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The Happy Part

I’ve already decided that the impish grin you have on your face after reading the title to this post is a bit dirty, but as a good friend I will keep it to myself.

I’ve been spending a good amount of time talking about the wealthy part of the title to this blog.  We really haven’t been focusing too much on the happy part, which is something I hope to rectify over the coming weeks.  I guess the outstanding question we each have to answer for ourselves is what exactly in life it is that makes us happy.  Is it bad puns, like the title of this post?  Maybe you love running, or video games, or music.  I feel like it is almost imperative that we spend our lives figuring out what those things that make us happy are, and then shamelessly pursue them with little regard for anything else.  Have you found that one thing in your life that makes your heart skip beats?  If you have, please share it with the rest of us here, because I’m still looking for it.

Now, let me be clear, we aren’t talking about people here (unless you’ve decided that your thing is caring for others, if that’s the case more power to you).  We’re talking about those few topics that hold our attention long after others would have gotten bored and found another diversion.  Personally, I’m nearly that passionate about technology, but there are times when I have to set it down and pick up something else.  Those few people that I’ve met that have actually found ‘that thing’ rarely if ever feel the need to do that.  Charles Schultz said “I think I’ve discovered the secret of life — you just hang around until you get used to it.”  I hope that there’s more to things than just getting used to it.

So, our open question for the day is what is your thing?  And how did you find it?

July 28, 2009 | Filed Under Dream

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Finding Time

I’ve had several people ask me where I find the time to write this blog 4-5 times a week.  Not to mention a couple of slightly incredulous people asking me why I would even bother.  The latter can await my answer with baited breath for all I care, but the former probably deserve an answer.

How do I make the time, you ask?  First thing is that I check out Lifehacker.com daily for efficiency tips.  Basically, any tip worth considering eventually finds its way onto Lifehacker, so rather than search around for a faster way to do something, I devote 5 minutes a day to reading that one website.  It has definitely paid dividends – they talk about all kinds of stuff like time management, speeding up your routine, and they even cover some techie stuff like speeding up your computer.

The second, and probably most important thing I do to keep up with the blog is I schedule an hour a day to work on it.  Yep, just an hour.  A 500 word post (which is about my average) takes me about 30 minutes to compose, so that gives me a bit of time to mess around and suffer from my semi-regular writers block before getting to work.  Since the idea of writing this blog is really a marathon, and not a sprint, I don’t worry that I’m not putting enough time in – I figure that if I keep it up long enough, people will notice and keep coming back.

Now, you’re going to think this sounds silly, but there is also a commitment piece of this little puzzle -  I’ve decided that I will post several times a week, and that I will be successful at this.  That decision is almost always the most important part of execution – I’ve never met anyone that was successful at anything that didn’t decide that they were going to be before they were.

Oh, and did I mention that I like to write?  I started getting into this whole personal finance thing a few years ago after I bought my new house but refused to be house poor.  I didn’t want to stop going out with my friends and otherwise doing the things that I enjoy.  That wasn’t the point of buying my condo.  But, buying a house is a commitment, and something somewhere had to give – in this case it was my frivolous spending.  I decided to spend consciously.  But what I found I was lacking was any sort of accountability and support – it’s like trying to lose weight when your spouse keeps bringing home pints full of ice cream.  Since writing is something I enjoy, and gives some visibility without having to organize some sort of personal support, I thought blogging would be a good tool for me.

The last piece is that I make time to do this because I really appreciate the kind words and comments I get from everyone about it.  Since a lot of my readers (at least at this point) still know me personally, I get a ton of great verbal feedback about my blog, as well as the comments people leave.  Seriously, I even like it when people disagree with my thoughts on something – at least that means someones reading my stuff and thinking critically about it.  You can’t imagine how much of a motivator that is for me.

So, do you have something that you want to do, but you’re afraid it’s too much work?  Find the smallest chunk you can do and get a return on it (like my 500 word posts), and then do it.  After you’ve done the first one, keeping it up gets a lot easier.  Just make sure you have someone to give you crap if you start slacking off.  For me, I hope you all will give me that crap if I ever need it.

June 23, 2009 | Filed Under Dream, Planning / Goals

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What the swine flu can teach you about personal finance

I saw in the news that the swine flu has been transmitted to pigs in Canada by humans. No Joke.  Not to mention that it’s actually a pretty mild strain.  Seriously.  If I were a pig, I’d be pretty pissed.  Particularly after Egypt slaughtered 400,000 of my relatives.

Ok, so why am I talking about this on a personal finance blog like this one?  Because I think situations like this can teach you a ton about being wealthy.  Like what, you might ask?

Think of this as a teaching opportunity, a lot like when schools shut down around here when there’s the threat of snow.  People tend to over-react to news.  Don’t be one of those people.  It’s not too late to change direction, and panicking really won’t solve your problems – it will just make it more difficult for you to get bacon.

May 4, 2009 | Filed Under Dream, Money, Planning / Goals, Wealth

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Save for your dreams, not for retirement…

I touched on this a few days ago, but I really want to talk about it in more depth.  As I’ve said, I’ve been having some trouble articulating my ‘dream’, but I feel like this concept is so powerful that it deserves to be talked about even without being able to give a personal example of how I’m doing this.

For the past 80 years or so, the idea of your retirement has the fourth leg of the bar stool that is the “American Dream®” (Go to College,Start a Family, Buy a House, Retire).  Talk about an effective marketing campaign – can you think of anything that is more American?  Ok, maybe apple pie, but seriously, this is what several generations have collectively been programmed to strive towards.  Unfortunately, much like home ownership, I’m not convinced that my generation will ever see the retirement that my grandparents did.  (yeah, yeah, I’ll talk about home ownership some other time.  I promise.)

Before I continue, just let me establish that this is not an excuse to stop investing in your various ‘retirement’ accounts.  Just that you’ll probably want to use (and think of) those accounts differently.

Honestly, I’m not even convinced that my parents, who are coming up on the mythic retirement age of 65, will ever truly get the chance to retire and live a life of leisure.  Good thing neither of them is really into that.  My mom just a year ago finished her masters degree in social work, and my dad bought into a small business just a year prior to that.  Talking to them, you wouldn’t think they were ever planning on retiring.

Ok, so what should we do instead?  I’m still advocating long term savings, and I still think everyone should be contributing as much as they can to any tax-advantaged savings account they can.  I just think we need to start thinking about them differently.  Sitting in an old folks home playing bridge at 2 pm in the afternoon and seeing the grandkids once every few months isn’t something that sounds appealing.  It sounds like something I want to avoid.  So instead, I feel like we should start calling them ‘Dream’ accounts instead of retirement accounts.

Everyone (and I mean everyone) should be saving at least 10% of their annual earnings for the long term.  That includes saving money for a time in which you won’t be able to work.  That is different from retirement.  Retirement is a ‘life of leisure’ where as what I’m talking about is a life of hospital bills and not wanting to be broke when you are no longer capable of caring for yourself.  Basically, it’s a really big emergency fund.  But it’s not for fun, and I don’t think it needs to be able to support you for 30 years (although that’s a great goal).  But it should be big enough that your needs are met when the time comes, and it can be co-mingled with your dream money for simplicity sake.

If your dream is to buy a dive shop in Bermuda in 20 years, maybe you don’t want to put all of your long term savings in your 401(k) where it will be hard to get to.  You might choose to put in just the minimum to get your company match, and then put the rest into a Roth IRA, which allows you to take the principal out at any time penalty free.  That way, you get to save for the future, get a tax advantage, and also get to save for that dive shop (there are ways to do that from your 401k as well without paying a penalty, I’ve been told).  If your dream is to travel the world and write for a travel magazine (or blog), then you might want to allocate your money differently still.  And heck, if your dream really IS to retire and be practically useless, keep following the advice of everyone else, because it’s definitely good, if that’s for you.  The point here is you should be deliberate about that you are saving about, not just some nebulous thing that’s 40 years from now that you’ll probably hate.

May 1, 2009 | Filed Under Dream, Retirement

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