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Flexible Hours in Your Working Environment

This article was written by Flexo in Career and Work. 17 comments.

The option to work from home has been shown to benefit employees and employers. This type of flexibility in working arrangements, when appropriate based on the employee’s responsibilities, increased productivity and retention for the employer and job satisfaction for the employee. The same benefits apply to working arrangements that include flexible hours.

As Margaret Heffernan explains in INC Magazine, “Treating employees like grown-ups made it more likely that they would behave the same way.” This treatment includes trust; if you hire the right people, you can trust them to accomplish their tasks and goals on time and under budget without worrying about the time they walk into their cubicle and the time they leave.

Clock It’s difficult to treat employees like adults, however. At one of my corporate jobs, I joined a team some time after the management hired an efficiency consultant. The consultant sat with each employee and monitored and logged every minute of each employee’s work day in order to determine opportunities for improvement in productivity. After the study, productivity might have increased, but it most likely didn’t last long. Employees resented the requirement of tracking every minute of their days.

Around the same time, one of the supervisors made a habit of walking the floor at nine o’clock in the morning to see who was at their desk on time every day. This type of micro-management benefited the supervisor, and perhaps it gave her a feeling of control, but the employees resented the approach, even if they were at their desks on time each morning. Even when arriving on time, the employees would need to be at their desks at the moment the supervisor walked by rather than in the rest room or the kitchen area.

Thankfully, this supervisor was no longer with the team by the time I accepted my position.

A policy that includes flexible hours gives employees ownership of their roles and allows them to make decisions about the best time to do their jobs. The right people can handle these decisions without taking advantage of the employer or the flexible policies.

A flexible working hours arrangement can take a variety of forms:

forty hours every week spread over four days instead of five
eighty hours every two weeks spread over nine days instead of ten
eight hours every day starting earlier or later than nine o’clock

This type of flexible working arrangement may increase productivity. Happy employees tend to be better employees, and they stick with the company longer. Long-term loyalty to a company has decreased over the years due to many changes in the relationship between employers and employees, but a policy involving flexible hours and other benefits can help reverse that trend.

Work/life balance isn’t always appropriate. I am always torn with this concept, because different goals require different treatment. When I worked for a small non-profit organization whose lofty goals were difficult to achieve on a tiny budget and a lack of resources, the expectation was to put our lives into our work. The only way to achieve greatness is to be completely dedicated to the mission, and that required making many personal sacrifices. Most jobs and careers do not work in this fashion, but in any career, this type of dedication can lead to success.

Work/life balance is a great approach for the cast majority of the American workforce that recognizes that life outside of work is important, but those whose personal mission is to become the best in the world at their job, life is just a distraction.

As a business owner without any employees, I took advantage of flexible hours. When I left my corporate job over a year ago, I experimented with creating a regular schedule for myself, but I determined — and this was something I had known since I was a teenager — that I just work better and more efficiently when I have the flexibility to work when I like.

Do you have flexible working hours at your job? Is it beneficial or detrimental to your group? If you work flexible hours, have you seen any personal benefits?

INC Magazine, American Psychological Association, Forbes

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How to Love Cooking

This article was written by Forest in Frugality. 44 comments.

This is a guest post by Forest from Frugal Zeitgeist. Forest writes about frugality, finance, minimalism and lifestyle. In this article, Forest shares his experiences in the kitchen. Cooking great meals is a great way to save money and stay healthy, but it’s a skill that I haven’t developed for myself. Passion can boost motivation, though, and this article might help me find that passion about preparing meals.

When Flexo wrote about alternative financial resolutions he mentioned the idea of cooking more often at home. Cooking at home is often described as a way to save money. It will do that if you replace your dining-out habit, but it does much more than just improve your finances. Cooking can quickly become an enjoyable hobby, and when you get into the groove you can even use it to impress your friends. The health aspects cannot be overlooked, either. Replacing processed foods and restaurant foods with home-cooked versions, where you know the ingredients, will affect you and your family’s diet in a positive way.

But you can’t just expect to fire up the stove and produce an award-winning dish. Learning to cook takes time and patience. You will fail, and you will find that at times cooking isn’t as economical as you originally thought it would be. Investing in a stock of spices and speciality ingredients can quickly blow a shopping budget!

In this post I want to share my journey into the wonderful world of cooking at home and then hopefully convince you to make it a regular activity and a beloved hobby.

How I found my passion in cooking

Toast I never learned to cook anything as a kid. My kitchen wizardry stopped at being able to “cook” a perfect slice of toast and heat an egg in hot oil. Sometimes I would experiment, but I’ll skip the tales of my candy-bar sandwich and curry hot chocolate. When I moved out of my parents’ home at the age of seventeen, I sucked at cooking.

Luckily I had a corner store within twenty seconds of my house. I became a wiz at putting plastic-wrapped steak bakes and hamburgers into the microwave, and later I even progressed to turning on the oven to warm up a frozen pizza. Breakfast cereal was a favorite dinner of mine too. Cheerios for dinner! Yum!

This went on for quite some time. When I turned eighteen and started to throw regular pints of beer into the mix, my belly decided to grow big and round. Through the age of twenty, not much changed apart from my pants size.

Weight is easy to put on and reasonably easy to fix, but the bad habits had been affecting another aspect of my life, something not immediately apparent to most around me. As my belly grew, so did my overdraft. My money situation wasn’t going too well.

In addressing the cash flow problem, I knew I had to make all sorts of cut-backs. It wasn’t exactly a secret to me that my processed food habit was costing me a lot of money and I decided to tackle it by learning how to cook at home. This was also around the same time that I became vegetarian, which seriously reduced the selection of ready-made foods I could purchase at the corner store.

One of my first trips to the supermarket after the decision involved me stocking up on spaghetti, cans of tomatoes, dried basil, salt, pepper and lots of fruit.

I remember throwing myself head first into cooking, just like the way I refused to read instructions when I got a Transformer for Christmas. I didn’t read any cookery books.

For one of my first home cooked meals, I threw a few cans of tomatoes into a large wok with a little oil. I tossed in a load of basil, a little salt and let it simmer for quite a few hours. The result was better than you may think for a first attempt, and although the work was minimal, I enjoyed throwing some stuff in a pot and coming out with an edible meal. I was intrigued enough to learn more.

I continued to develop my “tomatoes and stuff in wok” speciality and would try adding different veggies and herbs. One important thing I did do was learn the basics. This included cooking eggs in their various forms, the basics about herbs, simple stir fry, fried rice, stews and chilis. Occasionally I would follow a recipe.

The big change for me came when I quit my job and moved from England to Canada. I found food to be even more expensive in Canada, and my budget was very thin. I had left behind a high-paying job in London and was now washing dishes in a pub kitchen. Of course being around cooking all day was part of my inspiration, but working out how the hell to feed myself on minimum wage was the real kick in the butt.

I started to buy a lot of raw ingredients and had moved in with my girlfriend. A student and a kitchen boy needed some entertainment and that was where Manjula came in! We enjoyed making dinner together, even though it was stir fry most nights. Cooking with your family and friends can be a lot of fun and a motivation to push yourself forward. We both enjoyed curry so we learned how to cook it properly. I started to search for recipes online, and I discovered Manjula’s Kitchen on Youtube. Manjula cooks a lot of great Indian dishes and her lackluster commentary creates a homey, “I can do this” vibe that I found quite warming. After my first Manjula curry I was hooked.

I was being reeled into this cooking thing.

When you make that great meal, something you never thought you could make, it’s like you finally get it. Cooking can be drudgery, especially when you have to cook for many and you just don’t enjoy it. I look at it like painting. Painting a house is boring as hell, and the outcome is nice, but nothing special. Paint a picture and you enjoy the whole process and the outcome immensely. If you approach cooking like painting a picture you’ll enjoy it very much.

Next up for me was my other favorite food, bread. I had a drunken conversation with a Mexican lady who convinced me tortillas were just flour and water cooked in a flat pan. I had flour and water at home so a day or so later I mashed them together into a dough, rolled them into tortilla-shaped discs using a Snapple bottle, and fried them in a hot pan. Like my very first tomato experiment, it worked again — not perfect, but within reach of being able to be called bread!

This put me on a bread kick and I turned to the internet for a real loaf. The first recipe I ever used is one I still use today, and variations on the dough are easy to experiment with. There is something calming about kneading dough and something very satisfying about eating it hot out of the oven.

Where I am today?

I cook almost every day. Cooking is a hobby and something I do almost without thinking. I’ll happily tackle any kind of cusine and challenge myself to new recipes on a regular basis. I’m not afraid to pick up something I have never seen before and experiment with it. I still make a lot of mistakes but that is half of the fun.

Along with my confidence, my knowledge of food sourcing and nutrition has increased. I try to buy in-season foods and balance my diet with meals that contain the right amount of carbs, proteins, good fats and all of that stuff.

I absolutely adore cooking. Food is something we all need, but good food is something we all love. The smugness and satisfaction from being able to match meals at your favorite restaurants is unbelievable. Cooking isn’t an art or skill that only a few people have, it can be learned. If you keep at it, you will learn. You’ll want to share your new-found love with friends, and they’ll get the bug too.

Tips to start cooking

Starting off any new endeavor that you hope to grow into a hobby can be tough work. If things don’t work out the first time, it is easy to give up. Often, fear of failure, poor early results and lack of time push people back to TV dinners and prepared meals. Like any feat you want to achieve, you need to go in knowing that you will fail, you will make terrible food, and your journey from a person who reads recipes to a full-fledged cook will not be linear.

Making failure part of the learning process will guard your self-esteem enough to help you get through the rough patches. Set goals and make time for cooking. Instead of going to the pub, stay home and follow a recipe, bake a cake for the family, or go shopping for a cook book.

I would suggest you set goals centered around being able to cook your favorite meal or a favorite meal for your family, learning to cook a few dishes of a certain cuisine, or replacing a regular store-bought item with a homemade alternative. The goal should be something that matters to you and keeps you focused. A solid option is baking bread that is better than the store variety. It’s not easy but a skill that is a lot fun — and messy — to learn.

As your cooking progresses something will happen. Your lack of confidence will subside and you’ll fall into the groove I mentioned earlier. For me, indicators of this were being able to add ingredients without measurement and being able to open anyone’s pantry and put together a meal without a recipe book. At this stage, you won’t be a master chef, but you’ll be competent and confident enough to take on any recipe.

Experimentation is very important and is key to discovering the joy of cooking. If you think chocolate and chili pepper would be good on pork, try it. If you are bored at home, just grab some random ingredients and see what you can cook up.

Make cooking social

Keeping cooking a lonseome pursuit could stop it from progressing into a full-fledged hobby, so it’s important to share. Sharing the cooking and eating experience with friends and family is one of the best parts.

I remember baking cakes as a young kid with my grandma, and I think baking and cooking with kids is a great learning tool. I wish cooking with my parents had been a part of my whole life. Cooking with your partner also brings in a new intimacy to a relationship and shares a responsibility that is often left to one person, most often the woman.

Expanding beyond family, it’s great to host potluck meals or host a dinner party on rotation. Friends of mine set up a little club where four couples set four Saturday nights aside. Each Saturday night, the eight people would all visit one house, and the hosts would cook a three-course meal. The result was that it pushed everyone in that group to try to up their cooking game, and it was somewhat competitive. The dinner parties were successful enough that they have all improved their cooking skills.

Get started

Asparagus I hope I have you convinced to give it a try and I hope you have overcome any apprehension. You may not even enjoy cooking at first, but you’ll enjoy the challenge. Here are some tips to help you get started. Please come back to let us know how it went.

Cook a basic flat bread that can be used for lunches, side dishes and more.
Bake a real loaf of bread. This is the very first basic bread recipe I ever used, and it’s good.
Find an online video recipe for your favorite restaurant meal and try to make it.
Use the ingredients in your pantry and create a random meal. It doesn’t matter if it turns out bad, just mess around!
Try another favorite dish or two from another part of the world.
Invite a friend over for dinner and you cook. They can bring the wine.

Good luck with your new money-saving, healthy hobby.

Please don’t hesitate to ask any questions, or ask for any resources, ideas or anything that comes to mind. If you love cooking, what inspired you to start?

Photos: John McClumpha, jeffreyw, woodleywonderworks

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10 Ways to Avoid Hotel Fees

This article was written by Flexo in Featured, Travel. 14 comments.

I’ve noticed over the past few years that the fees and surcharges that appear on my hotel bills are creeping steadily upward. I’m apparently not alone with this observation. According to a new study by Dr. Bjorn Hanson from the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies, hotel fees and surcharges will account for $1.8 billion revenue in 2011, up from $1.7 billion in 2010. The increase comes from higher fees as well as more travelers (or escapists) spending time in hotels.

This doesn’t take into account the various taxes that appear on hotel bills. On a recent trip to California, my itemized hotel bill includes an Occupancy Sales Tax (12 percent) and a Convention and Tourism Tax (0.02 percent). In addition to the taxes, if I had done anything in the hotel other than sleep, I might have seen my bill peppered with fees such as telephone calls, internet fees, early check-in fees, late departure fees, business center fees, and if the hotel had been a little nicer, a resort fee.

Hotel Here are a few suggestions for avoiding hotel fees and saving money while traveling.

1. Know your fees before you travel. Unfortunately, many hotels make it difficult to have full knowledge of fees during comparison shopping. If you book your hotel room by using a website that compares rates at a variety of hotel brands, you’re only seeing the full story. Airlines have found this to be an advantage, and hotels are following suit. The least expensive hotel when comparing nightly rates may enforce additional surcharges.

One solution is to look at the individual hotels’ websites, but not every hotel is gracious enough to list all the fees that they may charge. You might have better luck calling the hotel directly and asking for the details.

2. Negotiate your rates. When I’ve put in an effort, I’ve had some success reducing the overall nightly rates and negotiating removal of some fees, particularly internet access fees. You may not have much room for negotiation if you book your travel using a third-party website or even the hotel’s own online booking system, but taking the small step of calling the hotel — and you just called to ask about fees, anyway — and asking for the best rates and fee considerations can work well. If you can pit one hotel’s offer against a local, comparable hotel’s offer, you could have even more success.

3. Bring your own internet service. If your business involves the internet, as mine does, you may find you need to be connected more often than not. Earlier this year, I decided to bring the internet with me by getting a mobile WiFi hotspot from my wireless provider, Verizon Wireless. It has helped me in a number of situations where I needed to have internet access while I was away from home. The service can be worthwhile for anyone who travels while needing to be online.

Mobile WiFi may be more expensive than a few nights each month with hotel-provided internet access, but if you need to be online on the road, the service is better than hotel room internet.

4. Avoid resort hotels. You would think that more expensive hotels would include more services. I’ve seen charges at fancier hotels for services that less expensive hotels offer for free. In a resort hotel, you may find it hard to resist the temptation to take advantage of some of the more unique services, like spa access.

5. Don’t call room service. If you’re planning for a longer stay, look for kitchen availability in the room and prepare your own meals. With a local grocery store, you could avoid dining out as well as relying on the hotel’s own expensive kitchen.

6. Stay with friends or family rather than the hotel. If you know your stay won’t be a burden, and you need to travel while spending as little money as possible, you might be successful crashing on a couch as a guest.

7. Couchsurf. Couchsurfing is one of the newest travel trends. Like the above tip, the comfort of a home often beats a hotel, and you never have to worry about hidden fees. With couchsurfing, you’ll need to trust a stranger as a host, but you can review a potential host’s references on couchsurfing.com.

8. Carry your own baggage. If you are staying in a hotel, one of the great conveniences is the presence of porters who help move your bags from the lobby to your room, for a nomial fee encouraged by an outstretched palm. In most cases, this service is unnecessary. This is one of the smaller fees you may be expected to pay, but if your goal is to take the most frugal approach, it’s easily avoidable.

9. Park elsewhere. If you’re staying at a hotel where space is at a premium, within a city for example, you may be subjecting yourself to a fee for parking. If you must bring a car, you might be able to find a parking lot nearby for less money.

10. Leave yourself enough time to review your bill. If you’re rushing to check out quickly in order to catch a flight or your next appointment, you might not give your hotel bill the attention it deserves. Some hotels are kind enough to slip your bill under your door early on your check-out date, but if not, leave enough time to review your bill line by line. If there is a charge you don’t agree with, have it removed by talking to the manager. This happened to me on one of the first hotel stays I experienced as an adult responsible for paying the bill — and at a time when I probably didn’t have enough money for taking vacations, anyway.

What’s your favorite hotel fee?

Photo: kevin dooley

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Amazon.com’s Month of Black Friday Deals

This article was written by Flexo in Consumer. 10 comments.

When a sales approach reveals itself to be significantly profitable for a company, you can bet those who run that company will want to expand that approach. Last year’s “Black Friday” day-after-Thanksgiving sale on Amazon.com was popular, and this year the major online retailer is extending the event throughout the week leading up to Thanksgiving, and offering publicized deals throughout the entire month of November, counting down to the start of “Black Friday Deals Week.”

The Black Friday Deals Week Countdown features electronics, home and kitchen, and jewelry, but Amazon has deals throughout all categories. The featured deals follow the style of Amazon’s “Lightning Deals,” where the retailer offers a usually deeply discounted item every several hours in limited quantities and for a limited time. The deals are not announced ahead of time, so in order to take advantage, shoppers would need to check Amazon.com often.

Shopping online beats running around from store to store on Black Friday, running the risk of being trampled by crazy shoppers. On the other hand, you may miss out on a retailer’s best doorbuster-type deals if you don’t get out of the house. Some companies take advantage of the fact that this is the one time of the year that a large population of consumers are obsessed with finding great deals, and it’s easy for retailers to present an offer as a once-in-a-lifetime discount for shoppers who haven’t properly researched their desires. An event like Black Friday also open the opportunity for retailers to take advantage of the impulse reaction, leading people to buy what they don’t need simply for the feeling of scoring a great deal.

Perhaps I’ve become lazier over the last few years. Except in a few specific situations, namely photography equipment, I’ve found that Amazon.com consistently offers lower prices on the items I find myself needing or wanting most often. I often don’t bother to shop around unless it’s for a major purchase. If Amazon’s price ends up being slightly higher, I don’t worry too much. Thanks to all the money I’ve saved over the past decade, my overall savings compared with shopping at retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City more than make up for the difference.

How closely will you monitor Amazon.com’s Black Friday Deals Week Countdown? I might visit the site several times a week to see what the trends are. I haven’t organized a shopping list for the holidays yet.

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Save Money While in College

by Flexo

Higher education has its benefits, both financial and not. A bachelor’s degree helps ensure lifetime earnings will be greater than someone with just a high school diploma. Aside from the financial benefit, the cognitive skills used in tackling tough academics are useful inside and outside of a career. Nevertheless, college students often start careers at ... Continue reading this article…

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How a College Meal Plan Wastes Money

by Flexo

Meal plans at college are convenient. A student’s food costs are wrapped into each semester’s tuition bill, allowing them to focus on academics and college activities rather than finding the money for each meal. Many colleges offer similar meal plan choices, and the two most popular options are plans that offer either three meals a ... Continue reading this article…

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Avoid Late-Night Infomercial Scams

by Flexo

I’m usually awake late at night, and I’ve occasionally helped myself shut out distracting noise late at night by keeping the television audio on at a low volume. Invariably, the late night programming is centered around show-length commercials for a variety of products. Kitchen devices seem to be some of the most popular products sold ... Continue reading this article…

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Avoid These Big Money Wasters

by Flexo

CNN is offering a compilation of the ten biggest money wasters. These items would be obvious to most loyal Consumerism Commentary readers, yet it would not be out of the question to disagree with some of these money-wasters in some circumstances. ATM fees. You shouldn’t be surprised that banks will charge multiple fees for the ... Continue reading this article…

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