Mind Listings

Organizer as Blogging Back-End - Part 3: Manage To-Do List

This article continues the series about Golden Rules Organizer as blogging platform back-end.

In the previous article, Organizer as Blogging Back-End - Part 2: Build-Up Values, we talked about defining values and logging daily actions, including blog drafting actions.

Now we expand into these productivity topics:

• Step 3: Create To-Do List
• Step 4: Define Recurring Tasks

Step 3: Create To-Do List

Under relevant Values, open one or more Activities (to-do items), as shown in the following screen-shot:

When an activity includes several consecutive steps, use Next Action field to describe the immediate step to be taken. You may also define due date, color-coded urgency and other parameters.

All activities can be seen in the main Activities tab, as shown here:

Log your actions under Activities-->Logs. The logs will also be visible in Values-->Logs tab, as well as in the main Logs tab.

It will be a good habit to track actual time each action took.

As soon as activity is completed, move or drag it to Completed bucket, or change status directly in the grid.

Step 4: Define Recurring Tasks

You can define recurring tasks for some values, as shown in this example:

Tasks will generate Activities according to specified frequency. As Activity is completed, next Activity will be automatically scheduled.

The series will be continued - stay tuned!

Organizer as Blogging Back-End - Part 2: Build-Up Values

Previous article in this case study, Organizer as Blogging Back-End - Introduction, listed advantages of Golden Rules Organizer as blogger's back-end platform:

• Blogging program independent, offline blog authoring and draft archiving
• Built-in mind map, facilitating back-end and front-end navigation
• Blog management support, inclusive campaigns, recurring tasks, to-do-list, contacts

Case study now proceeds with step-by-step setup of Golden Rules Organizer for blogging.

Step 1: Build-up Blogging Values.

Golden Rules Organizer provides hierarchical value system. Values on the same level of hierarchy may be arranged manually and assigned importance tag - from critical to low.

For some values I add descriptions detailing my actionable intentions:

The values are sufficiently elaborated to guide me in practical steps. As my practice will develop, value system will evolve.

Upon need, I also populate References with links to value-related information:

Step 2: Log The Actions

As soon as my blogging values acquire initial shape, I start logging all my activities under respective values, as shown here:

Note the following features of Golden Rules Organizer:

• you can assign multiple values to logs
• standing on hierarchically higher value, logs of all sub-values are also visible
• you can track actual time spent on each logged activity; upon selecting a value, Organizer shows total time spent for this value and sub-values.

Next article in the series:   Part 3: Manage To-Do List.

Organizer as Blogging Back-End - Introduction

This article starts a series on usage of organizer software as blogging back-end; as case study, Golden Rules Organizer freeware is used.

Back-End Functionality

• Blog authoring until final draft status. Golden Rules Organizer provides HTML editor matching blog drafting needs and lacking frustrating qualities of web HTML editors (slow editing, deficient support of HTML constructs, copy & paste and undo issues).
  
  Upon draft completion, blog draft is copied & pasted into web blog application, ready to final proofing.
  
  Here editor screen-shot with a draft of this article:
  
  
  
  
• Blog drafts archive. Organizer's logging facility allows easy maintenance of blog draft archive, as illustrated by this screenshot:
  
  
  
  
• Blog mind map. Organizer allows to manage mind map (hierarchical tree) of the blog topics and links.
  
  Mind map can be exported as HTML report and uploaded to blog site, allowing visitors to easily scan blog contents and directly access articles and referenced links (see Mind Listings Report sample).
  
  
  
  
• Blog management, featuring many topics like the ones below. Management topics will be covered in next articles - stay tuned.
  • Blog-related campaigns, recurring tasks, and to-do-list management
  • Bloggers contact management
  • Blogging activity logging, inclusive time tracking.

Advantages of Using Organizer as Back-End

• Faster blog editing and better editing experience
• Additional services to blog readers
  • Blog directory (mind map) with direct access to all articles and links (see Mind Listings Report as example)
  • Download-able blog directory and topical sub-directories for users of same organizer
• Blogging-platform independent archive
• Last, but not least - facilitation of blog management.

Next article in the series: Organizer as Blogging Back-End - Part 2: Build-Up Values.

Disclosure: I'm the author of the Golden Rules Organizer.

Retirement Planning and Net Worth Calculation Tool

When planning your retirement, you first need to set your targets, and then to plan your savings and investments accordingly.

This article suggest two Excel spreadsheets that would assist you in both tasks.

Disclaimer: The suggested tools didn't pass examination by personal finance experts. It would be worthwhile to show results to a retirement specialist, for these reasons:

• You may not properly estimate your retirement needs
• Your current saving and investment strategies may need tuning
• Your calculation may simply get wrong, and expert in the field would notice this.

Retirement Targets

There are at least these targets to consider:

• Life planning
  • Q-1 When to retire?
  • Q-2 How long me and my spouse planning to live upon retirement?
  • Q-3 What income do we need?
• Estate planning
  • Q-4 What will we leave as inheritance?

In recent article - Budget Planning Tool - I suggested a budget planning tool that, besides immediate purpose of budget planning, tracking, and cash flow forecast, also helps with question Q-3 - What retirement income do we need? - by allowing long-term expense forecast.

Retirement Planning using Life Planner Excel

After considering your targets, you may use this free Life Planner Excel to plan the retirement and to balance your plan versus the retirement targets. Feel free to customize this Excel for your needs.

Life Planner Excel allows to enter your retirement targets and savings plan, and to receive retirement income forecast.

Setup guidelines

All fields with yellow background represent your retirement targets and savings details, and should be set-up with relevant values.

Fields with green background should be reviewed and optionally set-up, since they represent your local regulations or expected interest rates which you may need to adjust.

You need to set $I3 cell to the previous year (currently, set to 2008).

The spreadsheet is suitable to double currency calculations (for countries which use both foreign currency, like US$, and local currency). If you just use one currency, set $ to Local values (row 8) to 1.

Section 0 - General Details

Adjust inflation rates and income tax forecast according to your country.

Tax for net calculation is used to estimate net worth of your pension funds, and represents generic withdrawal penalty. You may adjust it separately for each saving.

Section 1 - Assets

This section contains planning templates for the following asset types:

• Simple saving programs
• A couple of complex saving programs (called Educational Fund and Managerial Insurance) that you may use as examples for further customization
• Pension funds
• Real estate (your home, rental estate) - covers both asset and liability aspects

This article cannot go into details - I plan to explain more in subsequent articles. I believe that many of you will be able to proceed independently.

You absolutely need to tune this section to your assets. If you have multiple assets belonging to one scheme - don't hesitate to duplicate the related template.

Section 2 - Liabilities

Covers your debts and their repayment plan.

Currently, contains one template for simple debt repayment scheme - should be enough for most cases.

Section 3 - Net Value

This section summarizes your total net value (excluding your personal belongings) and its evolution with time according to your life plan.

Net value should stay positive by end of your plan, and should correspond to what you intend to leave as inheritance (see question Q-4).

Section 4 - Monthly Income

This section represents your retirement income plan, year by year.

This is the cornerstone of the retirement planning, and you definitely need to come to terms with this plan.

Conclusion

I believe that we need to start retirement planning as soon as our careers mature. Hope that this article will move you to start this process.

There are many retirement planning resources on the Web, here several ones to start with:

How much do you need to save for retirement?(by getrichslowly)
Retirement Planning - Introduction (by Forbes)
360 degrees of financial literacy (by The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants)

 
For Golden Rules Organizer users, attached zipped listings.

Productivity With Random Numbers

Sometimes we procrastinate on our routine tasks just because there is no fun in doing them.

You could add some flavor into the routine with help of random numbers - serviced by excellent, and free, Random.org site.

Binary Choice

Do it? Do this or that?

To answer this question, use excellent Coin Flipper - there are plenty of coin choices, including antique coins.

Choose one possibility out of N choices

For example, you have N numbered tasks, and need to choose one.

1. Throw one-to-16 dices and sum up the result - lets you choose one of 96 variations
2. Generate 1 integer by giving range from 1 to N

Order unnumbered tasks / people randomly

Prepare a list of tasks (or people, etc.), each on separate line, and copy into this list. Randomize.

Randomly order numbered tasks for execution

If numbers fully occupy sequential range without gaps (e.g, 1 to 10, 50 to 62), you may use sequence generator while giving range start / end values.

Also useful if you wish to do some tasks (probably more than 1).

Generate random password

Use string generator to generate random password strings; if required, manually add special symbols.

Expense Allocation Between Wants and Needs

Several blog articles were published recently about expense distribution formula between wants and needs. I personally recommend Balanced Money Formula from getrichslowly, advocating this simple rule:

• Needs - 50% 
• Wants - 30%
• Savings - 20%.

I will elaborate here about my view on expense allocation to the above three bulk expense categories. In Budget Planning Tool article I suggest a budget tracking Excel template that supports allocation and tracking by these categories.

Needs

The following expenses belong to this category:

• Housing expenses (with one exception: mortgage core down-payment, which belongs to savings; roughly calculated as 'loan amount' divided by  'downpayment months')
• Cell phones, TV, Internet
• Transportation
• Basic clothes and groceries
• Barbers
• Basic health care (excluding gym)
• Insurance (inclusive payments deducted from salary, or paid by your employer)
• Emergency fund (see this article from getrichslowly for more details; deposit 5% of monthly expenses, no matter how much you already have on this fund; this fund is only for one-time emergency payments, as its name suggests; if the amount exceeds 3 monthly expense amounts, transfer excessive amount to Wants or Savings)
• Basic (compulsory) education and nursing expenses
• Bank fees and interest
• Any down-payments on the above items
• Any savings targeting items in this category (e.g., savings targeting next car belong here, and not to Savings category)
• Benefits net value related to this category (for example: car net value would be total equivalent spending on private car, inclusive next car saving fund; meals net value would be your alternative spending on the meals, etc.).

Wants

The following expenses belong here:

• Home improvement
• Luxury clothes
• Luxury meals (restaurants, etc.)
• Entertainment and hobbies
• Luxury sports (inclusive gym) and beauty care
• Donations and presents
• Vacation
• Education (exclusive basic expenses)
• Any down payments on the above items
• Savings targeting the above items (e.g., vacation fund)
• Benefits net value (e.g., gym / vacation paid by employer)

Savings

Finally, this category includes:

• Mortgage core down-payments
• Pension fund deposits (inclusive both deduction from salary and employer share)
• Regular saving / investment deposits (inclusive deductions from salary and employer share) not intended for spending until you stop working
• Debt repayment (not inclusive down-payments on Wants and Needs).

Your comments are welcomed!

Weekend in Galilee

We spent long weekend with our close friends in Rosh Pinna, at Pinna-Be-Rosh-Pinna- new apartment hotel (Cornerstone Corner, in free translation) with 9 double rooms. For 150$ per night (100$ on weekday), we enjoyed spacey double room with jacuzzi and big LCD TV, outdoor spa and swimming pool, and rich breakfast at Auberge Shulamit's restaurant with glassed balcony overlooking Hula Valley (especially eye-catching at Spring time).

We made two daily trips in Rosh Pinna surroundings.

One day we visited Gamla nature reserve; we had the opportunity to observe eagles (pretty rare in Israel), and made a 2-hour trip to 50-meter Gamla waterfall- the highest waterfall in Israel.

After-wards, we enjoyed Turkish meat at Iskandar restaurant (overlooking Jordan river) at around 25$ per person, inclusive tip.

The other day, we engaged in water travel by foot at Ayn Atina waterfalls near Jordan river - both engaging and not hard (about 2 hours).

Then on our way back home, we passed by Ein Gev kibbutz at See of Galilee's eastern shore, where we ate at excellent Ein Gev fish restaurant (25$ per person + tip).

For Golden Rules Organizer users, attached zipped Listings.

Thanks to Travelogged blog for mentioning this article in Anywhere Everywhere Travel Carnival edition! 

Web Site Keywords Maintenance

A web site, like any other property, requires maintenance.

Today I wish to discuss proactive keywords maintenance. (Disclaimer: I'm not a specialist in Search Engine Optimization, but rather a non-profit site owner managing the site by himself.)

Introduction

Keywords (single-word, or blank-separated multi-word strings) should be maintained for one purpose: improve ranking of your site in search results. Keywords should match popular search patterns having high affinity to your site's business.

Web sites are automatically scanned for keywords and indexed by search engine bots (web crawlers).

There are several locations in the pages where keywords should be placed (I suggest Links and Traffic Tutorial as good introduction), notably:

• <meta name="keywords" content="<keyword>,<keyword>,..."> within <head> section
• <title> tag within <head> section
• page contents.

The following basic guidelines can be applied to keywords:

1. Title should include most important keywords in addition to site / product name
2. Meta tag should optimally include 10 keywords, since search engines may decrease keywords ranking if there are more of them
3. Keywords in the title and in the meta tag should correlate with the page contents (should be repeated within the page one or several times)
4. Pages should not be cluttered with keywords, otherwise many visitors will exit the site immediately after entering it (high bounce rate)

Why Keywords Require Maintenance?

For a number of reasons:

• Search habits evolve with time, and keywords frequently used 1 or 2 years ago may differ from those used now
• Pages are constantly updated, and correlation between keywords within meta tag and within page is weakened
• Your business evolves, and some keywords are not suitable anymore, while others are missing

You especially should do keyword maintenance if you notice low, or decreasing, rate of visitors landing from search engines.

Keyword Analysis and Site Adjustment

You can employ Google Search-Based Keyword Tool to analyze keywords usage in actual searches via Google. Similar tools are provided by some other search engines.

Check keywords used by competing sites, since you may wish to match them or to stand out with different but popular keywords.

Allocate enough time to keyword analysis, and choose the best 10 keywords for each 'direct landing' page.

Adjust <title> and <meta> tags, and modify pages text to naturally include new keywords.

Advertise Keywords (Optional)

If you have advertisement budget, you may allocate some of it to keyword-based advertisement programs (such as Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter, Yahoo YSM) that will put you on the first pages of the search results for the advertised keywords, according to contract conditions.

Follow-Up and Tuning

Use site usage statistics (free Google Analytics, statistics tool provided by your Internet service provider, or a commercial statistics tool) to analyze keywords that landed visitors on your pages from search engines.

It is important to check bounce rate for each keyword - high bounce rate means that visitors immediately leave the page.

Keywords with lower landing rate, or higher bounce rate than expected can be replaced by repeating the above process.

Google provides Google Web Site Optimizer tool that allows creating multiple versions of pages and accidentally routing search engine visitors to one of the versions. By analyzing landing and bounce rate for each version, optimal keywords (among other) can be chosen faster than by regular sequential tuning process.

Keyword Maintenance is Not Enough!

To increase your ranking in the search engines, you also have to:

• Increase number of inbound quality ('natural') links to your pages (see Links and Traffic Tutorial)
• Decrease bounce rate from your pages by adjusting page contents to visitors
• Make your pages easier to scan by search engine bots, etc.

These topics are out of scope of this article.

Additional Links

• Occam's Razor blog - excellent web analytics blog; includes nice introduction into the subject
• Link Popularity Check Software (free) - checks your page rank compared to competition
• Google Toolbar- shows Google page rank of each visited page.

Here zipped listings for Golden Rules Organizer users.

Windows Drive Cleanup

I noticed I have just 5% free space on my laptop's C drive. To clean-up the computer, I followed the following process (my laptop runs under Windows XP):

• Clean-up temporary Internet files using Internet browser(s) (for all accounts / browsers)
• Install recent CCleaner version (here the download link) and run it
  • Cleaner - clean all temporary files
  • Registry - registry cleanup
  • Tools
    • Uninstall - uninstall unneeded programs (similar to Control Panel --> Add / Remove Programs)
    • Startup - cancel automatic launch of unneeded programs upon startup (similar to Run-->msconfig)
• Run Windows Disk Cleanup Utility
  
  • My Computer --> right click on the drive --> Properties
  • Choose Disk Cleanup
  • Press OK to clean-up
• Remove Windows restore points except the last one (this alone saved me above 1 Gb)
  • My Computer --> right click on the drive --> Properties
  • Choose Disk Cleanup --> More Options --> System Restore Clean up
• Run Full Service Scan from Windows Live OneCare
  • It found several registry problems undiscovered by CCleaner
• Look for very large files that are candidates for manual removal, and remove them
  • Go to My Computer --> right click on the drive --> Search
  • Select option What size is it --> Specify Size (in KB) --> at least 5000 Kb
  • Sort results by decreasing file size
  • Remove unneeded files manually
• Install recent Defraggler version (here the download link) and run Defrag (takes several hours)

As a result, I now have 25% free space and, hopefully, better performing applications.

Budget Planning Tool

I wish to share with you an Excel tool I created and use for years to manage our family budget - Cash Flow Planner.

Cash Flow Planner - Description

The Excel contains several tabs (pre-formatted for proper printing, so please avoid changing column width):

• Cash Flow - budget tracking, planning, and cash flow forecast ledgers:
  • family expenses for 2009-2010 + 30-years forecast
    • detailed by categories and items
    • includes permanent and variable items (the last marked in yellow)
  • independent business expenses (for optional use)
  • income and balance
    • income ledger
    • balance sheet
    • cash flow (supports 2 accounts)
• Withdrawal - details variable expenses (ledgers)
• Benefits - cash equivalent of savings and benefits deducted from salary
• Averages - planned and actual average family spending by category
  • Deviations from planned category spending percentage are shown by color.

Planned average spending by category is set according to following recommendations (the totals are more important than specific distribution by category, which can vary):

• Necessary expenses + insurance: 50%
• Life improvement, vacation, education - 30%
• Long-term savings - 20%.

Initial Setup Advice

1. Set current year (just change $E2 if it's not 2009)
2. Customize permanent expenses and benefits (don't change the overall structure)
3. If you have 2 accounts, allocate each expense and income to relevant account (Acc1 or Acc2)
4. If you are paying mortgage(s), and wish to track average distribution by category, I recommend to split each payment into interest payment and capital repayment parts and allocate capital repayment to Savings & Investments category (monthly interest payment can be roughly calculated as <average interest rate> * <loan amount> / 24)
5. Populate permanent monthly income & expense items (actual & forecast) from current year start till end of next year
6. Check the average yearly balance for this and next year (lower yellow cell), and spread the amount between variable ledgers (in yellow) according to desired expenses percentage per category, so that, if possible, Balance will be just below zero (but - be frank with yourself).
7. Choose the date in month for which monthly balance will be drawn; this usually should be the first date after all payments and income for the preceding month are withdrawn
8. As part of one-time setup activity, populate Acc1 and (if applicable) Acc2 cash amounts (in the lines with green cells at the bottom) for the month of start balance date (e.g., if start balance date is April 11, then populate for April column)
9. Review the cash flow forecast; if it falls below desired amount for some months / accounts, you may need to re-distribute expenses between the accounts; if doesn't help - consider either spending reduction, or a loan / short-term savings withdrawal, to stay within the account limits you (or your bank) have set.

Monthly Audit Process

Once a month, after balance date reached, perform the audit process:

1. Modify forecast figures for the last month' permanent expenses / income according to actual figures (permanent doesn't mean there is no fluctuation from month to month, year to year)
2. Complete the Withdrawal sheet for the past month, so that all variable expenses are listed (you may track using your credit card data, or by saving the receipts, or both combined)
3. Update the variable expenses for the last month according to actual totals, so that cash amounts for the current month will correspond to actual amounts on the accounts 
4. Update the bi-yearly forecast where needed
5. Check the yearly average balance and cash flow for Acc1 / Acc2 for not falling below your targets; if it does - make corrections to your spending plan for upcoming month(s)
6. Check the expense spread by category; if it starts to deviate strongly from your targets - make corrections to your spending plan (especially, variable ledgers).

Yearly Setup Process

At the beginning of a new year, do the following setup:

1. Archive the budget excel with name like Budget-YYYY (last year)
2. Change the year ($E2)
3. Copy the figures from next year to the current year
4. Modify cash flow figures (green cells) for January this year according to January audit

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I hope these explanations will help you to get around with the Excel. In any case - don't hesitate to comment here in the blog.

To expand your knowledge, I recommend this excellent article in Get Rich Slowly blog: 13 tools to build better personal budget. It mentions additional budget tools (including Excels and on-line Web tools).

To finalize: no matter how you plan your budget - please do it! This is one of the foundations of your personal productivity.

This article was mentioned by the following blog carnivals: Money Hacks Carnival, Carnival of Financial Planning, Carnival of Wealth, Money, and Life.