The winner of The Great Blog Off 2.0 is Saving for Serenity (a.k.a Alan Schram).  In case you don’t know, The Great Blog Off is a blogging competition that I am a part of.  See the facebook group for more info.

Saving for Serenity is a blog about personal finance.  Alan writes at least three times per week on various topics relating to money.  His personal goal is to help you save money.  Isn’t that nice of him?  I recommend this blog because it has gotten me thinking about saving… so much so that I opened a Tax Free Savings Account a few days ago.

In light of this all, I’ve decided to show you my main strategies for personal finance.  Some may be obscure, but they work for me.

1) Pay off all dept before starting to save (do the math with the interest rates.  It makes sense)

2) Once dept free, start saving as early as possible

3) Find loopholes and jump through them (e.g. my checking account fees are waved if I have $2,000 in the bank.  I save more by waving the fees than I would by earning interest on a savings account.  All sorts of loopholes like that are out there)

4) Live frugally (some people call this cheap, but they tend to be worse off financially).   Here’s how to be frugal:

- Take transit
- Cut your own hair
- Accept hand-me-downs
- Shop at thrift stores
- Cook fresh food instead of pre-made and instead of going out
- Avoid fancy drinks at coffee shops – order coffee or tea
- Turn off all electrical devices (including lights) whenever they are not being used
- Take anything if it is free (maybe not anything, but you know what I mean)
- Socialize during free events, like going for a walk or sitting around
- Rent movies instead of going to the theater
- Pick up some beer rather than go to the pub
- Live with a roommate
- Mooch off your parents
- Learn to be content with what you have (there will always be the next “latest and greatest” and you can’t have it all)
- Hide your cheapness by calling it an ethical choice

Like I said before, these work for me.  At the age of 22, I’m dept free (with a BA degree and a full length recorded and printed album, both of which I paid for [accepting whatever help I could get of course]), I’m starting to save, and I live off of only a half time job (plus album sales).  This is not to brag or anything… I just want to show you that my financial strategies have worked for me.  Maybe they could work for you too.

Apart from this, I don’t have much to say on finances, so go subscribe to Saving for Serenity for more ideas about money.

My song “Death of Me” was originally a completely different song called “Autumn Leaves”.  The only parts that are the same are the guitar, a bit of the melody, and one line.

When I was recording Dark Before Dawn, I realized that the lyrics of Autumn Leaves wasn’t quite working.  The whole song was a metaphor for the passing on of grandparents, using the imagery of leaves in the Fall.  It was written decently well, but it didn’t have much heart to it, which is because I wasn’t really writing from experience… I was writing more thematically.  My producer, Adam Loewen, said (in the nicest way possible) that Autumn Leaves sounded like a teenage girl reciting her poem to an old folks home.  Here are the original lyrics for you to laugh at if you wish:

Autumn leaves, when winter comes we won’t forget your colors

Autumn leaves, you’re beautiful; your character is in your wrinkles

Fall down gently underground

Lay still in peace

In time this tree will see more leaves

In colors of gold

Autumn leaves, your history is memorable; you made a home

Autumn leaves, when winter comes this family tree feels empty

The only line I wanted to keep was  “Fall down gently underground.  Lay still in peace.” Although it lost it’s irony when it was no longer talking about leaves falling underground, it was still a good line.  I eventually thought of writing a song about a relationship dying - a love dying.  This is something that I could write about from experience.

I remember being in the relationship and both of us would always tell each other that we love each other, but we rarely showed our love.  I kept on hearing people say that love is a choice, which confused me.  I thought that if I chose to say, “I love you,” and tried to believe that it was true, then everything would just fix itself.  I didn’t realize that the choice involved real action as well.  I think the advice, “Love is a choice,” is a bit misleading.  I think the full message is that you need to choose to love someone and then act on that choice.  In other words, “Love is a verb,” like Dc Talk sang (I can’t believe I just referenced an old-school Dc Talk song!).

After my relationship broke up, I read a book called The Five Love Languages.  It’s too bad I didn’t read it earlier.  It talks about how people express and experience love in different ways from one another.  So sometime our love doesn’t get communicated because we are essentially speaking different languages.  The five languages are: service, quality time, gifts, words of affirmation, and physical touch.  People can speak all of these languages to some degree, but most people focus on one or two.

This book taught me how to act out my love (which I’m still working on).  And obviously when people don’t act out their love, it dies.  Hence my song, “Death of Me”.  You can find it on iTunes.

Here are the lyrics:

The air escapes my lungs. My God what have I done?

I knew our time would come but, not yet

My heart is slowing down. My head is spinning ‘round

My mouth is spilling out regret

Fall down gently underground

Lay still in peace

My love will be the death of me

It doesn’t suffice

I swear I read your mind. I knew you every time

But you had one surprise, you lied

You used to share with me, strong integrity

Now that ceases to be, we died

Fall down gently underground

Lay still in peace

My love will be the death of me

It doesn’t suffice

It doesn’t suffice

Love doesn’t suffice

Somehow I got roped into this blogging competition, The Great Blog Off, with three friends of mine: Adam Loewen, Alan Schram, and Tony Bookless.

I think that blog-off sounds like a British swear.  I can picture Gordon Ramsay yelling, “Blog off you bastard!” and then throwing someone out of his kitchen.

Anyway, if I understand it correctly, The Great Blog Off works like this: You join the facebook group and read as many articles as possible in all four blogs.  At the end of the month, comment on the facebook group saying, “I vote for Jeff” (you could say something else, but I suggest that one)

All three of my competitors have their own advantage:

- TONY is the comic threat (plus he makes friends as fast as Jamison Dick… if you don’t know either of them, it’s a bad sign)

- ADAM is the creative threat (he did all the photography and production for my album)

- ALAN is the intellegent threat (plus I think he’s a hacker… he’ll find some way to rig the vote)

- ME, well… I’ll probably just lose… :(  …vote for the underdog!

Here are the blog links:

http://jeffhawker.ca/blog/

http://alanschram.blogspot.com/

http://adamloewenphotography.wordpress.com/

http://tonynobooks.blogspot.com/