Cheddarblog

The Swiss_Mouse is considering shutting down the cheddarblog.  Well, not shutting down, but changing direction.

It has served it’s need, but sadly it made precious little money for the Swiss_Mouse.

I still get traffic here, but I am not able to keep up with the demands of blogging.

I need to make money more rapidly and with less “interactive” work.

The Cheddarblog started life as a joke amongst work friends.  Then I took it over all by my lonesome and attempted to make money via blogging about money/financial/practical items.   Then I decided to make it a journal of just how I was trying to make money period.

But it’s too much work in terms of getting blog material and keeping it going.

Most likely, I will make a few more entries over the next few weeks, then shut down what was the Cheddarblog and resurrect it in a new form.  Hopefully one that really makes cheddar.

More news soon.

The Swiss_Mouse’s IRA and 401k statement came in.  They didn’t use ink this quarter, it was blood!!!   And these numbers were pre-crash.

However, right now my networth is down only 9.48% for the year.   Not bad considering!    I have to go back 6 years to find a negative year!!!  2003.  At this point in that year I was only down 6.5% but that doubled by years end to 12.34%.

I know my next set of statements will be awful. My bet mutual fund has had it’s gain cut in half (I was up 155%).  But things turn around, they always do.

Here is hoping that my funds are all buying “cheap” right now.

Quantity is not Quality.

For some reason, a lot of people think you have to work long hours and very hard in order to productive and effective.  Mrs. Swiss_Mouse is one of those people.

I am not.

Just today, I put in 1 hour of intense time on a project and walked away, satisfied with the results.  Just 1 hour.  But it was a full 60 minutes (ok more like 50) of focused and intense work.  And more importantly, it was work I was interested in.  I felt compelled to work on it.

I read an interesting quote recently:

“When work is a pleasure, life is a joy!  When work is a duty, life is slavery!”

Right now, my life on the wheel is slavery.

The Swiss_Mouse is going to make some changes.

The Cheddarblog was intended originally as a “make money blogging” blog.  But that never quite worked out.  In fact the Cheddarblog was run by Swiss_Mouse, Lord Limburger and PepperJack.  But only the Swiss_Mouse was interested.

So the Swiss_Mouse continued on and over 1 year later, still no money.

The Cheddarblog has evolved and devolved.  It is now a journal of a journey.  The Swiss_Mouse’s Quest for Cheddar, but he doesn’t post nearly as much as he should.   He is working on that.

He has so many other projects going on.  Though his pay-per-post site failed, he is onto making cheddar with a different site and with a wiki site.  And let’s not forget Mrs. Swiss_Mouse is now on board.

The biggest change for the mouse:  goodbye 3rd person.  I was really getting tired of watching how I wrote posts.  WHEW…that feels much better.

A new year is on the way.  The Swiss_Mouse needs new skills, new ideas, new projects and new fresh cheddar.

Mrs. Swiss_Mouse panicked last week.

With the market crashing downward, she actually suggested cashing out IRAs and 401ks and putting them in the bank.  Ouch! Can you imagine the tax hit on that?

Granted the numbers aren’t in yet, but the Swiss_Mouse looks to be down in networth approximately 10% by the end of the month.  Terrible you say?  Of course it is.  But he still has several percentage points to go before he hits his worst year “on record”.

But he has lost a lot of money.  But he is trying to make a lot of money.  He is working hard at all of his non-Day Job pursuits.  Trying to earn some extra cheddar.  None yet, though.  But pressure is increasing to find a new source of income and a new career or at minimum a new job.

On the Cheddarblog front, the Swiss_Mouse has been thinking of sharing his Net-worth figures with you.  Historical and present.  What do you think?  Should he? Or keep it private?

The Swiss_Mouse winds up September disappointed.

His efforts to make true cheddar were completely unsuccessful.  Worse yet, he gained weight!

Add to that the downturn in the stock market is destroying is portfolio and September 2008 is a horrible month.

But the Swiss_Mouse has sat down and worked out his goals for October.  He has refocused his ideas, making his goals achievable and limiting the scope of what he is going to try to do.  Plus as an extra added bonus, he’s going to try to lose 8 lbs during the month!

Plus the Swiss_Mouse hope to start documenting his rise to internet millions.

The Swiss_Mouse posted this over on QuittingtheDayJob.com and rather than waste this tasty morsel, he presents it here as well…

Wake me up when September ends…

Seriously! What a month! Financial ruin and economic despair! Partisan politics and election turmoil! If only the Swiss_Mouse could see Russia from his house instead of that stupid double-wide!

Last month as Quitting the Day Job was getting off the ground, the Swiss_Mouse decided to use September as “bust my butt” month. His intention was to work as hard as the Swiss_Mouse could on all of his internet ventures. Priority, of course, was given to Quitting the Day Job, but the Swiss_Mouse divided up his time to each of his other projects as well. He split his time into 3 specific segments: Posting, Promoting and “Work” (meaning maintenance work on sites, plug-in upgrades, etc.). How did the Swiss_Mouse do? Eh. He did okay but not great. But he did learn several things, both positive and negative.

Positive: It really helps to lay out a timeline of work on a calendar. At first the Swiss_Mouse laid out what the Swiss_Mouse would do every day, splitting the time into lunchtime and nighttime, but was pretty general about what he needed to do. That was too much.  The Swiss_Mouse backed off to where he only planned ahead for a week. There are too many variables to account for: kid’s activities, sickness, hurricane aftermath, Molly Ringwald marathons on AMC…

Negative: Don’t think that you can do too much. Often the Swiss_Mouse would list out 3 items for a single evening and then barely get one done. He learned that He needed to be realistic about what needs to be accomplished in a set time period. Better to underestimate what can be done and then use any extra time to “get ahead” than to plan out a must do list and get nothing accomplished.

Positive: The best approach seems to be to concentrate all efforts in a single timeframe to working on one site or idea. That way all concentration is focused like a friggin’ laser beam from a shark’s head on your project.

Negative: Don’t make the assumption that you can actually get work done everyday. For example, by Friday the grind of the work week has taken such a toll on the Mrs Swiss_Mouse and Swiss_Mouse that we usually crash for most of the night. If we have the energy, we might go out to eat, but otherwise we vegetate and let the frustrations of the week release. While the Swiss_Mouse might hop on the computer to check emails or play a game, he really has a hard time doing work to Quit the Day Job. He might, might, do a little work. But the brain needs a rest. The Swiss_Mouse will plan this into future calendars.

Positive: The Swiss_Mouse has several sites that he will call “automatic”. In other words, a single days work will allow them to run for the entire month without any real intervention. He has learned that If he dedicates one day to them at the beginning of the month, he can ignore them for the rest of the month and work on sites that require more attention.

Negative: A lot of work went into September for very little gain. The $ never showed up. It can be very disheartening to do so much work and see nothing come out of it. So much so that it could be easy to give up. But the Swiss_Mouse won’t yet.

Positive: The Swiss_Mouse learned that while a generic list of “goal” and a calendar work great, he really needs a slightly more specific achievable set of tasks for the month. If the Swiss_Mouse sits down and plans them out, he can then use the calendar as tool to meet those goal.

October

The Swiss_Mouse will use September as a template for October. He’ll set up a prioritized list of goals. Turn the goals into tasks that can be put on the calendar and schedule his time more realistically. That way he should be able to use his time more effectively and hopefully profit from the experience.

Spotted an article in the local newspaper about a website that was allowing nerds with too much time on their hands to build internet radio stations. Live365.com is the site and the kicker was, it actually shares some of the revenue from ads.

Well the problem really is the fact that it costs about $15 a month to run the “station”. So you have to pull in more than that in order to make any money.  Now the nerd in the article admitted he wasn’t close to even making $15, but he was going to keep going.  Well good for him.

But you know, the Swiss_Mouse might just look into this…after all it might actually just be a fun activity.

The Swiss_Mouse is a reader.  He like books, magazines, cheese wrappers….

In the September 2008 issue of Money Magazine he found an interesting article entitled “Millionaires in the Making”.

It was a profile of two young DINKs, both 27 who wanted to retire by age 40.  The magazine profiled them and said they “just might make it”.  Well the Swiss_Mouse takes issue with a few of the items in the article.  First off their combined income was $211k.  NICE!  Assets $1 million. Double NICE!!  Liabilities $516k.  HUH?  This is when the Swiss_Mouse dug into the article.

Right off the bat he noticed they had mortgages (plural) of $444,025.  Turns out they have rental property.  Ok, that might not be so bad but in the advice that Money Magazines advisors gave to them they said that they should sell “one or two” of their rental homes.  Why?  Because overall they were LOSING $750 a month on the properties.  Notice the Mouse said LOSING $750 a month.  You’d think that a smart person would look at that and say “I need to cut these loses”.  After all, they could always trim this and buy back in later.  In essence they needed to stop the negative flow.  But the man refused!  And this from man who considered himself extremely frugal and went to great lengths to save money.  His reason for not dumping “I think those properties are going to come back eventually. …our retirement plan is not based on any return from those properties anyway.”   GOOD damn thing since he’s losing money.

Apparently also 37% of thie investment portfolio was in his company stock. Granted it is Microsoft.  He refused because it would be “it’s dumb to sell low..”.  Is it smart to sell in the single digits?  Hello?  Has this guy ever hear of ENRON?!?   The advisor only said he should cut back to 5%.  Geez even 10% would be smart.  Apparently this Microsoft employee has never heard of Open Office, Firefox, Google….probably working to hard.  Or….

The final thing that killed the Mouse (not literally) about these “millionaires” was the do “splurge”.  Apparently they do eat out 1 or 2 times a month.  They went to a show.  He bought a $30,000 car for road  rally racing.  HE WHAT?!?!?  After reading all about how frugal he was, how they sacrificed, how they shared entrees at restaurants to find out he bought a $30,000 car just for road racing was a big too much.

Sometimes the Mouse wonders if Money Magazine is being intentionally humorous.

The Swiss_Mouse’s hood was hit pretty heavy over the weekend by hurricane winds left over from Hurricane Ike.

Thus the Swiss_Mouse’s “bust your butt in September plan” got knocked off-line for a few days.

Luckily this was just a hiccup.  Some close by areas won’t have power for another 2 weeks.  No electricity, no cable,  no internet.  DEAR GOD it’s like living in the Soviet Union!!!

The Swiss_Mouse hopes to get back online on Wednesday night with posts about people who think they are “smart” and rich.