For your allergies, you may want to try thinking about your problem in another way. It sounds like most of what you’re doing is treating symptoms. If you work on the root cause, or at least closer to it, you can have much better results.

I strongly suggest doing the following:
1 – Eat about a spoonful of honey every single day. Use local honey, preferably unpasturized. Though I believe it will still work ok pasturized. But it must be local. I did this myself and cured my allergies within a year.

2 – Improve your diet. Eat what is commonly called a “Paleo” diet. I’ve read accounts of others who did this, and curing their allergies was one of the many benefits. (I also was improving my diet in this direction while I was eating the honey, so likely both helped me)

I do a lot of the things you do too to keep myself reminded of the things I need to take care of. I am happy to see that I am not the only “weird” one around. My husband makes fun of me for keeping a notebook with me at all times. I make my list from the order of how I plan to drive to what I need to pay first. I have a chalkboard at home and I write what I need to do for the day there the night before, otherwise I forget to do them. I keep one for my husband too, since he makes fun of me but “forgets” to do the things I tell him to do. Now there is no excuse!

Finally I just accepted that I was a single Mom working full time and that I didn’t have the energy to strip wallpaper and paint in the evenings or weekends. I knew people in similar situations who could do that, but I wasn’t them. I developed a sort of mental equation when evaluating which money saving strategies to use – How much does it save divided by how long it takes, with extra points if it is something I enjoy (going to garage sales with a friend) and demerits if it is something I hate doing (clipping coupons).

Calling several lenders to save an extra half percent or more on on a car loan just takes a half hour or so but could save thousands of dollars even if it isn’t much fun. Buying generic brands takes less time than clipping and keeping track of coupons and saves the equivalent amount. Being rested so I could do better at my job resulted in better raises which meant I had more money than I would have saved making lunches every day. And getting those promotions meant my job was more fulfilling.

The #1 thing that has helped me with seasonal allergies has also been the most surprising to me: eliminating wheat and dairy from my diet. I have some kind of weird interaction going on between pollen and dietary intolerances; at the height of allergy season, if I avoid wheat and dairy, I can get away with using a neti pot once or twice a day, and taking a Benedryl at night — Benedryl knocks me out so I can only take it at night, but it seems to hit “reset” on my allergy symptoms.

BUT, if I eat wheat or dairy during allergy season, I am miserably allergic for about 24-48 hours. Wheat and dairy don’t have this effect on me during non-allergy season, though they do make me tired, cranky and bloated. Obviously this weird dietary interaction thing won’t be the case for everyone, but just thought I’d add my two cents.

Good luck!

I’ve got ADD and I do a modified GTD (lots of lists). I also use google calendar to remind me of when stuff are due (I also note on google calendars when I make payments)…

And since so many people are bringing up, and potentially beating themselves up for, poor impulse control or ADHD (seem to be always connected), there is a positive side to having these problems. People with poor impulse control are the ones who will react first in an emergency while everyone else is standing around trying to decide what to do. Think about your life and you probably can think of situations where you were the first one – or the only one – to react to a dangerous situation.

I once abandoned my car in the middle of the road, left my purse and keys in it, left the driver’s side door wide open, stepped in front of traffic, forcing it to stop or swerve around, in order to find out why two small children, by themselves, were trying to cross a busy road during rush hour, and to take them back to their parents.

It wasn’t like this was something the other drivers didn’t see, they were swerving or slowing down as they passed, one driver almost hit the children when they tried to cross the street. Two concerned ladies in a car saw what happened, found a sensible place to park, probably secured their cars and purses, and came over to help as I was walking the kids back into their apartment complex. That was it, nobody else stopped. The difference between them and me is that I have poor impulse control. I didn’t stop to think about ANYTHING but the safety of those kids. I may have to trick myself into not shopping, but I also do not consider my impulsive nature to be a handicap or something that’s necessarily wrong or bad.

Have you tried to negotiate a discount for full payment? Even 2 or 3% would be better than any interest you’d earn at most places right now, and what landlord wouldn’t be willing to take a small hit for all that money up front?

Also, I’d heard integrating some local honey into your diet is a good natural way to fight allergies by introducing the pollens, etc. to your body. I don’t know if it would help with trees unless they’re flowering trees of some sort.

This is where you have a series of shots for 5 years. They start out weekly, but then go to monthly, etc…

The needles are small and hardly noticeable. No really pain, sometimes on a bad day, just a bit of a pinch.

As a hater of shots, this really isn’t that bad.

I know this isn’t the message of your blog post today, but as a fellow tree pollen suffer, I had to put this out there

Some of us are more inclined to be natural savers, planners, organizers and others aren’t. It doesn’t make one type of person better than the other although I’m sure they’d both disagree.

I’ve always been more like you than like Kris. Honestly, it has its merits and its drawbacks like anything else. Like you, I make an effort to avoid temptation. I think this is something everyone frugal does– it’s just something some of us consciously do and others unconsciously do. I avoid tempting stores in general and when I can’t avoid them, I try and go in armed with a list– mental if short, paper if not. And I avoid any aisle I don’t have to visit. I do the same thing with stores online, generally avoiding them completely and no longer subscribe to emails to my main email address to retailers I have a soft spot for.

Lifestyle Inflation – For any income increase or windfall, my husband and I either already have a plan for it or we immediately move the extra into savings. I basically have to *feel* like we’re living check to check or I will find myself spending without thinking.

Any small task or appointment or deadline, I know I need to do it immediately or enter it into my outlook calendar immediately. This is because I have the same problem anthony mentions. So when I think to do something, I do it right then and there – then I really can forget about it.

I use outlook calendar for the pop-up reminders. For some things, I set it to remind me one or two weeks in advance, and to repeat the reminder daily. This helps early morning or non-work hours appts to stick in my head, and it helps me get the jump on major deadlines.

If there’s something I need to remember at work the next day, I text a reminder to my work IM, so I will see it when I get to the office.

At home, anything that needs to be done or remembered in the morning is written on a sticky note at eye-level on the front door or bathroom mirror.

Unless it’s something fun. I somehow never need to be reminded of dance class.

Edit: There are also particular stores that I simply do not enter. Like Michael’s. And before automatic bill-paying became an option everywhere, my bills were late ALL THE TIME. I would frequently be reminded to pay the electric bill by the notices that they were going to shut off service. Not sure why the BILLS didn’t remind me.

I also discovered that if there was food like cake or cookies brought into the office, I no longer had the compulsion to go eat some. Bags of salt-and-vinegar potato chips brought into the house? No longer gone in 24 hours. In fact, we’ve got a half-eaten bag in the pantry that’s gone stale!

Diagnosis and medication hasn’t been perfect and I still have problems with inattention, especially at work, and overcommitting myself, but having the impulse-control problems reduced has been the difference between feeling out of control and feeling able to actually handle my life.

2. Post-its in places I can’t miss them. I’ll often put a post-it in my checkbook, on the exact check I will be writing to a person later (with a message that I don’t want to forget to tell the person.) Another common place for my post-its is the bathroom mirror. We recently went through a “bad parent” phase where the tooth fairy kept forgetting to come. This last time around, I heard one of our kids in the bathroom asking, “What does this note saying T.F.! on the mirror mean?”

I hate allergies too. Never had them as a kid and now I know I wasn’t as nice to people will allergies back then as I should have been, because now I know how they feel!

Anyway – check out this article on neti pots – http://simplicitytree.com/simple-health/february-2011-neti-pot

I have another strategy that works really well for me. In fact, I wrote a post about it http://www.adrianscrazylife.com/2010/11/moneymatters-teach-your-bank-to-yell-at.html

Basically, I use the automated notification at my bank to pester me into keeping my account balances up to a certain level. So, if my credit card goes above a certain level or my savings balance goes down too far, I get an annoying daily Email until I get it back on track.

Now if I can just figure out how to get myself to get to work on time!

Now on to the allergies…I moved to Austin, Texas 8 years ago from So Cal where allergies were practically a non-issue for me. Fast forward a few years and I got hit with the dreaded “Cedar Fever”…a terrible allergy that happens here in January and February. It is so bad that I found myself fearful of the time when the allergy hit and wanted to leave town for six weeks, but I have an employer who would frown upon that. Then I got a new doctor who prescribed Singulair (just like #30 above and one other commenter), Nasonex and Patonal. Although Singlair is for asthma, there’s something about it that makes the body not even create the histamines. For the past 3 years I’ve taken these 3 prescriptions during cedar season and I’ve felt great! It is truly like the allergy doesn’t even exist. Not cheap by a long shot, but I’d glady pay anything for the relief they provide me. And, by the way, without side effects. Simply amazing!

Great blog! This is my first time reading it after migrating from another site that I’ve lost interest in continuing to read.

I leave myself voice mails, send myself emails, make appts on my Outlook calendar, use post-its, carry a notebook, automate my bill payments, keep running grocery lists, and leave emails in my inbox until I’ve dealt with the issue and then filed it when completed to keep myself on track. I also put things back in the same place every time so I can find them easily. I have a mind like a sieve and create systems accordingly to keep myself organized.

While we rarely let it in the house, having it available sometimes at the office has been part of my downfall in the past.

But I found a way to handle it. When I see cake/candy/other crap at work, I say (to myself!): “That will make me fat and give me diabetes.”

Poof! End of temptation.