TMT009 - Cut Your Phone Bill and Stay Charged

Listen to Episode 9 of The Matt Trick in the player above or download it.

I've got some new Amazon links on the side. If you buy anything or sign up for anything on Amazon after clicking through one of my links, I'll get referral credit for it, so you can support The Matt Trick that way! Also, I found a referral link for YNAB from a few weeks ago podcast, so if you wish to buy it, you can get a discount and you'll support The Matt Trick at the same time.

If you've been enjoying this podcast, please recommend it to someone! If you've learned something from a Matt Trick episode, tell someone about it so they can pull a Matt Trick too! Also, if you feel so inclined, please rate my podcast favorably and leave me some nice words in iTunes to help me get discovered.

Just Swinging Around

The Matt Trick

Yeah, you really can have a cell phone plan this cheap

I interview my friend from school, Cody Diehl, about the phone service Republic Wireless. After buying either the Moto X for $300 or the Moto G for $150 (both very capable and slick Android phones) you can sign up for one of the plans above. Seriously. Unlimited for $10. Add data for a total of $25. Cody tells me in the interview how great they are. I've been using it for less than a week, but I've been coveting this for far longer.

If you do sign up, you can get $20 off by using my referral link and it will also throw me a referral credit to help support The Matt Trick podcast. I think you can also get a free Chromecast for a limited time, so now's the time to jump on it for sure.

Here's the uncut video of our interview. I didn't do a good job setting up the video call, so it's just a video of Cody, but he's a good looking guy, easy on the eyes.

Goal Line

The Goal Line page is up, which makes last week's goal complete. For this week, I want to focus on early to rise and early to bed, which have been my biggest failures here at the Goal Line so far. So every night this week (um, except for Sunday which I'm staying up late finishing the podcast) I want to be in bed by 10pm, and every morning I want to wake up by 5:30. No excuses! I'm focusing on it and I have the personalized Goal Line page to prove it!

Matt-spiration Moment

If you’re like most people, you plug your phone in everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. Perhaps you have to juggle the charging of several devices besides your phone, like tablets, kindles, ipads, laptops, and the like. Making sure our devices are well charged has become such a part of our culture that there are entire product lines of devices to make charging more convenient or more portable. At airports, there are charging stations with travelers crowded around waiting their turn to plug in.

We’re slaves to low battery alert! And yet, what would happen if we ignored it? Our expensive hand-held, pocket-sized computer which normally has the capability to know the whole of human knowledge and history or communicate with anyone anywhere on the entire planet would turn into a very shiny doorstop. And heck with the whole of human knowledge, we need that fancy device to argue with strangers and watch videos of cats! It must remain charged, and darn it, I’ll divert my daily schedule to sit at my desk and plug it in for an hour if I have to!

But what about ourselves? What about our bodies, or our minds, or spirits? How often do we take the time for ourselves to recharge? Randall L Ridd in April 2014 LDS General Conference makes this observation:

...if you don’t regularly recharge your cell phone, it is useless, and you feel lost and out of touch. You wouldn’t think of going a single day without charging your battery.

As important as it is to leave home every day with a full charge on your cell phone, it is far more important to be fully charged spiritually. Every time you plug in your phone, use it as a reminder to ask yourself if you have plugged in to the most important source of spiritual power—prayer and scripture study, which will charge you with inspiration …

Taking time for yourself to allow for a recharge should be much higher on our priority list than any of our devices, but if you don’t make the time out of your busy schedule to do these important, yet seemingly non-urgent things, you’ll suffer in the long run.

Taking the time to stay active is necessary to recharge your body, especially if you’re a lazy engineer like me who is inclined to compulsively play video games and watch The Simpsons and Doctor Who if left to my own devices. Regularly scheduled times with long and short term goals can be the commitment devices you need to overcome the inertia. Friends are great too.

Keeping your mind sharp is important too for keeping charged. It’s easy to fill your unwinding time in the evenings with “veging out” sort of activities. That’s what my smart phone is best at! But filling my spare time with good hobbies, though a bit more difficult, is far more satisfying. For me, I’ve enjoyed reading the books for the Summer Bingo Challenge, grabbing the guitar and singing with Megan, or recording podcasts that few people will ever listen to. Sure there is a time and a place to snuggle in bed and watch Sherlock, but keeping the mind charged with better hobbies should take priority.

And of course, as with the Randall L Ridd quote I read before, charging your spirit is of utmost importance. Take time for personal introspection, think inwardly on yourself on how to improve. Put yourself in daily scripture study or self-improvement reading as well as personal prayer and meditation. Use your cell phone as a reminder. When you plug in to charge, ask yourself when you last took the time to plug in and charge yourself. When was the last time you plugged into the real source of power to keep your personal batteries charged, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

TMT008 - Parent Like An Economist

Listen to Episode 8 of The Matt Trick in the player above or download it.

If you've been enjoying this podcast, please recommend it to someone! If you've learned something from a Matt Trick episode, tell someone about it so they can pull a Matt Trick too! Also, if you feel so inclined, please rate my podcast favorably and leave me some nice words in iTunes to help me get discovered.

That's one big zucchini, baby!

The Matt Trick

Kids aren't as bad as everyone says they right?
I mean, I see cute kids on Facebook everyday!

For the Matt Trick, I introduce a few points from economics on parenting. I know when you seek advice on parenting, you probably don't think about asking an economist. In fact, you probably run from any economists in the vicinity. By I really enjoyed many of the points Bryan Caplan makes in his book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.

He gave a great interview about the above book a few years ago on Econtalk. Check it out the next time you have an hour's worth of yard work to do. It will help pass the time in between pulling weeds and finding infant-sized zucchinis.

Caplan, as well as many other parent-economists, can also be heard in an episode of the Freakonomics podcast aptly called The Economist's Guide to Parenting.

My biggest take away? Parenting doesn't have to be as expensive (in terms of money, time, and energy) as the world makes it seem. Studies show that it's not what you do to your kids, like spending lots of money on expensive schools, summer camps, violin lessons, and the like, but it's who you are that largely determines how your kids will turn out. Also, the biggest way to positively impact your children for years to come is to build a strong loving relationship with them.

Goal Line

It's not done yet, but I will have a page up by next week that shows different goals I've made and their status of how I'm doing. This way I can be better held accountable and more focused. Also, setting a new goal every week is becoming too much. I'll use this Goal Line page to determine where to expend my energy, which goals to drop, and if I even need a new goal in a coming week.

Matt-spiration Moment

Let me tell you a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.  

Sometimes we have expectations. These expectations can be for ourselves, or they can be for what we expect others to do. Other people can have expectations also--expectations for what we will achieve or what they think we would have them achieve. And if there is not effective communication, no one will meet anybody’s expectations and we’ll all end up with Everybody blaming Somebody with Nobody doing what Anybody could do.

Megan has been reading and listening to a man named Larry Kerby on parenting. He’s an author and speaker with a small following on Facebook and YouTube. In one of his videos that Megan had me watch the other day, he talks about the “definition of done.” This is something we’ve become frustrated over with Oliver and Camilla. When we ask them to clean up the blocks, our expectation is that the blocks are picked up, in their bin with the lid on, and the bin gets placed on the shelf. Their expectation, however, is that they pick up most of the blocks from the center of the room and then go and eat a cheese stick. These expectation do not match, and somebody is inevitably going to be disappointed. But we found that by communicating our expectations ahead of time and asking them questions like, “What will the room look like when your job is done?" "Where will the blocks be when they’re put away?" "What is your definition of complete?” we can come to equal expectations and get better results with less fighting.

But this isn’t just a parenting technique. This is a communication skill. Communication which is necessary for any relationship, with a spouse, within professional environments, church, society, politics, etc. If others know what we expect, and equally we know what they expect, then together we can all move towards a common goal and know what it will look like when we arrive there. 

In the Gospel, Christ makes it clear repeatedly what is we are supposed to do in this life. He gives us His commandments, He shows us His example, gives us numerous stories and parables to teach us to love one another, love God and our neighbor as ourselves, search the scriptures, pray always, share the gospel with those around us, repent often, and become our best selves by working our hardest towards the goal of perfection everyday. And even better than communicating his expectations with us, he lets us know what we can expect from Him: if we do our part, His atonement will fill in our shortcomings and we can be forgiven and become perfected in Him. He is constant, consistent, and perfectly clear in His expectations. There is never any question of which part is ours and which part is His.

Let’s try harder to build stronger relationships by clear communication and consistency with expectations. All of our relationships stand to benefit: our families, our social circles, our employment relationships, and most importantly, our relationship with the Savior, Jesus Christ.

TMT007 - When Things Get Scarce

Listen to Episode 7 of The Matt Trick in the player above or download it.

If you've been enjoying this podcast, please recommend it to someone! If you've learned something from a Matt Trick episode, tell someone about it so they can pull a Matt Trick too! Everyone loves shameless plugs on Facebook, right? ;)

*UPDATE* If you purchase YNAB on my recommendation, support The Matt Trick by using my referral link for a $6 discount!

The Matt Trick

You Need A Budget
(who doesn't, right?)

For the Matt Trick, I introduce the budgeting tool Megan and I use called You Need A Budget, or YNAB for short. I go through the four rules that make YNAB so great:

1. Give every dollar a job.
2. Plan for bigger less frequent expenses.
3. Roll with the punches.
4. Learn to live on last month's income (stop living paycheck to paycheck). 

I am not affiliated in any way shape or form with YNAB (beyond referral credit) and I don't personally know Jesse Mecham, the founder and president of YNAB. I just really like his software. You can learn the basics of how to use it by watching the videos on his YouTube channel, get some other good tips listening to the YNAB podcast, and download a 34 day free trial at the YNAB website.

If you purchase YNAB on my recommendation, support The Matt Trick by using my referral link for a $6 discount!

Also checkout the YNAB apps for iPhone and Android.

Goal Line

In order to effectively use YNAB, you have to regularly input your purchases and check your categories. Lately I've been getting to YNAB and syncing things about once a month...maybe. So my goal this month is to visit the budget at least once a week on my phone and check the budget categories before making purchases to avoid overspending.

Matt-spiration Moment

I’ve gotten into economics as a hobby over the past few years. And not so much economics as in GDP, labor and money in a nation, you know, economics of how an economy works. But in a more personal, behavioral way. And generalized from not just money, but the ways we allocate all kinds of resources. And this is, at its heart, what interests me about econ. It is understanding the underlying incentives of how people behave in a world of infinite human wants but only a finite amount of resources. And economics is how we rationally prioritize those resources and wants so that we get the most net fulfillment out of life.

This idea of limited resources in economics is called scarcity. Scarcity has the connotation of being a bad thing. It sounds like we’re going to run out of something like in a food shortage or energy crisis. Or that something is difficult to find like the spotted purple wood finch needs to be on the protected species list. But really, the idea of something being limited and finite is not a bad thing. In fact, it makes us more efficient and innovative in the use of our resources. Think about your kids, or when you were a kid. Because they don’t pay the electric or water bills, they leave the lights on and the water running. To them, the resources are never ending without limit or price. And I was the same way. Until I went to college and had to pay my own bills and my money was very scarce. Then I very much learned to make wasting electricity in my college apartment scarce as well.

Speaking of money, scarcity is what make rule #1 work in YNAB, giving every dollar a job. When you first get your paycheck deposited, there’s a ton of money in your account and it seems as though it were unlimited. So you do the shopping, go out to dinner, maybe make a few splurges. But then when it comes time to pay rent, light, heat, and whatever else, the paycheck just doesn't cover it. By giving every incoming dollar a job in your budget before you spend it, you know exactly how much money you have to spend on each item, including fun stuff. And when the money for a category is running low, that scarcity drives you to innovate and get creative to make things work, or realize that you can go without. And by doing so, you aren’t left eating dog food to help you make it the next paycheck, or worse, racking up credit card debt.

Debt can be a scarcity trap of its own. When you have the so-called “freedom” to spend on credit, the spending can seem unlimited with the time for payment due too far away to seem real. Similarly student loan debt continues to rise as universities have figured out that they can charge whatever they want without innovation or cuts to keep their operations efficient, because students will simply borrow more money from a seemingly endless supply of student loans. But the money is not in endless supply and it must be paid back over time, along with interest.

Perhaps the most interesting personal resource of all we have to allocate in this life is our time. I say interesting because each person in this life, rich or poor, has the same 24 hours in a day. But we each choose how to spend that time. When the deadline of a big project is far away in time, why is it so hard to get started? Perhaps because the seemingly limitless amount of time makes it easy to push off to another day, while we can spend today looking at Facebook and videos of cats. But you can bet that when time becomes scarce, we are suddenly able to complete an amazing amount in the last minute. After all, if it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done, right?

To avoid this scarcity trap with time, we need to do something similar to what we did with our You Need A Budget budget. That is, give every dollar a job, or make a plan to do the things you need to get done. In Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he presents a four quadrant diagram of Urgent vs Important activities. The four quadrants of the diagram are urgent and important, not urgent but still important, urgent but not important, and not urgent nor important. Our activities can fit into these four quadrants. Urgent and important things might be something like a looming deadline, a crying baby, or some other crisis. Important non-urgent activities could be personal improvement, exercise, long term projects or goals, financial planning, or recreation. Non-important urgencies are interruptions like text-messages, phone calls, facebook updates, emails, and other time wasters that give an illusion of us getting things done, but really don’t move us toward any of our goals. I have to be careful not to trick myself with these, because it feels really good to compulsively get these things done. And then the non-important, non-urgent brain vegetating activities like television, video games, YouTube, The Simpsons, Mega Man, Doctor Who reruns, etc.

If we have the impression that time is not scarce, we’ll spend too much of it in those non-important quadrants and only get to the important things as they fall into the urgent category, getting them done at the last minute. Our goal should be to schedule time (or give those minutes a job) to get those non-urgent yet important things done. I mean, that personal memoir of yours isn’t going to write itself, right? I’m finding this especially true with my miracle mornings and my long runs. If I don’t wake up early to make time for my personal time  to pray, meditate, read, and write, it’s not getting done. And if I don’t schedule my long runs for 4:30 on a Saturday morning and tell my wife and running friends about it (you see what I did there with the commitment device) that’s certainly not going to make time for itself. By creating scarcity for the non-urgent activities, or setting up a finite time where we can focus on them without distraction, we’ll find ourselves more productive, happier, and running around less like a chicken with its head cut off.

The time we have in this life is precious and finite. Don’t we want to fill it with the best things possible? By utilizing scarcity to our advantage, we can be better stewards of our resources-- of our money, our time, and our energy. We can obtain the greatest amount of utility from what we have, that’s econ speak for get the biggest bang for our buck. And in our lives where it seems like time is only ever speeding up, this should be our ultimate goal: to do the most good and to get the most out of our time here on earth.

TMT006 - Lucky Love

Listen to the Episode 6 of The Matt Trick or download it.

Because of the holiday week (too much fun, not enough time) and because today is my and Megan's 7th anniversary, here is a special edition of the Matt Trick. Last week a friend of ours asked us to perform Lucky I'm In Love by Jason Mraz for her wedding. It went well enough that we thought it'd be fun to record it. Here is our (less than professional) performance. Enjoy!