Falling College Admissions is good for the economy?

I've been pretty tuned in to the news in recent days, and there are a lot of interesting headlines floating around right now July of 2016 has brought a number of troubling and controversial trends to light, from protests all across the United States, the declaration of political choices of the major parties for candidates for president, and all time highs in the US stock market to terrorist-style vehicle crashes in France. The most fascinating headline that floated over towards me in the past few days was the observation that college enrollment was declining in recent years, specifically at for-profit colleges, and specifically for programs focused on two year or shorter courses of study and tailored towards specific careers. Most of the students that had been attending these schools in pursuit of a new job had been on the whole older than the general college graduate, and had been motivated  to take additional coursework on because they were unable to progress in a rough job market without either additional training, certification, or potentially a complete re-training and a pivot into a different sector.

If the enrollments in these types of trade-focused schools is falling, this could mean that those careers are less attractive, which is a possibility, but it could also mean that there are many more opportunities available to people besides paying for two years of post high-school education to get a certificate.

I suppose that this would qualify as a curious case in macro-economics, as it is likely a net positive when people are going to school, getting extra skills, and then going out and applying those skills to help make the economy more efficient, but it is also a positive thing when there are opportunities available to people that allow them to earn a good income without the need for additional, lower efficiency educational programming right out of school, which would allow the people working at that for-profit college to go and produce work themselves.

What do you think? Should we consider falling enrollments a positive or negative sign for the economy? Is there an education bubble in the West right now?

Saving money on hot water is cool

Hot water is one of the luxuries of modern life, and it is also ridiculously expensive for a number of reasons.

Hot water requires heat, which usually comes from the combustion of fuel, and is constantly radiated away from the water into the surrounding structure, air, or ground. As a result, there is a great deal of waste involved in the process of making, and keeping water hot.

Not only that, once the water is heated it usually goes from a piping hot boiler to a series of copper or plastic pipes throughout a structure that allow the heat to dissipate once again, so it is frequently necessary to let the water run before it reaches warm enough temperatures to satisfy our demands.

Needless to say, the water waste from simply letting water run down the drain until warm enough is considerable, and the fuel waste in heating water over and over again is major as well.

A number of money and resource saving solutions to this problem exist, including point of use water heaters, insulated and high efficiency boilers, and much more, but the simplest and cheapest answer to this problem is insulation.

At a cost of less than 50 cents per foot, insulation for pipes is dirt cheap, and offers savings of approximately 50 dollars per year in utility costs for the average household in a temperate environment, and serves to reduce the likelihood of frozen pipes in the winter time.

But beyond finance, there is little better than having hot water immediately available when you turn on the tap.

Saving money is cool, but hot water is just so soothing that it's worth paying for, as my recent home depot receipts and electric bills will show.

Is the Secret to success as simple as waking up earlier?

I wake up every day at 4:00 AM sharp. Every morning, I rise, make myself food, and begin my day. However, I have recently come across a video concerning this kind of lifestyle, a TEDx Talk recorded from a presentation given by a man named Felipe Castro Matos. He decided to wake up earlier for 21 days, setting his alarm clock for 4:30 sharp, with the understanding that he would be building a new habit over the course of those three weeks.

And it took off.

Mr. Matos was featured on Business Insider, his story was publicized worldwide, and there have so far, as of March 27th 2016, been 1,884,404 views of his TEDx talk on Youtube (here is a link to his video, if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOEB1Fr0_MM ), but I think that his message has a good bit of wisdom in it.

You can set a goal of doing the things that you want or need to do, and you can actually accomplish them by making time for them. In my case, when I was a high performing student, worker, and member of society, I rose early to work on my assignments, get time to study and perform my various chores and duties before I had to commute to work, school or various meetings. Now, many years after I started waking this early, I can go exercise, work on my cooking and household tasks, write, read, keep up with my industrial education, and even indulge in leisure activities in the wee hours of the morning. The amazing thing is, waking up earlier rarely subtracts from your lifestyle, because you can always socialize in the early evening.

Whether you decide that you are going to wake up at 4:30, or at 4, or start walking every day, or pick up a hobby, you can follow up with the activities that you care about and make them part of your schedule, part of your lifestyle, and part of yourself. You can, as Mr. Matos was insightful enough to say, make all of the little things that you do each day positive, or at least make time for the positive things.

Getting Back Into Pinterest

I remember opening my Pinterest account.

It was another time, I lived in another state and had vastly different life goals. Most of what I pinned was in the form of an infographic or pulled directly from a blog or advertisement, and I was primarily interested in delicious food and high quality glassware.

All of my friends were using Pinterest to swap recipes and show off the pictures from their camera phones, and I was interested in getting involved with them, so I made my account and promptly forgot about it for several months.

In any case, I'm getting back into it with a quickness that I hadn't anticipated. So far I have reviewed a good number of my infographic pins, and a fair portion of the different kinds of tea that I like.

If you haven't looked into Pinterest lately, check it out and try to find something you like!

Cooking Up A turkey

I have a lot of little ways to save money, but one of my favorite is taking advantage of advertised deals and stretching out my savings.


I was able to purchase turkeys frozen after the winter holidays, and I am planning on roasting another one today. It has sat waiting in my freezer as I ate through frozen beef, discount chicken, and bags of frozen vegetables, and I am finally ready to cook it!


I have been keeping it in the refrigerator for several days now, and after just a few hours I will be able to carve out a great slice of turkey.

New Year, No Fear

We're into the year of 2016, and it's correspondingly time for all of us to make our New Year's Resolutions, give up on them, and reflect on our muddling around in the last 12 months.

I'm not going to do any of that here with you.

Instead, I'm just going to keep on updating my different sites with new content, and hopefully I'll be able to keep you guys and dolls reading for at least a little while.

Thanks for sticking around with me through 2015, and hopefully I'll have something interesting to show you this year.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to staring at the moon.

My Grocery Shopping Philosophy: How to Live Well on less than 100 dollars a Month

For the longest time, I've been spending much less on food than other people, but eating both a higher quality diet and enjoying the food that I eat. While I would attribute at least a portion of  this success to my character, I think that it might also have something to do with what I choose to eat and how I shop for food. I have been on a higher than average calorie diet in order to gain some weight, so keep in mind that I am not shopping to minimize calories, but rather to maximize nutritional value at a relatively low price.

It is also worth mentioning that there is a significant portion that could, in a crisis or if my circumstances changed, be reduced or removed from this spending plan without negatively impacting my health, but this is a comfortable way for me to shop for food without spending a great deal of time to do so.

I spend about 100 bucks on food for myself each month, and I'm finally gaining a little bit of weight.

I recommend getting in a good high fiber carbohydrate to use as your base for calories. I like to mix rice with beans, but potatoes are also a good base, and are quite economical. I actually recommend getting both potatoes and rice, since they are cheap and keep well. Oats are also nice.

Next up we should tackle vegetables. I don't know what you like, but you probably do. Buy those and cook them cheaply, by steaming or baking them until edible. I usually pick a price that I am willing to pay per pound or unit, and then only buy vegetables in amounts that I am definitely going to consume when under that unit price. In general, I get leafy vegetables and root vegetables of some kind every month.

Fruits are also subject to the unit price phenomenon. I like to buy under 1 dollar per pound for fruit, but for certain things I will go over that, like berries or dried fruit, either because I love them (dried fruit) or I can use them sparingly compared to other fruits (berries).

Meats are a great way to hit a number of nutritional goals and potentially gain weight, but there is a lot that you need to be concerned with when it comes to meat from both a procedural and a budgetary standpoint. Comfort with the supply chain that the meat takes from conception to the market, handling between your purchase and your storage, and processing in your home can be somewhat daunting, especially if you are not a confident cook or have some qualms with the current state of things. And on a purely budgetary basis, meats can be really expensive if you don't shop smart. I try to pay well under 5 dollars a pound per meat, and prefer to stay as close as possible to 1 dollar per pound. I like to buy chicken (bone in if possible, so that I can make soup), beef (also bone in if available, because marrow is delicious), and lamb (bone in if possible, which is almost all the time because I usually get lamb from an abattoir). If you watch for sales or have good relations with a slaughterhouse or butcher, meats are eventually available for around a dollar to three dollars per pound depending on the type of meat (chicken, beef, etc). That is when I stock up. Once I get meat home, I usually do one of a few things with it. I will either immediately put it into the refrigerator for use within the next 2-3 days (before the sell by date on the package), put it into the freezer for use within the next couple of months (food in the freezer is good for up to a year if processed correctly), or I will prepare it immediately for use that day. I like to poach or bake my meats, to ensure that they are thoroughly cooked.

Dairy is a great way to improve the variety of your meals, and add additional vitamins and minerals to your diet. I buy milk at its regular price, which is already pretty low considering that a gallon of milk is 3.7 liters and less than 4 dollars for me no matter where I shop. Cheese is pretty expensive, but if you use it sparingly it lasts for quite some time. I recommend being price conscious when buying any dairy other than milk though, because most other forms are ridiculously expensive.

I like to buy eggs, for several reasons. I enjoy using them to add additional protein and exciting textures to a dish, they are very quick and easy to cook (5 minutes or less, stovetop or microwave), and nutritionally they are quite valuable sources of essential B vitamins.

It is important to note, however, that fresh fruit, vegetables, and milk will usually not last a month in your home, so you might want to schedule several trips or buy more durable forms of those (dehydrated milk, dry fruit, frozen vegetables) to use after the fresh ones are consumed.