Justin Germino Ramblings

A friend of mine bought me Dave Ramsey’s book Total Money Makeover, and I started reading it recently on my spare time.  My friends had followed this book to the T, and have confided in me how their lifestyles are dramatically better now as a result.  As like any normal person I have my fair share of debt and am reading the book to see what is the logic and secret, but there is none of course.  This book is about how showing you that discipline and sacrifice now can lead to a better lifestyle later.

The books mantra written on every page is “Live Like No One Else Now, So That You Can Live Like Nobody Else Later” and is all about how if you strip all of your income that goes to trivial stuff, and consolidate it into debt payments, you can become debt free.  Sacrifice by getting only what you need, not what you can afford or not afford, and live by the cheapest means necessary.  (Do budget some luxuries, but emergency fund and debt reduction are top priority).  It is a typical snowball debt reduction strategy that is common sense, but the problem is few people can abide by it.

Americans are too lazy and have gotten used to buying too much on credit, we don’t want to wait 6 years to get a new TV, we don’t want to save up for 8 years to take a trip to Hawaii, we want what we want and as soon as we can.  The thinking is this, I may not live to see 40, I may die of a car accident tomorrow, and I would have missed out on what I could be doing today.

I have a more moderate view, while I realize that anyone who follows this book to the T, will likely be debt free and very well off, depending on how long that takes, they may miss out on memories and living life now.  I am trying to balance some of the things in this book with the reality that I have a family with two young kids, and I have to make some exceptions to keep everyone enjoying life.  I still think it is a very good read and anyone who is in any debt at all, or has trouble balancing their budget should read Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover.

Follow it as closely as you can and it will work very well, I know people who have and are doing very well off by following Dave Ramsey’s advice.

I mean it everyone including myself needs to put their debt on a diet pill, so that you can enjoy life a little more and not be so stressed out financially. Nothing is more painful and discouraging than to get paid and then have nothing left over to save or have some fun money. When you are upside down and owe more than you earn you can be tearing your hair out.

-Justin Germino

Crazy busy at work with almost a dozen projects for my full time job, in addition I run my 4 blogs at night, work for my wifes music production company “Rock Along Productions”, make time for my kids and now have two dogs to play with.  I am a busy person and enjoy being busy, I take some time out at night to watch TV and movies with my wife and am looking forward to Valentines day where I am taking my wife out to McCormick & Schmick restaurant.

She has some sort of special event planned that we are attending after the dining, it was a cooperative Valentines Day where I coordinate the dinner and she coordinated the after activity/event.  I don’t know what she bought tickets to and I am extremely excited to see what we are doing.

Meanwhile I have to find time to work out which I will be doing today, sometimes I feel like I want to clone myself like the movie Multiplicity with Michael Keaton (a funny movie by the way) where he clones himself and assigns his clones to different chores and tasks.  It would be a whole lot easier to manage my time and projects if there were more of me.

Meanwhile, what are some of your Valentines day plans? I like to hear what other people are doing, post about it and I will link back to you here so others can see what plans you have for Valentines day.

-Justin Germino

Meet Porky

On Sunday February 8th 2009 we drove over four hours (2 hours each way) from Casa Grande, Arizona to Black Canyon City, where we braved vicious dark storms and hail the size of peas raining down on us. We had posted an ad on craigslist last week that we were looking to add another Boston Terrier to our family after ours had a near death experience, we wanted to have a 2nd dog in case something were to happen to the first. We would have a way to cushion the loss with the kids, as well as wanted to share love with another dog around.

Boston Terriers are among the most loving, loyal and kid friendly dog breeds in existence. They just love everyone and are so social and friendly, when we arrived at the nice people’s home we were torn between Hamlet and Porky both were excellent seven month old puppies. We decided Porky was the one for our family and brought him home.

We paid $400 for the lovely puppy which even though is almost the same price as a notebook computer is still far cheaper than the $1200 – $1800 you can see Boston Terrier’s selling for in mall pet shops, or even the $650+ price range directly from breeders.

Porky is still a little homesick and misses his parents and sibling and former family, but is adjusting well. He likes our older dog Gouda who is 8 years old and is warming up to the family and kids. He slept in our bed last night and he only had 1 accident in the house (peeing on the rug) yesterday early on when we brought him home.

Here is a picture of Gouda (the smaller, older brindle one) and Porky (the new Black and White Boston Terrier)

-Justin Germino

My first submission to Associated Content was a Valentines Day poem, which they accepted and published.  It was a poem called Charms and Trinkets.  I was told about Associated Content from my friend Damien Riley who said they sometimes pay bloggers and journalists to write articles for them.  I decided to take the Valentines Day poetry challenge, since Poetry is my forte, and got accepted and published.

I was pretty happy about that.

-Justin Germino

Some things we can take for granted in life such as the job we have, the house we live in and our families.  This is especially true of people who are in long relationships, one can sometimes get so caught up in the routine that they have expectations or have feelings of incompleteness that may not exist truly, but just are a symptom of not stepping back and looking at all that you truly have.  One such example is that there are many facets to a relationship, these include but are not limited to: Friendship, Support, Love, Attraction…etc

If you find yourself lacking or thinking something is missing, then focus on everything that your relationship does have and then devise a conclusion like this:  Am I just being picky, or is there something really wrong?  Is there something I can do to alleviate how I feel about the situation?  Remember it is easier to blame and point at others, but many issues can often develop and be caused by ones own self.

My point is if you take your relationship as a whole and have few complaints about a few issues, then this is the nature of a good and healthy relationship.  Don’t over analyze your relationship to death, and don’t expect that you will be happy with 100% of the relationship, 100% of the time.  People are people and relationships are give and take and you get out of them what you put into them for the most part, so instead of expecting anything, put more effort into the relationship and talk with your partner about how you are feeling.

Communication is always key.

Just one of my insights for today.

-Justin Germino

As a part time author for Ya’Sou Ezine I just sent off my 2nd article to be published in the near future and I wanted to encourage my readers who are interested in poetry, writing or any type of literature to check out the online magazine called Ya’Sou!.

It has some good work, contests and accepts submissions from poets and authors who are looking to contribute.

So take a look, there is some great content posted and this magazine is released every quarter.

-Justin Germino

My wife was asked to be on the local Arizona KXAM 1310 AM Independant Radio station to promote her Rock Along Productions company and upcoming Rock Show on Saturday at The Goat Head Saloon in Mesa.  I accompanied her and got to witness being part of a live radio talk show for the first time.  My wife was a guest along with Al Bowman from Phoenix Music Awards who is working with our company for the show, as well as Steve McCarty who cowrote “Fly Like An Eagle” with the Steve Miller band and also demo’d a new version of “Wild Mountain Honey” for the first time on the show.

I sat in the corner of the room since they only had enough microphones and headphones for 3 guests plus Shante Evonne who was one of the nicest radio broadcasters I had ever met in person.  I assisted my wife by helping focus what topics to bring up, and she was able to express her companies goals and vision for the future.  Including the company’s involvement in wanting to bring music back into our public schools.

It was a great experience and I really enjoy being part of my wife’s company Rock Along Productions, we really try to bring local Arizona music to the masses to open people’s eyes to spend time listening to some of the sounds coming out of the valley.

-Justin Germino

Thank you to my January Top Droppers who have all deserve to be added to everyone’s drop list. In addition to being listed here you get added to my Entrecard Generator on Dragonblogger.com for the month.

I have been an avid fan of NBC Heroes for several years and I wanted to point out something funny that happens when people become fans of anything. They start to research and learn more about things mentioned in the show, movie or game that interests them. For instance Heroes had numerous connections with Odessa, Texas which was where HRG and Claire lived, as well as the paper company Primatech had an operation there. Not knowing much about the geographical location of Texas I decided to map it and learned that Odessa is only a few hours west of Dallas.

But I notice people do that kind of thing all the time, for instance in the Movie Kung-Fu Panda, the Wu-Shi finger of death is mentioned as a joke, and I put the keyword on my KungFu Panda review on my blog only to learn people actually do type in “Wu Shi Finger Hold” or variations and end up on my blog site by some fictitious title of a fake martial arts move.

So people have a curiosity and google whatever they see or hear that interests them and sparks that curiosity, whether it be “real” or “fictitious”.

Just something that I have noticed.

-Justin Germino

This was amazing video that I was shown from CNN of a massive herd of manatee’s huddling together in the Florida waters for warmth. I have never seen so many of the gentle sea cows in a single location like this. I couldn’t help but watch the video in awe. Notice how many of the poor creatures have scars and injuries most commonly from scuffles with propellers or other man related water craft.

Manatee’s have always fascinated me by their simplistic and gentle life style and serene calm they always seem to have. They are actually one of my favorite animals.

-Justin Germino