A piggy bank is not so cliche...

Having a bag of loose change is not only inconvenient, but it also makes you have an abnormal bulge in a much more abnormal location. Keeping change is an important trait in me, chiseled early on when I had no jobs to fund my spending. Hell, I even used regular paper to roll my coins, and didn't have any "fancy" paper rolls until later.

The fact is, I still have change on me, and so I have a piggy bank, if you will, by my desk. Well, okay, it's officially a Mario coin-block bank because...well, I'm a video game nut. Whatever it is, I put my loose change into it, and then use it later when I do.

Sure, I know what you guys might think. "That's just change," or "you're only saving pennies here and there." Well, when I'm with friends here, going out to lunch is just as frequent as going to work, and often times I've had to dive into my coin reserves to fish out extra money when necessary. And often times, I have enough for one day of lunch, if I absolutely need to "break the bank."

And while I'm on the subject, I personally hate those Coinstar machines that convert your jars of change for other stuff, including cash. Coming from a person who enjoys counting money (Yeah, I have a little Scrooge in me...), I find it insulting to have to pay 9 cents for every converted dollar through their machines, whereas I can keep that money if I just make a trip to the bank.

Goal of this week: Put aside $50

To start off the week, I'm gonna set this personal goal for myself and try to set aside $50 aside. It's not the best goal to begin with, but it's a more realistic goal to place. And my goal, over time, is to increase this amount gradually per week, so hopefully I can set aside much more than I begin with.

Oh, and here's the site to make those cool cards. Such a time waster that is...

The purpose of this blog

In creating this blog, this is proof that I've finally found some small amount of time to dedicate to blogging. This has been done horrendously in the past, mostly because I wanted to compose everything myself, including hard-coding HTML to painfully accurate specifics. Because of all the labor I wasted on that, I rarely did any actual posting, and have left a few old websites in the grave. The one that broke my blogging mold, however, was when I created Gameritis, which I've dedicated to at least one post every weekday. Since its start last August, I've been pretty consistent with it, and I figured that if I can stick with something as hobby-like as video games, I should do the same with my finance.

Compared to most, I'm a dud when it comes to finance. And I'm not proud to say that my wife handles most of these issues. What I hope to attain, over time, is a more organized and goal-oriented path towards understanding it and taking more responsibilities away from her, thus giving her and myself more ease of mind.

This is my New Year's "Revolution," and it will begin next week.