Who doesn’t like a blast from their past? Recently, Vicki Robin, co-author of Your Money or Life has been in the press discussing the updated version of the 1992 classic Your Money Or Your Life.
For me, this book sparked my imagination and inspired me after reading just a few pages when I came across it in the library in 1997. Retrospectively, I realized how I missed this book when it first came out because we were pretty busy raising very young children while keeping a job that required overnight travel.
Bottom Line #1. I’ll cut right to the chase. Read the recent article on what all of this FIRE hubbub is all about.
Hey fitness fans, it’s coming up to the holiday season when New Year’s Resolutions will be cast in hummus dip served at holiday parties. Around this particular time of year, my gym has new people taking tours and signing up as they prep for the New Year and their own “new you”. January 1st marks the time when people make yet another valiant attempt to turn over a new leaf toward losing some weight and getting some exercise. Continue reading “21 Kinds of People I See At The Gym”
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, gratitude.
Overcoming Obstacles
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.
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)”
This week’s post will be an easy read. I am going to direct you to another blog that has a pretty cool savings/retirement calculator guide that works and is very accurate.
I’m throwing in the towel on the topic of FIREbecause it’s covered so well by 1300+ other bloggers and the value that I add applies to a very small circle of influence. The 2nd-gen FIRE boys are well on their way, so keep your expense tracking and net worth sheets updated. Your efforts and diligence will pay you back, well before the 20 or so years that it took me. Continue reading “Saving Is a Simple Process”
Back in December, there was a fromthebachrow article called: The 20 Different Kinds of People that I see in the Gym. It was a setup article about a very common New Year’s Resolution which many people have which is to get into shape. At the very least, the resolution was a way to resume the long-forgotten healthy lifestyles of our past selves.
With six months of the year completed, I have to ask. How are you doing with those New Year’s Resolutions? Resolutions in July? Yes, for most, the resolutions were tossed out along with those empty champagne bottles from the New Year celebration. Continue reading “How New Year’s Resolutions Last Into July”
If you’ve been following this blog for any period, you may have noticed that I follow the mantra that planning is a process, not an event. Thoughtful planning is a skill that can be developed over some time using experience and the amazing plethora of resources at our fingertips. In our age of technology, planning can occur at a moment’s notice. I occasionally use OpenTable to make a restaurant reservation on the fly when walking in a particular neighborhood in Chicago and wanting someplace nice or interesting to eat that is nearby. One is always treated better with a reservation without the wait, even if it’s made fifteen or twenty minutes before walking into the restaurant door. That’s as close to impulse planning as I get. For everything else, I strive to be a planner. Continue reading “Why You Should Have a Plan For FU Money”
Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad Poor Dad book series wrote: “For many, the power of their excuse is more powerful than the power of their dreams.”
Excuses might be one’s defense mechanism for avoiding the discomfort of moving into unfamiliar territory.
Up until the age of when we were selecting what college we were planning on attending, someone else was making our choices for us. There are of course a few exceptions. Take for example when I was a kid with a dime in my pocket. I had some pretty exciting choices to make when I was selecting some candy to blow my dime on at Zarchies’ corner store. Back then, ten cents could buy ten pieces of candy. Zotz, Bazooka, Hot Tamales, Bullseyes, Pop Rocks, and Bit O’ Honey were some of my favorites. I vividly remember walking home and eating those sugary delights. I had to make sure I ate all that candy before I got home. Hint, don’t get the Bit O’ Honey. Remember the slogan? If you’re in a hurry, forget it.
Bottom Line #1. The best position is to be in is to make a decision for yourself. In some cases, if you don’t, someone else will make the decision for you, and you may not like the direction or result. Either way, a decision is going to be made with or without you.
OK, back to the topic on excuses. Making excuses limits your behavior to get what you really want. One has to learn to identify what one wants once they filter out the noise of professional objectives.
For the past three weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of filtering out, actually eliminating, every one of my professional objectives that came into me through a corporate Outlook email box. Yep, I’m no longer at my place of employment.
More on that story after I finished digesting the seven years that I was there and after I finish organizing a bunch of moving parts to complete the exit. Of course, there is a happy ending to the story. Not as good as Edith’s story, but along a similar thread.
Since the previous package, I’ve prepared for these reorgs and times between gigs by getting my financial house in order. If you recall from previous posts, I discovered the term escape velocity. The FIRE Community refers to it differently, but the same concept. Since I have a science background and was a child of the NASA era in its heyday, escape velocity provides much more meaning to me as I was not able to achieve this with a lot of help and guidance.
The one thing that I struggled with and made plenty of excuses to avoid working out in detail was deciding what I would do with my time without the structure of corporate goals and objectives.
When I finally receive my very last W-2 statement, how will I spend the 168 hours each week? For 33 W-2 years, 40-50 hours each week was structured by an employer, customer or a service to a series of fantastic direct reports.
I had designed a robust cash flow model that extends out to 2027. I really struggled to design a schedule to account for the actual 168 hours that are available each week while unemployed for, say, the next 33 years. I made the excuse that I had the plan rattling around in my head and I will eventually write it down when the time comes. It was made tougher because of inexperience, procrastination. Of course, reasons and excuses fueled by perhaps some complacency and lack of a sense of urgency without a deadline also didn’t help matters.
Bottom Line #2:“While we are postponing, life speeds by.” -Seneca
Again, Mrsfromthebachrow nudges me lovingly into a different thought pattern to shift my behavior away from a financial analysis planning excel sheet into daily practical living and planning.
Over the course of the past three months, I’ve come up with the following response to the question that I repeatedly asked myself. “How will I spend my 168 hours each week when not in vacation mode?” I started with the easy stuff and worked my up until the struggle became unproductive. This is what I came up with, and just recently started to add time values to them.
Sleeping: 58 hours
Gym time & Yoga: 14 hours
Fun, leisure, friends, family spontaneity: 12 hours
Linkedin research: 2 hours (you, know, networking and job hunting)
House Cleaning: 1 hours
Inside house maintenance/projects: 1 hours
Outside house maintenance/projects: 1 hours
Library time: 1 hours
Procuring supplies: 1 hours
Wasting time online: 2 hours?
Crap, how many hours is that, only 135 hours? What the hell am I missing? Oh, that’s right, a job and travel. I don’t have one of those right now, so there’s some of those missing 33 hours.
Bottom Line #4. “To get different results, you’re going to have to do things differently.” -Darren Hardy
What else do I want to accomplish? (I have a separate running list of places that we would like to do some slow travel and is this outside the scope of this piece.)
Now that I’m between jobs, so to say, and in decompression mode, it might be time to make a shift away from accomplishments and ask a different question. What do I want to learn? What new hobbies or experiences do I want to get involved in?
Those are better questions, don’t you think?
Again for the past three months, I started jotting down things that could fill in the 33 hours that I have available. This was a brain dump and the items are not ranked. So here goes.
Get better at fly fishing and fish locally
Try learning Spanish with podcasts
Explore Paintless Dent Removal training (PDR)
Factory Five 3 day build school in Michigan
Build a Factory Five Roadster
Take a WordPress Coding Course at the local Community College
Rebuild the lawn mower engine that has been giving me problems
Restore the 1999 Trek Mountain Bike that my team gifted me.
Lakefront time: biking & paddle boarding
Part-time work at a marina, fitness center, winery, Trader Joe’s, Costco,
a. usher at concert venues, college sports arena or Wrigley Field
Write the personal finance course for College Seniors
Write a sales training course for the service industry
Temporary Contract Sales Manager
Cloud-based project marketing consulting. (yes, Julian, I’ve been following)
It’s an interesting list that is broad, yet not too deep. I plan on revisiting my childhood and adolescent memories to see what I neglected all these years.
Perhaps it’s time for all those silent readers to take a few moments to jot some other ideas in the comments section and share them for consideration. It’s brainstorming, so no idea will be rejected.
While you are preparing your thoughts, I’ll leave with this last point that puts this whole FIRE concept in the proper context for me.
Bottom Line #5. “The goal of life is not to relax on the beach, sipping mojitos all day. The purpose is to find something you love that also adds value to the world.” -Benjamin Foley
Each of our four seasons, spring, summer, fall & winter as measured by our calendars, lasts three months. In the Chicago area, we have experienced weather and temperatures that fit each of those seasons within the same week.
Life and careers can match and mirror cycles that are very similar to the seasons we experience. Rather than three months, our growth and maturity cycles in years. Now that birthdays seem to come faster as my time erodes, I started to reflect on the seasons of my life. Let’s say each of our life’s periods can be referred to as seasons for this particular article. I wondered how I can categorize and measure these seasons of my lifetime.
If one pays attention, some signs highlight the transitions between seasons. This transition allows for some time to recognize and prepare for the upcoming season. Continue reading “The Seasons of a Lifetime”
Exactly ten years have passed since my time standing on the GE “Meatball” logo during sales meetings. On February 18, 2008, I took a separation package which provided me with an opportunity to leave a job that I truly enjoyed. Forced out by a couple of truly horrible, horrible bosses. A pair of real douche bags.
Happy Holidays.
Thanks for coming back and checking in on the blog.
You’ve probably been wondering why the regular posts have come to a pause. Well, I’ve been focused on a few other things for these past several weeks. I have been reviewing much of the blog content this time of year for a couple of reasons. Mainly to check myself to make sure that I am walking the talk. Nearly forty-four posts contain nuggets of hindsight, resources, and my version of a “bottom line”. Continue reading “The Year End Wrap Up”
Here’s what I learned running a blog through 42 blog articles this year.
1. Learned how to start up and maintain a website.
2. Developed better writing skills.
3. Learned how to create content that adds value to 80% of the blog visitors.
4. Learned how to use web-based tools to increase security on my website.
5. Gained a better understanding of Google Analytics functionality.
6. Began learning the art of SEO management.
7. Realize that most people are online to either solve a problem or be entertained. (mostly to be entertained).
8. Discovered that gratitude is much more difficult to measure than accomplishments. Continue reading “8 things I learned During My Blog Start-Up”
If you have not noticed, there are small changes in format and functionality made to this website every few weeks. Not only do I try to come up with valuable and creative content, I also learn how to make this website easier to navigate and increase its functionality. For example, this week, I fixed the iPhone/iPad interface bug that now allows comments from those devices. The previous week I added the search box that works. Whenever I am about to make a code or layout change to the website, I go through a backup procedure and keep a copy of all of the files and code offline, just in case I did something stupid and can quickly go back to the functional version. After the change, I test everything I possibly can and have the patience for it. This week’s task was to stress test the search box, and just for fun, I typed the word “Goals” and learned there are ten articles that reference goals.
One of the common underlying themes in articles about goals is that most touch on systematic methods to set goals, a system. Developing systems and workflows is a professional approach to establishing habits. Changing or adapting new habits requires a behavior change. Changing behavior is difficult if one does not recognize that a particular behavior needs to be changed, especially if it is identified as a possible root cause. Let’s look at an example of changing behavior.
There are a couple of blogs that were written to help the reader observe and identify behaviors. One, in particular, was the post on tracking your spending for a week on food, transportation, and entertainment for one week. How many of you made the effort to collect receipts every time you made a purchase? Collecting receipts is one step of a simple system. How many of you summarized the purchases using a notepad or the Excel sheet that was provided? Not many, based on the comments and conversations I’ve had with a few readers, and here’s the reason why. There is a saying in sales that applies to behavior changes.
“A customer won’t purchase until the cost of the problem outweighs the cost of the solution.”
The same principle applies to breakthroughs that create behavior changes. No amount of “would of, should of, could of” will change a behavior until a level of discomfort is more unbearable than implementing a system and creating an action plan to solve a problem or achieve a goal. Even if blog writers or coaches provide tools, techniques, and systems and lay them out and explain how to use them, no one ever will use tools and techniques until a necessary reactive response comes into play, like a decision to change a circumstance or a habit. Developing systematic methods to set and achieve goals creates a more proactive environment, which to me, is certainly more enjoyable than constantly reacting to things. Much worse, solving the same problem over and over again and expecting a different result. Like many skills that one develops, the secrets, reveal themselves when you know where to look and recognize their significance as they are applied to you. So let’s get back to the headline that brought you into this post and down to this week’s bottom line: How to Develop Your System. Easy, you don’t have to develop your system, you merely borrow it from someone else, implement it, and begin to make subtle changes to make it work for you. This blog contains quite a few systems that started with an idea from my mentors, coaches, authors, leaders, and other bloggers, and took best practices and made them my own. I merely took them to the next level by applying them to the circumstances that I created to achieve the results. You wouldn’t build your hammer or saw to build a birdhouse, would you? Of course not. You would buy a hammer and a saw and look on YouTube to see how someone else did it. You now have the tool and the knowledge, there’s your system. You only need some basic materials and the desire and time to get it done with your own hands, focus, and creative style. Like anything, once you have the system, execution is your own hurdle. Taking those first steps builds momentum. The only way to take those first steps is to make the decision toaction and yes, I have a system for that too.
I follow a handful of bloggers that cover personal finance on one end of my interest scale to leadership on the other end. In resources, I list a few of the FIRE bloggers that I follow and at times, I occasionally make a few comments on the posts that they write. Most times, I read the piece, and pull out one or two helpful nuggets of their perspective think about them for a while, and figure out how I can utilize the information. Sometimes I even save a couple of the sites or tools that are referenced and refer to them later where I retrieve them from my Favorites folder. I don’t take too much action unless it grabs my attention and imagination. I’ll leave my option open to re-read the blog later on. Guess what? Later never seems to materialize as the sense of urgency has peaked and it’s never the same stimuli later on. It’s a component of the “decay rate.” Continue reading “How Make Better Decisions That Lead To Action”
If you’ve been following this blog for any period, you may have noticed that I follow the mantra that planning is a process, not an event. Thoughtful planning is a skill that can be developed over some time using experience and the amazing plethora of resources at our fingertips. In our age of technology, planning can occur at a moment’s notice. I occasionally use
Exactly ten years have passed since my time standing on the GE “Meatball” logo during sales meetings. On February 18, 2008, I took a separation package which provided me with an opportunity to leave a job that I truly enjoyed. Forced out by a couple of truly horrible, horrible bosses. A pair of real 
Happy Holidays.
Here’s what I learned running a blog through 42 blog articles this year.
I follow a handful of bloggers that cover personal finance on one end of my interest scale to leadership on the other end. In