Eating healthy for cheap

Since I am in college, I don’t have too much money so I’ve gotten into a habit of making several things that are good for me and aren’t too expensive. I shop at a grocery store that carries fresh local produce as well as many organic foods. My favorite things to eat are homemade hummus, bean soup, baked sweet potato, hot bread with olive oil dip, oatmeal, yogurt, fruit, salads, egg sandwich, and much more. (Let me know if you want to know how I make my favorite things to eat.) I already have many things at home like peanut butter, olive oil, seasonings, whole wheat noodles, and cans of tuna fish so I don’t need to include it in my weekly grocery list below.  Much of what I buy is on sale so it makes it easier to save. I probably end up spending only about $25 a week on groceries.

My Grocery List

• 1 lb. bag of beans
• Cantaloupe
• 2 lb bag of carrots
• Celery
• potatoes
• bag of onions
• eggs (dozen)
• sweet potatoes
• oatmeal (1 qt)
• loaf of whole wheat bread

Webershealinghands.com is up and running!

This summer after work at night, I learned a bit of html and created a website on Notepad . For a while though, I kept putting off getting my website online since I had no idea how to get started. Thankfully, a few friends started helping me out with referrals so I HAD to get it up. It’s actually much easier than I thought and this is coming from someone who knows close to nothing about this kind of stuff. Anyways, after an hour and a half of clicking buttons, I got it online here. In case others have this same problem, I will outline what I did.

Bringing website online for first time on GoDaddy.com

1. Go to GoDaddy.com.
2. Type in what you want your domain name to be where it says, “Start your domain search.”
3. Once you have one that you can use, click shop on more products.
4. Click on the “Hosting” tab and choose what you want. (I chose the website hosting.)
5. Click on your plan and your operating system. (I chose the economy plan for 1 year since I only wanted to start a small business. In addition, the Linux operating system is on default so if you have Windows, change it to Windows.)
6. Click on Check out.
7. Follow the check out instructions. I created a new GoDaddy.com account and I didn’t get any extras (since I don’t need anything fancy.)
8. Pay for it.
9. Once the confirmation shows, go to “My Account.”
10. Click on “Hosting” and add your domain to it.
11. Click on “Manage Account.”
12. Sign up for GoDaddy’s FTP Client through the Hosting Control Center.
13. You should be sent an email within 24 hours.
14. Go back on GoDaddy’s Hosting Control Center and upload your file. (I created mine on Notepad.)
15. Rename your first file you uploaded as “default” or “index.”
16. It should show up. Mine did. 

**This information is just for informational purposes only and if you have any problems, talk to someone who really knows what they’re talking about. For example, GoDaddy.com customer service representative or a professional website designer**

My Learning Process: Waves

Learning is very important to me and I enjoy doing it. Though I tend to learn better by doing, learning from books are a large part of my life especially during my college years. Now I have a confession. For the majority of college students including myself, book learning has often boiled down to waiting a few days before the test to study the information and forgetting it as we leave the testing site. I used to beat myself over forgetting information that I only used a few times but I now believe it’s a process that makes learning more efficient. We were meant to learn, forget, and relearn again as the next time is always easier. Besides, if we really need the information, our exposure to it will result in being able to remember it longer.

Since I have come to terms with that, a problem I’ve had is when I try to fit the large variety of my diverse interests (from Judo to cooking to photography) all into my schedule at the same time. This method mirrors time periods in high school where we had a subject an hour. While this structured type of learning gets more done, I find that I personally learn better in waves as once I’m on a roll learning about a subject, I don’t like to stop. Each wave puts me in a zone where I just soak up everything I read or watch about that subject for about a week or so. This depends on how many other interests I’m looking into at that time. I limit what I study to only a few per week to prevent myself from being bored and to keep the rate at which I absorb, understand, and process information high. Like everyone else, my efficiency drops as my motivation cools. In a few weeks, I will usually be as excited to learn about that particular subject as ever. For example, a couple weeks past, I had a home improvement obsession which I satisfied by taking notes on marathon viewings of HGTV every night. After a week, I didn’t have the same curious drive to learn about home improvement. Now I’m on my real estate phase with an occasional viewing of HGTV sprinkled in.

Though the possibilities are endless with so much to learn, my point is that instead of trying to change how I learn, I believe that it’s better to take advantage of how I learn best. In my case, I’m good at digesting a lot of information on the same subject for about a week until I burn out. Then I come back to the topic when I’m feel excited about that topic again, which usually takes a few weeks at most. This ongoing process is what works for me. What works for you?

Weber’s Partial List of Interesting Subjects

• traveling
• home improvement (landscaping, interior design, etc.)
• personal finance
• stock market
• real estate
• cooking & nutrition
• productivity
• judo
• relationships
• massage

Financial Update: 7/30/08

It has been awhile since I have posted about my finances. I have listed below the projects that I am currently working on in relation to my finances.

1. Massage Therapy Business- I have updated my previous post and I still need to compile a resource list before I get back to Gainesville. I also plan to give a couple hours of massage everyday to family once the gas station is sold so that I will keep my hands familiar with giving a great massage.
2. Stocks- Currently, I am using The Motley Fool’s The Stock Advisor (my yearly subscription ends in Oct) for stock recommendations. However, I am trying to use that in conjunction with The Motley Fool Investment Workbook that I mentioned in a previous post to see if I come up with the same analysis that David and Tom Gardner do, two men with a proven investing track record. This way I can practice making analyses of stocks and form a base for further learning on this subject.
3. Prosper- I am currently looking into person to person lending (p2p lending). If you diversify, the risk isn’t as large as you would initially think. After evaluating three p2p lending sites (Prosper, Fynanz, and Lending Club), it seems that Prosper is the best choice for me. This site is a great place to start learning about p2p lending. If you want to get started, please comment and I’ll send you an invitation right away so we both get an extra $25 in our account to lend. Thanks.
4. HSBC Direct- Offering a 3.5% APY until September 15 on online savings accounts, HSBC Direct is offering the best return that I know of for online banking. To get started, go here.

Live life, Save money

1. Walk/bike on nature trails or wherever you need to go. It saves gas and since we’re traveling slower, we have more time to experience the beauty of the world around us.

2. Get a few friends together to split groceries and experience the joy of cooking together. We save money, we have fun, and we improve our cooking skills.

3. Plant a herb, vegetable, or fruit garden. It is a great way to get in touch with our green thumb and it really does taste better when we grow it ourselves.

4. Meet up regularly with someone who knows a language you’re interested in but needs help with English. Devote half of the time to learning their language and half of the time to teaching English.

5. Empty your head of any worries and take a day off to relax in a serene place. I’m thinking along the lines of laying down, having a picnic, observing the beautiful world and its inhabitants, napping, and pondering the mysteries of life — all while sprawled under the shade of a tree.

If anyone else can think of any other good ways to enjoy life and save money at the same time, please comment.

Massage Biz To-Do List

Because when I go back to school, I want to start off right away with my massage business. I will update my list I previously posted to make it a realistic to-do list. However, for those things that I will be able to do now, I will bold. At the same time, for those things that I have finished, I will give it a strikethrough. And for those things that I am not sure whether I should do it or not, I will italicize.

• Decide what to put in the Sorority Gift Basket and whether it is more financially feasible to make or buy soaps, potpourri, lotions, etc. to put into the basket
• Create a resource list of stretches and exercises for injury/pain
• Place Biz cards placement in strategic places such as library during exams week.
• Write on the back of biz cards, “This was the therapist I was telling you about.”
• Write a letter of introduction about my massage therapy business
• Massage business website for online presence and to make appointments
• Volunteering at nursing home giving massages
• Integrate myself into massage lifestyle (use sauna, talk to LMTs at massage school, visit massage classes, etc.)
• EDIT: Free membership card to be stamped for a free massage every 10 massages.

By the way, I finished my massage website though it is not online yet since I have to first buy a web domain. However, it uses very simple html. Everything is on one page and I color coded it in orange and blue. It is very likely that I will tweak it more in the next week or two to make it just right before I take it online.

Active Income: Learning HTML

In my previous post, I wrote some massage business ideas that I had including making a website for my massage business. I realized that learning html would help me with this massage website, make me more proficient with personalizing my blog, and is a good skill to have as a base skill for online income. I am learning HTML to help increase my active income with massage but I realize that it may potentially be important for earning passive income. I will give myself a couple hours each day for a couple weeks to learn this skill. I am starting here.

Edit: The website above is a great step-by-step site to learn html. After learning HTML, more step-by-step guides for more complex website design such as CSS and JAVA are available.

Active Income: Massage business ideas

Though I have been a licensed massage therapist for almost half a year, I have not done much with massage. Starting in September when I am back in school, I plan on vigorously pursuing massage therapy as a source of active income. I have made a list of some ideas that I have below:

• Gift Basket (soaps, potpourri, lotions, etc.) to sororities
• Meditation CD for clients
• Resource list of stretches and exercises for injury/pain
• Referrals – $5 off for every referral
• Biz cards placement in strategic places (write on the back of card “This was the therapist I was telling you about.”)
• Letter of introduction about my massage therapy business
• Massage business website for online presence and to make appointments
• Volunteering at nursing home giving massages
• Integrate myself into massage lifestyle (use sauna, talk to LMTs at massage school, visit massage classes, etc.)

I talked to a friend who would be willing to let me rent her massage office for cheap (i.e. $5/hour). Because it is already a massage office, the atmosphere of the room should be fit for a massage. I will just have to see how the location is. For example, how close it is to campus or where I live and whether it is in a good part of town or not.

Passive vs active income: Part 2

Now that I have covered my first stream of passive income, I would like to explain my first stream of active income, which is my fledgling massage therapy business.

At this point, very little has been done with it but come fall semester of college, I will target the Greeks for my consumer base as they have more disposable income compared to the rest of the college. Some ideas that I have to jump-start my business include a massage website, gift baskets of good-smelling soaps and potpourri to sorority houses, emphasis on $30/30 min massages, going on “contacting” trips, setting up free 5-minute massages at parties, etc.

My friend Andre has said that he would like to help me to build my massage biz. When the 2008 fall semester starts, we will sit down and iron out the details of how he is going to help and how I will reimburse him for the clients I get from him. He is creative and full of great ideas yet very practical so it will be interesting to see the ideas that we can bounce off each other.

For now, this will be my one and only source of active income. Though I will keep my eyes open for any business ideas, earning $60-80 per hour for doing something that I love to do isn’t too bad at all.

Passive vs active income: Part 1

The way I like to look at passive income vs active income is that passive income is when you get to sit on your a$$ and let money work for you while active income is when you have to work your a$$ off for money.

Though nothing is truly passive in this world, value investing comes pretty darn close as you only have to spend a couple hours every few weeks to check in on your stocks if you did your research. Value investing is a philosophy in which you buy a stock at a price less than its intrinsic value. Warren Buffett, one of the world’s greatest stock market investors, is a huge proponent of value investing. (As a matter of fact, this year 2008 he was crowned richest man in the world.) The premise behind value investing is looking at stocks as businesses and buying great businesses whose shares are underpriced according to fundamental analysis (i.e. high dividend yields, low price-to-earning ratios, etc.)

Though investing is not for everyone, I feel that this is piece of the puzzle that I have been looking for in terms of creating multiple streams of passive income.