Category Archives: Ideas

random ideas that pop in my head…

Neighbors Buying and Sharing

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Teamwork

Teamwork

Occasionally, I like to through out ideas for saving or making money, and come up with experiments (for an example check out my Lunch Experiment)!

So my idea for today (actually I’ve been thinking about this for years), is to have a Neighborhood purchase program for rarely used things, then have the neighbors share those certain rarely used tools!

So let’s say that you have 10 neighbors, and each month they each pitch in $10.  Well, after 2 months time the neighborhood could purchase a edger.  Then 3 months later after the purchase of the edger, they could purchase a pressure washer.

Each purchase would be kept on 1 of the neighbor’s house and the entire neighborhood could all borrow the tool/item!

The beauty is that it would be cheaper than renting the item, the entire neighborhood would look better because all the neighbors should want to use the tools.  This desire to use the tools would mean that their properties all look nicer…

Maybe after 1 year, the payments to the neighborhood kitty could be decreased to $5 a month instead of $10 a month.

Now one might wonder “But what if one of the machines/tools that the neighbors purchased broke”?  Well good question and the answer would be that the money collected from everybody would have to be used to repair the tool.  Unless someone in your group was good at repairing things already.

Why I think this would be a good idea is because mostly the tools I described above, sit in the corner of the garage taking up space doing nothing…

Another side benefit would be that the sharing of tools would be an opportunity to talk to your neighbors!  This might create a more socially health community!

-MR

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Childhood Thoughts About The Universe And Time

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When I was a pre-teenager (and then later as a teenager), I use to think about things like the universe and time. So now I’m going to write my rambling childhood thoughts about the universe and time below.

Time

With “Time” we usually associate a starting point, a duration, and an ending point.  Time is always running and measurable, it’s quite an amazing concept really.  But Time must not really exist, at least at some more permanent level.  There can’t be a beginning and there must not be an ending.

There must be a form of pulsing (like the Big Bang Theory), where our Universe expands, then contracts in a continuous cycle.

To be honest, to think that there is no such thing as time kind of freaks me out.  After all, it’s all that we known our entire life.  What I mean by this is that at a higher level, there is no such thing as time in that there is no start or end times to the existence of matter.  It’s always has been there, it must have been. 

Okay, I’m not going to dwell on this because it really does freak me out, even today!

The Universe

As a child, first I thought that our solar system was like an atom in many respects.  Then later, I thought that our Universe was like an atom too.  Then much later, I wondered if all the universes that we know of is part of a larger atom and so forth, continuously becoming part of the atom cyclic pattern, and then somehow everything circles in on itself to become an atom on our planet, and all of the heavenly bodies. etc.

It’s still an odd concept for me that there is not boundary to matter, we don’t have an edge of existence… We can’t it’s not possible, this is also a weird concept for me.  Not only does time not exist for matter, but neither does boundaries to matter.

Now as an adult, I just live in my little space on a little ball of a planet and just enjoy life the best that I can in the little time that I have on it that I do. 

Conclusion

I had some weird thoughts as a kid, and to be honest, I still don’t know the answers.  But I will say, as an adult, I no longer want to know, ignorance is bliss…

Below is a youtube video that is the classical piece by Samuel Barber called “Adagio for strings“.  It has a video of space, but truthfully, I just like the music!  If you listen to it, I’m sure you’ve heard it before in plenty of movies.


-MR

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Trying Something New

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Random Thoughts:

As a child we are all thrown into opportunities, learning many new things, from talking, walking, swimming, ridding a bike, running, hiking… and the list goes on and on.

As we age, those awesome “learning something new” opportunities start to dry up like spilled kool-aid on black pavement on a hot summer day.  The things we do know lose the shock value as we have performed them over and over (diminishing returns).  We masses in the middle (click here to read about my middle class life cycle) live a somewhat boring, repeating cycle of activity (especially during the working days of the week).  New adventures become more scarce and we fall towards an unknown end, wasting our youth and ambition to meet some ultimate goal at that end (perhaps retirement, heaven, or whatever).

So what are we to do?

  • Path1:  Should we live it up today, borrowing and spending all our money and skipping work only to end up out in the streets homeless with debt in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars?  (NO)
  • Path2: Should we live a somewhat slower lifestyle by striving for a more balanced approach?  This is a good solution because you get a little of everything…  financial security, some new experiences etc…  This is my current path. (MAYBE)
  • Path3: Or should we forget about the end goal and realize that it doesn’t really matter and we should try to expanding and enjoy our life to the fullest but at the same time realize that having money can open up more doors to enjoy life?  That having money can enable us to do things like traveling to distant locations and enable use to experiencing things that we never though we’d be able to see or experience? (MAYBE)

I think I would like to have a balanced lifestyle as in Path2, but I would also like to incorporate some of the elements in Path3, which would turn my balanced lifestyle to more of an aggressive balanced lifestyle.

Enough on the discussion of lifestyles, on to actions!  Until I have the finances to enjoy more new experiences, I intend on “Trying Something New” by taking advantage of all the great free stuff online!

I have to admit, I’ve already been doing this by reading blogs which I find very enjoyable!  Reading blogs convinced me to start my own blog enabling me to telling my own story and share my thoughts.  I’m planning on expanding further into online experiences (perhaps a short podcast for next Saturday?  and some day a video).

So this entire article leads up to the following sentence.  I going to use my Saturday article posts to experiment and share more of my raw thoughts and experiences. I’ve done this a bit in the past with my comic series, but that was too limiting (although I still want to post a comic at least once a month).

Are you planning on researching, learning or experiencing something new soon?

-MR

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Business Opportunities Through Family and Friends

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When I was younger, I use to work at my grandparent’s furniture store occasionally for a small amount of money.  I was just a small boy, so I didn’t work for long periods of time.  Most of the task I got paid for was dusting off merchandise on shelves and other trivial activities.

Later when I was sixteen, a close family member got me into a union controlled grocery store.  The store was managed by a cruel older man who had worked in the grocery business since he was 13-year-old.  The seasoned store manager treated everybody like dirt, so the work environment was horrible.  At this store location, there always seemed to be a lot of backstabbing negative and often illegal activities, so this was a very negative experience for the young worker that I was.

After such a bad experience, I didn’t want anything to do with family or friends getting me a job!  Now looking back, I realized that I missed many opportunities from family and friends that presented potentially great employment options to me!  The business opportunities were both direct and indirect ones! 

The direct business opportunities are pretty obvious.  A direct opportunity is when work is offered to you via a job offer.  That said, you may be wondering what I am talking about when I say “indirect business opportunities”.

Indirect business opportunities through family or friends are those opportunities that we are able to create or find ourselves.  While not obvious, if you keep your eyes and mind open, such opportunities exists or can be created!

I thought I would conclude this post with an example that I recently learned about:

A cousin of a co-worker is well on his way to becoming a rich entrepreneur by fully taking advantage of indirect business opportunities through family and friends.  Rich (the cousin) was smart enough start a business that was a sure bet. 

What was this incredible business?  Rich created a dumpster business.  You see many of Rich’s family and friends are successful homebuilders.  Instead of competing directly with them, he decided to create a business that could benefit off of their success.  This was a win-win because they have enough competition already and they use his business for their dumpster needs.

I’d also like to mention that Rich has other business too.  For example, I know that he is also a landlord.

So look around, do you see any side or full business that you could create?

-MR

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