Weekly Roundup – I’m a Loser Baby!

The theme for this week (and most of this month) is losing!

This is a good thing but also a not so good as well.

First up in the not so good category is my beloved Buckeyes. Sadly The Ohio State University (my alma mater current university) lost in the NCAA Final Four. What started out as a great first half, looking very much like we would prevail, became a nail biter ending and a disappointing finale.

Like millions of Americans, I did not win the lottery this past week. I’m still missing my 10 bucks but I’ll get over it. I will not be playing the lottery again for awhile, it’s just not for me. Which, if you think about it, is rather strange given the amount of money I have thrown away over the years. Gambling is just something that I will never be into.

I have lost a few great things this past week and the month of March. I have lost 15 pounds! I have lost my taste for pop. I am fairly shocked by that. I gave up pop about 3 months ago and recently had a Coke. It was so sickly sweet that I could not finish it.

I have lost my desire to eat meat and dairy products. I watched the documentary Forks Over Knives earlier this month and it resonated with me so much that the desire to eat animal products of any type is gone. I started eating a vegan diet earlier this week. I’m already gluten free and have been for months and one thing I realized is that eating a diet where I am not buying meat or dairy products actually makes the expense of buying gluten free foods that much better. My grocery budget may actually stay in the range that I was hoping it would each month.

I have also lost one credit card bill! I am so happy that I paid off my Dell bill! One down, 5 more to go! I HOPE that the next one is paid off in the next month or so! It’s under $300 so I should be able to.

Finally, this month I really feel like I have lost my mojo. My focus is gone, as is my productivity. I think it is the fact that I have been completely off my ADHD medications for a couple of weeks now and the symptoms are rearing their ugly heads. I am not staying on top of my to do list and things are not getting done.

There are very few things I truly hate in this world but one of the biggest is this feeling of failure. I do not like letting my clients down. I have come up short on a couple of articles this month and it is really upsetting to me. I’ve also noticed that what I have wrote hasn’t been as good as I’d like it to be.

I’m taking a few steps to improve on this for the month of April, I am hopeful that I will be successful. A few of those steps include cutting back on a couple of the clients that I have taken on. I want to focus on a few, even if it means making less money this month. I’d rather do a really great job for them and make less money then do a mediocre job for more clients and make a full time income.

I’m also going to try to find a way to get some insurance. Student insurance may be cheaper than self-employed insurance, I want to check into those. But I may also qualify for state funded insurance, depending on the income level guidelines. I know I’m getting close, if I’m not already over it.

After all of that rambling, I do want to alert you to some of the articles I have had published around the web.

*At PerkStreet’s Blog I wrote an article, “5 Signs That Your Children Will Be Bad with Money”. As I was writing this, I was thinking about my children. I hope that I can do enough to make sure they never make the mistakes that I have made in the past. I am very strict about how they delve out their allowance. In my home it is 50% Savings, 40% Spend & 10% Give. (We are currently using our “Give” money for the Ronald McDonald House.) I do not allow them to dip into their “spend” money very often. I have found that they really don’t want for much. So when something special pops up (like this past weekend when we went to the Lego Kids Fest.) they can spend their money on something very cool.

*I don’t know if I’m getting a tax return yet or not because I haven’t yet filed my 2011 Income Taxes (good lord, the deadline is almost here! I better get cracking!) But for those of you who know you will have a return, I wrote an article at FiPath that is just for you. Smart Ways to Spend Your Tax Return is some good advice that I will definitely be following.

* Also for FiPath, another tax post on what to do if you have tax debt. I REALLY hope I do not have to pay.

*All this talk of winning the lottery had me thinking. It inspired my most recent post at Enemy of Debt. Do You Have the Mentality to be Wealthy? I don’t think I do.

*Also at Enemy of Debt, I wrote about Selling vs. Donating a Car. I’m going to need to make a decision about my car very soon. I don’t know how much longer he’s going to last.

*I wrote a couple of guest posts over the past couple of weeks. For Everything Finance Blog, I posted at So Over Debt. I was thinking about my overly-dramatic-slightly-obsessive side when I wrote about the difference between being “gazelle” and being “crazy.”

* I sent another guest post over to So Over Debt for another client, Moolanomy. I like writing about using coupons. I even had a few confessions about what this crazy coupon lady has done in the past. (PS. today I saved $15.35 using coupons and a lot of what I bought was fresh produce! It can be done people!)

There has to be more but if you’ve made it to the bottom of this (over 1oo0 words) post, you deserve a prize. Or at least a hug!

Happy April everyone! Let’s make it a good one!

I also blog at A Five Star Life. I write about anything that comes to mind but try to focus on finding the good in daily life.