Joseph Dickson – Page 6 – Joseph Dickson

YNAB on Paper

During the month of December I signed up for the 34 day free trial of YNAB and though I love the App, the You Need A Budget (YNAB) system is simple enough to track on paper; though most prefer the YNAB inspired spreadsheet from Blooming Finances.

If spreadsheets work why pencil and paper?

Today, I’ve got some downtime at work as the holidays approach, so I pulled out my under-utilized Laconic Gantt Chart and began to reflect on the first half of the month as well as looking forward to January and as I wrote each category down followed by, assigned dollars, account activity dollars, and remaining available, I discovered that even if its nowhere close to as efficient as a spreadsheet or app, YNAB on paper is not just possible, its relaxing; all my hard work of uncovering the real expenses in my life was done while I read the book and began to apply the system, keeping a paper and pencil record is not just doable but almost as easy.

In the last two weeks my anxiety for budgeting nearly disappeared and though YNAB’s current pricing at $109 per year isn’t cheap, it’s worth $9.08 a month for that peace of mind.

Reflections on a year of using ClassicPress

Last December, I migrated from WordPress to ClassicPress. Matt Mullenweg was shattering the once vibrant community with every post and interview, and at the peak it seemed his noisy irrelevant rants and gatekeeping by withholding services from people he disagreed with arrived almost daily.

ClassicPress offers an alternative for projects that don’t benefit from from full-site-editing and the block editor. ClassicPress launched in August of 2018, with the intention of continuing a lightweight content management experience predictable for content contributors, site maintainers and visitors.

Around this time I was also craving a simple platform for blogging and communicating my thoughts, free of gimmicks and feature bloat. I could just post a status update or blog post and move on with my day.

Happily my only setback was not informing my web hosting environment that I had migrated to WordPress, this led to a conflict when cPanel forced an unwanted upgrade back to WordPress. Thankfully An Honest Host, has great customer service and we worked through restoring from a recent backup and modified my install for ClassicPress preventing the problem in the future. Read the migration documentation and get ahead of any possible conflicts.

Thank you, ClassicPress, for a great 2025.

Revisiting the Kokuyo Campus 20 Ring Binder

My 20-ring binder hasn’t seen use since early August of 2025. I have been using a Traveler’s Notebook (TN) daily for the last few months, and that’s a shame because I tend to use it more like a to-do list and planner, while any longform free writing becomes infrequent due to unfounded concerns about archiving meaningless crap alongside valuable ideas. For me, a bound insert makes me feel less free than loose sheets of paper, which I can compost moments later with the morning coffee grounds and move on with my day.

About the photo:

Kokuyo Campus A5 20 ring binder, clear.
Paper: A5 Kokuyo Campus 20 hole “Biz” Loose Leaf paper, blank.
Pen: Kaweco Sport with an extra fine nib.
Ink: Pilot Iroshizuku Ama-iro (sky).