? What tools do you use to encourage you to get down to the nitty gritty?

Denise Gabbard is a writer and blogger. She writes about a wide range of topics—writing, social media, travel, even personal finance and topics like import car insurance.

I realized over the last two weeks, that the reasons audits are so much more stressful for me than tax returns are because there is much less of a filter between myself and the client. If I'm working on a tax return, at least two people above me review it before it ever gets handed off to the client. On an audit, this isn't feasible. There is constant back-and-forth with the client, us sending questions and templates, etc. Not all of this can be reviewed.

But, I'm going to make an effort to ask my senior/manager to review as much of this stuff as I can from now on. Especially when doing something for the first time (for example, determining materiality and then selecting a sample), while my senior and I might assume this is simple enough for me to get right, I've realized that when doing something BRAND NEW, it is very difficult for me to check my own work. My brain doesn't know what mistakes to watch out for.

So, I'm making a little resolution for work - even if my boss/senior/manager doesn't ask me to give them something to review before sending it on to the client, I'm going to send it to them to review anyway.

Also, every time I do something, I need to think about what questions I can ask to help me better understand what I'm doing!

Other things about busy season to keep in mind going forward:

• Don't pack multiple pairs of shoes. No one notices if you wear the same shoes for 4 days, and the extra pairs take up a lot of space in my suitcase.
• Don't pack multiple jackets. I packed my typical cold weather jacket, plus one that is not as warm, but looks nicer. I wore the one that looks nicer to the client, and I didn't have any opportunity/time to wear the other one.
• Not going to have time to blog in the hotel in the evening - need to write blog posts the Sunday before!

Have you ever made mistakes at work that you realized later you could easily have avoided by simply asking someone? What tips do you have about making mistakes?

I had been on the fence about whether I should invest more, or pay off my student loans faster. My student loan debt has an interest rate of 6.5% - high enough that I can't be sure that stock market gains will be higher, but still low enough that buying stocks could eventually pay off a higher amount.

The other problem with paying off debt is losing the ability to use that money.

If I paid only $185 to my student loans each month (the minimum payment), I could save the rest of my $1,000 ($815) and use those savings in a few years as a down payment on a house. After 12 months, I would have saved over $9,000, and could easily put 3.5% down (FHA requirement) on a lower-cost home here. Having $10,000 in student loan debt wouldn't really hurt my chances of getting a mortgage, since it's considered a "good" debt, and because it's not high enough to really worry the bank. Check out this article from Thousandaire here for a really good explanation of why paying off student loans isn't automatically the best option.

I would keep paying $185/month for the next 9 years, but I'd have a house and being paying that off over time.

Paying off my loan now is for emotional reasons. If my loan is paid off by next year, then I feel like I can really *start* feeling financially savvy then. How can I say my finances are in good shape when I've still got this big debt hanging around? I also won't have to think about the loan when making decisions about how to allocate my money.

What I will do when I'm Debt-Free!
(This portion of the post is part of my entry to the $500 Enemy of Debt competition, sponsored by Life Insurance Finder the life insurance comparison experts. If I win the $500 prize, it will go straight to the student loan balance.)

• Start saving in earnest for a 20% down payment on a home. The savings will go much more quickly when there are no student loan payments eating away at my cash flow.
• Visit my high school friends on a regular basis (they're a $300 plane ticket away.)
• Plan out some international vacations over the next few years
• Move apartments! (Well, that may happen before I'm debt free . . .)
• Well, let's not get overboard here, since I will also need to focus on saving for retirement!

What will you do when you're debt free, or what did being debt-free allow you to do?