I’ve been wanting to create one of these forever. And after reading some of your comments on what you’d do with an extra $1,000 I’m finally sitting down to pump this out – so thanks!

And I plan on actually CROSSING THESE OFF MY LIST too – they’re not just gonna be sitting here looking pretty for the fun of it. If you’re anything like me, you want to do a thousand things but there’s never enough motivation (or memory) to DO them at the moment. If they’re written down though – esp for everyone to see like on this blog – there is a much higher chance of them becoming a reality. And you might even get a few cheerleaders along the way!

So in the spirit of living a fun & adventurous life (all somehow budgeted in, of course), here is the start of my very own Life List. In no particular order.

I, J. Money, hereby pledge to accomplish the following over my lifetime.

(and btw, this is all about the FUN things I’d like to do some day – totally separate from all the love and family and other important aspects of life)

1. Go to an airport and jump on the next flight out! Me and a thousand others who’ve said they’ve wanted to try this before :) But like I said, I am going to make this happen! Even IF it’s one of the most un-frugal ways to purchase a plane ticket. Because when it comes to adventure and spontaneity, this is one of those that can’t be beat – with or without someone!
2. Bet $1,000 on black. You know those movies where people risk it all on a 50/50 chance at roulette? Well, that’s gonna be me one of these days. I’m not crazy enough to bet the whole shebang, but $1,000 should be plenty enough to satisfy my high – whether I double it or not. (But I’m surely hoping to!)
3. Buy a Fancy car. Whether it’s a Benz, Beemer (I know it’s spelled b-i-m-m-e-r, but that just doesn’t sound right to me), Porsche, whatever – I just REALLY want to experience V.I.P. one day, even if for only a year or two. My fear, of course, is that I’d fall in love with it & then never go back because I then know the difference!
4. Work for myself full-time. I put this on the list because then “working” would NOT be working! It would be building things online and making money at the same time as increasing happiness. And if it doesn’t I’d go right back to the real world ;)
5. Donate $10,000 ANONYMOUSLY to a charity. I’m not gonna lie, this is going to be hard for me. Not so much the money part of it, but the anonymity side. The most I’ve done before was $50 and the urge to put my name on it was so high!
6. Get my “things” down to 100. This will probably take the longest of the bunch :) But the good news here is that I’ve already STOPPED collecting more stuff! So now it’s just about shedding the rest little by little until I finally hit that magic number. And it could very well end up being 200 or even 300 things by the end, I’m not sure. I just know that 5,000 things is way too much right now, and I’m fairly certain I have at least that.
7. Launch Love Drop – My kinda sorta charity that I kinda sorta started but haven’t had time to get up and running all the way :( But when it does, expect it to blow up! With Nate and I’s passion we could really help a LOT of people.
8. Build a house from scratch. I have ZERO experience or know how in this department, but give me a year and some industry contacts and I’d be a very happy boy! I’d like to say that I build the house I live in with my own bare hands – even if 100 or so others helped out :) (or maybe I give one of those tiny houses a go!)
9. *NEW* Visit all 50 States! I totally forgot about this one until momcents reminded me (thx!). This will be a fun one since it’ll take some nice finagling trying to hit all those states I’d normally never go to :) And that would be a shame because there is so much CULTURE here in the states!  And we barely even touch it all staying in our own little area most of the time.  So while I’ve hit at least 24 so far, I’ve still got a long way to to. But I can’t wait!!
10. *NEW* Play in the World Series of Poker! – it might cost a pretty penny to enter (Doc S thinks about $10,000), but to sit there and be surrounding by a whole bunch of really great players? With the chance of possibly winning? (if you play your cards right ;) bah dum ching!) – Totally worth it. As long as it comes from my entertainment budget ;)

That’s the list for now. It will change and grow overtime as I get older and more wrinkly, but for now that’s what I’m workin’ towards. If I can accomplish all 7 of these I will be one happy mother f’er! And the reality is they’re all within MY power to make happen – so you better believe it’s just a matter of time. I can be one stubborn bastard when I’m passionate about something! ;)

Want to join me? I’d love to hear all about your wishes too! If you’re up for it, share it below in the comments or send me a link to YOUR own Life List and we’ll all support each other. Then maybe if you’re lucky I’ll create awards to hand out every time you cross one off your list :)

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Some of my friends’ lists:
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Lots of great lists already in the comments (seriously, some of these are really fun!!!), and others around blog land too – Get excited!!!

- Jeremy Orr’s List @ Mr Orr’s Classroom
- Jenny Decki’s List @ Beyond Mom
- Alex’s List @ The Tao of Grad School
- Doctor S’ List @ Finance Your Life
- Jeff’s list @ Sustainable Life Blog
- Trinnie’s List @ Made-Up in America
- Erin’s List @ Made-Up in America

• J. Money on Personal Finance, Life, and Sillyness
• The Original Millionaire To-Do List
• My millionaire to-do list! Ya gotta start somewhere…

Work for the airlines! You can travel alllll over when you’ve got that hook up. I did it for an entire year and will never forget it :)

But it’s not for the faint of heart – you will need to ROCK customer service or else it’ll eat you up a live.  (It’s seriously up there with debt collecting and working at the DMV! You’ve got to be GOOD.) And if you do get past all the passenger crankiness, you will be rewarded handsomely! In miles though, not money (more on that later).

And when I say cheap, I mean CHEAP. $10-$30 round trip tickets pretty much anywhere in the U.S.!  And only $50-$100ish anywhere in the world!!! At least when I was in the game (8 years ago by now). Whether you’re a ticket agent, flight attendant, baggage handler, operations, etc, everyone in the company gets hooked up. Oh, and you have the option of having these trips automatically deducted from your paycheck! Haha… Which was both good AND bad if you don’t watch yourself ;) I had many a friends lack a few paychecks here and there due to their sexy adventures.

You better believe I took advantage of it too!

• Cancun: For 4 days right after “graduating” from training and against the advice of my boss!  I almost got cut too – right before starting ;) Showed up the first day of work w/ some Mexican Virus due to drinking tap water (never EVER do that!)
• London: For a 3 day weekend to visit friends traveling there @ the same time. The week George W. declared war on Osama, actually. I was in a bar watching it on T.V. and not feeling so safe.
• Mall of America (Minnesota): Flew out in the morning, shopped for a few hours, and flew back – all on the same day! Just because we could ;)
• St. Louis: To visit a friend for the weekend.
• San Diego: 4 day trip to visit another friend.
• Puerto Rico: 2 Day quick weekend for some sun & cervezas!

And multiple trips to D.C., Miami, and many many others. I’ve also heard of people flying to places like Boston just for a nice lobster dinner too! It was pretty crazy.

Other pros of working for the airlines

• You meet a lot of cool people!
• You meet a lot of hot girls! (or guys, if you’re into that).
• You learn other languages – especially if you work the international flights.
• You can travel for FREE as a flight attendant ;) Or steward, or whatever they’re calling it these days.
• You don’t even have to work full-time!  If you were good, you could trade away your days and work the bare minimum to stay “active” (like 10 hours a week or something)
• You can fly first class a lot! Even business class!
• You can trade around work schedules and pretty much travel whenever!
• You become a customer service master.  Or you quit.

On the downside, you also get paid PENNIES – unless you’re a pilot or a 30+ year veteran. And all those free-ish plane tickets are also on standby ;)  (I remember getting confirmed seats too, but I think you only had a cple of those passes every year, the rest was standby)

Sooooo you may be able to get anywhere in the world for cheap, but once you landed you didn’t have much to live off.   So we were pretty much in and out of friends’ places and hostels here and there. And luckily there was always cheap beer no matter where you went ;)

Other cons of airline working

• You work all hours of the day and night! 3pm-11pm, 5pm-1am, 4am-11am, pretty much any wacky schedule out there. And that’s just for ticket agents as I was, not flight crew. They go hours and hours through all sorts of late-night gigs.
• You learn that baggage handlers really don’t care about your bags.
• You meet a lot of whack jobs.
• People get mad at you when it rains.
• People get mad at you when volcanoes are erupting and you tell them they can’t fly back home or they’ll die! And then they complain to your boss and ask why we just don’t “try it.”
• People also get mad when you tell them they’ll have to miss their own wedding because they showed up LATE on the very last flight out! The NIGHT BEFORE the wedding! (I swear, if you’re going to an extremely important event or destination, PLEASE, whatever you do, make sure to allow enough time for random problems!)
• Everyone sleeps around – especially the pilots. They get more ass than anyone at the airlines! Seriously, it’s insane. And sadly I’ve never seen so much debauchery or cheating going on while working theretoo. (although it could just be a New York City thing)

So to summarize: Airlines are good for cheap tickets, crazy adventures, and lots and lots of debauchery. Basically a perfect job for all who’s single and ready to mingle ;) Or those with lots of time on their hands.

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PS: I worked for Continental Airlines, in case you were wondering.

(Photo by Kossy@FINEDAYS)

• Wedding #8 this year: The Bahamas! (minus travel insurance)
• Texting is the newest, CHEAPEST, way to entertain yourself!
• Procrastination & Expedia.com: 2 of my very best friends.

I was at a loss for topics to write about this morning, so I decided to go through some of my old drafts piling up and see if anything sparked my interest. And what do you know! I found a link I’d saved over a year and a half ago just waiting to come out :)

(I literally have 70+ partially written posts just sitting there waiting to be resuscitated back to life. If I put something in there and don’t finish it within 2 days, it usually stays there for good – which is why it’s always best to write when things are fresh on your mind! But I digress…)

What I liked about this post was that it shows just how NOT perfect us personal finance bloggers really are. We do stupid stuff and blow our money too, just like you! Even when we very well know it’s not financially smart to do so. In fact, if you look around you’ll notice most bloggers are blogging BECAUSE they’re in debt! They’ve got awesome war stories, unlike myself. But these are pretty close…

So. While the wife and I have gone from $0 net worth to $150k in a little over 3 years, I am not a perfect angel. This ones’ for you Kristy from Master Your Card!

Why I Can Suck at Personal Finance …

1. I eat out Monday through Friday. Every single work day. I used to make pb&js 4 times a week but I seemed to have forgotten this trick 1.2 years ago.
2. I’ll buy milk at 7-Eleven. I know I can save $0.75 if I drive another 1/2 a mile, but then you have to find parking, walk to the very end of the grocery store, walk all the way back, and then wait in line for 7 minutes to pay. I consider this $0.75 a “convenience fee.”
3. I spent $1,600 at GoDaddy.com last year. $1,600! I went back to see what, exactly, I bought, and besides the necessary items like hosting for this blog and other sites of mine, it was all domain names. I’m afraid to tell you how many I have.
4. We spend $185 on Cable every month. Internet and home phone service is included, but still. We could surely work on this.
5. If I forget my 20% coupon, I’ll still buy something at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. You know how you sometimes realize you totally forgot to bring one from that stack in your kitchen drawer? I do that all the time. Every now and then I’ll come back later, but usually I’m just too lazy.
6. I’ll spend 3 hours looking for the cheapest flight, but then blow $50 checking in a bag ($25 each way). Being a guy I could probably fit everything into a carry on, but I like having room and not playing Tetris to make all my stuff fit properly. Plus, you can’t bring a giant bottle of hairspray on the plane with you (I have a ‘hawk, remember?)
7. I’ll leave a balance on my credit card, even though I have the cash. Granted, I do this purposefully to make me work harder to pay it off (like when we plopped $2,000 on it for Eurotrip), but it’s still wasting $20-$30.
8. I go looking for apartments and end up buying a house. We went searching for an apartment one day, got lost, found a lake, saw a house on this lake, and made an offer the very next day. 3 days later it was accepted, and we went from from renting a 1 bedroom apartment to owning a 3-level townhouse in a blink of an eye.
9. We only negotiated $5,000 off said house. Looking back this was pretty stupid. Especially since it was the month the housing bubble burst!
10. We bought a house the month the housing bubble burst! (!!!)
11. I have no problem spending $4.00 on coffee or movie candy. If I’m hungry/thristy, and something tasty is in front of me, I will buy it.
12. I’ll be buying a $30k Benz soon! It may not be today, or even next month, but you can bet your sweet ass I’ll be riding around in one of these sooner than later. And of course I’ll buy it used, I’m not *that* crazy ;)

See, your boy J. Money isn’t all roses and pockets of sunshine. He does stupid stuff with his money too! And the older he gets, the more stubborn he is becoming – believe you, me. It’s a damn good thing I figured out this whole savings and retirement stuff when I did! I might be wasting hundreds and hundreds dollars over the years, but as long as I’m saving THOUSANDS and thousands of dollars I’m okay with that. Who want’s to be perfect anyways? Perfect is boring.

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Runners-up: Spending $400 on a blinged out watch, and $40 on Bling Water. And did I mention $1,600 at GoDaddy?

(Photo by my friend Suburban Dollar)

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I’m back from the beach! And let me tell you, I feel like I’ve been transported back into 1992 again (aka 6^th grade).  By that I mean I went metal detecting!  Twice!  And I actually found something of value!  It might have been only $2.12 worth, but nonetheless it was AWESOME.  And contrary to popular belief, all the cool kids are doing it ;)

Have any of you guys tried it before?  It may sound nerdy as hell, but I gotta tell you – it’s really exciting.  The idea that you could be standing on top of piles of gold coins or diamond rings? Total hotness.  In fact, someone literally JUST found $5 million in Roman coins this week!  Off a regular ol’ metal detector! (Okay, well maybe it was a higher end one I’m not sure, but still – any detector would have picked it up.)  Not something you see every day, that’s for sure.  But at least it proves it’s do-able ;) And his words on the sport sums up the love for the game perfectly:

“The joy of metal detecting is that you never know what you will find.”
 

I couldn’t agree more.  It’s like turning on a “hope machine” every time you step out and give it a shot! The possibilities of what you can find are endless.  Also like lottery tickets, only it’s free (once you have the equipment) and the odds are much better that you come back with something of substance ;) Even if it is a handful of pennies.

So why should you care? Well, maybe you won’t I don’t know.  But the more I started typing this out and thinking about it, the more I wanted to share all this with you in hopes you find it equally exciting :)   If you’re interest is piqued, continue reading!  If not, click away and move on to your next favorite blog. Or use this knowledge to form your next Halloween costume! (“Beer Detector” anyone?)

Metal detecting 101 starts right….NOW.

What exactly IS metal detecting?

You know those old white guys who scour the beach scaring little kids with a long metal stick that beeps?  Those are metal detectors :) And what they’re doing is looking for gold. Or Rolexes as my dad likes to say.  But what they usually come up with is handful of bottle caps and an assortment of coins. Quarters if they’re REALLY good. And all it entails is basically swinging/swaying these detectors back and forth over the sand or dirt until you’re happily notified there’s metal beneath you. Then, you cross your fingers and dig!

Where do you metal detect? What can you find?

On beaches (usually in the early evening after all your beach-goers have gone for the day, leaving all their goodies behind), forests, deserts, mountains, underwater, pretty much anywhere – all depending on what exactly you’re trying to find, and how much time you have to do so ;)

As a kid, I used to actually go in my backyard! We lived on an old Civil War campground at one point and I’d literally go searching for bullets and swords and the like.  I never came up with the latter (although I’ve heard stories of friends who have), but I’ve def. found my fair share of buttons and belt buckles – one time even finding a rare one worth over $700! – and a plethora of other things once worn by our fellow soldiers.  Pretty damn awesome in my books.

Then, of course, you’ve got the treasure hunters who search for sunken ships and lost chests and booty (that’s what she said)!  I call them the “all or nothing” types.  You’re either gonna hit it BIG and become an instant millionaire, or you’ll slowly drain your savings but continue searching with all the hope in the world.

Oh yeah, there are also metal detectors who are actually trying to find something in particular and NOT get rich off of it ;)  Say, historians and the like.  Not as sexy as striking gold for one’s one benefit, but equally as exciting.  And you probably get paid to do it for a living too!

Other things one might find: Coins, rings, trash, gold, silver, bottle caps, watches, nails, cannons, swords, bullets, more trash, jewelry, antiques, and anything else that contains metal.  The more expensive detector you have, the more crap you can usually avoid (something about the sound waves being able to tell the nature of the item under your foot)

Metal detecting resources

I actually had to research this one from the start as the internet wasn’t even around back in my metal detecting days ;)  And man, there’s a lot of good stuff online!  I found metal detecting clubs – like, groups of people who get together and go detecting, and then come back and share their findings and swap stories – magazines, online forums, blogs! and pretty much anything else a hobby consists of. Here are some of the more interesting links I came across:

• Metal detecting tips
• Metal detecting blogs
• The metal detecting forum
• List of metal detecting clubs (in the U.S. and world!)
• Costs of metal detectors (Amazon)
• Books on metal detecting (Amazon)

There you have it – Metal Detecting 101! It may not make you the next millionaire, but you’ll sure as hell have fun trying. See ya on the beaches, pimps.

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(Photo at top by uvw916a)
(Photo in middle by J$ – a snapshot of his Civil War findings can be found here. W00T!)

• I just realized that i’m addicted to money. The "cool" kinds.
• Got a Cool Interview up over at A Gai Shan Life :)
• Net Worth: June – Up $27,000!!! Hot damn, 401(k).

So the 20 Something Bloggers posed an interesting question this week, and for once I thought I’d participate. Not because the others were weak or anything, but when it comes to money y’all know I’m ’bout it ’bout it! Plus, there’s an off chance of winning $100 ;) I know, I’m a slut.

Here’s the question, in question – feel free to answer it yourself in the comments below:

How do your friends and others affect your choices regarding money?

This is a GREAT question because friends usually DO have high influences over our money. And more oftentimes with the departing of it than the saving of it ;) A perfect example: 6th Grade.

How many of you were rockin’ Nike Airs back then? Or better yet, Reebok Pumps? (remember those?) 9 out of the 10 kids I knew had them and unfortunately I was the 10th without. I remember my mom telling me I was just as cool with my Ponys (back when they were originals, not trendy like the ones you see today), and that if people didn’t like me for who I was, over what I wore, they weren’t true friends. Well yeah D’uhhh! But who cared about that in school? We all wanted to be as hip as possible and get as many girls as we could – and it took Nikes to do it ;) The more expensive the better. Haha…

My point? If all our friends were doing it, we wanted to do it too – no matter the cost. Only back then we had the Bank of Mom & Dad to shut us down when we were actin’ crazy. Now it’s just you and your wallet, baby. You have free reign to spend it as you wish, and no one’s gonna know better if you don’t open up your mouth. And in fact, that’s usually what’ll happen – you won’t talk shop with your friends and everyone will think you’re peachy keen (shop = finances btw, not shopping. THAT we know you talk about ;) and yeah, I just said “peachy”)

And I’m not much better about it myself. With the exception of this blog, which I’ll get to more in a bit, I usually don’t talk about finances in real life unless provoked ;) It’s not that I don’t want to though (I do! a LOT a LOT A LOT!), but I just know how uncomfortable people can get in person. And I also know how fired up I get myself! If you’re in $10,000 debt and you wanna tell me about a 50% sale on those $400 jeans you just picked up, I’m gonna feel like slapping you. Even if they do make your a$$ look great (hey, I can slap you there! haha…).

But I also know that when people are seriously in need of help they will usually come seek it. It may not be face to face, or with me in particular, but with social media these days they can find hope and inspiration within seconds. And it doesn’t even matter if you’re friends w/ the source or not! I literally interact with hundreds of people a week and most of us don’t even know what we look like – what our real names are for that matter :) But that’s fine. We’re starting conversations about money and we’re putting it all out here for the rest of the interested-world to see. And we’re really HELPING people! You might never know it, but that last post or comment you sent around could have very well changed the way someone viewed their personal situation.

It’s also easier to connect this way. There are literally thousands of tweets streaming every hour with the latest tips, coupons, and financial news blips! Not to mention awesome check lists and quizzes like this financial fitness check-up tool I just scored a 95% on ;) Ow Ow! (You should try it out and see if you can beat me, it’s fun) And if you can’t take the spasticness of it all, a blog or Wiki is just a click or so away too. You can even read all of it in your underwear if you wanted ;) But the truth is there’s much more people talking about it online than there is out in the open.

So while I know I kinda went off topic here with today’s question, I guess I’m realizing that it’s more of the HOW part that’s affecting me, than the WHO. My real life friends are awesome as hell and I love them to death, but financially I am much more influenced by what people are sharing online these days than face-to-face. That means way less Nike envy, and much more healthy discussion :)

How about you? How do your friends affect your money?

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Disclaimer: This post is part of the 20SB Blog Carnival: Friends & Money, sponsored by Charles Schwab. Prizes may be awarded to selected posts. The information and opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the views or opinions of Charles Schwab. Details on the event, eligibility, and a complete list of participating bloggers can be found here.

(Dollar design by J.Money…unless the Gov’t is asking)

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