I was reading a story about a mom blogger at Dooce.com and how she has pretty much spilled out her life journey on that blog. It looks like there is everything from parenthood to issues with alcohol and employment. There was an interesting note about the whole story and how she eventually started to make about $40,000 to $60,000 a month through advertisements on the blog. Essentially, her readership started to skyrocket when she began to blog about some extremely hard times in her life.

What that topic brought up was how it basically took something extremely negative in order to garner the attention to produce what she has today. As well, I was watching a video interview on how so many mom bloggers are writing part time to make themselves an income. When you think about it, would the same have held true if her story was simply bubbly and happy instead? My guess would be probably not.

Kind of reminds me of a lady on this panel before where the topic was about Internet communication and she was specifically writing about dating and her personal relationships online. Apparently, it wasn’t until she had some kind of a big fight with her boyfriend that she started to get thousands of visitors and attention. She even said it seemed like no one cared too much when everything was all and well.

That should make you think too if you were planning to do something like this where you figured it would be nice to earn an income from it. If you are specifically aiming to make it a career of sort, you pretty much have to be prepared to spill yourself in some way. Unless you are already a big name or have some kind of network to leverage off of.

And you know, for those of you who are in debt too, this can actually be a good way to help you get out of it where you will be scrutinized by hundreds of people and at the same time possibly earning some money while you’re at it. Example, talk a bit about your finances and your goals. The possibilities are endless for a wide range of topics too. But if you are to learn anything from this it’s that everyone has a story to tell and if you are willing to reveal it you never know where it can take you personally and financially. Just be prepared for all the negatives and positives that come with it.

So it’s summer time and this year I am seriously considering the farm idea where I wanted to visit a farm to see how much money I could save if I bought items directly from one as opposed to shopping at a store. Not only that, I figured the products would be better too.

Looking at the locations, it appeared that all of the farms were located in more rural areas that would be quite a way off from the area I live in. That was making me think and trying to do some research on the prices that farmers would charge for the item vs a store. At the same time, just how much volume do you have to buy to make it worth it?

I have been trying to find some kind of price list online but have not had any luck thus far. But At this point I think it does come down to the travel expense. Example, if an item was only $1 dollar cheaper buying it direct yet it costs you $1.25 to get there and back then it is not worth it.

So many times it can be cheaper to just buy it from the store since companies buy them in large wholesale quantities have the shipping all sorted out. I always wondered why more farmer’s don’t just put a pricelist online somewhere as I’m sure if there was more awareness of the alternatives in buying the products directly from them it could be better for everyone.

Happy Canada to all the Canadian readers. So this is supposed to be the 142nd birthday of the country this year. It doesn’t sound that old to me personally when it comes to a country for some odd reason. I spent the day doing some shopping at a grocery store and it was kind of funny to see this “1000 tastes of Canada” sign as you can see here:

I think the store was marking certain products as a way to promote some local food and produces and hence the “1000 tastes of Canada” tag were placed on them. But as you can see there, this was placed on a rack selling blank CD’s. I’m not sure how those taste and nor do I want to celebrate the day finding out either.

Recently I was with a group of people and a conversation came up about maintaining ones health and one person was saying how he can’t eat too much of a particular item otherwise he will gain weight. Now she seemed like she did a lot of physical activities too and so you would think one wouldn’t have an issue with things like that. Afterwards I realized that she was into things such as smoking and drinking alcohol. So in my mind I thought that kind of explained some points about the weight issue.

At the same time, she was also talking about finances and how she tries so much yet it seems like it is such a challenge to stay balanced at the end of the month. I was just thinking about her habits though such as those cigarettes and how that is probably one huge monthly expense alone. I’m almost inclined to say that it would be close to a monthly gas bill for people who drive a car.

I personally dislike some styles of budgeting where people create charts outlining if you do two things good to save money then that means you can do two things that are bad in terms of spending it. Hence, you are always just breaking even. Is that really a good way to manage your finances though? Would that make sense in say a business where the strategy is if you get one happy customer then that gives you one customer to make angry?

In many ways I think focusing on your habits is more effective than just creating budgets in general. Cause with that you are focused on living a particular lifestyle which is the key to producing results personally and financially.

So with that crazy incident that happened at the mall yesterday one topic that I heard a lot of people rumble about was how it was so inconvenient if you were taking public transportation yesterday and that it would have been so much better to just drive there. That then brought up the topic of the amount of money you spend buying a transit ticket to get to your destination vs gas for your car.

For the car advocate they were using an example on how it costs about $2.50 a ticket one way and so you burn about $5 going to say the mall for a day. Compare that to $5 worth of gas where you can probably go back and fourth to the mall about 10 to 20 times with $5 worth of gas. For the public transportation advocate they mentioned how you have to factor in all of the other expenses associated with having a car such as the monthly insurance rates where in the end taking public transportation is cheaper.

I was thinking with those examples and it seems like technically the cheapest middle of the road way to go based on all of those factors is to simply participate in something like a carpool or vehicle sharing program. Of course, unlike things like a house or apartment I’m sure sharing a vehicle is not as straight forward. But imagine if four people normally spent about $100 a month in transportation usually for the sole purpose of traveling to work.

Assuming the insurance is about $100 a month with gas being say $150, that means everyone could potentially save about $37.50 a month or more. Of course, there are always the non vehicle options such as walking or riding a bike which can work just as well depending on your travel distances.

I know here in BC there are a lot of rideshare type of programs available too. I think this is really dependent on where you live and the options you have available. Example, I know many that just take the rapid transit to work at the core of downtown as it is a nightmare to find parking that can also cost you a lot of money in parking alone.

Mixing and matching doesn’t hurt too I’d say. Example, if one day you are traveling to a fireworks show that would be a 20km ride one way and a rapid transit option is available then it may be wiser to use that option. If you find yourself having to travel smaller distances frequently and need the convenience to get from point A to point B then a car would make more sense financially. Sharing one with someone else could make more sense too.