My hindsight can be your foresight
I have this printed out and sitting on my desk to remind myself about these ten essentials basic actions. Everything else seems to fall into place when one works on the basics. Skipping over the basics drags the process of learning and implementation at the expense of long-term follow-through. Many of these are referenced in “The Leader List” from an earlier post. Go back to it and see if you can find them in that blog.
Simon Sinek is my current favorite leadership teacher. He takes leadership and human motivation and puts them in incredibly simple terms. Most can identify with his style. He states out loud what I have been thinking for years but could never articulate the message the way he does. In the spirit of leadership, I have begun to compile a list of skills that we all will eventually master at various levels. These are the basics of my career management that I picked up along the way. They are in no particular order or priority. Continue reading “The Top 10 Skills You Will Master”
What’s the difference between a “Shortcut” and a “Hack”? It was not clear to me, so I decided to write this piece based on the image above that came from Lifehack.org.
I’ll take a stab at differentiating the two.
To me, a Hack is related to a soft skill and a shortcut is something I took when walking home from school by cutting through a couple of neighbor’s yards to get home faster.
There is no shortage of hacks/shortcuts and everybody loves a shortcut. Once you find and used a shortcut regularly, 80% of the time you don’t even realize that you are using it. Over time, a shortcut becomes your normal routine. Continue reading “Every Hack You Need Located In One Place”
Having a birthday recently, I stepped up my game by consciously appreciating events, people, and interactions more. It’s a lot tougher than appreciating material things that one can see and touch. It’s a work in progress with plenty of room for improvement.
I’ve been saving this quote from a blog:
“Humans don’t prosper without a positive way to spend their waking hours. Children, family, exercise, and chores can take up a few hours, but without something else, it can be brutal.”
The quote comes out of this blog and I implore you to read it.
https://www.urgentcarecareer.com/2017/03/stories-of-an-early-retiree/
While this article focuses on retirement, it was pretty easy for me to re-align it to my very own happiness meter. The financial part of retirement was an easy but long process.
Bottom Line #1.
Never during my quest for FIRE did any of my personal goals, planning, and financial models ever account for my happiness for myself or Mrs.Fromthebachrow.
That is why the quote above resonated with me. It’s what needs to get worked on while enjoying an encore career.
Bottom Line #2.
The quote listed above helps connect another set of dots for me. If I keep connecting the dots, the picture of a well-lived life will eventually come into focus as I appreciate the process.
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Save some, spend some, invest some
I’ve been working on my tax return for the past couple of weeks. I’m still waiting for Charles Schwab to release the 1099’s. They are always the last to report my financial statement to me. What’s up with that?
During my TurboTax income “questionnaire”, I’m always pleased with the small efforts that I put in throughout the year to track my expenses to the nearest penny. My year-end roll-up makes doing taxes just more palatable since I keep track of the necessary docs to get taxes done quickly and easily.
Continue reading “Tax Time & Connecting The Dots”
Every year between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I have developed the habit of cleaning out my home office and discarding items that are no longer relevant for the upcoming year. Like most people, I tend to hang on to a few things that I believe I can use in the future. Things like old swimming goggles that no longer have any elastic left in the strap, old watch batteries, or loose screws that belong to something. Last but not least, a Palm Pilot, an iPod, and a stack of old iPhones that still somehow fire up when fully charged. I keep these items in a special place, you, know, just in case I need them.
I have the magazine page below hanging in my office since 2003. I believe it is from Men’s Health Magazine or Experience Life Magazine. Either one, it captured my attention enough to tear it out and hang it in my home office.
This year, I decided to scan it to secure an electronic version since it’s starting to fade.
While I went that far, I decided to make a quickie blog post of it.
Have a read through the page below.
Take a second reading, but this time, read it again, more thoughtfully and with Gratitude.
There, now you have an achievable New Year’s goal that you can work on daily,
Bottom Line #1.
Most fail at New Year’s Resolutions because the goal is too big and too difficult to measure and monitor.
Bottom Line #2.
“Breaking one’s promise is costly, but exceeding it does not appear worth the effort,” concluded the authors of a 2014 paper published in Social Psychological and Personality Science on promises kept, broken, and exceeded.
Strive for something easier and simpler.“Meet your deadlines.”
Enjoy the process of working through your obstacles with a more thoughtful approach.
It certainly has been fun and interesting year again. The most notable event occurred right before my very eyes as I was planning to complete the RE of my very own FIRE.
Continue reading “A Quick Look In The Rear View Mirror: 2018”
While the October/November weather was still holding, we decided to take another road trip in the Challenger; Chicago to Winslow, Arizona via the historic Route 66. A few years ago we drove Route 66 from Vegas to Flagstaff and I wanted to drive more of this historic road before it completely disappeared.
There are plenty of sights to see during this 15-day round-trip drive. We also made a detour off the route to visit a couple of National Parks and Monuments. You know, since, we were so close.
We didn’t stay on RT 66 the entire time because Interstate 40 runs parallel to it quite frequently. I-40 replaced much of RT 66 and in many cases runs parallel to the original road as a frontage road.
Our goal during planning was to drive about 400 miles every day and stop along the way at things that interested us or were suggested by the guidebooks and maps that we were following.
I put a list of the resources that we used at the end of this blog. Continue reading “On The Road Again: Route 66 Chicago to Winslow”
Personal Finance has different meanings to each reader and to some, the term is complicated and overwhelming. If you don’t read any further into this particular blog you can easily step off the page with this Plan and go about your other web surfing activities:
“Spend Less Than You Earn”
Welcome back. This is part 3 of 3.
If you read my article about where you were on the second saddest day in rock & roll history, then you can certainly figure out that our next stop was going to be Memphis.
I’ve been wanting for years to go to Memphis to see Graceland.
Memphis completely surprised me with the number of other points of interest worth experiencing.
We got back into the Airbnb groove again with an ideal location near Beale St.
Beale Street is lined with many a Blues Bar. Great music poured out of nearly every bar. Continue reading “The Ultimate Southeast Road Trip Part 3: More Airbnb’s”
We recently completed an 18-day, 3,451-mile tour of a bunch of Southeastern states. While the first week was planned very well, the second and third week’s plans were more fluid and flexible. We camped a few nights, used some Hilton points at a couple of hotels and booked three separate Airbnb places.
Continue reading “The Ultimate Southeast Road Trip Part 2: A Few More Airbnb’s”
For years, we’ve been using VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) to book houses and condos during vacations. During my years of business travel, the last thing I really wanted to do on vacation was to stay in another hotel. The beauty of VRBO was that once we picked a city destination, like Livingston, MT, VRBO.com became our first stop to see the housing choices that were available to us. Continue reading “Taking The Fear Out of Booking an Airbnb”
Who doesn’t like a good book that you’ve enjoyed reading and learned a few nuggets of knowledge from the author? Case in point, Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard. It’s an easy-reading parable about a couple of mice in a maze looking for, what else, Cheese. Being a parable, it is generously peppered with metaphors related to the pursuit of goals. The book will help make you aware of the dynamics that are occurring outside of your field vision (the maze) and the constant changes to the environment that you choose to be in. It’s a very fast-reading book that can help you learn how to recognize, plan, and respond to the silent language of change to your best advantage. Continue reading “What To Do When They Move The Cheese”
I have some time free available between “job hunting” activities to explore different areas of interest. A few weeks ago, I got an invitation in the mail to sign up for a free retirement seminar. Normally, I would shred these without a second thought because nothing is ever free or they usually have some strings attached. In this case, I decided to sign up since it was at a convenient time and location. It was my first seminar on this topic and I knew there had to be some kind of sales pitch involved.
I have never been to one of those infamous vacation time-share seminars. I heard a few stories about how they wouldn’t let people leave the room without enduring many high-pressure closes for commitments before collecting their free “gift”, just for listening. Preparing myself for this approach, I went to the seminar with an open mind. Continue reading “Here’s Why I Don’t Need a Financial Advisor (Part II)”