I’ve begun to encourage others on this topic at believernet.blogspot.com and would appreciate your comments on this site as I watch your progress here, too.
Thanks!

Cut out the middle man and sell direct to your fan base.

[...] I was reading about your progress on your goals, and thought that you would be interested in my own personal experience with tipping the debt [...]

Good luck with the book JD! Looking forward to holding one

Well, I *had* an emergency fund, but it was drained for an emergency.

I’m rebuilding it. Also, I made estimated payments throughout 2007 for GRS income, but I earned more than I had anticipated. I haven’t been saving more yet because I knew that I could save the revenue from early 2008 to go to those taxes. I’m in the process of setting up a better system, though — one where I save taxes right along and earn interest on the money while it’s in a high-yield account. I’ll have a better idea of how all this will work once we actually do our taxes…

I just started hitting the gym last week and it’s the best choice I’ve ever made. I only go for half an hour to maybe an hour, but it gives me time to clear my head.

Keep on hammering on those goals, and reward yourself when you get there.

I must have missed your post introducing your new blog, just read it today (all of it). Very good writing and equally addictive in the “get-rich-slowly, I’m-the-guy-down-the-street-who-is-just-like-you” writing style. Kudos!

(weak!)

Ouch I’m surprised that someone apparently as “together” as you hasn’t been saving for this already *AND* doesn’t have an emergency fund.

Best of luck!

-Frank

Paying an agent up front is risky. The reality is, an agent will have a difficult time selling your idea to publishers if you aren’t widely recognized as an expert in your field. If they tell you differently, be very cautious.

Publishers have great resources. The editors are extremely helpful, and publishers have powerful access to bookstores (yes, they will be able to put your book on shelves…for a while), but you are still going to be responsible for marketing your book. My experience was that the publisher did very little marketing.

Depending on the arrangement, publishers may try to control what you write. You generally don’t walk in with the final manuscript, they will want changes, sometimes significant changes. This happened with one of my experiences, which ultimately contributed to an end product that I was not very happy with.

Again, depending on the arrangement, publishers will take a large percentage of the revenue. In my case, they assumed most of the risk, so it made sense for them to gain the largest reward. Bottom line: don’t go into this for the money – watching 95% of sales fall into the hands of the publisher is a little depressing.

Should you self-publish through something like Lulu or completely on your own, I think you’d come away with much greater satisfaction, more cash, and you would continue to build your name. Having the strong name will give you leverage for the next book, at which point you could pursue the agent path.

I’ve heard Dan Miller (http://www.48days.com/) make similar comments, just as another point of reference.

Either way you go, I wish you luck!

My wife and I got an exercise bike to put into our attic instead of joining a gym. We have a 2nd TV that we watch when we bike. You can get a pretty decent exercise bike on Amazon for $300-400 or a much cheaper one used off of craigslist. This is only a few months or less of a gym membership.

Since we link it to watching TV, every time I start watching TV, I think to myself, I could be biking too. I don’t actually bike every time I watch TV, but I still end up biking 4-5 times per week. Ours has a calorie counter and 30 minutes of biking can burn 300 calories, which is pretty good for watching TV. After about a month of doing this regularly (I started at the new year), 30 minutes doesn’t even seem like much. My legs aren’t tired and I don’t end up breathing very hard, which means I’m getting into better shape. I like biking when watching sports, so I don’t feel as lazy as I would if I were just doing the couch potato thing.

I may have missed it, but are you planning on hitting the gym? The pounds will melt off when you combine that with eating healthy food in moderate proportions.

I’m new to your site. But I’m a wife who is just getting started with active-partnering in the field of budgeting, planning, saving and education. My husband has trained me slowly (grin) The first step was getting me used to a money-software package and my first step 12 years ago was to just bring home every receipt for every penny spent. We entered it into our software tracking with categories; all our accounts and cash spending. The most important of all of that was that he never made any comment (except positive reinforcement for the receipts). Never a “did you have to?” or “why?” Never a frown or negative body language comment. Merely, in order to know where the money goes, this is important, so “Thank you” for the daily receipts in “the box.” Since then, we’ve gotten more sophisticated in our goals, but I never really was “involved” – the best thing he says he ever invested in was an ipod for me. He downloaded a number of Clark Howard, and other free podcasts for me, and I’ve become quite “invested” in our financial state. (huge grin)

Also, I believe it was Merle Lafferty who gave an excellent interview about publishing. One of the warning s given was to never work with a publisher/agent who asks for money up front. I haven’t done much searching for the interview to post a link, but I believe it may have been on NPR. (Too many podcasts, too few braincells to remember all the details!

BTW: I would love to hear more about what it takes to recover from a setback, like having the $1500 but then needing it for car repairs. Seems to me every time I reach even a small financial goal of mine ‘something comes up’ that knocks me back. Very disheartening to say the least!

Best of luck!

That $1,500 baby emergency fund really served its purpose, didn’t it? Aren’t you glad it was there?

Best wishes for your goals this year.