the matthew Z project

This Fourth of July holiday weekend I am going to try out something I read about a few months ago. I’ll post the full details early next week. Hope it’s a hot weekend! matthew Z

**UPDATE** Okay, there are three (3) things one must do to be successful in any business venture one enters into.  First you need time.  Without time, you might as well just give money away.  With that said, this is the first reason why my experiment failed.  I didn’t want to take away time from spending it with my family this weekend so I never even went to the store to buy the bottles of water to which I would have sold for $1.00/each. But on a lighter side of it, I had a blast!  We did so many things.  Biked at the rail trail, had backyard barbeques, saw fireworks 3 nights in a row, went to a carnival, and just plain ole had a good time.

Next you need money.   This I had, but instead of spending it on this lucrutive business idea, I decided to take the family to the carnival and ride rides and eat overpriced, but extremely rewarding, elephant ears with cinnamon and sugar toppings.  What a fun day we had!

The last thing I think any venture needs is luck.  Whether it’s in the form of timing, networking, or in my case the weather, I did not have this going.  The first day I wanted to sell water it was a balmy 59 degrees out.  To sell water, one must think higher temperatures help.  It does.  This coupled with the “Time” issue stated above helped me to not sell anything the first day.  Day two (2) was similar but a bit warmer at 65 degrees.  Still not the “luck” I needed to help motivate me.  Hence, no sales for day 2.  Day three (3) was exactly what I needed.  Sunny.  80.  And a perfect day to sit in the backyard with the family and enjoy the day.  The weather inspired us to go to the carnival and what a fun time we had!!! I’m pretty sure that I could have made a fortune on the 4th, but perhaps next year all things will align better and I can make some cash. 

Outcome: great weekend spent with the family.  You can’t put a value on it!  Maybe my next experiment will be how to make money while doing nothing but spending time with the ones you love.  Anyone know how to do this???  Well, until anon…matthew Z

We all know how to have fun without having to spend money!  It’s like riding a bike. Sounds easy enough right?  Well why don’t we do it often enough to have it make a difference on our wallet?  I think it’s because we’ve become too complacent with instant reactions and outcomes (elevators, Internet speeds, drive thru lines, etc) .  We have forgotten that when we were growing up, things took a little time.  But now if we’re hungry, we’d rather drive our car to an ATM, then sit in a drive-thru line for 5 minutes to receive a sadly inferior (to homemade) meal, and then drive all the way back home to eat it.  What we could have done is head to the local market and bought a pound of ground beef, some buns, a 2-litre soda, and a 5 pound bag of spuds for less than $10.00.  From here we could have cut and cleaned the potatoes and made good ole home fries.  Made our burger patties and fried them up. Butter the buns and toast them for a minute.  So now lets do the math.  A large value meal from a fast food place, we’ll say $4.90 + 6.0% sales tax equals $5.19.  One meal.  Now lets look at the market version.  1 pound ground chuck, $2.24.  2 liter of soda, $1.19 + $.10 deposit.  5-lb bag of potatoes, $1.49.  Buns, $1.29 (for 8!).  For a grand total of $6.31.  Read more…

Your Home of the 80s

Have you ever found yourself working at your desk and could use some refreshing tunes from your past? Or sitting around at home disgusted at what’s on the radio, and don’t know where to turn. Well, I have your solution! A free, (I don’t mean free after you sign up to 12 sponsored commercials, or free if you purchase something else), I mean a really free online radio station. It’s listener supported (using listener donations) and COMMERCIAL FREE! That’s right. Not only is it truly, completely free, it’s also commercial free. If you haven’t had the chance already please visit lost80s.com. At the time of this posting, I have just become a member of Club 15!  Doing my part to keep it free! Until anon…matthew Z

cute Packer's fans

Hi, I’m matthew Z.  Nothing special about me.  I have a beautiful wife, Melisa, and two wonderful daughters named Lauren and Lindsay.  That is Lauren in the picture with me.  As you can tell we’re Greenbay Packer’s fanatics.  Although she didn’t have a choice, she’s embraced it well! We live in small town USA, average to say the least.  Melisa is a stay at home mother (more than full time) and I am a blue collar, drive 20 minutes each way, wannabe middle manager who is looking for that “Ah-ha!” moment.  Sadly I’ll tell you I haven’t found it yet. But I will keep you posted.

What do I hope to achieve over the next year? I’d like to offer anything that I feel will help anyone better themselves.  I’ll try to give better ideas, better gadget advice, better strategies for happiness, just anything better! I want to help better you, and perhaps in doing that I will help better myself.   

extended family Christmas party

First off…health.  Anything I find that may make you (and I) healthier, I’ll share.  Hopefully this won’t be as painful as I think. Health and Happiness…happiness and health. I may be on to something.

Secondly…wealth.  This can be approached in so many ways.  This one I will only offer opinions and self examples, but will in no way try to sell you anything, or offer get rich quick schemes.  I WON’T! Correcting financial issues, especially in our rat race, instantaneous click here to fix, lifes, it will take time.  So be patient and disciplined.  Good things come to those who stick to the key values outlined and don’t let bad situations change them.  Don’t let financial hard-times alter your goal or strategy.  Doing so will only make things worse.  In our debt = money environments, it’s often good to go back to the basics.  We’ll touch on this more later. Read more…