sententia

The first week of postings here at Sententia are now all up. *Whew*! However, just in case you thought that all I did is spend my time thinking of things to write for you all, here’s a look at what else I’ve found interesting recently.

If you would like to pass on anything you think I might be interested in, post the link as a comment to this thread! I’m always looking for new things to explore. Note that comments on this site are moderated, especially if they contain links, so if it doesn’t show up right away, don’t worry!

Made Me Think

In Praise of the Adult Allowance (from Get Rich Slowly): Over the past year or so, I’ve become quite a frugal person. The problem is that I tend now to take it almost to an extreme. A lot of times, it’s not that I don’t like to waste money, but I actually have a really hard time deciding to buy anything. This quote from GRS really resonated with me: “By allocating [allowance] money to use however I pleased, I was freed from feeling guilty about every little thing I bought.”  I haven’t yet started giving myself an allowance, but it’s certainly something that I’m going to be considering.

Fighting a Frugal Battle Against Ice and Snow (from The Simple Dollar): Speaking of frugal, I found the title of this post a bit misleading, since it didn’t strike me as having as much to do with frugality as with tips and tricks for dealing with wintery weather. The timing was especially good, as last night, we got hit with a brutal winter storm which dumped over 20 cm (8″) of snow on us — and more still falling — while throwing us into a deep freeze of -30C (-22F). I especially liked the tip about how to keep your car windows from frosting over.

How to Make Lots of Money During a Recession and How to Create Real Value (from Personal Development for Smart People): Steve Pavlina’s been on a real roll lately, talking about creating and delivering value. Again, titles here aren’t everything, and the posts are of the more lengthy variety, but they are incredibly insightful. They also tie nicely into Steve’s other recent (and brilliant) piece: Calibration. Together, these three posts had a big impact on my decision to re-start up Sententia.

New Sites I’m Following

The ABC’s of Investing (http://www.abcsofinvesting.net/): I like to think of myself as having a decent (albeit basic) understanding of how investing works. Reading The Four Pillars of Investing was absolutely fascinating to me, but I often found myself going and looking up terminology and ideas that I just wasn’t familiar with. I have a feeling that if I’d known about The ABC’s of Investing, I wouldn’t have had nearly as many questions. The site describes itself as “created to help educate people who have little or no investment knowledge”. Here’s a sample article.

Someday Syndrome (http://somedaysyndrome.com/): The name of this blog makes it sound like an anti-procrastination blog, and that’s true. But it’s also more than that. The site description says: “At Someday Syndrome, we get you moving, get you dreaming, get you on the right path, get rid of stuff, get over it, get it done, and most importantly get you happy.” Lately I’ve been really fascinated by psychological research that shows how being happy requires a different set of skills than not being unhappy, so this article from SS really caught my eye.

Bonus Material

I just finished re-reading The Golden Compass, the first book of Philip Pullman’s series “His Dark Materials” this week. This book is one of my all-time favorites, and it’s become somewhat of a tradition for me to read the entire trilogy in December each year. Every time I read it, I seem to notice new connections and ideas that I hadn’t seen before; to me, that’s a hallmark of a well-written book. A note if you’ve only seen the movie: don’t let it turn you off this book or series (the books are way better).

Finally, one of my all-time favorite songs has to be “All I Ask of You” from the Phantom of the Opera.  The King’s Singers version of it is absolutely gorgeous — have a listen (it should auto-play; or search for it on Google Video).