Check out this new website by Barnes and Noble called http://quamut.com.  It’s a how to guide of everything from making sushi to setting up your own website.  The website categorizes its how to guides by general categories such as house and home and computers and technology.  The categories break down into more specific topics like automotive/garage and programming/software.  What I like about the site is the in-depth treatment of each topic.  Other web-based how to guides throw a million topics at you, but with little actual information for each one.  By contrast, Quamut devotes pages and pages of information on each topic.  Today’s “how to” is (surprise!) blogging.

Interestingly, I just tried looking up the word “quamut” on dictionary.com.  The word doesn’t exist.  I guess companies are getting very creative about coming up with names for their websites because there are just too many cybersquatters out there hogging webnames for no good purpose other than to try and sell it to you!  My thinking - if you don’t use the web name for six months, you gotta give it up.  That’s my gripe of the day.

I recently received an email from a reader in New York City:

              Dear Financial Gal-

I read your post about disgruntled lawyers.  I am a dissatisfied attorney myself and looking to get out of my 16 hour/day never-see-the-light-of-day associate position at a major law firm.  I have been trying to save enough money to cover my expenses for at least six months so that I can take time off to travel or simply decompress, but I can’t seem to reach the goal.  Although I am making a decent salary, NYC is a very expensive place to live.  Most of my paycheck gets eaten up by taxes, rent, dry cleaning, dinners out, new suits, etc.  My biggest problem is that because I’m so stressed out at work, I tend to spend my free time shopping to blow off some steam.  I have a closetfull of clothes and shoes that I have barely worn.  I suspect that what I’m doing amounts to emotional spending, like emotional eating.  How can I control this bad habit so that I can move on with my life plans?

            Suffering big law associate.

I completely empathize, because I’ve been there myself.  My first job outside of law school required 14 hour days and frequent weekend work.  On those rare weekends where I actually got a day off, I spent them sprawled on the couch or at the mall, trying to figure out which pair of shoes to buy.  Just like digging into a ice cream sundae, shopping was an indulgent fix (albeit temporary) to my stress-ridden life.  Of course, when you are working that much, the last thing you want to do is clean your own house or do your own laundry.  Hence, you incur even more expenses and dig yourself further into the money pit.  Here’s my two cents on what to do:

1. Make a plan to escape.  Just like Tim Robbins’ character in the Shawshank Redemption, sometimes it takes a few pebbles at a time to dig yourself out of your cell.  Your exit won’t happen right away, but if you have a plan, this will instantly boost your spirits.  Chart your goals for the next year.  When do you absolutely want to be out of your job?
2. Once you have your deadline set, figure out how much money you need to set aside for each paycheck to reach your goal.  Then, set up an automatic withdrawal plan with an online bank like www.ingdirect.com.  The money will disappear out of your account before you’ve even gotten your hands on it.
3. Credit card therapy:  Reduce your credit card stash in your wallet to no more than two cards.  Then, tape a note to each card to remind yourself that you are sticking to your plan NOT to spend so that you can reach your financial goal.  If you want to be even more graphic, include on your note a picture of the partner that is making your life a living hell.
4. Go through your closet and rid yourself of the clothing that you no longer wear or don’t ever intend to wear.  Calculate how much money you spent on those clothes.  Write that number down using a big black magic marker and stick it on your refrigerator as a reminder of the cash that was wasted.  Chances are you would have already reached your six month goal had you not made those purchases. 
5. For the clothes that are still wearable (which I am guessing is all of them), donate them to Goodwill or to Dress for Success.  Pat yourself on the back.
6. Last tip:  Reduce your contact with shopaholic friends and family.  You would be amazed at how peer pressure will cause you to spend needlessly.

Let me know how you’re doing and whether you have adopted any of these tips.  There are going to be days when you find it too difficult to resist a purchase here or there.  But when you do make progress, you need to congratulate yourself and remind yourself of your long-term goals.  From all of us disgruntled lawyers, we are all rooting for you!

Having a hard time getting your teen off the couch and doing meaningful work this summer?  Having a summer job, no matter how menial, can be a good experience for a teen.

My summer jobs ranged from answering the switchboard at a local bank to running a gift shop at a local hotel resort.  The worst one?  Probably a cashier at a grocery store, where I couldn’t figure out how to process WIC vouchers during my short tenure.  Despite the mishaps endured at my various short term jobs, I did learn a few lessons. 

1.    Money is hard to make, so don’t blow it all in one place. 
2.    Stay calm, don’t panic, and persevere, even with a long line of angry customers.
3.    Stay in school.

This last lesson was never really a choice.  Just ask my parents.  However, the summer jobs did reinforce why school was so important.  At the grocery store, I slogged alongside older co-workers working for minimum wage and remember how difficult it was for them to hold down a job, take care of kids, and pay bills on a paltry wage of $4.15/hour (or was it $3.85)?. 

A recent articlein USAToday on the past jobs of CEOs demonstrates, any experience, no matter how gritty or filth-ridden, is a valuable learning experience for a teenager.  The profiled CEOs shoveled dirt, hawked encyclopedias door to door, and held menial retail jobs, taking in lessons like overcoming adversity, developing ambition, staying in school, and having a positive attitude, no matter how nasty the customers can be.  So, why the continued slide in teen employment?  The article points out that the more well-educated the parents, the less likely their kids are going to hold down summer jobs.  Interestingly, Borders bookstore CEO George Jones’ teenage son, Dylan Jones, who barely has worked in any Borders store, but has traveled to 30 countries.  In this day and age of helicopter parents who expose their children to unique and diverse learning experiences, holding down the menial job at McDonalds is low (or nonexistent) on their list of priorities.  But ironically, that job may teach them a lifetime of good values.

What do you do when you have a great idea but don’t know where to start?  For instance, you may be really excited about your idea to start brewing your own jasmine tea or making organic marshmallows, but the idea just stops right there.  Then what?  How do you take your idea from the drawing board to a real live operation?  I’ve often wondered about this myself, as I constantly pitch ideas to my husband and friends.  But an article in the Small Business section of Fortune magazine about the granola company Bear Naked shows that it may be as simple as going shopping at your local grocery store.

Two friends, Kelly Flatley and Brendan Synnott, started Bear Naked, which makes natural granola products, in 2002.   In Fortune Small Business, Flatley and Synnott describe how they took this simple idea and developed it into a multi-million dollar business.  How did these two twentysomethings start out?  They did the same thing we do all the time.  They went to Costco.  But instead of dropping hundreds of dollars on tubs of spinach tip for their personal consumption, they invested in the business.  Flatley and Synnott scooped up granola ingredients like bags of nuts and gallons of honey and canola oil, so much that they scored Costco’s customer of the month title in fall 2003.  Flatley and Synnott also recall that they were the accountants, distributors, kitchen cleaners, and the cooks for their product.  After five scrappy years, they grew the brand so well that it reached $65 million in sales in 2007.  Even better, the Bear Naked brand caught the eye of Kellogg, which bought the company last year for a whopping $60 million.  Although the money is good, Flatley and Synnott describe themselves as proud parents of the brand, noting that with the sale to Kellogg, Bear Naked granola can reach an even wider audience. 

Bear Naked epitomizes how perserverance and a belief in your own product can take your company to dizzying heights.  It’s also a real-world example of how starting a company doesn’t have to involve fancy business plans or Silicon Valley venture capitalists.  It can be as simple as taking that baby step of going to Costco and mixing up a batch of your Mom’s secret recipe.