I finished 2008 with a great 10 day trip to New York. A beautiful city with a lot to do and see. I hope to go back some day. Meanwhile, we have pictures: New York

If you learn to appreciate more of what you already have, you’ll find yourself having more to appreciate.
Michael Angier

Not much. You can try. Today. Say thanks to someone who has helped or inspired you. Do it now.

Psychologic studies show than being grateful makes you happier. I’ve also read a lot of times how being grateful can make you happy. You should try it and see for yourself.

It seems lately everyone tries to set some goals for the new year this time of the year. Don’t fool yourself. It’s good to have goals, but just because it’s a new year it won’t make them happen easier. Instead, try looking at the previous year and saying thanks to everyone who has helped you in any way.

To make things easier, I’m going to start a blog meme to see how far it goes. I’ve seen memes circulate for much more mundane reasons, so I hope it spreads.

Think about 3 people who have helped, influenced or inspired you at any level and write that you are grateful and why. If they have a blog, link to them. If not, tell them you praised them in your blog. If praising someone is good, doing so in public is much better.

Here is my list of three:

• Esther: my beloved girlfriend. She’s probably the person I’ve thanked most often in person, but she earned that. If I could measure my happiness and success with any metrics, she could probably take responsibility for at least 80% of it. She supported me in my decisions when nobody else did, and she kept doing so until now. Thanks!
• 
  Nacho. Since I arrived at Warp and got into the business world, he has been an inspiration and model to follow. I’ve learned a lot from him about many things, and he always come to mind when I read about true good leadership. Thanks!
• Heidi. I read somewhere that one of the steps to become more creative was to surround yourself with creative people, and she is definitely a creative one. She once was surprise about how I was keeping my passion for photography day after day, when I usually get tired of things very soon. What she may not now (yet) is that she helped me to keep going with her comments and good praise. Thanks!

There are much more like these, but I said three by now. Now it’s your turn.

Yes, you read it right, website. I know that sounds like 90s, and today trends are blogs and social networks, but I felt I needed some semi-static place to hold some info about who I am.

It’s not finished yet, I have more ideas for it, but it’s been sitting in my hard drive in a decent state for a while, and I think it’s time to obey the release early, release often motto.

Go there, if you want: www.jorgebernal.info

http://www.youtube.com/v/UXziurFkQxM&hl=en

If the answer is yes, you may have your house full of useless stuff, just like me. I found today 15 great de-cluttering tips, and this was the most insightful for me:

Take all your items that you unsure about getting rid of (e.g. I might need this someday…), put them in a box, seal it and date it for 1 year in the future. When the date comes, and you still didn’t need to open it to get anything, donate the box WITHOUT OPENING IT. You probably won’t even remember what there was in the box.

$ history | awk '{print $2}' | awk 'BEGIN {FS="|"} {print $1}'|sort|uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10
111 svn
61 cd
44 rake
36 l
32 hg
18 ./script/console
14 rm
12 screen
12 history
12 ./script/server

The original idea for the title was “What’s wrong with American personal finance”, but I guess a positive thinking could help more than just criticism. I usually read some productivity and lifehacks blogs like LifeHacker or zenhabits and once in a time, a money article pops up. The two most common pieces of advice in this field are:

1. Avoid late fees by using Quicken/MS Money to pay your bills
2. Get rid of your debt

Those two common issues amongst American people were really bizarre for me the first time, and still today I can’t fully understand were the problem comes from.

Avoiding late fees

Simply put, I’ve never paid a single late fee in my life (maybe renting videos long time ago). The most common payment method in Spain for recurrent bills like Internet, rent, phone,… is called domicilación bancaria. I’ve been told there’s something like that in the US, and I’ve found similar concepts on the Wikipedia: Direct debit and standing order.

That is, if I get a new DSL contract I give my bank account number to the service provider and they charge me every month directly in my account. The only chance to get a late fee there is if there are no funds in that account.

So, my piece of advice here is: ask your bank about this possibility and get your bills paid with direct debit

Get rid of your debt

This in fact hit me long time ago, in an episode of The fresh prince of Bel-Air, when Will gets his first credit card and starts spending way more than he can pay. I thought that was a silly joke, but as I discovered later, it seems like the sad beginning for a lot of people.

I have one credit card and I only use it to buy online and when I travel outside Spain. My other cards are debit cards: some Visa Electron and some Maestro. In fact, most of the time my credit card stays at home.

I don’t even know if there are debit cards in the US, but if they exist, you should get one.

I found this cool parody some time ago about getting out of debt:

http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/2zb8R5htoF6Qi5G62

Conclusion

My final basic trick is that my expenses are much lower than my income, so I can pay them every month.

I think the above video is my conclusion to this: don’t buy stuff you can’t afford and I should add find the financial tools you need to stay away from credits.

Like Seth Godin said (more than) once:
Safe is risky

I found a short article about How we learn which summarizes my point of view after 5 courses.

10% of what we READ

20% of what we HEAR

30% of what we SEE

50% of what we SEE and HEAR

70% of what is DISCUSSED with OTHERS

80% of what is EXPERIENCED PERSONALLY

95% of what we TEACH TO SOMEONE ELSE

William Glasser

You can never imagine the kind of questions you are going to get from so many different mindsets, so you have to find a lot of answers that you’d never find otherwise.

But today I noticed some black spots on my Google search (Jorge Bernal). First, it seems to be an actor called like me, and a Bernal familiy which is not mine.

But the thing that keeps me worried is the Jorge Bernal mugshot. Anyone who knows me can realize that the guy in that photo is not me, but still. I was really nervous last Sunday when I was at the customs office in Minneapolis Airport, knowing that there was a murderer in the US with my same name.

To whom may it concern: I do not kill people. My only killings are -9, if you know what I mean

The acution: Reproductor MP3 iRiver IFP-895, 512MB, just in case you are interested