Looking good on a budget!

Over the weekend, I spent time with my very classy and beautiful friend Robin. One of Robin's amazing qualities is her ability to look fantastic on a budget and find deals everywhere. So for this post, I am channeling her style-fu to give some handy tips to gals on how to look good on budget.

* Everyone has a right to a mani/pedi. Mani is a manicure (or making your hands/nails look good) while a pedi is a pedicure (or making your feet/toenails look good). While you can go out and get it done professionally, anyone can easily give themselves a cheap brush-off at home (even guys!).

First, find somewhere to soak your hands/feet. You can use your bathtub, a bowl, or snag an inexpensive foot spa (Walmart and Target have them for $20). To add an inexpensive and nice fragrance (as well as help soften hard callouses), try tossing in some orange peel. You can eat the orange while your feet soak! After letting your feet soak for about 10 minutes, use a callous shaver/pumice stone/or even a rough washcloth to soften your feet and get rid of the dry, dead skin on them. (FYI- If you use a callous shaver, please be careful! Use light, frequent strokes. You can seriously cut the bottom of your foot.) When your feet look nice and cherry red, apply a moisturizing lotion. It can be as simple as some lotion you got from your last hotel stay. You're all done! Ladies may then want to touch up or apply toenail polish after wiping the lotion off the nail bed.

Hands are much simpler- soak, dry, lotion, polish. After you do it a few times, you get much faster at it. You can also use things like sugar scrubs and the like to combine the smoothing and moisturizing step.

* Separates stretch your wardrobe! When shopping for clothes, opt for items that you can wear with multiple other items. Buy singles rather than outfits or outfits that have items that can be worn with other things. Patterns in easy-to-match colors, slacks in neutrals (black, khaki), and items you can wear with something dressy or blue jeans can help you look good without spending a fortune.

* Do some long-term budgeting. $8 blade razors can cost $51 a year in blade refills. Whereas an electric razor, whose blades maybe need refills once a year (and are only $10), may only cost a little bit more than the refill blades. See if there are more cost-effective (and less consuming) alternatives.

* Budget in your "must haves" and compromise. Compromise and trade off an impulse buy (and we all make them) for something that you consider a must-have (particular shampoo, spa treatment, etc). Wait an extra month to get your hair cut or go without an item for a month or two. You can fit most things into your budget if you plan ahead for them accordingly.

In addition, you can also find when things are on sale and stock up on them.

* Make your own specialty beauty products. Cucumbers on the eyes really do work! In addition, a quick internet search will give you literally hundreds of recipes for making your own beauty products at home.

* Have a "home spa day" with your friends. Get a group of your friends together, go over to someone's house, and make an afternoon out of home spa treatments.

Some of these tips may seem pretty simplistic and things anyone could figure out on their own, but maybe it will remind you that you can take care of yourself even when money is tight. When you look good, you feel good.

Venture Capital is a Mortgage

After reading this post on founder dilution, I realized that my feelings on venture capital have changed since the financial crisis.

When we all lived in a world of exciting growth, rising house prices, and record profits, it was easier to be dazzled by the magic of Other People's Money. Borrowing and lending huge amounts seemed a great long-term financial strategy that prepared you for next year's record growth.

But now the buzz has worn off-- people are losing their homes and jobs with gut-wrenching speed. Oh, and that expected growth for next year? It's gone for an extended vacation.

Lending and overleveraging got us into a tough financial mess. And this got me seeing venture capital in the same light that I see home mortgages-- a good way to spend beyond your means and lose your hard work. Let's try some analogies...

Working for someone else is like renting an apartment.

Employees and renters have a lot of similarities. In both, you're more of a participant than a driver. Someone else makes the house rules, the arrangement can end when either party is unhappy, you're investing your time in someone else's bottom line (not yours!), and, fundamentally, most problems are someone else's responsibility. In the end, you're dependent on your employer and your landlord for vital aspects of your life.

Owning your business is like owning your home.

Here's where all the value, independence, and responsibility comes in. When you own your home or business, you make the rules, you're investing your time on your own value, and ultimately it's all your responsibility. You're a lot more independent of other people, but you're often closely tied to your investment.

In the ideal case, you own the majority of your house or business, and both are more than paying for themselves.

So people like to speed up that process...

Using VC money is like getting a home mortgage

You can't afford your dream business or house, so you get money with an agreement that eventually you will make good.

Involving lenders and VCs substantially increases the chance of affording the business/house, but their participation also significantly decreases the money and value you'd keep versus doing it all yourself. Their financial involvement could easily continue for decades, if you don't fail before that.

While borrowing and investment sounds like you're better off than renting/employment (in terms of personal value growth), you're actually inheriting many of the same limitations and chaining yourself to your benefactors for the long haul.

Why spend so wildly beyond your means?

Home buyers had a rude awakening-- now they're buying homes they can actually afford or foregoing the purchase entirely. Now they have to provide larger down payments because the lending system isn't as free as it was. Buying expensive homes on someone else's dime is harder now, so home owners are forced to avoid extensive leveraging of their future.

But who's going to teach entrepreneurs? VCs are still making deals and still growing companies who feel they need tons of money to get going.

While it's exciting to live beyond your means, your company doesn't have to do so. A company that can't grow itself without crazy amounts of outside money isn't going to be able to manage downturns and turbulence very well anyway. (Remember 2000?)

Even if you succeed, is it ultimately worth 80% of your hard work to grow your business faster? Borrowing money to bridge financial sticky points is one thing, but living beyond your means is a good way to over-leverage your future and drain your equity. Don't let yourself believe that the only way to success is with ridiculous infusions of investor cash.

Blessed be startups that drive their own growth without spending beyond their means.

Work hard, bootstrap, keep your head up, raise money modestly (if at all), and you can succeed without selling as much of your soul.

Romance during recession

I recently read an interesting MSNBC article about the effects of economic recession on relationships. Not surprisingly, divorce rates go up during recessions. Considering that finance holds a firm place as one of the top things couples fight about, this is even less surprising.

However, I happen to know 2 couples personally whose struggles with their layoff, jobs, and finances have made them stronger as a couple. So how did they do it?

The key is to focus on what is important. Yes, it is important to have a roof over your head. Yes, it's important to have food on the table. But a person has to pick and choose their battles. Is it really worth yelling at your wife for buying an $8 sweater (assuming it's not the last $8 to your name)? Is it really worth berating your husband in public for wishing for a television for his birthday? (Yes, I have seen the latter and I wanted to yell at the woman for being such a mean-spirited harpy.)

Sometimes a little consideration goes a long way- this is especially true in relationships.

So maybe the wife in the above scenario couldn't afford to buy him a television. What could she do instead? Maybe arrange so he could go to a bar to watch his favorite game on the big screen with his buddies. So many times, we focus on the things we can get for someone rather than the actions we can do to give back to them.

Can't afford to go on vacation? Make a vacation at home. Set up beach chairs in the livingroom, make pina coladas, and take a romantic bath together (hey, it's almost like a hot tub or hot spring!) Can't afford to go out for a date? Make a date night. Cook something the other person likes and watch a movie or play a board game.

There are some things money can't buy and one of those is your time. It is that time, and a little consideration, that can make romance flourish when it seems everything else is scaling backwards. :)

AltSearchEngines, ThrillList give great reviews

I was excited to see a fun (and good) write-up about us in AltSearchEngines. Not only did they like our site, but they had a good bit of fun with it too ("Yikes! I said no poodles! No!"). The whole people having fun with it part is definitely the best thing about Yumbunny. :)

The fantastic men's ezine,Thrillist, also gave us a great write-up in their latest edition. I had the pleasure of speaking with the reporter on the phone and I hope his readers enjoy the site as much as it looks like he did. :)

Last night, I was voting a good bit on my widget and having a little too much fun with it. Yes, we not only develop our stuff but we (and by we I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US on the team) test it ourselves, in real-time, just like a normal user. Because the questions are so open-ended, there are some great responses. We do also get some fake profiles, which we remove from the queue so you don't matched up with a joke profile. One of our developers set up a page with the top funniest fake profiles we've removed.

The whole page made me laugh but the funniest one was the male sloth, who listed his likes as "lady sloths" and "leaves. yum!" The rest of them were pretty funny as well and gave us all a little chuckle. Of course, real profiles are the best but at least the fake ones are good for a laugh. :)

Gifting Girls

Now that Valentine's Day is over, there are three kinds of people right now:
* Singles and people who don't celebrate
* People happy with the gift(s) they received
* People unhappy with the gift(s) they received

If you're in the first two categories, you're doing much better than people in the last category. ;) The sad part is that a lot of women, particularly, are in this last category.

Some lovers may show up to a woman's door bearing gifts only to walk away confused when they see the box of chocolates and flowers elicit a frown rather than a smile. The fact is that not all women like chocolates or flowers, and the best gifts are ones specifically tailored to the person to whom they are intended.

A friend of mine said it best: she would rather an hour of someone's time than a nice (but generic) expensive gift.

When thinking about a gift, especially for a woman, ask yourself the following:
* What are her interests? Is she into sports? Does she like scrapbooking? Reading? If you can't answer this question, maybe your gift should be taking your lover away for a romantic weekend and discovering the answer. ;)

* Does she prefer acts or things? Some women, actually, don't like getting things at all- they would rather someone do something for them. This is especially true for women who are secure financially. In this case, a tailor-made coupon book of things you will do for her (backrub, make her breakfast, etc) would be better than a piece of expensive jewelry.

* Is there something she's been mentioning a lot? Women are the masters of dropping subtle hints. Has she been mentioning a particular restaurant you haven't tried yet a lot? Did she call your attention to an article about a cool, new gadget she found? Whenever a woman mentions something specific, especially if it seems out-of-the-blue it's most likely a very subtle hint.

The key to good gift giving is to think about the person. Some women love flowers, some women love chocolate, some women (like me) love new video games or electronics.

Whatever you, don't give her something YOU want unless she likes it, too. If she's not a sports fan, prime tickets to a NBA game is obviously more for you than for her. :)

TechCrunch is yummy

TechCrunch, will you be my valentine? ;)

Just kidding. I was really excited to see them cover Yumbunny today though. The article was well-written, fun, and just really made my day. There is nothing cooler than other people seeing the fruits of your labor and really getting a kick out of it.

The story also made Digg, so please feel free to Digg us and share the love: http://digg.com/tech_news/Yumbunny_Crowd_Sourced_Matchmaking_With_Hilarious_Results/who#

After matching myself up (or not, as the case may be) on my laptop, in my pajamas, for over 45 minutes, I finally remembered that I should finish writing this blog post. ;) I have to admit, though, that it is quite fun and addictive to sit there and click through matches. I've been so focused on my other duties that I forgot how much fun Yumbunny actually is for the user.

Tomorrow I'll make a less rambling post regarding Valentines Day gifts and the female psyche. ;)

Until then, feel free to match me up with people:

Django Without Templates

I'm not sure how common it is to run Django without templates of any kind, but our project recently had reason to do so. Turning off all the template related settings is relatively straight forward if you follow the settings documentation from the Django site.

Django still expects certain templates to exist though. For example, when it can't find a page, it expects there to be a 404.html Django template. I didn't want any templates at all, so to overcome this, I handled all incoming urls with a default view that always returned a certain string when there was a problem. Hooking up the view in the urls.py file involved putting a regular expression at the end of the list like this r'^.*'. Be sure that it's at the end, otherwise it will always be called for urls you are expecting.

Another way to do this is to define the default handler for 404 errors. Adding a line like this to your urls.py will override the default 404 handler.

handler404 = 'project.application.views.default404'

You can do the same with server errors, which catching all the urls as above wouldn't help you with.

handler500 = 'project.application.views.default500'

More on this method is here.