In winter, when I leave for work, I turn the thermostat (on a dial) down to 2 degrees celsius (to prevent freezing) and then when I come home I turn it back up to between 16 and 20 depending on how I feel. Is the dial thing a “programmable thermostat”?

Or do people really leave their heat up at 18 degrees all day? That’s just crazy!

They have a link on their site to a DIY setup.

http://turbowalkstation.com/

I think the tension comes when you see a sudden drop in income and have to be frugal for the first time in your life, but then have to balance that against earning more money or getting more training. That’s pressure!

http://www.steelcase.com/na/walkstation_products.aspx?f=30670

I’m well past that and find my ability to handle more than one function simultaneously is mostly counterproductive, but we do have to allow that for some people, especially younger ones, it is very doable. It’s virtually the world they live in.

1-Doesn’t work well with cheap treadmills, since they are 6 or more inches shorter than a better
model. You can walk on the shorter ones but it’s difficult to run.

2-Test the clearance from the floor. If it has an autoincline feature, you should be OK. If it doesn’t, you will need to allow for the table’s pedestal.

3-Put a foam pad under the laptop and cooler to reduce vibration. Some laptops have a hard drive housing which will compensate for vibration, some don’t, and if yours does not, you are limited to walking and not running if your floors are weak.

RE eBay–Recession has dried up many opportunities on eBay and many listed items are unbidded. I am surrounded by a sea of sharks waiting for me to put a certain collection on eBay because sales on that commodity have dropped so badly. Craigslist is a better option currently for most sales of used merchandise.

Trent, honestly, that defeats the purpose of a healthy, relaxing walk.

Seriously. Everybody needs to relax and recharge, especially creative folks and parents!

Multi-tasking all the time? That is rarely a good use of time and depending on what you’re doing, can be wasteful and counter-productive.

I hope you do not multi-task when you drive. There is no excuse for that. It’s dangerous!

You do have to spend time building, creating and maintaining a career, whether self-employed, working for a company or running your own biz. It’s extremely time consuming, depending on what stage you’re in in your life or the demands of a particular position, client, etc.

Long before I became an independent contractor, I still put a dollar value on my time. In part it came from having to account for all of my time as it was billable to clients in one form or another when I worked for a company. That gave me a huge awareness of my time and how I allocated it and helped me focus on what was really important.

When you do that, you really think about what is the best use of your time. Sometimes, it means taking the afternoon off to attend a child’s game, to help a friend. It’s always people first.

When I was generating a solid and large revenue for myself, it made sense to spend more time at the office and hire someone to clean and do the laundry and run errands. I rarely cooked, didn’t do my own laundry, and traveled a lot for business. I actually had very little down time. ANd when I did, I spent time catching up on sleep and renewing my creative energies by enjoying cultural activities, that were also necessary for me to maintain my work skills.

Even with that, I managed to save more money then than when I made less money and was intensely frugal and did not hire anyone to do anything and did everything for myself. So it’s all relative.

I do understand where Milton is coming from. I have close friends who run a business and while they do cook (it’s their form of relaxation!), they hire a number of people to take care of their house. In doing that, they really add to their local economy so it’s not wasteful.

The key is adjusting to your current income, your available time and what is the best use of it. Cutting costs only goes so far. Especially these days. Everyone I know has been careful with money for years and still can barely make it. And they are neither spending a lot, nor making an hourly minimum wage.

If you have a low income, all of this is moot. Cause you don’t have the money. Period. And you have to find ways to make more (multiple jobs, if you can find them; going back to school to learn new skills; getting retraining). These days, it’s all about flexibility because jobs are going bye bye and if you want to work, pretty much everyone will have to learn new skills and reinvent themselves at one or more points in their lives.

There are times in life when you have to really put the energy into expanding your life, taking on new skills for your personal and professional lives. You must network, the sincere and real kind and be available to help people. This is your “investment” time/effort. Sometimes, the real results of this don’t show for awhile. But they serve you better in the long haul.

You never lose when you spend your time wisely building a life you want.

THe problem with some people and frugality is that they get lost in the details and miss the big pix.

They also become penny wise and pound foolish and that’s missing the point.

sometimes the best use of your time is real downtime, just hanging out with friends. You really can’t be worrying about generating and/or spending money 24/7. That’s something that’s life limiting no matter how much you have or don’t have.