Archives for September 2013

Think about your answer to that question. What do you carry every day? Do you put your hands in your pockets and tell me that you have a wallet, phone, and keys? Maybe you’re a student and you think about your backpack – its books, binders, spiral notebooks, and more. 

Figure-Ground Perception

These physical objects carry a weight; they follow us, contained within pockets, bags, and purses. We can feel them throughout our day, if we are mindful. Unfortunately, if you only responded to the physical, you’d be answering the wrong question – especially if you care to be frugal.

Psychological textbooks love to talk about the image in the top-right. Why? Because it’s a trick of the mind. Your vision tends to process either the figure or ground. Do you see the two faces? Or, do you see a vase? Depends on your vision! This rule is aptly named: figure-ground perception.

Apply it to your life and ask yourself, are you focused on what’s physically or emotionally weighing you down?

Testing Frugality’s Limits

I created this site in early May of this year. Born of a growing dissatisfaction with my debt and an aim to right my course, I decided to start my journey back to zero. But despite starting this site and having a clear goal, staying frugal has been difficult.

There are plenty of excuses I’ve used: I’m a long-distance relationship, a graduate student, young and social, and the list goes on an on. What I’m saying, emotionally and mentally, is that I deserve to spend more than I make. At times, it can be difficult to fight the urge to spend unnecessarily or more than I have to. There are competing desires.

As my inner voice shows, if you’re just joining the frugal journey, you’re in for one helluva ride. Psychologically, your biggest test will be seeing what triggers your response to spend. How can you stay focused in your life, reduce your spending, and enjoy your life more? It sounds like a bad sales pitch, but that’s really the goal. How do you find that?

Reduce, Reuse, Reframe

For me, it all goes back to my emotional well-being. If, on the inside, I feel happy, positive, and strong, it’s relatively easy to overcome spending pitfalls. Sometimes I crack and feel like I deserve to have something. My shoes have pretty serious wear in them, but they still work. Do I deserve to have a new pair?

I’ve chosen to reframe these difficult tests: I deserve to be debt-free by working hard to overcome this. While simple to understand, it’s hard to begin to believe. I do deserve to be debt-free, but that’s only if I work through my psychological barriers that cause me to spend beyond my budget.

Today, I happened to fall down a brief rabbit hole of social media and networking. A friend’s Facebook wall had a video about a man that gives without expectation. It’s touching, moving, and heartfelt; albeit, at the end, you realize it’s an advertisement. Nonetheless, the theme is true and video is powerful. What can you give?

DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), DRM (Digital Rights Management), and restrictive publication rights hurt everyone. The old guard, represented by companies like the RIAA and MPAA, believe that an artist’s profits are contained within a deeply policed realm. For years, we sat through momentary pauses at the beginning of video games, TV shows, and movies, while they advertise severe threats of financial harm via the FBI. Atmospheric numbers flashed and danced – jail time and a $250,000 fine may follow suit. With the industry’s sordid past, I wanted to take moment to explain why I’m choosing Creative Commons (CC).

What Is It?

Creative Commons is not about giving up your rights. As the creator of some art (motion, text, etc.), you hold the copyright for such documents. So how does CC fit in the picture?

CC sets an organized framework for others to use your material. If you believe that traditional copyright laws have hindered the distribution and modification of art, then this is for you.

Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — on conditions of your choice. (CC)

This flexibility will enable art and authoring to become a collaborative, building experience. CC is a non-profit organization tasked with maintaining the licenses and offering easy tools for others who want to join in and share.

I decided to make the plunge after reading the infamous editor of BoingBoing.net, Cory Doctorow, hailed the virtues of a Creative Commons license for major publications.

There’s no way to stop it, and the people who try end up doing more harm than piracy ever did. The record industry’s ridiculous holy war against file-sharers (more than 20,000 music fans sued and counting!) exemplifies the absurdity of trying to get the food-coloring out of the swimming pool. If the choice is between allowing copying or being a frothing bully lashing out at anything he can reach, I choose the former. (Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother)

Won’t You Lose Money?

Major corporations with multi-million dollar lobbying arms have long wanted to tamp down on piracy and sharing. The argument has been that copyright violations lead to less money in the coffers of big business.

A range of evidence suggests that piracy doesn’t hurt box office or overall earnings for the movie industry. In fact, in 2012, Hollywood set a box office record of more than $10 billion. Likewise, increasing evidence suggests that the largest pirates also fund the industry best. These are real fans. They go to live concerts, buy special packages, memorabilia, and go to events.

Is it possible I’ll lose money by allowing people to copy my work? Possibly, but I’m honored that somebody would’ve found something of interest to graft it from this site. If it helps others, why keep it locked down? The more people that are reached, helped, and find a ground to begin working on their finances, the better.

How Can I Try It?

At the bottom of my site, in the footer section, you’ll find a small logo for Creative Commons. If you click this small copyright notice, you’ll see that I allow the sharing (copying and distribution) and remix of my work on this site.

CC has one of the easiest ways to choose your copyright laws. Allow modifications? Allow commercial use? License jurisdiction? Then, select your license. The entire process takes less than two minutes.

This is a new direction for me. All I ask is that you think about trying it and give credit where credit is due.

Do you ever open Facebook to find all your friends having more fun than you? Ever think, I wish I was on that trip, at that bar, or flying first class, too? Do you find yourself sucked in, almost vicariously, to others’ lives?

Marketing Mavericks

Personally, I answered yes to all three questions. Facebook is an interesting development for the marketing and social worlds. It’s the single greatest advancement to the combinatory industry of social marketing. The company is a multi-billion dollar organization based solely on marketing a vast treasure trove of user data.

In recent years, they’ve forced users to verify their identities with state and/or federal IDs. The swath of data and information is a honeypot for the company. Even if users stopped using Facebook altogether, the treasure trove would still exist – the imprint made. Facebook could sell that data for vast sums of money.

Friends Make Friendly Advertisements

Marketers have long known that friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers – word of mouth – are the best forms of advertising. Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point asserted that key figures tip the popularity of products. Facebook is at the fulcrum – parlaying it’s data into profits and inserting advertisements into the stream of new updates.

When you used to login into Facebook, you’d see ads on the side of your friend’s status updates. But that wasn’t good enough. Research suggests that the most highly clicked areas tend to be the easiest to see. Makes sense, right? The eyes start at the top left and top middle of any page. By placing ads inline with your friends status updates, Facebook can market to you easier and ensure more traffic to companies.

Your Face, Their Message

Nowadays, Facebook seems creepy. Zuckerberg, their founder and CEO, once questioned why people just trusted him with all this data. He seemed quizzical about why he deserved such volunteering of data, but he wasn’t stopping it.

Not too long ago, the company was sued for using profile pictures of friend groups to advertise products. Let’s say your friend “Likes” Nike. Nike is interested in selling more shoes. They know that by leveraging your friends picture, you may be more likely to buy their product. It’s called social proof.

After a nasty lawsuit, profile pictures went by the wayside. People weren’t advertised products by their friends’ faces, and there was even a settlement deal for those that had been victims of this advertising tactic. Unfortunately, it might come back again.

Facebook has been trying to leverage its user data with a new privacy policy. Inside the policy, it states that a profile picture could be analyzed and may be used for marketing purposes. That’s a heavy price to pay for being a member. There likely wouldn’t be an opt-out feature.

Can You Be Frugal On Facebook?

Thankfully, Facebook has been compelled to delay the latest privacy policy revisions. Popular outcries and public interest groups have made a loud and clear message: don’t do this.

But a larger question about social forces and advertising remains. Facebook may be the single greatest marketing platform that ever existed. If I were to post an update that included a picture to my brand new Nikes, my friends may have no idea I was sponsored to share it. I’m profiting off this social display – the simple share and spend.

Suddenly, companies are in the network and it’s making frugality a challenging skill.