I am excited to announce that The Boy and the Pearl, the illustrated fable that I published as a limited edition artist’s book in 2004, is now available in iBooks/iTunes for 99 cents. I was inspired to write the fable after Daniel Pearl’s murder. Diane Salter created the beautiful illustrations.

At the moment, the book can only be read on an iPad with iBooks 2. I will probably do a Kindle version, but you can’t really beat the ease with which I created the book in iBooks Author. I plan to run a review of iBooks Author soon, but I lost half of the review when MS Word crashed, so I’ll finish writing it when I am done sulking about that. That teaches me for not writing it in Pages!

If you have an iPad, I would love it if you checked out the book. Diane and I are really pleased with how it turned out.

I’m typing this on my new Android phone. It hurts me to say those words, but I had to do it. As much as I love love LOVE my iPhone, I hated paying AT&T’s prices. Stephen and I want to retire early, so I’m trying to save money wherever I can.

With AT&T, I was paying $39.99 per month for 450 anytime minutes and 5000 night and weekend minutes. In the past year, I’ve never even reached 300 minutes in a month. I currently have 4,146 rollover minutes. I also pay $25 per month for 2GB of data. I haven’t used 2GB of data in the two YEARS I’ve had my iPhone 3Gs. And finally, I pay $5 per month for 200 text messages. This is the one area where I have started to exceed the monthly limit. On my last bill, I went over by 182 messages, which cost me an additional $18.20. I’ve already gone over by 194 so far in June. Moving to the unlimited text plan would be $20. In total, my last AT&T bill was $95.80 with the taxes.

Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V

Earlier this year, Stephen started looking into Virgin Mobile’s prepaid wireless plans. The cheapest plan was $25 for 300 minutes, unlimited data and unlimited texting. Awesome price, but how could I give up my beloved iPhone? Neither of us was ready to make the move. But about a month ago, my iPhone dropped out of my jeans pocket when I was getting out of my car. It landed face down on the blacktop, and I ended up with a long crack in the glass screen. It still worked perfectly, but I hated looking at that big crack. Still, I wasn’t ready to give up my iPhone.

For some reason, in the past week, I started thinking about Virgin Mobile’s great prices again. In addition to the ugly crack, my iPhone doesn’t hold a charge as well as it used to. I could replace my iPhone 3Gs with the same model for only $50, but that wouldn’t do anything to alleviate the pain of spending around $1,140 on service every year. So I started looking at Virgin Mobile’s phones. I knew the only mobile operating system that could even begin to replace iOS was Android. I thought the most promising one was the LG Optimus V, which turned out to be the one Stephen focused on when he was researching phones. I read a lot of reviews, of both the phone and Virgin Mobile, and they were decidedly mixed. But, recognizing that consumer reviews tend to skew negative, I decided that for the price I was willing to take the chance. Saving ~$70 a month was too good to pass up. The savings would pay for the new phone in just over two months.

Making the switch turned out to be surprisingly easy. I ran to Target this morning and picked up the LG Optimus V for $149 (down from $200). I took it home and let it charge while I went to meet a friend. When I got home, it was charged so I was ready to call Virgin Mobile. I wanted to keep the same number I had with AT&T, so I gave them my mobile number and PIN and got my account set up. They said that it could take up to 24 to 48 hours to port the number, but it actually took about two hours. As soon as I saw there was no service on my iPhone, I called back and finished the activation. Normally you don’t have to call back, but with the unfamiliar phone, I decided it would be easier. Even so, it took me a bit to figure out that I still needed to run through an additional activation process on my phone after I hung up. The worst Virgin Mobile reviews were about their customer service, but both people I spoke with were friendly and helpful and got my business taken care of as quickly as possible.

Now to the phone itself. It is worth noting that the iPhone does not come with a manual, and the Optimus V comes with a 136 page book. The iPhone is very intuitive, and I feel like there will be a bigger learning curve on the Optimus. When I got my first iPhone and synced it, it just grabbed all my contacts and my calendar off my iMac. With Android, it seems like everything takes at least one extra step. The Optimus V manual doesn’t even address things like putting music on your phone. It just has a couple pages about connecting your device to your computer with no further detail about what kind of files you can put on your phone and which ones you can’t. Luckily, it is pretty easy to find instructions on how to do almost anything on the internet, but with my iPhone, I rarely needed to look up instructions for anything.

The Optimus is slightly smaller and lighter than the iPhone, but I really miss the solid feeling of the iPhone’s glass screen. The whole phone just feels sturdier than my new phone. I’ve had iPhones since they first came out, and this was the only time I’ve cracked the screen on one. I’ve done far worse damage to plastic phones in the past. Virgin doesn’t yet offer any accessories for the Optimus V on its website, so I ordered a Body Glove case and a car charger through Amazon.

Parts of the interface remind me of the little Nokia phone I used to have. Some of it just looks really outdated next to the iPhone. It seems like this is mostly cosmetic, but sometimes it makes certain functions a little more laborious, like looking for ringtones. Although it isn’t quite as intuitive as the iPhone, it is possible to figure lots of things out without the manual. Yet theres a two page table of status and notification symbols, and the meanings of many of them are not obvious. There are lot of things that I will end up looking in the manual for.

I already had lots of music in iTunes, from both in-app purchases and from ripping my CD collection. Luckily, I had converted my iTunes music library to the non-DRM versions whenever they first offered it. There might be a few that still have DRM protection, but most of my music can be put on my new phone. However, the phone comes with a 2GB micro SD card, so in order to put a decent quantity of music and other data on the phone, I had to run out and buy a bigger micro SD card. Some people complain that the iPhone doesn’t have a card slot, but at least I don’t have to run out and make another purchase in order to put data on my phone. I don’t like having some stuff on the phone and some on the card. To put my music on my phone, I had to create a music folder on my card, then open up my music files on my computer and physically drag and drop any songs I want on the new phone into the music folder on the card. But again, it’s not nearly as convenient as syncing iTunes. I just have a playlist in iTunes called Current Favorites and whatever happened to be in it at that moment was what was synced with my iPhone. I think there are some apps that operate similarly, but I don’t keep all of my music on my phone, so it isn’t too onerous.

I also have an investment in Apps from iTunes, although they are mostly free or really cheap. Of course, I can still use all of them on my iPad. I’m told that the Android App Market has a larger selection of free apps. However, if you download an app on the phone, it doesn’t automatically show up on one of the four pages you have for shortcuts and widgets. You have to go to the menu, click add, then click shortcuts, then click application, and then scroll down until you see the app you want, then click it to add. Once it’s on the screen, you can click and hold it until it vibrates (just like on the iPhone) and move it where you want. I am not crazy about the Marketplace interface on the phone, yet downloading apps from the Marketplace website on my computer, then syncing to the microSD card, then putting the app on my phone seems so much more unwieldy than syncing the iPhone.

Setting up email was a breeze, but I don’t like the interface as much as I like the interface on the iPhone. I had to set it to “never” for how often I want it to check my email, because I was getting notifications all the time. I don’t care for the notifications because often (but not all the time) if I open the program directly for new mail or a message, I still have to go into the notifications list separately to clear them so the icons disappear. I had a notification for a text message and opened it from the notifications screen. I didn’t have time to look at it then, so I closed it. But it doesn’t show in my list of text messages and it is gone from my notifications. I didn’t delete it. Perhaps in was in a different program, but I don’t find it anywhere now.

I was able to convert my Apple Address Book to vCard format, copy all of my contacts to the micro SD card (I used the included SD adaptor and a usb SD card reader), then load them onto the phone from the card. But if I make any contact updates on my phone, they won’t automatically sync back to my computer like with the iPhone. As for my calendar, I expect there will be no compatibility at all, so I will have to re-enter everything in the Optimus V. I pretty much only use the calendar on my phone anyway, so it’s not tragic, but of course I can’t sync appointments between my phone and my iPad now.

The main criteria for both the phone and Virgin Mobile’s service is whether they will meet my needs. It will be an adjustment, but I know they will. It just won’t be as easy or enjoyable to use the LG Optimus V as the iPhone. Would I go back to the iPhone if the service were more reasonably priced? In a second. I already miss it. But I missed that extra $70 a month ($840 a year!) more. And the prepaid plan (which really just means I pay at the beginning of the month instead of the end) means I am no longer locked into a contract. Hopefully, someday the iPhone will be available with reasonably priced service (and without paying $650 for an unlocked phone). Don’t get me wrong, the Optimus V phone and the Android operating system are very good, but so far I find them both inferior to the iPhone and iOS. Everything is just a little more work than it was with the iPhone. If someone has never used an iPhone and especially if they have a PC instead of a Mac, I think most people would be perfectly happy with Android. But in my book, it definitely takes second place to Apple’s iOS. Now that you can buy an iPhone as cheaply as $50, I think the main impediment to even wider adoption is the cost of the service through Verizon or AT&T. I was perfectly happy with AT&T’s service, just not with the cost.

June 28, 2011: Four days in, and I still miss my iPhone terribly. Every task just feels clunky in Android. Don’t get me wrong, I am sticking with this phone & plan as long as I am saving so much money. But the second a reasonably priced service plan is available for the iPhone, I am going back. I can’t see how anyone who has tried both would pick Android over iOS for any reason other than finances. My assumption was that Android would be a very close second to iOS and that it would probably be even better than I expected since I have a pro-Apple bias. But although Android is far from terrible, it is a more distant second to iOS than I thought it would be.

June 29, 2011: I’ve read a lot of complaints about how the battery life on the LG Optimus V is not good. So today, I printed out a list I found of phone settings that will help optimize my battery life. Unfortunately, before I could implement them, the battery died.

July 1, 2011: Today my boss texted me to tell me I could leave work early. Unfortunately, his text arrived while I was talking on the phone, and there was no notification sound. I didn’t notice the text until I was leaving at 5:00 pm – the regular time. I should have checked, but since my iPhone always notified me of a message no matter what I was doing, I figured this phone would too. Nope.

January 24, 2012: Now I can honestly say I despise my phone. Why oh why did I think this was a good idea? Is the torture of using an Android phone worth saving $70 per month? Actually, yes. As much as I dislike this phone, I like saving money more. I’m still wishing and hoping for a more reasonably priced service option for the iPhone.

Salty is ready for his close-up.

I would have missed Salty Rat’s calendar debut had I been able to get the calendar I intended to get. Lately I’ve been buying the pit bull puppies calendar, because the calendars with the adult pit bulls depict some dogs with cropped ears, which I can’t stand. But for 2011, even a couple of the dogs on the puppy calendar have cropped ears. I can’t stand to look at those pictures, so I pass on those calendars altogether. So this year, I came back to the rat calendar and got a surprise.

I suppose you are wondering why we didn’t know that Salty would be appearing in a calendar this year, but there’s a good reason. Stephen licensed the image through Alamy. Alamy doesn’t tell the photographers who is buying the pictures – the price for the photo is based on the size the client needs. So when Stephen licensed the photo many months ago, he didn’t think any more about it. I’m so glad I happened across it.

And yes, I know how to spell famous, but I love a bad pun!

Please book me and my buddies a double double at the Sheraton!

It costs $27 per day to house research monkeys at Stanford. So if you have several monkeys, it can add up fast. I get a corporate rate of $180 per night at the Sheraton, which equals approximately seven monkeys in small un-luxurious cages at Stanford. You could get way more than seven monkeys in a king size bed at the Sheraton, and they’d be a lot more comfortable, even if it was a tad crowded. In fact, housing monkeys at the Sheraton sounds like a research project in and of itself (what would they watch on HBO?). But in order to make it work, we’d need one piece of missing information. Is there a surcharge for more than two monkeys in a room?

Rabbits are only $15 per day at Stanford, so you could get even more bang for your buck at the Sheraton with rabbits. But that’s the problem. You start out with 12 rabbits, and you end up with 364. That’s a lot of rabbits, even for the Sheraton.

These shelves hold traditionally bound Korean books, created with handmade paper

Even so, I couldn’t imagine giving up the tactile experience of reading an actual book. There is just something wonderful about holding a book in your hands. But I have a history of shunning new technology only to embrace it later. I was NOT giving up my records in favor of CDs, and now I only buy music digitally (and we are not even going to talk about my eight track tape player). I got on the DVD bandwagon a little more quickly, partially because they are so much easier to store than VHS tapes. And when digital download of movies becomes faster and higher quality (for the average person), I’ll be there.

But books aren’t like anything of these other mediums. Books have been around a long time in various forms. They’ve stood the test of time a lot longer than any other media. I liked my records, but I LOVE my books. Yet I couldn’t help but be intrigued when e-readers started coming out. I loved the idea of being able to carry around dozens (even hundreds) of books with me at once. I take the train to work, and so I always need reading material. With an e-book, if I finish my book while I am on the train, I can just download another. I found that idea pretty appealing.

I considered a Kindle for a long time, but I held back, partially because I have so many real books and partially because I didn’t want to spend money on a device that only does one thing. If I decided I didn’t like reading on it, then I had basically thrown the money away. If you’ve read my iPad review, then you’ll know that was the device that finally got my attention. If I decided I didn’t like reading books on it, it still does a zillion other things.

It took me about 10 minutes to decide I love reading books on my iPad. I read two series of books on the iPad, and I just flew through them. When I’d finish one, I could immediately start on the next. I didn’t have to wait to get home to grab the next one, or go to a bookstore. Even if I didn’t already have the next one, it only took a couple minutes for me to find and download it. The only drawback is that is very susceptible to glare, so it is difficult to read in full sunlight. I have to carefully choose my seat on the train so that I can still see what I am reading.

Reading a few books on the iPad really helped me to separate form from content. I still adore actual books, but as long as I can make myself comfortable while I am reading, it doesn’t really matter how the content is delivered. This leaves me with a dilemma. What should I do with the gazillions of books in my house? I had been slowly working my way through them, and I certainly don’t want to buy e-books of books I already own, but I’d love to divest myself of a huge chunk of them. Most of them came from BookMooch, so they entered my home fairly cheaply. If there was some way to cheaply transfer them onto my iPad without tons of labor, that would be great. I am not quite handy enough to make my own book scanner, although that would be awesome. I guess my plan will be to do another weeding and see what I can get rid of now, although I’ve already done a pretty good job of getting rid of things I don’t think I will read.

What will I keep? I have a big collection of books about Korean history and culture, many of which are out of print, and those are staying. There are a few art books (how-tos) with lots of full color illustrations, and those are staying (although I would like to see how one of those books would look on the iPad). I’m keeping my books on animal intelligence, plus a few favorite authors. But that leaves many, many books that I want to read and then get rid of permanently. It seems silly to buy books to read on the iPad when I have a house full of books yet to read, but I find myself less and less willing to carry around a book. No one is more surprised than I am that I don’t want to lug around a book anymore. The main thing holding me back from completely making the switch is the financial aspect. There is no reason to be buying new books for the iPad if I have plenty of actual books left to read. Buying books online isn’t really much cheaper (if at all) than buying hard copies.

Has anyone else made the switch from all actual books to all e-books, or somewhere in the middle? I’d like to hear about it.

For my birthday this year, I told Stephen I either wanted a boulder or an iPad. I wasn’t kidding about the boulder either – I really want a GIANT rock in our yard landscaping. And it’s cheaper than an iPad (though not as much as you would think). I guess Stephen decided we would get more for our money out of the iPad, so that is what he opted for. I decided on the 3G model because I felt that even if I started out just using the wi-fi, I would have the option to turn on the 3G when we were traveling and had iffy wi-fi access. I didn’t want to limit my options with the wi-fi only model. I activated the 3G for the first month, just to make sure everything worked properly. I didn’t want to wait until I needed it for a trip, then find out I had a defective iPad. I was able to use the 3G service in my brother’s barn out in the middle of nowhere in Iowa, so I was really pleased.

Everywhere I go, people go crazy over my iPad. A friend came over to see it the afternoon after it arrived and immediately went out and bought the same model. On a recent flight, I sat in the middle seat between two strangers and spent much of the trip providing an iPad demonstration and answering questions. The big thing people seem to want to know is whether they can replace their laptop with an iPad. It depends entirely on what you use your laptop for. I used mine mostly for word processing and watching videos. Word processing isn’t quite as good on the iPad when I am on a train or something and can’t easily use a real keyboard. But the video quality is outstanding. I also have a bad back, so I never liked to carry around my heavy MacBook, but I can toss my 1.5 pound iPad in my purse or backpack and barely notice it. We do need a laptop on vacation for photo processing and burning DVDs, but for that we will bring Stephen’s MacBook Pro.

READING

One of the main reasons I wanted the iPad was as an eReader. I had considered the Kindle, but it seemed kind of expensive for something that only did one thing. So when the iPad was announced, it was obviously the perfect device for me. It does the main thing I really wanted it to do, but it does a zillion other things too, and it completely integrates with the hardware and apps I already had. As an eReader, it is wonderful. I love that I can not only use iBooks and the integrated store, but also the Kindle app. Before my iPad came, I downloaded a ton of free classics on Amazon. I also experimented with downloading an ePub formatted book from Project Gutenberg and putting it in iTunes. It opens just fine in iBooks. I have the Kindle reader program on my iMac too, but I don’t anticipate using that nearly as much as I will my iPad Kindle app. In terms of reading, I have a slight preference for iBooks over the Kindle app, mainly because iBooks tells me how many pages I have left in a chapter, which I find incredibly useful when I have limited time to read.

It is a little harder to read books outside, but I use it the most on the train to and from work, and don’t have any problems. I only wish I could magically convert my hundreds of actual books to eBooks in an instant. I have many books that will never be available in an electronic format, and for the ones that are, I don’t want to pay for them a second time. Unfortunately, many of the eBooks are not much cheaper than hard copy books, at least compared to the discounted Amazon price. However, there is something to be said for both the portability and hopefully an eventual reduction in the killing of trees.

VIDEO

Another popular activity on the iPad is watching video. I don’t download movies, so I don’t have a lot of content, but I do download episodes of Glee and Castle in iTunes, so I have those. I also have a couple Blu-Ray movies that came with a computer download copy (Mamma Mia and Up), so I’ve got those on there too. Everything looks FANTASTIC on the video player. I couldn’t help but watch all of Mamma Mia the first weekend I had the iPad, just because it looked so good. Once I turn off the 3G after a month, I unfortunately won’t be able to watch streaming video on the train, which is perhaps better so I will keep up on my reading. The Netflix streaming app is great. I’ve never thought the picture quality of their streaming content was that great, but it is certainly no worse than it is on my iMac or my TV. Like the iPhone, the iPad has a built-in YouTube app. I haven’t played around with it too much, but what I’ve viewed looked good. ABC has a player, which I have heard raves about, but haven’t used too much. I download Castle in iTunes, and I don’t watch too many other ABC shows (or any other channel for that matter). I don’t have cable or even network reception, so any tv viewing has to be online or on DVD. I do use Hulu for several shows and I wish they had an app, but I am assuming their agreements with the various networks and content sources don’t allow that (but of course I can go to their website on Safari on my iPad). I wish that the iPad had come out about a month earlier, because I really could have used the streaming video while I was home recovering from surgery. In bed, I could only lie on my back, with my torso and my knees raised, so the iPad would have been great.

NEWS

The number and quality of the various news apps is good and will undoubtedly get better. Combined with viewing news sites in Safari on the larger iPad screen, it is a great device for keeping up with current events. I particularly like Reuters and BBC. The NPR and This American Life apps are great, although the TAL app can be a little crashy (as it is on the iPhone too).
There are a couple disappointments. The New York Times app is just a few articles of the editors’ choosing, so I would rather just use my NYT RSS news feed. The Time Magazine app just allows you to buy issues of the magazine ($4.99 each), and doesn’t include much in the way of sample content. Since I can read some of their content for free on their website, that’s what I’ll do. If I don’t subscribe to the hard copy of a magazine or newspaper, I’m not going to buy them online either.

ENTERTAINMENT

I have downloaded ONE free game for the iPad, Clickomania. It is just a matching game, so it gets old fairly fast. I didn’t bother putting games from my iPhone on my iPad, just because they are so small and don’t look good when expanded. I prefer the free games (like most people), but a lot of the “lite” versions of games are just ads for the full version, so I’d like to avoid those. I may download a couple paid games once I find some I am sure I will get a lot of use out of. I also downloaded Civilization Revolution for Stephen, and he is already addicted. They did a really nice job with the iPad version.
I’m going to put Entertainment Weekly’s Must List app under entertainment rather than news, but I quite like it. The Must List is just one page in each issue of EW, but they’ve made so much more out of it for the app. If they mention some video you should check out, then they include a link so you can immediately go watch it.

THE APP STORE

I know lots of people complain about Apple strictly controlling the content available for their mobile devices. But the fact is it works. The variety and quantity of apps available on iTunes is amazing. Sure, some of it is crap, but there are more than enough fantastic apps to keep most people satisfied, even if you just stick to the free ones. One coming improvement that I am extremely excited about is the ability to put apps in folders. It is just too darn hard to find things among pages and pages of apps. Even with some past improvements (originally made for the iPhone and iPod Touch), organizing them is still a pain. I long for folders and I can’t wait until fall, when iPhone OS 4 is supposed to be available for the iPad.

THE CONS

There are definitely some legitimate complaints about the things the iPad doesn’t have, although I have previously written about how silly I think all the vitriol has been. There are plenty of people who hate Apple simply because it’s Apple, so you kind of have to sift through all the nonsense to find the actual problems. A camera seems like a must for the next generation. Although for now, I can just take a picture with my iPhone and email it to my iPad.

A USB port wasn’t necessary for the iPhone or the iPod touch, but it would dramatically increase the ways in which one can use the iPad. I would love to be able to hook it up to an external hard drive or a printer. There are ways around this limitation, but I am generally too lazy to do anything but wait for a future generation of the device.

One drawback that will hopefully lessen over time is the dearth of cases for the iPad. There are a few available, but the most popular ones are incredibly difficult to obtain. After a couple fruitless trips to my local Apple store, I finally gave up and ordered Apple’s iPad case online. I am hoping it arrives this century, but the website currently says “Ships 3-4 weeks”. I’d like to at least get it before we go on vacation in July or August.

The fingerprint issues are the same as with the iPhone. I just carry a couple of those cloths for cleaning glasses in my purse.

The absolute worst thing about the iPad is that we only have one. I dread getting on a flight with my husband and battling to see who gets to use it. I’ve been entering contests to try and win an iPad for him, but the odds are long.

FLASH?

This is the one complaint about the iPad that doesn’t bother me. Some folks may really miss Flash, but I don’t care in the least. The effect that it has on my web surfing is minor at most. I am not saying it isn’t legitimate for some folks to want Flash, but for me it is a non-issue. I’ve seen various figures tossed around, such as 75% of websites use Flash, but so far I haven’t had a single problem viewing websites on my iPad.

IS THE iPAD WORTH IT?

For me, the answer is a resounding yes. Because I take the train to work every day, having the iPad has been wonderful. It does all the things I need it to do and more. It’s not the mobile solution for everyone, but I dare you to spend five minutes with one and not want it – even if you don’t NEED it. It looks great, it works great and it is fun to use. I never thought I could love an inanimate object more than my iPhone, but it turns out I can.

I suppose you could accuse Stephen and me of being cheap, but with our dream of early retirement, I’m going to just call us forward-thinking. We have been saving diligently, both in our 401K plans and in other non-retirement investments. We try pretty hard to keep our expenses low. We don’t have cable, we’ve cut our dinners out to almost nil, we do our own gardening (which puts us in a minority in our community), I use BookMooch to get used books instead of buying them new, etc. The other benefit of a frugal lifestyle is that it makes us feel more prepared for the unexpected, like a layoff or a medical problem. We don’t want an unforeseen complication to derail our plans – we can delay them, but we don’t want to give up our dreams.

Other than depriving ourselves of any life enjoyment whatsoever, it started to feel like there was no place left to cut expenses. So Stephen has started diligently tracking our expenses, which is of course what every money expert tells you to do anyway. He has just started, so it may be a little soon to see patterns. However just being forced to save every receipt and track every penny has already encouraged us to get more creative and see some new ways to save money.

Just this morning, I cut our garbage bill in half. We kept the same 64-gallon garbage can the previous owners of our house owned. They had two children and produced far more garbage than we do. Some weeks, we don’t even bother putting our cans in the street because there is so little garbage in them. So I called the city and asked to exchange our 64-gallon can for a 32-gallon can. Now we’ll pay $27.50 a month instead of $55 a month. That’s a savings of $330 a year – money that can go toward our retirement instead. And I just don’t feel deprived by having a smaller trash can.

I also just canceled the long distance on our landline. That’s only about $8 saved per month, but it won’t be long before the landline goes altogether. Because we have DSL through our phone company, we just have to talk to them about how we repackage our services without the landline. We could potentially save another $30 a month or so.

I am starting to see more places we can cut as well. I subscribe to five magazines, which just isn’t necessary. Three of them, I could easily browse through in a bookstore. A fourth, which I recently allowed to expire, usually isn’t that interesting. As I write this, I’ve decided I am going to either cancel or allow three more to expire. This will also cut down on paper we need to recycle. The fifth magazine is Consumer Reports, which we refer to frequently. But you can access everything online, so maybe I’ll see about an online only subscription. I do enjoy reading magazines, and I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I occasionally look in the recycling bin next to the mail bins at work to see if there are any interesting magazines the doctors didn’t want. You can’t really beat free.

I know it’s a good idea to see if there are any benefits your employers offer that can save you some money. My employer gives me a free train pass, so if I take the train to work, there is absolutely no cost to me, other than a little extra time. Well, it’s $30 a month to park at the Caltrain station, but I couldn’t possibly drive for that little. I have been driving to work far too often lately, which started when I hurt my back last summer and didn’t want to chance getting stuck at the office with a limited shuttle schedule to the train station if I really needed to go home. It is ridiculous not to be taking advantage of the free transportation every day, so from now on, I am resolved to take the train unless I have a doctor’s appointment or need to go to our main campus. With my improved back situation, there isn’t any reason not to do this.

Another great benefit my employer offers is up to $800 a year for classes. If I take the classes from Stanford Continuing Studies, they don’t even have to relate to my job. For some time, I have been considering applying to grad school in creative writing at San Jose State, because it offers evening classes and wouldn’t interfere with work. However, Stanford Continuing Studies has an excellent writing program and I don’t need a degree – I just want the training. So I’ve decided to just make sure that I use up my tuition grant every year because if I don’t use it, I lose it. This will only allow for one class a year, but that is certainly better than no classes a year. I am signed up for a novel writing class that starts on Monday.

One really important thing is to be aware of where you really don’t want to cut expenses. The two non-essential areas where we tend to focus our disposable income are technology and travel. We have a Netflix subscription for a little under $20 a month. When they started charging a premium for people that rent Blu-ray movies, I changed our subscription from three discs at a time to two at a time, but we’ll keep the service. We rarely go to a movie in the theater and as I said earlier, we don’t have cable (or any network reception for that matter). When I hurt my back last year, being able to lie in bed and watch Netflix streaming content on my laptop was wonderful. Now we can even stream to our tv through our PS3, so we are hoping that Netflix continues to add to the movies and television available for streaming, even though the quality isn’t as good. We also watch the tv shows Bones and Flash Forward on Hulu, which has been great, and the advertising is extremely minimal.

We also debated a lot about whether to order an iPad, but finally decided to do it (as a birthday present for me). Because we use Macs and iPhones, the iPad is well-integrated with our other technologies. Stephen really wants me to cut down on the huge number of actual books in the house, which means an e-reader will be useful for me. I already have lots of other content for the iPad, in terms of music and video. The iPad is not cheap, but I have to admit that the amount of enjoyment I am going to get out of it probably far outstrips the price. I do know what I like! I am however trying to decide on a reasonable monthly iTunes budget, because my current unlimited budget concept isn’t working! But I do want to be able to download a new album from one of my favorite artists when I feel like it.

Cutting costs also won’t have much of an effect on Stephen’s photography related purchases. He makes enough money from his photography to pay for equipment, so coupled with the huge amount of satisfaction he gets from it, there really isn’t any reason to make cuts here. Again, the amount of enjoyment he gets far exceeds the cost.

The other area of importance to us is travel. We try to take at least one two-week vacation every year. We’ve gone to some pretty amazing places, and we have so many more that we want to see. However, because one of the reasons we want to retire early is so we can travel more, we still try to be as frugal as possible when we travel. We are not the fancy hotel types. Often we go overseas, but this year we will probably take a driving trip somewhere in the U.S. Our driving trip in the American southwest a couple years ago was amazing. We haven’t yet narrowed down our choices for this year, but we know we’ll remain west of the Mississippi.

I am sure that as Stephen continues to track expenses, other areas to cut will become obvious. It’s just important to strike a balance between keeping expenses low to reach our goals and allowing ourselves to indulge in some of the things we enjoy now. I’d love to find out what other people are doing to cut expenses. If you have any creative (or mundane for that matter) ideas, please comment below and share them.

Korean Children key ring from JooSweetie

One of the first Korean themed items I found on Etsy was this key ring from JooSweetie featuring a little girl in a hanbok with a Korean flag tag. On the reverse, there’s a little boy in hanbok. The design is adorable and very rugged – I’ve had mine for nearly two years and it still looks great, even with daily use. She also has some really cute magnets with the children on them.

Yi Sun-Sin pendant cut by Petsalad

Hangeul thank you cards by Puddle Jumpin' Cards

Korean holiday cards by Grace Hester Designs

Korean Alphabet Quilt by EmiShimosato

Pumpkin tea notebook from PretzelsNPumpkin

This is just a small sampling. If I am ever able to grab a treasury on Etsy, I’d love to do one with Korean goodies. It seems as if it is possible to find just about anything you can dream up on Etsy, so if Korean stuff isn’t your thing, a quick search will probably reveal whatever you seek.

Stephen has opened a shop on Etsy for his fine art photography. He already sells photos on his own website, Bay Images, but Etsy will likely expose a different audience to his work. I’m really interested in seeing how the Etsy shop works out. I haven’t used mine for anything other than getting rid of old art magazines and supplies, so I haven’t done any marketing at all. If anyone has some great Etsy marketing ideas, I’d love to hear about them.

Artist Carla Sonheim will be hosting an online class, The Art of Silliness, during the month of April. I’ll let you click the link for the details of the class, but I bet it is going to be a fun one! I took a drawing class with her at Artfest a few years ago and it was wonderful. You can see one of the drawings I did in her class here. She is a wonderful teacher, and at $25, it sounds like students will get more than their money’s worth.

Sonheim also has a book, Drawing Lab, which will be out in July from Quarry Books. It will definitely be worth checking out.