Excerpt of Finance with Chocolate Sauce

What's in this book?

I’m going to show you how we made changes without writing big checks for goods and services. Writing big checks would be spending 'Real Money'. Spending Real Money is buying things at full price because you're impatient or not as clever as those of us who do not do such things. There is only one reason to spend Real Money and that is for an item that truly represents a special treat, something that you have carefully considered that to you is worth the cost. From my point of view spending Real Money carefully is the only way to go, since most of us can’t pay full price all the time or for everything. And why should we?

In order to begin to make changes, we'll have to get specific. It is one thing to talk in general terms about being frugal or making our home and garden beautiful, but I've learned through years of trial and error that the details are what count. To that end, this book will take you through the house, room by room, addressing specific ideas for improving every aspect of your home without spending much of your hard-earned money. I'll talk about storage, lighting, seating, appliances. I'll ask you to study pictures and take tours of homes and gardens. We’ll brainstorm about using items to suit your needs and I’ll be helping you to think a little out-of-the-box. I will also ask you to take your time and not rush these changes. According to research on the way the brain produces 'Aha' moments, you need time to mull things over and ideas on which to mull, if you will. "Insight does favor a prepared mind." (Hotz, 2009, p. A11)

Let’s be realistic: when you save money, it usually means that you will spend more in time. However, like your financial budget, you can economize in ways related to time and thus make progress in fits and starts. Soon one room and then another will be transformed and friends will be asking you for tips and ideas. Yes, they will be asking YOU. This book will not only transform your home and your finances; it will transform you from a relative novice into a veritable expert on matters related to making your house beautiful and maintaining your finances in a healthy way.

How much time will each change take? That's hard to say, except that any change will almost always take more time than you think, especially at first, when you are less experienced and are probably doing things for the very first time. It will be very hard to even estimate how long you may need when you’ve never done a particular project before. Be patient with yourself. How would you speak to a child if he or she became frustrated while learning something new? Try talking to yourself nicely while you learn and grow, okay?

Mitigate some of the angst with planning. Have a spot set aside for the mess that may be present, such as the tools and material and miscellaneous bits and pieces. Move ahead with your vision. Unless your plans include vacationing in Europe while your crew redoes the house at your designer’s direction, you will need to live with a bit of dust during a project.

I have to study things to figure them out. I do everything with an instruction manual, including household improvement tasks. Moreover, I was one of the craziest-dressing, uncreative persons among our particular set of friends and family. In other words, if I can bring style to our home and family, you can too. This book is the roadmap for you, my dear, to make it happen.

With my trusty honey by my side, I struggled in ways that you will avoid through this book. What? No trusty honey? No problem! You make the progress that you can make. You find the bargains that you can find. With a partner you may double the arms, legs and brains. But individually we are certainly up to any challenge! In my case, I would have made many of these improvements even if I had been on my own, though admittedly many would have taken longer. Also, because I lack expertise in areas that Mort excels, I couldn't have done all of it without him, and I couldn't have done it the exact same way. But this book explains how to assess your individual ability to make desired changes and aspires to help you figure out other ways to make the improvements you seek.

This book will show you what I've learned and researched about a variety of specific household improvement concepts. It addresses the science of color, which affects the look and mood of every room in your home, and the effect that different colors have on emotions. We'll tackle clutter, look at how it affects people and reveal some helpful ideas for corralling it with style.

And what about that lawn furniture I mentioned? I've got yard sale tips for finding great furniture and other deals and ideas for beautifying whatever you buy.

We'll get outdoors, too, and discuss plants and gardening and find creative ideas for your patch of grass. I’ll share what I’ve learned about the amazing benefits of the great outdoors, which has enormous powers, from calming kids to easing road rage.

I’m going to show you ways that I have made decisions about where to spend Real Money, how I made choices about maximizing the few dollars that we had to work with. This book is a perfect example of frugality and choices, for costs were prioritized based on what I could scrimp and things that I felt were important. These priorities are individually chosen, meaning that what is vital to me may seem like a crazy expense to you.

The illustrations and photos in this book are in black and white. I don't love books with black and white pictures. But if I opted for color pictures in this book the costs would have been nearly triple. So to keep my costs reasonable, thus to make the purchase price reasonable, I opted for boring black and white pics.

That said, in order to satisfy the need to see things in color, all of the photos will be available on my web site www.MarionSyversen.com. That way, we can make the book price accessible as well as satisfy our need to have pretty pictures to frame our discussion.

Excerpt from Real Deal: Making Big Changes with Small Change by Marion Syversen, MBA. Copyright 2009.