Continuing the series of republishing the old Art Calendar articles with updated commentary here is the 5th one looking at the power of a wall chart and some things that flow from this. Though I didn’t specifically note it in the original article, leaving it as implied from previous articles, I feel like I should give credit again to the book “Your Money or Your Life” that introduced me to some of these concepts and which goes into further details about them.
Continue reading “AC5 – Wall Charts, Savings Buffers, and Knowing When to Quit the Day Job”Blog
AC4 – Where Does All the Money Go
Here is the next of my old Art Calendar articles with lots of updated notes tacked on. This 4th one is about the way I go about tracking my money in order to have a clear sense of where it is coming from and where it’s going to. Now with a couple decades of hindsight I can say this is one of the most powerful tools I have for understanding myself and keeping the finances in good order. It’s a practice I can strongly recommend!
Continue reading “AC4 – Where Does All the Money Go”AC3 – Housing You Can Afford
Continuing to transfer from my davidhuang.org website, with updated notes, my old financial management articles written for the art business magazine, Art Calendar, here is the third one looking at housing. Getting housing costs under control is probably one of the biggest things I’ve ever done to better not just my finances, but my life in general. My homestead has become a place providing me a deep sense of security with money, food, and energy. So without further ado, here is the old article with my updating comments sprinkled within.
Continue reading “AC3 – Housing You Can Afford”AC2 – Your Real Hourly Wage
Continuing to transfer from my davidhuang.org website, with updated notes, my old financial management articles written for the art business magazine, Art Calendar, here is the second one focusing on your real hourly wage. I feel like this is a very powerful conceptual tool for getting a handle on ones finances while also gaining a deeper understanding of yourself and what you value.
Continue reading “AC2 – Your Real Hourly Wage”AC1 – Making a Living
Very soon I am going to be moving my davidhuang.org website to a new platform and hosting server. It’s not that I really want to do this. It’s more that the software it is running on is SO old, out of date, and no longer supported that it’s going to break as soon as the server gets the update that should have happened many months ago. So I will be rebuilding that site from scratch in WordPress here on the account that is hosting this blog. Unfortunately what that also means is that most of what I’ve built up on the davidhuang.org site over the many years will simply go away and be lost. There is no easy way to transfer it all. I do hope to reconstruct some of the more popular sections as time permits.
Continue reading “AC1 – Making a Living”Off-grid Solar Living When There is No Sun
The weather forecast for my area tomorrow is looking pretty ugly! The rain could be starting just about anytime this evening and continuing through the night. At some point Saturday it’s supposed to transition into snow as the precipitation continues unabated into the early hours of Sunday, with as much as 6 inches of the white stuff predicted to accumulate. The catch here is that transition stage where the ice is supposed to come. Lots and lots of ice, freezing rain accumulating to as much as 3/4 inch of ice. It’s the ice that really causes the problems around here. We can generally deal with rain and snow just fine. Should this ice storm come to pass there will probably be lots of downed trees and plenty of people without power tomorrow. Being off-grid and generating all my own power through solar panels, downed power lines aren’t likely to cause me issues. Ironically though it was still looking like I would be powerless during the storm, just for different reasons.
Continue reading “Off-grid Solar Living When There is No Sun”How I get 1000% to 3000% more interest with my emergency fund savings
Being a self employed studio artist as my full-time job is a pretty awesome thing. I feel very blessed to have been able to make this my life! However, there are some challenges involved. One that I learned early on was that my income is just going to be highly variable. Some months hardly any work sells. I think my worst month I had a grand total of $10 in income! Thankfully this is offset by months of monster levels of income way beyond what I ever made when working a normal wage type job. Over the course of a full year things seems to average out and remain fairly constant year to year. However, due to this wide income variability I would be a financial and nervous wreck if I tried living paycheck to paycheck. I’ve found I really have to have a significant stash of liquid funds to ride out the low points with stress free ease.
Continue reading “How I get 1000% to 3000% more interest with my emergency fund savings”Autumnberry: A delicious fruit you may have never heard about
All the right elements seemed to combine this year to make it a bumper crop year around me for autumnberries. (These are sometimes also known as autumn-olive, with the scientific name of Elaeagnus umbellata.) It’s probably not a fruit you’re going to see in grocery stores. In fact, you may have never heard of it before, despite the fact that it’s said to be the most common wild fruit across large regions of North America. I only learned about it a few years ago and went hunting to try and find a bush. Eventually I found some along an old railroad line converted into a hiking/biking trail where I find a lot of wild foods. After positively identifying it in the field I was chagrined to discover a hearty sized specimen growing at the end of my driveway! Doh! It was growing right under my nose for years, with me walking by it everyday as I went to check the mail. I find this is so often how it is with wild edible foods. Until we become educated about them they remain a seemingly invisible part of the landscape. Put another way, the more I learn about wild edibles the more vibrant the natural world around me becomes!
Continue reading “Autumnberry: A delicious fruit you may have never heard about”So how much is in a cord of wood?
As anyone who heats with firewood knows wood is generally measured in cords, but you also would know a cord is a pretty fuzzy measurement. Technically a full cord is a stack 4 feet high by 4 feet deep by 8 feet long. The problem is every time you stack that pile of logs it will sit a bit differently altering the gaps between pieces and thus changing the overall volume of the pile. Then there is the other issue that how much potential heat energy in that pile also depends on what type of wood it is, how dry it is, and so on.
Continue reading “So how much is in a cord of wood?”When Things go Awry
So the other day I got up and was raring to get out into the studio and start hammering. I feel like I’ve been slacking on my metalwork, getting pulled away in too many other directions. I really need to be getting some hammering done, both because it’s what pays my bills and I’ve got several galleries needing to be restocked! I’m feeling the pressure and guilt of not getting enough done. So I’m ready to head out the front door and go to the studio. “Oh, that doesn’t look good.” “Hmm…” Yep, the front door won’t open!
Continue reading “When Things go Awry”