Physical activities are both fun and good for your health. Among many advantages there are:

• increasing your life quality,
• releasing stress and anxiety,
• decreasing blood pressure,
• forging character,
• improving sleep,
• increasing stamina, immunity and your energy level.

This positive impact on your health will also directly increase your savings. According to The Physician and Sportsmedicine journal, $330 per year is the average cost in direct medical expenses per each physically inactive person.

As a bonus you may also get leaner and fitter. Investing time in physical activities looks like a very promising idea at almost no risk level (watch out for injuries).

photo credit: mikebaird

My favorite physical activities are:

• Martial Arts – I have kung fu classes twice a week with instructor and as much as possible I practise with my friends or alone.
• Weight Lifting at Gym – usually I do it four times a week
• Jogging.
• Swimming.

Currently I don’t perform jogging and swimming. Martial arts trainings give me quite enough cardio, but in future I would definitely love to enjoy also those two activities. I did a lot of swimming and running while I was at the University and I must admit they were giving me a great physical and mental boost.

What are your favorite physical activities?

Saving on gas and improving the fuel economy are definitely worth to consider, especially when gas prices are on the rise.

As there are already a lot of articles and posts around about this topic and I don’t want to repeat same ideas another time, I decided to prepare a list of useful links. These will definitely help you to improve your mileage and become a hypermiling master. Of course, many basic tips and ideas appear in multiple articles, but I’m sure that in every single one, you will find something unique and useful. In the end of my list, there are also links to my two posts concerning ‘car’ topic. Enjoy reading.

• U.S. Department of Energy gives tips about driving and car maintenance.
• J.D. presents 23 top tips for better fuel economy.
• Trent presents a gas station trick that puts money into pocket.
• David shows gas saving myths and real tips that work.
• There are 9 ways to save money on gas presented on SmartMoney.
• 10 more tips on saving on gas + free ebook on WiseBread.
• CNN Money exposed 4 gas saving myths.
• FiveCentNickel presents how to improve your gas mileage.
• Basic tips as well as some advanced tactics are presented at MyMoneyBlog.
• Read at Gather Little by Little how to become a hypermiler.
• Broke Grad Student refers to 9 simple ways to save on gas.
• Finally, I present how to utilize your time when stuck in traffic and I encourage you to optimize your routes.

If you have your own tips related to saving on gas, which are not mentioned in above articles, please share them in comments.

photo credit: Andy King

Stary Browar is an award-winning shopping, art and business centre in Poznan. It is located exactly on my 10 minutes way I everyday cover on foot, from my car to the office and back.

I love Stary Browar and I love shopping there. Most often I do quite unnecessary shopping. It is good for my pleasure, but not so good for my savings, and if you read my last post about saving money, you know that this idea is very important for me.

Almost everyday I pass near Stary Browar and it is very tempting to come in. And when I decide to come in, it is very likely that I will spend some money on not so necessary stuff. As I don’t want to buy unnecessary stuff five times per week (each time I cover my way to/from office), I had to coupe with this temptation.

Below is my short guide on how to restrain from unnecessary shopping. Try following steps:

Don’t take debit/credit cards and cash when you don’t need it.

This way you will not be able to buy anything. When I go to work, I need only some money for lunch and fruit. I don’t take more cash, so I know I will not spend it or lose it.

Visit shopping mall when you don’t carry any debit/credit cards or cash.

Sounds a little stupid. Connected with the previous one. The idea is to teach yourself that you can walk through the shopping centre/mall or market, watch exhibitions, products and in the end you don’t buy anything.

Visit shopping mall only to buy one necessary item.

You have some money with you and you go to the shopping mall. But you also know what you want to buy and this is something you really need. Buy only what you planned and then keep in mind the feeling connected with not buying anything at all, like I described in previous paragraph.

Allow yourself to buy something unnecessary.

When I started learning to control my shopping urge, I allowed myself to buy not so necessary item once per seven days. I scheduled one day of week for this. With time and practice, I’ve got better and better at controlling my buying temptations and I found myself not buying anything even when I had my inner permission to do so.

Avoid visiting and passing nearby shopping malls.

Simple and effective. But this one doesn’t work for me as Stary Browar is on my optimal route to work.

photo credit: ralphbijker

I was always a big fan of computer fighting games. When I was four, I played on ZX Spectrum games like Saboteur, Conan and especially I loved Yie Ar Kung Fu. Spent many hours on it. On my best friend’s Atari, we played together International Karate and Bruce Lee all the time. My love to martial arts, kung-fu and fighting games remained for a present day, but it is not the subject of today’s post.

Let’s go to the middle of 90’s. I don’t remember the exact date or even year (probably ‘95 or ’96 and I was thirteen), when, on some kind of geek show, I saw a review of Virtua Fighter 2 on Sega Saturn. That was a thing. I was positively stunned and I had to have a Saturn and VF2 on my own.

At this time in Poland, Sega Saturn cost 999zl. What I had in my pockets was something about 50zl, but no more. Of course I didn’t have any sources of income. From time to time, my parents were giving me small change for my outgoings.

I decided to keep saving as much as possible to eventually buy my beloved Sega Saturn. I remember I stuck a piece of paper on the wall near my desk and I wrote how much zlotych I am short to Saturn. Each time I saved few zlotych, I updated my counter. That was really motivating.

The idea of saving was great, but my sega-saturn-fund was growing very slowly. Definitely too slow. Time passed and when I was somewhere in the middle, my urge to Saturn somehow passed away. A brilliant example that it is good idea to wait some time before purchase, especially if it concerns more expensive stuff.

Ok, I didn’t want Sega Saturn, but the idea of saving money was really fun and I kept a goal to gather 1000zl.

Again, it was going very slowly. Without such a reward as Saturn, the second half of my first thousand was going even slower than the first one. But it was OK for me. No need to hurry.

The day has finally come. I had a 1000zl in my locker. So, what now?

Very soon I turned 18 and I was able to open my own bank account. I put my money there and I was very happy. That time the inflation ratio in Poland was really high. Unfortunately I don’t remember the exact number. However, at that moment I didn’t care about that at all. What was important is that on my personal account I had slightly over 10% rate of return. Each month, my 1000zl was giving me a free ticket to the cinema. Great. What was my next thought in my head? I want to save another 1000zl and put it on my account.

…and that is how my saving habit started.

photo credit: trungson