#these spaces just dominate a lot of easy entry points to activism and its frustrating

[problemsynth]

I don't really have much to say on like the wider leftist/anarchist movements that hasn't been said better by tons of voices better and more wide spread than mine. I usually lurk more than participating online (doing the reading, using it as a jumping off point for things that surround me). But something that has always bothered me in leftist spaces Is just the prevalence of repackaged personal responsibility politics.

Like not to mistake it for like holding people accountable for their actions (that's different and needed, you hold Steve accountable for that slur he dropped or w/e). but like the fundamental push for your personal life to reflect some moral good in all your actions and interactions with no real consideration for things like culture, disability, and poverty, etc. And the humming and hawing and forcing people to justify fairly normal life choices that dont even disprove their actions. And then the air of superiority and judgement that follows even when everyone (mostly) agrees that they get a "pass". It's this you didn't do the game with multiple options correctly so I don't want to give you the delicious juice reward mindset.

Like it's a lot of twitterisms and shit that have the wider impact of making the activism these people claim to be doing that much harder and ineffective. Bc a lot of the steps are just first world shit. Like idk the whole boycotting products thing. Which like ok that's valid you don't want to support an unethical practice fair. But boycotting products is the least effective way (boycotts generally don't last in peoples minds very long and the way the monopolies run shit means you could still be buying from them and not even know it, you're likely not even the target demographic, etc) and ignores that it's often not an option bc that may be the only option for a lot of people (supply or cost, etc)

And then it goes further in a lot of whiter spaces where there's this overwhelming sense of "actually we know better" and it crosses the line into actual racism.

Like idk how the veil of active is used to perpetuate actual genocides.

Like the racism and ableism are the biggest ones. (and Im white so I don't think I have a right to go in depth about it. My voice isn't the most important one to listen to. But I am disabled so.) But it's telling that when you prod at these personal responsibility arguments that it quickly devolves into an argument of "who gets to decide who has a 'right' to break the 'rules'" bc you quickly get a mask off that the people you're talking to believe there should be a system to determine who has enough special points and that they think they have the right to decide that.

Im sorry what? No. Why are we reinventing "able-bodied white people get to make the rules" again?

Like idk my point here is by all means use your own actions to support your activism. But forcing your personal choices on people and blaming them and denying them the respect they deserve for not fitting into your box of what makes a good activist is not Activism. It's not morally right. It's a dick move and contradictory to what you're claiming to believe.

Other working class people aren't your enemy redirect your anger to corporations and stop looking down on who are doing the best with what they have.

[vivinthomealarmsystems-blog]

Vivint Smart Home Alarm Systems 2020

Everything about Top 5 Smart Security Systems 2020: Automate Your Home For ...

Tyler Lizenby/CNET Vivints of the world. As opposed to securing you into a multiyear agreement, a lot of DIY systems offer you the versatility to selected how and also when you monitor your house. That usually indicates you can authorize up for a monitoring service on an optional basis as well as cancel whenever-- without very early termination costs or various other surprise fees.

That's due in large part to its wide array of devices. Its starter package costs simply $230 and undertook an equipment upgrade just recently that looks better than previously. You still need to pay a minimum of $15 each month to access any remote security features (something that's typically used free of charge with various other systems), however Simpli Safe's remarkable variety of devices as well as strong performance make it our leading choice in general.

Find out more: Chris Monroe/CNET House has every one of the conventional sensors as well as gadgets for an easy entry-level security system. It integrates with Amazon.com Alexa, IFTTT and Nest for voice-enabled equipping as well as disarming, along with various other innovative automations. You can add devices to the system a la carte.

Things about Best Home Security System Reviews – Consumer Reports

It likewise sustains Zigbee and also Z-Wave, which implies you can attach the system to a large selection of third-party devices so you can control everything from within the Residence application. I wish you really did not have to use House's internet app to make custom-made rules as well as automations, yet this scalable self-install system provides trusted performance at an excellent value.

Find out more: Tyler Lizenby/CNET The $499 Nest Secure alarm system starter pack comes with one Guard hub, two Tag key fobs and also two Discover door/window/motion sensors. You can arm and also deactivate the system by getting in a PIN code on the Guard's integrated key pad, by touching a paired Tag fob over the top of the Guard hub-- or by transforming the setting in the related Nest application for Android and also i Phone.

By doing this, you can open up a home window, grab the paper from your front backyard-- and also more-- without having to disarm your Nest Secure system. Review the Nest Secure testimonial . Now playing: Watch this: Nest's alarm system is expensive, yet safe The above listing covers our favorite self-install house security systems, yet there are various other alternatives out there.

Smart Home Security Systems Of 2019 - Smarthome Security ... - The Facts

Chris Monroe/CNET Honeywell's Smart Residence Protection System is a DIY kit. The system's primary hub is called the Video camera Base Terminal; it's equipped with 1080p high-definition real-time streaming, a 145-degree viewing angle as well as complimentary 24-hour cloud storage (this will alter to 3 days during a future upgrade). You can additionally contribute to the system with an array of optional accessories.

Right here's the checklist of bundled kits and also standalone devices, with pricing: Beginner Kit (Cam Base Station, 2 Accessibility Sensors, Key Fob)-- $500Camera Base Station-- $400Door as well as Home Window Accessibility Sensing Units-- $40Key Fob-- $30Motion Sensor-- $50Indoor Activity Audience-- $99Outdoor Motion Audience-- $199 Check Out the Honeywell Smart Home Safety System review .

Pay $10 each month for specialist tracking, cellular and also battery backup and also a variety of various other functions. (Check Out even more about Precursor's tracking solutions.) Precursor deals with Amazon.com Alexa for equipping and also disarming, yet it doesn't have much accessories to pick from. Review the Precursor Alarm House Safety System evaluation .

Smart Home Security Systems Accessories - Verizon Wireless - An Overview

Its optional $200 expansion kit includes a smoke detector, a carbon monoxide gas detector and also a water leakage sensing unit. Unlike the various other DIY systems on this list, Smart Things' system includes contract-free expert tracking from ADT. It begins at $15 monthly and goes up to $35 per month for full tracking of both "life safety" and also "house safety and security" products.

Choosing a residence safety and security system can seem frustrating yet it need not be this way. You can tailor your surveillance system to match your budget as well as requirements with a lot less headache than you might imagine. Maybe you're wanting to develop a brand-new system from the ground up? Maybe you already have a system in position and also you require takeover house protection so a new firm can presume control of that existing system? In any case, it pays to have a thorough understanding of your myriad options when it concerns one of the most effective smart house protection system.

With these gadgets, you pop a magnet onto your door or window with the sensor and also tiny alarm device nearby. When the electromagnetic field is breached, you'll listen to a piercing alarm so with this small step alone, you'll much more secure in your home. If you want to tip points up a notch, dial-out safety and security systems make use of an emergency dialer to signal your cellular phone, a family members member, or your neighborhood protection business in the occasion of a trigger.

The Only Guide for Best Home Security Systems Of 2020: The Best In Smart Home ...

You can also include flooding, smoke, and also temperature sensing units to expand the scope of your home safety. Installment is super-simple as well as these systems are pretty user-friendly even if you're not the greatest tech-lover. This is a fantastic means to get going into even more ambitious residence safety and security systems without excessive commitment.

Many thanks to the Web of Things, you can remotely manage door locks and lights to improve your entrance as well as departure using just your phone. Control reaches thermostats, lawn sprinkler systems, and also also pet feeders. Together with sensing units and motion detectors, you'll require a hub to enable communication with your safety and security devices using Z-Wave, Zigbee, Wi Fi or a mesh network like Insteon.

So ... We'll start with an option of techniques to safety and security electronic cameras before going on to locks, activity sensing units as well as complete alarm systems. Possibly you're checking out all the elements of an effective home protection system as well as believing a straight-up safety cam would be ample for you. If that holds true, you've got lots of options covering inside your home and also outdoors.

The Best Home Security System In 2019: Simplisafe, Ring ... - Questions

Attached to your residence Wi Fi, you'll be notified when anybody approaches the door. You can after that connect with them using your cellular phone. The added advantage is that you'll have the ability to keep your eyes on points afar so you truly can unwind on getaway confident your residence is fully protected.

Ring Video Clip Doorbell Ring dominates the home safety and security space with their easy to use, tech-driven appliances for all aspects of your clever residence. Although the style is smooth as well as understated, the buzzer itself is quite bulky at 5 x 2 1/2 x 1 inches so hesitate if you live somewhere with limited doorframe area.

Wire the Ring to your exisiting bell or use it independently. While set up is not intricate, be person and also anticipate a tiny discovering contour. Once you're up and also running, this is an extremely straightforward item of set. The app is intuitive and also the user interface a pleasure to utilize. For a well-founded video doorbell video camera that proceeds to sell out worldwide, there's no replacement for the Ring Video Clip Buzzer.

The 8-Second Trick For The Best Home Security System For 2019: Reviews By Wirecutter

Get full HD video clip insurance coverage of your home also if it's dark Live-View feed allows you to keep an eye on points in actual time wherever you remain in the world Alexa-enabled so you can control access with your digital assistant No free video storage so variable this right into your budget If you want extremely reliable 2-in-1 functionality, your ideal wager is a protection camera with integrated flood lamps.

[andrewdburton]

Why you should track your spending (and why Quicken sucks)

Last year wasn't good for me. Depression and anxiety reigned supreme. By objective standards, my life was pretty good. But subjectively, life sucked. Going into 2020, I decided I needed to make some changes. I'm pleased to report that the first five weeks of the year have gone swimmingly. Life is grand.

I've made three specific changes that I believe have contributed to this improvement:

I've rented office space outside the house. My office is for work only. I do not allow myself to play games (or engage in other shenanigans) at the office. Zero tolerance.

I've begun getting up early. I tend to be an early riser anyhow, but early for me means about six o'clock. This year, I'm generally rising at 4:00 or 4:30, which means I'm at the office by five.

I've curtailed my drinking. In fact, I didn't touch a drop of alcohol during January. I've had a few drinks in February, and it's been interesting to see how it affects me, both in the moment and then for days after.

Taken together, these three changes have mitigated my mental health problems and made me more productive. I love it. Over the next six weeks, I plan to integrate two additional changes into my life: I'm going to begin exercising regularly and I'm going to cut back on videogames. I expect this to provide an additional boost to my well-being.

There's been an unexpected benefit to my quest to become a better version of me. January was — by far — my best month with money in years.

My January 2020 Spending

As you know, I track every penny I spend. I've been doing this since 1993 (with occasional breaks). It's a valuable practice.

Earlier this decade — after my divorce but before my RV trip — my monthly spending averaged about $4000. After returning from our cross-country adventure, that number spiked. From 2016 to 2018, I was spending closer to $6000 per month. This led me to push for austerity measures last year, measures that worked. My 2019 spending averaged $4221.27 per month.

In January, I spent $3212.24. This is a fist-pumpingly fine number, one that I'm proud of. But I'm even prouder of how I achieved those cuts. My top financial goal for this year is to spend less on food. I did that. And because I didn't drink, I spent nothing on alcohol.

Because I was curious, I decided to explore my spending over the past few years. I think you might find it interesting too. Here's a snapshot:

This spreadsheet shows monthly spending in select categories during the past five years. The 2016 numbers are for December only (because that's when I resumed tracking after our RV trip). The numbers for last year are only for the first half of the year. And, obviously, the numbers for this year are only for January.

Some thoughts:

Generally speaking, my vehicle costs are low. They were high in 2017 and 2018 because my 2004 Mini Cooper needed repairs. They were high last year because I spent $1900 to buy a 1993 Toyota pickup.

My entertainment spending is dominated by three specific expenses: my Portland Timbers season tickets, our subscription to Broadway in Portland, and my iTunes movie and TV purchases. The theater tickets are a one-time expense each February. The Timbers tickets (which I may not renew this year) are a one-time expense each August. I continue to work to keep my iTunes purchases under control.

I spend more on our pets than I thought. A lot more. I love our dog and three cats, but wow! I paid $142 to support them last month, and there were no vet expenses in January. Much of this spending is for pet-sitting when I travel.

Look at my food spending! Holy cats! I've been pushing hard to reduce this over the past five years, and January was a shining example of what I can get this down to if I try. Kim and I didn't feel deprived. We just made smarter choices.

Finally, when I'm not drinking, my spending on sin — which includes alcohol, occasional tobacco, and legal pot — falls off a cliff. Obvious, but also wow.

I know I'll spend more in February than I did in January. Our theater tickets renew and that's a $1500 expense, for instance. Still, I expect that I'll continue this trend toward reduced spending, and I'm glad. It makes me happy. It's yet another way that 2020 is off to a better start than 2019.

Why It's Important to Track Your Spending

It might seem strange that I'm such a vocal advocate of expense tracking. After all, don't I have all of the money I need? I do. But I think part of the reason I keep that money is because I'm so vigilant with my spending.

In fact, this seems to be a key habit with most wealthy people I know. They keep tabs on where there money goes. In The Millionaire Next Door, the authors write that the three words that best describe the wealthy are “FRUGAL FRUGAL FRUGAL”. They also point out that most millionaires keep budgets.

Tracking your spending demystifies money. You begin to perceive it as a tool. You gain a sense of power; you no longer feel that money controls you, but that you control money. Your awareness of your money habits is heightened, allowing you to make changes to improve your situation. You begin to understand how your one-DVD-a-week habit affects other parts of you your life.

When you track your spending, it’s important not to make judgments in the moment. This activity is meant to describe your money habits, not to change them. (You probably do want to change them, of course, but that’s a different task.)

To make it easier to track your spending, remember the following:

Be careful with transactions that are easy to forget. Some transactions – cash transactions, online transactions, transactions without a receipt – are quickly forgotten. Take special steps to remember these, such as…

Get a receipt for everything. It’s easy to forget where you spent your money yesterday morning. Make a habit of always asking for a receipt. Keep them in one place so you know where to find them.

It’s best to process your transactions daily. The more diligent you are about recording your expenses, the less likely you are to forget something. But daily book-keeping can be a chore. Try to do this weekly at the very least. (Make it a habit, a ritual. Do it at the same time every Saturday morning, for example.)

Expense tracking paints a picture of your spending habits as they actually exist – not as you think they exist. You can use this information to build a budget and to set financial goals. At the very least, you’ll get a snapshot of where your money has been going. Without doing this, it’s difficult to know how much you’ve really been spending – and what you’ve been spending it on.

Plus, if you're a money nerd like me, it's fun to track your spending. I love putting the numbers in by hand, then looking at the data with different graphs and reports.

How to Track Your Spending (and a Rant)

During the 1990s and 2000s, it was easy for a curious person to track her spending. There were a variety of tools she could use: Quicken, Microsoft Money, Andrew Tobias' Managing Your Money. Nowadays, though, your pickings are slim.

Yes, I know there are all sorts of apps out there that purport to track your spending. My business partner Tom uses Mint. Many folks are fans of Personal Capital. And, of course, Quicken still exists.

Although I do use Personal Capital (here are my thoughts on the pros and cons of Personal Capital), I do so primarily for its nifty retirement planner. I'm not a fan of automated money trackers, those that download and categorize info from your financial institutions. I feel like Mint and Personal Capital don't do a great job at this. Plus, I track my spending because I want awareness. Manual data entry helps with this.

That means I want a tool like Quicken, which allows me to enter info by hand.

But even Quicken has become problematic. Are you ready for a rant? Tough. You're going to get a rant.

For years, I used Quicken 2007 for Macintosh. I love Quicken 2007. It's everything I could want in a money-management tool. It replicates the feel of a check ledger, which appeals to old men like me. It's ugly, but that's okay because it's filled with functionality. I'll take personality over pretty any day!

The downside? It doesn't run on modern versions of the Macintosh operating system. To keep using it, I have to hold on to an old iMac with an old version of the OS.

Quicken 2017 is…okay. It's certainly much prettier than the older version, and it does its job reasonably well, but that's about the best I can say for it.

Entering transactions manually (which is how I enter transactions) is maddening. There's no way to do this quickly. There's a serious lack of reporting tools, and what reports do exist have limited functionality. (Want to get a net worth report for a specific date? Sorry. You can't.)

Here's my detailed comparison of Quicken 2007 and Quicken 2017.

How frustrating is it to enter transactions into Quicken 2017 compared to Quicken 2007?

Today, it took me nineteen minutes to enter twenty transactions into the new version. This is partly due to the crappy UI and partly because I had to track down (and fix) a couple of strange ways it handled account transfers (such as paying a credit card from a checking account). When I drove home and re-entered these same twenty transactions into Quicken 2007, it only took me six minutes and everything worked as expected without any fuss on my end.

Despite this, I had made the decision to move everything to Quicken 2017. Last October, I made the switch. Then, last week, I got this email from Quicken.

As of 30 April 2020, Quicken 2017 will no longer support downloading stock prices. In fact, all automated downloads and connections will be disabled. But hey! If you upgrade to the new version of Quicken — which is now a subscription-only product (meaning you have to pay every single frickin' year) — you get to save 10%.

This is bullshit of the highest order.

When companies do this, it makes me livid. There's no way in hell I'll upgrade, and there's no way I can in good conscience encourage you, my readers, to support Quicken if they're going to pull this sort of bullshit.

So, I'll be sticking with Quicken 2007. Thankfully, Quicken doesn't have the power to disable features in that version of the program. They can't force me to upgrade. And since it's a superior product to 2017 anyhow, I'm okay with that. But it means I have to keep one computer on hand that I don't upgrade to a new version of the OS.

What if you don't have access to Quicken 2007? How should you track your spending? Here are a few possibilities:

If you're in the early stages of money mastery, I recommend You Need a Budget. Yes, YNAB uses a subscription-based model, but I've heard enough people rave about it to recommend it. (Plus, I like the YNAB philosophy.) Here's my YNAB review.

If you don't want or need manual data entry, use an app like Mint or Personal Capital. Personally, I'd go for Personal Capital. I've heard reports that more and more, people feel like Mint is fading away.

If, like me, you want an online tool that allows manual entry, find an older version of Quicken somewhere. If you're a PC user, you might consider using Microsoft Money. This product is no longer published (or supported) but Microsoft offers a free download of the final version of Microsoft Money Deluxe from ten years ago.

If you use Quickbooks or something similar to manage your business finances, it's possible to also track your home finances with that software. (But I don't think accounting tools will integrate investments. I could be wrong.)

Many people actually use home-brewed systems for expense tracking. Most of these are built around customized spreadsheets, although I've also seen people who use pen and paper (!!!) to track their spending.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter which tool you choose. What matters is that you track your spending.

Conclusion

Expense tracking is one of the cornerstone habits of smart personal finance. Not everyone needs to do this, of course. Some folks have so much money and spend so little that expense tracking becomes unnecessary. Others are naturally hyper aware of their behavior. But for most of us, expense tracking grants keen insight into how we use our money.

Unfortunately, there's no great solution right now for folks who want software that allows manual data entry.

The last time I complained about this, one GRS reader suggested that I create my own software tool. Honestly, that's not a bad idea. I probably no longer possess the skills to code this myself, but I do possess the experience, knowledge, and opinions that would help me design a piece of software that could be useful and effective. Plus, I'm not motivated by greed, which I think is a bonus.

For now, I'll continue to use Quicken 2007. It's a small hassle to keep an old iMac around with an old version of Mac OS, but I can do it. When that computer dies, though? Well, I'm not sure what I'll do.

Like me, my buddy John at ESI Money is a long-time Quicken user, with data going back to 1994. Like me, he enters transactions by hand. Like me, he recently tried to upgrade. Unlike me, he intends to continue using the new version of Quicken.

The post Why you should track your spending (and why Quicken sucks) appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/track-your-spending/ via http://www.rssmix.com/