Review: The Millionaire Next Door

Posted on by Jordan

As I mentioned in my initial multi-book review from summer vacation, I really liked this book.

What has started to become apparent to me as I have tried to tell people about it, is that they seem to start out expecting that I read some book about how to become a millionaire, or in some way convinced myself that I found the secret to getting rich.

That is in no way the case! This book is basically just a compilation of facts about people who have a net worth of over one million dollars. The authors provide some commentary, trying to explain why they think trends appeared, and in some cases offer advice.

If I were going to give a one sentence summary it would go like this: “This is the book to read once you are doing the Dave Ramsey thing, and want to start thinking about what the rest of your life looks like”

Again, I want to stress that this isn’t about “getting rich”!!

Basically what you start to realize is that the people who actually accumulate wealth are the people who don’t spend it! Living below their means, and working hard, are  two of the hallmarks of the people this book looked at. In no way do you leave with the impression that doing a few things will let you live in a huge house and have all the toys your heart desires. They are quite clear that most of the people living that way have no hope of sustaining it, ether spending everything they make, or being heavily subsidized by a parent or grandparent.

Like a lot of what you get from Dave Ramsey, nothing in the book is really outside of common sense, but it’s easy to get blinded by day to day life. I found this book so exciting to read, as just an encouragement that the plan Heather and I are pursuing really is where we want to be.

Probably the single biggest point thing I got out of the book, as far as things I can use today, was their information about houses and behavior. Basically, if you live in a “high-consumption” neighborhood, you will spend like the people around you. Apparently it is really hard to live conservatively when surrounded by people who aren’t. Considering there aren’t vast enclaves of budget  conscious people in most cities, the authors  recommended simply living in a house that cost no more than double your annual household income. Last year when Heather and I were looking for houses, I can assure you that the banks will be happy to loan you a lot more than that!

I cannot recommend this book enough if you are looking for encouragement to stick with a budget, or just sticking with a lifestyle that doesn’t have as many toys as the people around you. Outside of that I thought it was just interesting to have my perceptions rocked as to who in this nation actually has wealth as opposed to putting on a show of wealth.

-Jordan

Deep Thoughts… Or Something

Posted on by Jordan

Over the weekend, Heather and I drove out to western Nebraska for a wedding.

But before that, let me setup my frame of mind…

First I saw this video:

And then, the Internet being what it is, the remix video:

So, back to my drive out west. The song was kind of stuck in my head, and at the same time I was driving into an awe inspiring lightning show. I mean a really incredible storm! Clearly I all to easily forget how intense a storm can be.  I was really enjoying the lightning show, and started thinking about the guy in the video.

Now, I am afraid he may have been under the effects of some mind-altering chemicals at the time of that filming, but I don’t think that means he was wrong really. Rainbows, storms, all the other things you see outside… they are so amazing and I kind of take them for granted too often.

I actually have started investigating some ways to force myself to get outside, and outside of city limits, but I won’t post any details until I actually get something going. For now lets just leave it at enjoying the amazing show weather patterns in the Midwest can produce, and in awe of the splendor God has built around us.

-Jordan

Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Pie (step-by-step)

Posted on by Jordan

I had some time tonight, so I actually made the pie! Just for completeness, I will include the recipe again. If you saw my research post, I should note that this recipe isn’t quite the same as what I posted before. What you see here is what I adapted into.

Jordan’s Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Pie

(modified from this recipe over at all-recipe, and using advice from a commenter)

Ingredients

  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
  • 1 1/2 cups  Splenda
  • 16-oz natural creamy peanut butter (one jar of the Smucker’s Natural)
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 standard pie crust

Directions

  • Beat together cream cheese and Splenda.
  • Mix in peanut butter and milk. Beat until smooth.
  • Spoon into pie shell
  • Cover, freeze until firm.

That is the recipe, now to actually start:

I made the crust first:

My recipe for the pie crust said to bake for 8-10 minutes. Apparently They were planning on my having rolled the crust out a lot thinner, because I baked this for over 20 minutes! I think it could have gone longer, but I didn’t want to risk burning it. Given that this pie will be served frozen I don’t suppose it matters if the crust is a little soft. The actual recipe calls for Graham Cracker crust, and I am sure that would work fine. Heather is always looking for ways to avoid sugar, and I thought it would be more fun to make a real pie crust, so that’s what I did. (this is also what I did last year)

As the crust was baking, I started on the filling:

I forget how nice a powered mixer can be sometimes, although I am glad the one we have is small. Splenda behaves just like powdered sugar, and can usually be substituted by volume anywhere the sugar is used. Heather kind of turned against it a while back, but if I coat it in enough peanut butter she will still give it a try 🙂

Speaking of peanut butter that was the next step:

As I was in the process of adding the peanut butter, I realized that the recipe I hacked up to get this actually used half a tub of ‘whipped topping’ in the mix. With that in the back of my mind, I started increasing the amount of peanut butter in the measuring cup a little. Once I had one and a half cups I realized there was only about half a cup of peanut butter left in the jar anyway. What you see here could be said to have 100% more peanut butter!!

Here is the point where the long cook time of the crust was starting to be a problem. Despite my having posted a ‘done’ picture of the crust, it was still in the oven when I snapped the picture of the filling all ready to go. I pulled it out a minute later, but I don’t think you should really put the filling into a hot crust. It might be ok, but I was afraid it would make the filling melt into strange layers or something else weird. I ended up putting the crust into the spot that I had cleared out in the freezer, sans-filling for a while so it wouldn’t try to cook the filling.

The finished product:

You could top this with ether low-sugar, or sugar-free whipped-topping before serving, but I think leaving it off makes it easier to sell as low-sugar. 🙂

-Jordan

Book Reviews

Posted on by Jordan

As I mentioned in the vacation summary post, I read quite a few books that week.

I thought I could throw up some quick thoughts about them here.

The Lost Fleet Series:

The basic hook in these books remains the complications of communication over solar system sized distances, given the painfully slow speed of light. The rest of the story was ok, but probably wouldn’t have held my attention. It helps that the books are an easy read, of the six books in this saga, I read two of them in a single day (one day per book). Strong points of these books: deals with religion without being disrespectful. The author did invent a faith that is very much not along the lines of Judeo–Christian, but sci-fi books gain points with me just for treating faith with some respect. Another strong point is the author keeping the book inside a PG-13 rating. Some of the other books didn’t and I just don’t see a reason for that. In short, the books are a fun read, but nothing too deep.

The Millionaire Next Door:

This book was amazing! I plan to devote an entire post to it later. The quick summary: “If you want to get excited about saving and living a thrifty lifestyle, read this book!” The book is mostly just detailing things the authors have discovered from years of doing marketing research, but I found it really really interesting, and motivating.

Altered Carbon:

The book boils down to a kind of private-eye story, that incorporates a lot of “way out there” science fiction elements. The story had lots of conspiracy, and suspense… kept me pushing to finish for sure. I keep trying to cut the author some slack for just wanting to have a conflict between religion, and tradition against technology, but I felt like the book really beat up on the Catholic faith more than necessary. I know that the kinds of things they were doing in the book would cause some real conflicts for people and churches, namely the ability to move your contentiousness to another body, more or less at-will. It made for an interesting problem to wrestle with, but given how many other things were made up, I don’t see the point in calling out an existing church. That wasn’t a major element of the book it just annoyed me. I should also include a warning that the language is course, and the book includes both sex and torture scenes that were a little more graphic than I prefer to read. Despite all my complaints, I do plan to pick up the sequel to this eventually.

Black Hawk Down:

The book on which the movie is based. As you might expect, it goes into much more detail about the battle depicted in the movie. I was really shocked at how inexperienced the Rangers were in this book. A year or so ago, I read the book “The Unforgiving Minute” that goes into detail about one man’s path through West Point, Ranger school and then on to Afghanistan. What that book tried to explain, and Black Hawk Down did a better job of explaining, is that, as hard and good as the training provided to the army’s best is, nothing actually prepares you to get shot at. We now have 50 years of practice training special forces, and it still hasn’t changed the fact that “green” troops are going to make a lot of mistakes in their first battle.

The second thing that really stood out to me in the book is how vastly different the culture of Somalia is from ours. The book is full of examples of women and children gladly acting as shields for the tribal fighters. Pregnant women running through gunfire to bring more ammo up to the fighters in cover. Frankly the behavior seemed more alien than some of the stuff I was reading in my sci-fi books. I haven’t nailed down what I think about that, or how a we deal with that without going places nobody wants to be… I probably won’t write whatever conclusions I come up with here…

I thought it was a great book, and I guess I would say if you could handle the violence levels in the movie, and you want to spend some time thinking about the actual conflict, you should check it out.

-Jordan

Peanut Butter Pie

Posted on by Jordan

Heather’s birthday was last week.

Last year, I made a peanut butter pie for her birthday. Heather still, a year later, tells me how amazing that pie was! Due to Independence Day festivities the week of her birthday was a little crowded, so I wasn’t able to make the pie on her birthday this year. The Broadway show “The Jersey Boys” is showing in Des Moines though, and I think Heather was sufficiently overjoyed at going to that show she didn’t miss the pie too much.

I still really want to make one this year, so I started trying to find the recipe I used last year… and after close to an hour of looking I pieced together that I didn’t use a recipe! So in the interest of being able to reproduce the pie again, let me post where I started from, and what modifications I made:

Jordan’s Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Pie

(modified from this recipe over at all-recipe, and using advice from a commenter)

Ingredients

  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
  • 1 1/2 cups  Splenda
  • 1 cup 16-oz natural creamy peanut butter
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crusts
  • 1 Standard pie crust.

Directions

  • Beat together cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar. Mix in peanut butter and milk. Beat until smooth. Fold in whipped topping.
  • Spoon into one large pie shell
  • cover, freeze until firm.

I haven’t actually made the pie again, but I am comfortable saying this is what I did last year. I will update the post with any adjustments and pictures as soon as I actually get the pie made 🙂

-Jordan

(I kind of stealth-updated this recipe, what you see here is what I actually used)

Gallery Down

Posted on by Jordan

Yeah, so the upgrade didn’t go so well…

As it stands right now the gallery isn’t working at all.

I am going to try and restore from backups but the file system on the server is a mess right now.

Just thought you might be interested, or perhaps you tried to click on a picture link and got nowhere.

-Jordan

About That Bike Ride

Posted on by Jordan

Well…

We did make it back, but there were consequences:

We didn’t get left as early as I had hoped, maybe hit the trail by 10:30. The path I was planning to take, also known as the actual bike path, was closed about half way down town due to the flooding that has been plaguing Des Moines for the past few weeks. Our detour involved a killer hill, but we eventually found our way to Grand, that has a straight shot to down town.

The farmers market was starting to wind down by the time we made it there. Lucky for us Heather’s favorite stand still had a few of the whole wheat croissants she loves! We bought some sandwiches to finish out our lunch, and headed for some shade to relax for a while. At that point we were starting to feel like we had gotten some exercise, but the ride home didn’t sound so bad. I think we were both starting to look a little pink, but each chose denial rather than admitting that two fair skinned adults headed into a day out in the sun without stopping to put on sunscreen.

After lunch we headed for home. As it turns out, the 11 miles we rode in were all still there waiting for us on the way home. Also, that gentile breeze we had been enjoying was blowing into our faces now. I may be mistaken, but I think there is a noticeable climb from the banks of the river to our apartment too. The sun started to feel hotter too, and given that it was now about 1:30pm, it may actually have been hotter. What I am trying to say is that the ride home was no fun! It took us nearly two hours to get all the way back to the apartment. Heather and I are starting to think that her co-workers who described this as “an easy ride” may be trying to get rid of her.

Once home, we were spent. Our plans for the afternoon went from wildly ambitious to lying under the fan and drinking water. As we reflected on the ride, we realized that this does highlight a pattern we seem to be establishing. We don’t go on long walks, so we did a half-marathon, we don’t go on long bike rides, so we decided to ride the entire way across Des Moines. You would think we would be learning about training, and working up to things, but so far no. 🙂

-Jordan

We didn’t get left as early as I had hoped, maybe hit the trail by 10:30. The path I was planning to take, also known as the actual bike path, was closed about half way down town due to the flooding that has been plaguing Des Moines for the past few weeks. Our detour involved a killer hill, but we eventually found our way to Grand, that has a straight shot to down town.

The farmers market was starting to wind down by the time we made it there. Lucky for us Heather’s favorite stand still had a few of the whole wheat croissants she loves! We bought some sandwiches to finish out our lunch, and headed for some shade to relax for a while. At that point we were starting to feel like we had gotten some exercise, but the ride home didn’t sound so bad. I think we were both starting to look a little pink, but each chose denial rather than admitting that two fair skinned adults headed into a day out in the sun without stopping to put on sunscreen.

After lunch we headed for home. As it turns out, the 11 miles we rode in were all still there waiting for us on the way home. Also, that gentile breeze we had been enjoying was blowing into our faces now. I may be mistaken, but I think there is a noticeable climb from the banks of the river to our apartment too. The sun started to feel hotter too, and given that it was now about 1:30pm, it may actually have been hotter. What I am trying to say is that the ride home was no fun! It took us nearly two hours to get all the way back to the apartment. Heather and I are starting to think that her co-workers who described this as “an easy ride” may be trying to get rid of her.

Once home, we were spent. Our plans for the afternoon went from wildly ambitious to lying under the fan and drinking water. As we reflected on the ride, we realized that this does highlight a pattern we seem to be establishing. We don’t go on long walks, so we did a half-marathon, we don’t go on long bike rides, so we decided to ride the entire way across Des Moines. You would think we would be learning about training, and working up to things, but so far no. 🙂

-Jordan

A Wedding, Fireworks, And Demolition

Posted on by Jordan

It has been a while hasn’t it?

What have Heather and I been up to?

Well, we went to her cousin Kiley’s wedding. Perhaps most notable in the fact that it will probably be the last wedding ever to hold it’s reception at Dana College. The news of the college going into bankruptcy came out a few day before the wedding, but somehow arrangements were made to allow the reception to proceed as planned.

Outside of that excitement, it was really nice wedding… I just don’t feel like I know what to say about it. Heather has a big family, and the majority of them came for the wedding. I got to meet a few family members for the first time while I was there! I am beginning to realize that easily my favorite aspect of weddings is the opportunity to interact with the other guests. Everyone has such tight schedules that chances to see some friends or family may only come up at major events like weddings. Not to discount seeing the bride and groom, but if my wedding is anything to go by, so much gets packed into those few hours, it’s all a blur. A warm fuzzy blur, but still a blur.

After the wedding, and after staying up far too late talking to family at the farm in Blair, Heather and I drove to Kearney to see my side of the family. Quite a few of my cousins were there, and they all brought fireworks! To be honest I was a little disappointed that things worked out this year such that Heather and I were unable to attend a professional fireworks show. I am not sure getting to supervise a handful of my younger cousins as they set off an arsenal of patriotic spirit is a full consolation, but it’s something. We have managed a perfect safety record so far, although towards the end of the “show” a lot of effort was put into trying to simultaneously launch two and three things at once. I was sure  that would eventually lead to problems, but we ran out of fireworks before we ran out of luck I guess. 🙂

Moving on to this weekend (still in progress) Heather and I finished work Friday without any special plans for the evening. We had attempted to set something up with a few couples from church, but no concrete plans ever finalized. When we got home, Heather had an e-mail from another couple we know through church, inviting us to come help them demo the house they just bought. Maybe your thinking, “hey, that doesn’t sound like a great way to spend a Friday night” well, maybe you don’t live in an apartment and type on a computer for a living? I am not sure I would want to do that every night, but I truly enjoyed getting to swing a hammer for a few hours! Beyond that factor, it is just nice to feel like we have some friends we can hang out with here in town.

Looking to the future, Heather and I plan to ride our bikes all the way down town this morning to visit the farmers market. It will easily be our longest ride this summer, although not long by most bike enthusiasts standards I suppose. We have discovered that Des Moines seems to have spent a significant amount developing an impressive trail network throughout the metro area, but they have not spent much putting together an online map for said trails. A few low-res .gif files are they best they have to offer, and what they have are years out of date. The adventure may end up being if we can find the trail everyone tells us we should have seen on our last ride.

-Jordan