Making It All Work – Getting Control: Engaging

This is the ninth entry in a twenty part series discussing the wonderful time and priority management book Making It All Work by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings through December 10.

Engaging?

To put it simply, the fifth (and final) element of positive engagement with your world is just that – actually doing stuff instead of planning. The question, though, is why this has to be mentioned at all. Isn’t the whole point of all of this to set us up to work more effectively?

I like looking at it this way. All of the collecting and organizing and reflecting serves one very specific purpose: it creates a situation so that at any given time, you have a good grasp on the things that are actually worthwhile and important to do. The question then becomes which of those important things you choose to do right at this moment.

Allen calls this a “next action.” On page 172:

The most common cause of a list becoming listless and unispiring is the lack of clarity about what to do about what’s on it.

Imagine you have a to-do list in front of you with twenty five items on it (something that’s a common occurrence for me). They’re items you’ve actually went through the process of determination with and have recognized each of them as being something important. How exactly do you determine which of those twenty five items should actually be done right now?

Allen’s first line of defense here is to make sure that your to-do list actually represents thought-out next actions. On page 174:

The best criteria to determine whether or not you’ve actually thought something through sifficiently to act upon it is how clearly you can answer these three questions:

+ What has to happen first?
+ What does doing look like?
+ Where does it happen?

In short, if you have something on your to-do list that doesn’t have immediate answers to these three questions, then your to-do (or “next action”) list has a problem.

What do you do if you find an item that doesn’t have immediate answers to these questions? You resolve them. Take the item completely off your to-do list and reprocess it. Make sure these three questions are resolved before you re-add an item to your list.

On my own to-do lists, I usually make a direct note of where the thing will happen, because I’ll often group things together by their location. Allen refers to this as “context,” and touches on it heavily on page 182:

There is never a moment at which you could do everything you’ve decided you need to do, simply because most of those actions require a specific tool or location. You have some tasks at your office and others at home, and unless they happen to be in the same place, you are limited in your choice by where you are.

A great example of this is the errands you have on a to-do list.

I live in central Iowa. I run some errands in Ames. I run other errands in Des Moines or a surrounding suburb. It makes sense, when I’m assembling a to-do list, to clearly mark “Ames errand” and “Des Moines errand” next to errands that occur in those areas so I can group them together easily and make only a single trip to Des Moines to take care of several things.

Another “context” I often use is “email.” For me, opening up my email is a gigantic black hole of time, so I often try to do it once a day (or twice a day at most). To make sure I remember to send key emails, I clearly note “email” next to items that require an email to be sent or replied to.

You can use whatever contexts you’d like. The idea is just to make it easy to group obviously related tasks together off of your big to-do list.

Another big question, of course, is how you set the priority of such a list full of items. How can you tell at a glance which one is the most important out of these important things? Allen addresses this on page 190:

Ultimately, you must trust a combination of your intelligence and your intuition. You’ll never be able to integrate enough information consciously and then apply to it some logical or mathematical formula whose results you will always trust implicitly.

In other words, you should just purely trust your intuition. I used to stress out over this part of it quite a bit, but I often find that if I just glance at my list, one particular item will stand out to me pretty quickly, so I do that (and possibly other items in the same context). Then I rinse and repeat.

In other words, the two big keys to having a successful to-do list (once you’ve actually processed everything you need to be doing) is to have very clear things to do (so you don’t have to think about them) and to trust your intuition once you have a list of these clear tasks. I find that it really works for me.

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Making It All Work – Getting Perspective

This is the eleventh entry in a twenty part series discussing the wonderful time and priority management book Making It All Work by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings through December 10.

For me, this is the exact point at which the book moved from an interesting rearrangement of the ideas in Getting Things Done to something on an entirely different level: a deep, critical look at life priorities and how they affect what you do on many different levels.

Why spend half of the book on effectively remaking Getting Things Done, then? Simply put, it’s foundational material for the rest. Without some sort of sensible system for keeping track of all of the things you have to do, you’re going to be spending most of your long-term focus on simply keeping tab on things without the space to really think deeply and figure out the larger directions in your life and how they connect with the day-to-day elements of your life.

In other words, Getting Things Done is akin to forming a strong foundation upon which you can conceive and build some of the great things in your life. Without it, you’re building on top of sand – all of it is inherently weakened because you don’t have control of the day-to-day in your life.

Allen looks at it from a somewhat different angle on page 200:

Let’s assume that, having read or listened to the first part of the book, you’ve gotten things under control. Now the question is: Where do you put your focus? The purpose of getting control in the first place is to be able to be clear of distraction. But why? And distraction from what?

In other words, when you’ve got a good grip on what needs to be done, the next step is to back off a bit and figure out, in a broader way, what actually needs to be done. That requires perspective and consistent reflection.

Allen spends a lot of this chapter looking at this issue through a very specific example: reading materials. We all have a lot of reading materials that we’d like to get to someday (I know I certainly do).

That accumulation of material in itself is a problem. It’s just a pile with no real priority within it. Which of these is actually the most important to read? Page 101:

What, of all the things you’ve captured that you think you ought to read, should you really be reading? Here comes the perspective part. Is there material in that stack that was interesting a while ago but has since lost its luster for you? Which of the reading is truly important for you?

When I consistently asked these questions of myself and of the books I had on my shelves, I came to some very fundamental conclusions about what I was doing wrong.

First, having a big shelf full of books that I’m not going to read anytime soon is a waste. Why have them? They’re sitting around taking up space and often distracting me from what I might actually want to read. If I want to have a big list of “someday” books, why not just have a big list of “someday” books instead of a big waste of space?

Second, the decision on what book to read next is often best made when I’ve finished a book and am selecting another one. Having a strict “queue” often resulted in frustration. I’d come to the next book that I had decided long ago would be the next one and I’d realize that my interest in that book had passed. I’d try to force myself through it, but then I’d burn completely out on it and get nothing out of the hours I’d invested in the book.

Because I stepped back and really thought about my accumulated books and reading habits, I came to some very different conclusions than I had held before and it’s made my reading habits much more efficient. Rather than spending my time accumulating books for a bookshelf, books that I might get around to reading someday, I’m just reading the book that looks the most interesting to me, deciding whether to keep or trade it when I’m finished, and moving on to the next one. If I know of a book I want to read now, I reserve it at the library – if I finally get that reserved book and it’s no longer of interest to me, I just return it immediately.

Why did this happen? I used to think about reading from a longer term perspective quite a lot, but I began to find that although my interest in reading is a higher level life value, my specific choice of reading material was actually often a day-to-day thing. I’m far better off choosing my books on a whim (or from an accumulated list of “to be read” books) than I am trying to decide a queue far in advance.

Thus, I spend much less of my time thinking about books in a “meta” sense and much more time doing the actual, enjoyable reading, which is what I really enjoyed spending my time on to begin with.

That kind of thought process can be used in almost every aspect of our lives, from how we manage our money to how we choose to spend our lazy afternoons. Our day-to-day actions are often tied to larger goals and ideas that we rarely think about consciously, but if we step back and think about them for a while, we often easily find better ways of doing things in our day-to-day lives.

The next several chapters focus on these types of perspective shifts.

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Making It All Work – Getting Perspective on the Runway: Next Actions

This is the eleventh entry in a twenty part series discussing the wonderful time and priority management book Making It All Work by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings through December 10.

Starting with this chapter, Making It All Work spends some time focusing on how to determine what’s actually important (and unimportant) and how to prioritize things at each level of focus in one’s life, moving from your to-do list all the way up to your overall life goals. For me, these chapters were the real value of the book, because they gave me a framework to step back and really re-evaluate what my priorities were in each area.

The first chapter focuses on your “next actions” – in other words, your immediate to-do list of stuff you need to get done in the next few days. Allen, on page 210:

Wash the car, call your mom, draft a proposal, talk to your boss about a new idea, surf the Web for a gift for your brother, buy nails at the hardware store, check your voice mail.

This category refers to all the physical, visible actions that you can take. They could be the next things to do on your projects or larger outcomes, or simply single-step eventsthat you pursue because of some area of interest or responsibility.

To put it simply, this is the kind of stuff that your to-do list should be composed of each day: specific tasks broken down so that you don’t have to think about what to do in the heat of the moment. Your only decision should revolve around which one to do next.

How can you make that decision easier? Interestingly, Allen points to having a complete to-do list on page 211:

You will automatically feel better about what you’re doing if the invesntory of defined actions available to you is as complete as possible. At the risk of stating the overly obvious, the more aware you are of what you’ve told yourself you need to get done, and the more accessible the options are for you to consider, the more you will trust your plan of attack and your choices about the actions you’re not taking.

Think about it this way. Imagine you’re looking at your to-do list and it’s as complete as you can possibly make it. You know everything you need to do is on that list, so you can just look through the items, pick the one that feels the most important or relevant to the moment, and run with it.

On the other hand, imagine you’re looking through your to-do list, but as you’re looking, your mind is constantly coming up with things that you need to be doing that aren’t on your list. Should you do something on your list … or one of those ideas that popped up in your head?

This is why the list preparation process is so important and why it’s well worth investing the time in getting a system rolling that can create this kind of thorough list for you. By doing it, you no longer have to think in the heat of the moment. You can just glance at your options and move forward with great confidence.

That sounds great, but it feels unapproachable. How can a person be that organized? Allen touches on this question on page 213:

In our two-day intesnive coaching with individuals, usually 90 percent of the program is focused on this horizon, simply because its approach is so unfamiliar and the volume of material to deal with is so sizable.

Trust me, it can be done, but it takes a lot of upfront work. In fact, it takes so much upfront work that for a long time, I didn’t believe that the work would ever be worth it. Yet, in the end, I find that every single day, my day is made smoother by having this list of genuinely important specific tasks. I am able to move from item to item much, much faster than before and I can focus on the item while I’m doing it with a depth that didn’t happen before.

The startup time was immense, but the rewards I get from all of that effort – turning all of the stuff in my life into a to-do list – is something that rewards me greatly every single day.

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Making It All Work – Getting Perspective at Ten Thousand Feet: Projects

This is the thirteenth entry in a twenty part series discussing the wonderful time and priority management book Making It All Work by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings through December 10.

All of us have ongoing tasks in our lives – individual things that need to be done but are too large to be accomplished in a single sitting or require various things for various steps along the way.

I know that my own life is littered with such projects. I’d like to rearrange my office, moving my mostly-empty bookshelf over to another wall and replacing it with shelving for my game collection. I’d like to write a third book. The list goes on and on.

I like how Allen describes them, on page 217:

A project is essentially a miniature goal, something that can be finished and marked off as “done.” The reason for the “within a year” parameter is that any commitment you have that can be completed in that time period – even very big ones – should probably be reviewed at least once a week.

In other words, a project is any large task that you can reasonably complete within a year. It’s usually composed of enough work that you can’t get it all done in one session – instead, you have to break it down into smaller chunks, spread out over time. Sometimes, those chunks require something to happen between them – time must pass, someone else must accomplish something, or so on.

A big key to completing your projects is review. In other words, keep track of your ongoing projects, then once a week, review all of those projects and determine what your specific next action for each of those projects is. A “next action” should be something small enough that you can do it in one session.

So, for example, with the projects listed above, I might have a “next action” of looking for an appropriate shelving unit for the games. I might have another “next action” that involves an outline of the book.

It should be noted that projects are tangible things that you can wrap your hands around. They’re not nebulous – they have a clear and definite conclusion, one that can be reached within a year.

Allen offers up some keywords that can help you define the projects in your life. On page 218:

The following verbs point to typical outcomes that I refer to as projects:

Finalize
Implement
Research
Publish
Distribute
Maximize
Learn
Set up
Organize
Create
Design
Install
Repair
Submit
Handle
Resolve

If you’re curious about what and how many projects you actually have, just use the above as a checklist, and include everything that can be linked with one of these words.

I currently have a list of forty-five ongoing projects that almost entirely match up with the words on that list.

Each week, I do a review of this project list and try to look for the “next step” with each of these projects. This keeps them all moving forward or helps me to realize that I need to abandon them.

Allen riffs on the weekly project review idea on page 222:

During a weekly look at all your projects, actions, and schedule provides an “inner coordination” that is fundamentally intuitive because of all the shifitng factors involved in the complexities of your life.

In other words, you’ll find that when you look at your project list at the end of a week, you’ve changed a bit as a person. You no longer find one project to be as vital, but now find this other project to be really important to you.

In many ways, this reflection helps you to connect your ongoing projects to the higher level things going on in life – your areas of focus, your goals, your purpose in life. As these subtly shift over time, you’ll find more radical shifts at the lower levels.

I can make a very clear example of this in my own life. Five years ago, being a parent was barely on my radar screen as a central value in life and my day-to-day activities showed it. Today, that’s completely different – one of my main life goals is to be a great parent to my kids. This shows up not only at the “purpose in life” level, but it begins to have bigger and bigger effects going down. Today, some of my projects involve things like potty training and teaching reading and teaching arithmetic, things that would not be projects in my life if I didn’t value my role as a parent so highly. The broader elements of my life greatly affect the projects I choose, which thus affect the things I choose to do every day.

A final thought: one really compelling idea I found in this chapter comes on page 224:

One of the most inspiring examples of how this elevated look at your commitments can add huge value to your life is the family weekly review. Establishing a context in which life partners (and children) can mutually debrief their past week, share a thorough and concrete overview of their commitments and projects, compare calendars, look ahead to the immediate future, and make decisions and plans together can be a phenomenal way to experience winning at the business of life.

I can’t tell you how much I love this idea nd I can’t wait until my children are a bit older so we can start doing this. Right now, my children are a little young to have ongoing projects of any real kind other than their ongoing epic castle made out of Magna-Tiles and Legos.

What sorts of projects will our family members have and share when we grow older together? It’s really hard to say, but I not only see this as a way to teach my children how to be more organized, but also a way to bond more deeply as a family.

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Making It All Work – Getting Control: Reflecting

This is the eighth entry in a twenty part series discussing the wonderful time and priority management book Making It All Work by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings through December 10.

For me, the single most important part of keeping my life on track and headed in the direction I want is the time I spend reviewing what I’ve done, what I need to do, and whether I still want to reach that destination. It takes time – time that’s seemingly not productive – but it adds so much value to everything else I choose to do that without it, I would simply feel aimless and lost.

Because of this, I regularly allude to the power of review, as I did yesterday when discussing procrastination. I do small reviews at least twice a day and at least one big review a week, where I look at every goal and aim I have in my life and ask myself whether this is really of value to me and, if it is, what I can be doing right now to move forward with it.

What do I mean by “review”? It parallels quite closely with what David Allen talks about in this portion of Making It All Work.

Allen argues that there are dual functions to reflection and review, on page 163:

Reviewing your system serves two distinct but equally critical purposes: (a) to update its contents and (b) to provide trusted perspective.

Let’s look at these two roles that a review can provide.

Updating
On page 163, Allen offers further insight into the value of updating:

Invariably, the world comes at us faster than we can keep up with its details. By the very nature of work, when you are doing one task, you’re not thinking about others – nor should you. You may be capturing along the way, but you won’t be clarifying and organizing everything as it happens.

During a given day, tons of little things blip across my mind and my computer screen and the phone and the mail and from the lips of my wife that I need to take care of. Most of this stuff gets jotted down quickly so I can return to the task at hand, and most of those jottings get dealt with in some way later in the day. I either take care of the task or add it to my to-do list.

The problem is that, frankly, some of that jotted-down stuff is junk – and it’s rarely completely obvious whether it’s junk or not junk. Reviewing those things a time or two goes a long way towards making that distinction, rather than just adding more junk to your to-do list.

An example: I got a letter from my bank informing me of their refinancing offers. I jot it down and add it to my to-do list, since refinancing to a much lower rate would be very valuable to us. This is one of those “important but not urgent” things that’s easy to leap over.

Without review, that kind of item would easily be left undone on my to-do list and probably discarded and forgotten. A quick review of my to-do list, though, reveals several little things that are essentially wastes of time. There’s no real importance to reshelving all of these books, since they’re mostly just going out via PaperBackSwap anyway, so I toss them in the PBS box. I don’t need to make a trip to Ames just for some new photo paper, so I just add that to-do to the grocery list. It’s not vital that I fertilize my lawn, especially since it’s late in the year and dry. Suddenly, my to-do list looks barren and I have room for that “important but not urgent” thing.

This is a simplification, of course, but that’s the kind of thought process that happens when I stop for a moment and review what needs to be done. I see through the “urgent but not important” stuff and toss it, leaving me time for the “important but not urgent” things that really matter in my life.

Similarly, as the activities in your life change, the priorities that you put on various things changes as well. On page 164, Allen expands on that:

Because projects are likely to change their meaning over time, your system also needs to reflect that fact. What was an active project last week may have turned into a “someday” one, given all the new demands that have arisen since then.

The things left undone on my to-do list are often just as important as the things that I’ve done, because they indicate how the priorities in my life are shifting over time.

For example, if I’m consistently not keeping up with some activity I’ve adopted in life, I know it’s time to sit down and ask myself whether it’s something I really value or not. If it’s not – and if I’ve adopted a pattern of avoiding it and mostly just thinking about it, it’s not something I value – then I make the hard decision to just move on as soon as I can, without regrets.

Otherwise, it hangs on like a cobweb in my mind and my to-do lists, slowing down my thoughts and popping up as something I ought to be doing. For a long time, my life was chock full of those things – things I thought I should be doing and were taking up space in my thoughts and often physically in my home. Systematically reviewing all of it and getting rid of the cobwebs makes it incredibly easier to do the things that actually are important with gusto, focus, and passion.

Getting Perspective
All of the above material comes from applying a bit of perspective to all of the things going on in your life. Just as important is reversing that paradigm to look at the big picture things in your life and seek out how they lead to the day-to-day things you’re doing.

Once a week, I sit down and go through every major goal and project I have in my life and simply ask myself if this is still important to me and, if it is, what am I going to do in the next week to move forward on it. This takes about two hours, believe it or not – I usually do it when the children are napping on Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

This seems like a lot of work, and I like how it’s addressed on page 167:

“Write everything down? Decide the actions you need to take on everything? Keep all that on… how many lists? Keep an index of all my projects? And … what? Take two hours every week to review all of that and get all these lists complete? You’ve got to be kidding! I’m too busy.”

That’s exactly how I felt about all of this when I first started. “I have too much to do to waste my time with this,” I thought. What I found, though, is that I was constantly making poor choices in my life that didn’t reflect on what I really valued. I would choose work projects over my kids. I’d burn time on pointless conference calls instead of getting useful projects done. I’d deal with piles of paperwork that really didn’t need to be done while big projects sat untouched. I’d run around doing household busywork while my children were out in the yard wishing Dad was there. I’d devote hours and hours to things I didn’t really want to do because I was convinced I was supposed to be doing them.

Having a weekly review and a consistent system ended all of that. I threw out mountains of busy work – it wasn’t really important. I started spending a lot more time with my kids and a lot less time on household projects or other things. I let go of some unrealistic projects and started focusing on hitting home runs on projects more in line with my life goals (like The Simple Dollar, for example).

The simple process of having a list of all of my goals and dreams in life and all of my ongoing projects and a to-do list and then sitting down once a week to go through all of them and ask myself whether they’re really important and how I’m moving forward on the important ones is the single most valuable part of my week. It keeps me from wasting my time on the less important things and redirects me to spend my time on the more important things.

That’s well worth two hours on a Saturday afternoon, if you ask me.

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10 Ways Consumers Are Getting Ripped Off

Consumer rip offs can seem like the domain of conspiracy-theory-obsessed taxi drivers. But when you begin to notice less and less cash left at the end of the month with no real addition to your lifestyle, who could blame you? These ‘rip offs’ also have a more technical term coined by economists, and are known as ‘market inefficiencies’ where the price of something is far removed from its actual value.

The value to price ratio could be out of whack for a number of reasons, but in this case your suppliers and retailers are not doing anything technically wrong, they are simply using a situation to their advantage where you have no choice but to use their goods or services, or you are simply too time poor to worry about being cash poor.

Therefore, to help you spot these rip offs in your everyday life and hopefully keep more money for yourself, rather than the salesman, compiled here are the top 10 ways you could be getting ripped off right now.

It’s nice to receive a little rock star treatment, especially when you’re traveling – which can be stressful enough without the waiting in line and the headaches brought on by other passengers. So you may think that the $425 a year membership to the United Airlines’ Red Carpet club is well worth it, even with the additional $50 application fee.

As a member of the Red Carpet Club you’re getting priority customer service and access to a comfortable, quiet and cushy lounge at major American airports. However, if you sign up for a United Mileage Plus Club Visa card, you can earn air miles as well as receive a Red Carpet Club Membership and the annual card fee is just $375.

You may have heard about these shoes which have a curved sole and promise to give you a workout with every step. A number of athletic shoe manufacturers make their own version and whether you opt for the Reebok EasyTone or the Sketchers ShapeUp you’ll be paying around $130 for a pair of sneakers.

However, according to Doctor Michael Ross who is the director of Rothman Institute’s Sports Performance Lab, “There is no evidence they will help you tone better or quicker than a regular shoe”. This is because the shoes primarily target the foot and ankle, and if you want to get fit and toned, just keep walking – all the way to work, the gym or just take the stairs. There is no need for special shoes.

Education is an investment in your future, but you don’t need to over capitalize on your investment by being ripped off when it comes to your study materials. According to Nicole Allen a director at Student Public Interest Research Group students are being ripped off when it comes to books because they are “a captive audience since professors decide what books they need to buy”. As a result the average American student will spend around $900 a year on textbooks and with new editions coming out every three years, the prices will go up even further.

To help your starving students make their way more frugally through college look for sites like Chegg, which allows you to rent the books you need, allowing you to make savings in excess of 70% of the sticker price.

Rather than suggesting you put yourself and your family at risk when you travel, simply think about where you are buying your insurance from, and whether they have your interests or their commissions at heart. In America more than $1 billion is spent every year with agents, as travelers aim to protect themselves from canceled flights and stolen luggage and possessions.

However, other products and insurance policies you already have can cover the same things for a fraction of the price. For example, many homeowners’ insurance policies cover lost luggage, and you may even have more extensive insurance coverage on your credit card – if you purchase your holiday using the card. Plus most airlines will reimburse you for the value of lost or damaged possessions up to the value of $3,000.

If you do want a dedicated travel insurance policy, go directly to your insurer rather than through an agent because purchasing insurance through a third party generally means that party is being reimbursed for signing you up, so you’re going to be paying more for your own safety and well being.

Being a parent is a busy time but when you purchase ready to drink baby formulas you’re making it even harder by stretching the budget for no reason. Taking the time to mix the powder with water to feed your bub can save you over 50% in some cases. For example, buying a 32 ounce (or 192 fluid ounces) can of premixed formula which you can open and serve to your baby will last you just a few days and will cost around $45 according to Diapers.com whereas a container of powder that makes 168 ounces is around $25.

Instead of spending 57% more on premixed formula, invest in a water filter jug if you’re worried about the quality of the feed and you’ll be spending $30 in a once off purchase, rather than more than 50% more each feeding time.

Giving a prepaid credit card gift card is a nice way for you to give the perfect gift, while not encouraging overspending on a real credit card. However, some cards, like the American Express gift card, charge a flat $3.95 charge just for buying a card, regardless of the value loaded onto it. Visa not only charges $3.50 for the cards sold through bank branches but also includes a $2.50 monthly fee 12 months from the purchase date.

Plus, many merchants will not accept the cards if the value remaining is less than the purchase price of the item, so it can be hard to use up those few remaining dollars. Instead, if you want to give your friends and family the gift of an unrestricted shopping spree, just give cash.

According to a search on Whole Foods on Yahoo Finance, Pre-sliced and packaged deli meats can cost 27% more than having your meats sliced at the deli counter of the supermarket.

Therefore, take the time to wait a minute or two to be served at the deli counter rather than paying all of that extra money just for convenience, not to mention additional packaging and plastic.

No one likes being sick but if the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) were able to successfully charge manufacturers of products which claim to fight germs and colds, and boost the immune system then you are better off observing good hygiene practices and getting enough rest, rather than being ripped off by ‘germ fighters’. Also watch out for the packaging of these supplements because while the FTC were able to have three manufacturers of these products change their packaging to avoid misleading claims, the products are still available.

Title insurance is an unavoidable cost when you have a mortgage, but be careful of how much you spend. The costs can vary significantly between states, for example insurance on a $500,000 home in Houston can cost $3,000 but in Boston you’ll get away with $2,000 in insurance. Also be careful who your real estate broker recommends, as you will be paying for your insurance, as well as for the referral fees paid to your broker.

Instead, take some time to shop around and to save even more. Contact the insurance company used by the previous owner; they know the property and will have almost all the information you need, so the insurance company can often offer you a very affordable rate.

When you have pay TV, there are hundreds of channels and thousands of shows which go unwatched. You know this, which is why you want a basic cable package. Unfortunately your cable company knows this too, but they want you to pay for those channels anyway. As a result they’ll bundle the channels you want with ones you’ll never want to see, just so you will pay for them all.

If you think this is unacceptable, try and go without the cable all together. Whenever you’re looking for something else to watch, visit sites like Hulu where you can watch movies and TV series for free at anytime. If you want entertainment on tap you can also subscribe to Netflix for just $9 a month and have access to over 100,000 TV shows and 12,000 movies on DVD.

This is a guest post from Timothy Ng, who lives, breathes, and sleeps personal finance! Check out his in-depth guide to doing a balance transfer for life where he answers everything you need to know before applying for a lifetime balance transfer.

Tagged as: Money Management, Spending

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Getting the Most Out of Salary Comparison Sites

I'm a big believer in increasing your value as an employee to gain some job security and to potentially get a raise/bonus. That's why I wrote a whole series of posts on being a better employee. The idea is to bring more value to your employer, make yourself more valuable, and eventually get paid more for it. Your job gets more out of you and you push yourself to become better.

Everybody wins.

But simply doing more and showing up early isn't going to cut it when it comes time to getting paid more. Unless you have a dream boss that will push to get you more money without you saying anything, odds are you'll have to raise your hand, clear your throat, and ask for it.

One crucial way to help make your case for a raise is comparing your salary to others in your field. That's where salary-comparison sites come into play. These sites can give you a rough idea of how much people are making in jobs similar to your own. By using three or four of these sites, it can make your raise/bonus case that much stronger.

The two big sites I like are Salary.com and Payscale, but you should also check out Vault.com and Glassdoor.

I like Salary.com because getting information from it is really easy. Type in the title of the position you want salary information on, your zip code, and you can select a free salary range that gives you a nice range of salaries for the position. You can click around and get more detailed about it (bonuses, benefits, etc.) if you want, but for a quick and dirty idea of what a position is going for, this is the place to go.

They get their data from "compensation consultants" that crunch a bunch of data to come up with their ranges. For more details on how they compile their information, you can check out their methodology page.

Payscale is another site I like to use, but it's just not as easy and fast to get what you want from it. This extra information might give it an edge over Salary.com, but it can be annoying. Since they ask you for so much extra information (which is mostly optional), it takes longer to get through but also means you're getting more data points every time people like you and I share their actual salary details.

Payscale uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the U.S. Census Department, and the data entered by regular users like yourself — which is great to include because it keeps the data fresh, but it might get annoying to have to go through so many screens to get the data you want. On the flip side, they do offer a variety of widgets you can place on your site that allow your visitors to skip all that non-required information and get to the good stuff right away:

PayScale Salary Calculator

I've never used Vault.com but I have used Glassdoor, and the cool thing about it is that all their data comes from actual people. Current employees, former employees, and even interview candidates. Make sure to check these out too — the more data you have, the better.

So now that you know about these sites, what next? The obvious answer is to check positions comparable to yours to see what others are making. Brace yourself: You may not like what you find. If you expected to see salaries way above yours to then take to your boss, you may be disappointed. Maybe the data says you're getting paid pretty well after all, in which case it's time to really step it up at work and start doing more of the tasks of a higher-paying position.

If that's the case, try to find jobs that are a notch or two above your position and find out what those people's responsibilities are. Then go to work the next day and start doing them. Down the line you'll be able to use the data you've discovered to say, "Hey look, I've been doing all this stuff, and this is what the position pays in the market."

If you find that you are being underpaid, then that's good news! That means you have a case to make with your current job. Don't just storm into your boss' office just yet — this isn't supposed to be a confrontation. It's supposed to be about sharing the data you've discovered and finding out why you aren't being paid what the data says you should be.

Here's what I would say:

I did some research and found three different sources for what my position's salary should be. On average, it's 15% higher than what I'm being paid. I was just curious why I'm not closer to this average considering I've gotten positive feedback in each of my reviews.

See that last part? Yeah, that's kind of important. If you haven't been performing at work, it doesn't matter what you find online. Your boss will probably be annoyed that you're asking for more money when they already feel "eh" about you. If you've been showing how valuable you are, then this request will make a lot more sense and will go down easier.

Why wouldn't they want to pay you what the market says you're worth?

There are other ways to use this salary information, and this is just one of them. But I'm curious to hear, have you used these sites in the past? How effective were they?

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