Tag Archives: cassette tapes

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Why bother with financial tracking?

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Continuing the financial planning theme from yesterday, I am going to focus on tracking in a little more detail.

This will lead to a discussion of financial net worth in a future blog.

Tracking

Years ago (before the dawn of personal computers) I tracked all my families income and spending manually using a financial ledger (yes a real book) which I wrote figures in (yes with a pen).

In the early nineteen-nineties I was a early adopter of quicken for windows (a so called personal financial manager – PFM).  I used it for tracking my income and expense as well as an ongoing financial net worth calculation.  It was much quicker and less messy then the ledger system, which went bye-bye.   I strongly recommend if you are not using one of these “apps”  you start right away.  As mentioned in yesterday’s post all financial planning stems from this one basic foundation – ongoing tracking.

Which Financial Tracking Tool

For getting started basically you want a product that contains functionality that lets you enter each expense and and income entry by category and by account type (e.g., checking, saving, investments, loans etc).  Most products have default categories to track spending by and you can add your own custom.

Although I am an early adopter and long time user of Quicken I have flirted with other products.  In the end though the benefits of alternate tools have not been enough to drive me to change.  However,  I would recommend a google search to find the application you are most comfortable with (there are some great free shareware products out there).

I got a tool and I am entering every transaction, so what?

The basic tracking information you are gathering in the tool has three principle uses.  (Disclaimer, this is planning 101 so I only am describing the basic uses, there is a lot of advanced stuff you can do)

  1. Report on spending by category over a specified period – You can do this review weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.  I personally just do it annually (so it is not a lot of work and is just once a year).

    I keep all the summary output of spending by category for each year (my current spreadsheet has 25 years of data).  I can compare what the difference in category spending is year over year; year over overall average; and so on.  This lets me see trends at a glance and make decisions.  For example restaurant spending is on the rise, automobile repairs tripled year over year but are close to the average.

    These observations (which I basically make once a year) let my wife and I manage our spending behavior to match our lifestyle, rather than visa-versa.   This is not a work intensive exercise and the benefit is amazing.

    For example the rising cost of the auto maintenance category could lead to a decision to use public transit (reducing auto cost) so more money is a available for other things we prefer.

    I should note that the analysis you make should be as broad and long reaching as you can, not just a tactical year over year consideration.

  2. Income vs. Expense – I will describe this in a future post.
  3. Net Worth Calculation – I will describe this in a future post.
Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Cassette Tape Story

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Yesterday I was listening to a cassette tape recording of a hip-hop group called the Tower of Power when something very interesting happened.  Here is the story.

The Background

The first popular and common way of distributing recorded music was through the use of vinyl records.  These were played back using a gramophone/phonograph/turntable/record player (basically all the same thing just with different names).

As recording techniques improved the music would be recorded onto magnetic tape.  Recording and playback was accomplished using large reel to reel tape recorders.  This was then transferred to vinyl records for distribution.

In the mid- sixties cassette tape recorders were developed.  These were relatively compact and could be cheaply produced and mass marketed.  They also allowed for home recording using a microphone attached or built into the recorder.  (Overtime, they also spawned several different playback device variations – boom boxes and the Sony Walkman being the main ones)

In the beginning of the nineteen seventies, music artists songs were being sold on both vinyl albums and cassette tapes ( and a variation on cassettes called 8 track tapes).

By the nineteen nineties a third major format had been developed and entered popular use, compact discs.  These could be recorded and played on computers and mainly just played back on compact disk players.  For a time compact disks (cd) became the predominant media for distributing recorded music.

Today CD’s, vinyl records and cassette tapes have largely been replaced by digital music distributed by online methods.   Although CD, vinyl are still produced and sold (vinyl mainly to avid collectors who believe the sound is better) cassette tapes have largely disappeared.

Hence this background, so those of you not familiar with cassette tapes would understand a little bit about them.

The Story

The Tower of Power focused on hip hop and funk genre of music in the early nineteen seventies migrating to disco in the back half of the decade and then falling from popularity.

When I purchased a used Toyota Corolla in 1980  it had a built in cassette tape player and the previous owner forgot his Tower of Power tape in the player.  So I acquired it.

Back in the early nineteen eighties, my youngest brother was babysitting our daughter one evening; she was probably between 9 and 16 months old at the time.  My brother was experimenting with getting our daughter to say “da da”.  He got so excited with his success he grabbed my Tower of Power tape (which was probably near at hand or even in the cassette recorder) and although it was a “pre-recorded” tape he proceeded to override that and record our daughter saying “da da” along with his encouraging words.

Yesterday I was relaxing in the “man cave” yesterday grooving to a little seventies funk by Tower of Power when suddenly the music was interrupted by my brothers recording.

Thanks bro!   The nostalgic surprise was cool but a pre-recorded tape – really – have you heard of blanks?  Now I remember why you weren’t asked to babysit much.