Kurt's Favorite Things

Oprah does a show every year when she gives out her favorite and often high priced things. I've decided to do my own list of favorite things which are low priced if not free.

• Comic Strips:
  
• Sheldon, a billionaire kid, his grandpa, his lizard and the genius duck. What more could you want out of a comic strip
  
• Wally and Osborne, the south pole adventures of a penguin and a displaced polar bear.
  
• Overdue Media, Dew and co. are employees of the local misfit of a library.
  
• Russell's Teapot, while often hilarious it is not for the easily offended. The strip always makes fun of Christianity, it's value comes as an outside observer of the state of church.
• Blogs
• Financial - Blogs where you can learn to be thrifty, invest wisely, and get good financial advice
  
• Free Money Finance
• The Honest Dollar
• Five Cent Nickle
  
• Religion
• Tuesday Column By Keith Drury
• Wright Off the Bat by Kevin Wright
• Ben Witherington
  
• Websites (non-blogs)
  
• Library Thing - catalog, review, and track your books. Get suggestions of books you might like or get suggestions from you unsuggester of books you are least likely to own. You can talk about your books with fellow fans or just keep track of what you own.
• Itunes U - Download audio and video lectures from a good deal of colleges and universities, including Yale, MIT, Notre Dame, and many more. The lectures are free and are from lecturers many can only dream of seeing.
• AllRecipes.com - The best cook book on the planet, free, plenty of pictures, reviews, suggestions, and more recipes than you want.
• Kiplinger Personal Finance - The gurus of personal finance.
  
• Tools
• Grand Central - The way I get $40 +tax  worth of calling for $5 +tax a month. GC on line phone service that gives you smart calling. It assigns one number to ring at every phone you own. You can block callers, record calls, assign personalized outgoing voice mail messages.
  The BEST part; GC let's make long distance calls for free. You select which phone you want to call from and who you want to talk to, it calls your phone, when you answer it calls who you want to talk to. Many people don't know that all incoming phone calls are free, when you use GC to call 'out' it actually calls in first then uses the magic of the Internet to call out. Meaning your phone receives an incoming call, which is free, then calls whoever where ever. I have a $5 + tax phone line, to make a regular outgoing call costs me $.80, using GC I never make the outgoing call but I get unlimited local and long distance a $40 value.
• TurboTax - If it weren't for this software I wouldn't be doing my own taxes. I tried an on line solution one year but gave up and bought Turbo Tax, it is great, simple to use.
  
• Kitchen Gadgets
• Bread Maker - This is the greatest thing I own. It makes bread, jelly, pizza dough, pasta dough. It's easy dump a few ingredients in a pan set the machine come back to a fresh loaf of bread or a fresh lump of dough. Just shape the dough, let it rise bake it and eat. It's cheaper than a buying fancy bread, healthier, and much more fun.
• Ice Cream Maker - it's fun to be able to make ice cream and the thing is flexible, it makes yogurt, ice cream and smoothies.
• Magazines
• Economist - Good economy stories that touch on every aspect of our lives.
  
• Biblical Archeology Review - A whole magazine dedicated to the intersection of the Bible and Archeology.
  
• Kraft Food and Family - a free recipe magazine, sure the recipes are on the boxes of Kraft food but the magazine has better pictures.
• Kiplinger Magazine - What I don't catch on line I read in the magazine.
  
• Financial Things (not listed above)
  
• Free File - If your gross income in 2007 was less than $54,000 you can efile for free. The systems aren't as hefty as TurboTax but if your taxes aren't complicated you should use it.
• 401k - What gets better than getting money from you employer just for saving money.
• Roth IRA - No 401k option at work check out Roth IRAs.
  
• BankRate.com - The best place to find a high interest, no fee, no minimum savings and checking account. High interest means free money.
• Credit for Qualified Retirement Savings Contributions aka from 8880 - Remember the above mentioned 401k and the Roth IRA if your income is within limits the Government will give you money because you saved money.

All those things and barely a penny spent (get your magazines at the library like the rest of us). Sure the bread make and ice cream maker cost money but after a year of homemade pizzas and loaves of homemade bread you will be saving money.

What are your favorites?

Things You Should Do

This is simply a my suggestions of thins everyone should know how to do and should be doing. They won't guarantee success in anyway but are necessary for a well rounded life.

Learn to cook at least one meal of your own: It can be as easy as Lasagna or as complicated as Italian Wedding Soup. Either way everyone needs to know how to cook at least one company sized dish. People like coming over for a warm home cooked meal and they want something a bit different than what they cook at their own home. Maybe try my Seven Cheese and Chicken Stuffed Shells (they sound harder than they are), Mexican Pork Chops (it doesn't get much easier), or Chicken and Bean Burritos. If you don't like any of that sign up for the free Kraft Food and Family Magazine or head over to their archives and browse the old issues. Food and Family has easy seasonal food. Learn how to cook a meal or two and invite some friends over to dine with you.

Write Thank You Notes: I'm not excited about it but thank you notes are back in style. I've been getting more and more lately for a wider variety of reasons from gifts to help moving. A thank note is much more sincere and heartfelt than a verbal "thanks". I'm not good at writing thank you notes (my wife and friends will attest to that if necessary) they are usually scrawls inside a plain card.  That being said I'm going to share how to write a thank you note. 

The good news is a thank you note doesn't have to exceed 4 sentences (plus the greeting and your signature).  The first sentence is the gratitude sentence, "Thank you for this great blog post". The last sentence is recaps the the first sentence and is often just "Thanks again!" Don't overdue the exclamation points this isn't Seinfeld. The hard part is the middle two sentences. The second sentence will mention the use or the event, "I cooked your Seven Cheese and Chicken Stuffed Shells for a dinner party everyone loved them." The third sentence mentions the past and the future, "I really enjoy reading your blog, I look forward to next weeks post."  Its also nice to include a p.s. if you can, "p.s. I'm going to make the Pork Chops this weekend." 
Keep in mind two main rules; the note is only about thanks and the event or gift and a thank you note is always sent using snail mail never email. If you are worried your card will look empty use a postcard, they look full with 4 sentences.

Read books / newspapers / magazines / journals: 52% of adults read a book voluntarily in 2002 and in 1999 "50% of the population aged 25 and over read a newspaper at least once a week, read one or more magazines regularly, and had read a book in the past 6 months" (NIFL.gov).  People who read are well rounded and informed, questions about reading habits are even becoming popular interview questions. People who read always have something to talk whether it's current events are a book they have a place to start. If you aren't sure where to start head over to Librarything.com to get a few suggestions.

 

Buy a DVD player and video game system: This is more for soon to be college students than adults but can be easily applied to adults. Video games and DVDs are a large part of the social fabric that is college. I realize parents won't like that advice but it's solid tested advice. If you don't want to buy the new systems your old NES or the SNES will be an excellent lower cost substitute. When I was in college we spent weeks playing the old NES mostly Mario, Duck Hunt, and the Track and Field game on the Power Pad.