The Life You’ve Always Wanted?

August 8, 2010 10 Comments

We all have our ideas of what the “perfect life” would be like but often the images in our mind are a far cry from the reality we are living.  If you were able to travel back in time and ask a younger version of yourself if this is the future they’d choose for themselves, what would their answer be?  Twenty years ago, could you have envisioned the life you have today?  Is it everything you’d imagined or have your dreams evaporated into thin air?

Chances are, the life you are living today is nothing like the life you expected to have.  You sold your ideals for a dollar bill.  Why?  “Because that’s just what adults do.” We have to make a living to pay the bills.  There’s food to buy and television to watch.  How are we supposed to save the world when we’re up to our eyeballs in debt?  The mortgage isn’t going to pay for itself, is it?

“It is what it is.” There’s no time for dreams.  Dreams don’t pay the bills or put food on the table.  Our younger selves didn’t understand what it meant to be adults.  We have obligations now and we’ve built our lives around some idea of what it means to be a “responsible adult” in today’s world.  What we ended up with is a career that steals our time and energy, a mortgage that drains our income and debt from all the Stuff we bought to furnish and decorate our home.  We have many thousands of dollars in Student Loans and a couple of cars to pay for.  Oh yeah, and the credit cards…

It looks like being an adult isn’t all that we’ve been led to believe.  All of our lives we’ve been told that adults are “responsible”, implying that it’s somehow more virtuous to fall in line and follow the leader than it is to follow our youthful ambitions.  The “responsible” thing to do is find a job, get married and have children, buy a house and a couple of cars, then keep your nose to the grindstone until it’s finally time to retire.  When that day does come, we hope that our health will last long enough to enjoy the life of our dreams; the life we’ve been waiting our whole life to live.

And what has it all amounted to?  A garage full of Stuff we never really needed in the first place, kids that seem to resent our very existence unless we’re buying them something, a spouse that we barely seem to know anymore and a huge house we aren’t able to enjoy because we are at the office earning a paycheck to pay the mortgage.

Sure, we have all the Stuff we could ever imagine.  We drive nice cars and wear nice clothes.  Our home is decorated like a magazine cover and on the weekends we are able to relax with a cold beer in the backyard.  On the surface things seem wonderful.  A little deeper though and things don’t look as good anymore.

What are we sacrificing to create this image of the “perfect” life?  Our time, our energy, our sanity?  If the average person starts working fresh out of college at the age of 22 and retires at 67, that’s 45 years of life sold for a dollar bill.  We’re trading our life to fill our garage with junk, for a heap of metal to take us to a job so that we can pay for that same heap of metal.

What if there were a different way?  What if you didn’t have to spend your entire life working?  Would you do it?  If you knew that in 10 years you could be financially able to walk away from your job with enough money to pay for all your expenses, would you have the ambition to make it happen?

There is a way, it is possible!  The only problem – of course there’s a problem – is that to get there, you have to minimize your spending and save.  “But that’s Un-American!” Our entire lives we’ve been told to “get out there and boost the economy.”  After the attacks on September 11 we were told to go shopping as a way to stand up against terrorism.  Does that mean we’re supporting terrorism by saving money?  Of course not!

What I’m talking about isn’t a new concept.  It isn’t impossible.  It’s been done before and it’ll be done again.  And not just by a few outliers but by many thousands of people.  Will you be one of them???

What’s the secret?

Live Frugally: Cut your expenses to the bone.  Anything that doesn’t offer real value to your life is out.  That might mean going without a contracted cell phone, cable television, TiVo or Netflix.  Find alternatives or other ways to occupy your time.  It may seem impossible now but you can live without these things.

Get Out of Debt: You can’t be financially independent when you’re in debt.  Get out, get out, get out! By adopting a frugal lifestyle, the extra money you’re able to save can be applied towards eliminating your debt.  After you’ve saved up enough money to cover six months of living expenses, every penny should be thrown at your debt.

Save: Once you’ve paid off the last of your debt it’s time to save like never before.  It may take you a few years, maybe even ten or 15, to save enough money to become financially independent but that’s better than 45 years!

Invest: This is where the magic is!  With the money you’ve saved, you can invest it into conservative investment vehicles which will pay you interest in fixed intervals over a specific length of time.  If you’ve saved and invested enough, this interest will cover all of your monthly expenses.  Now your money is working for you, not the other way around!

If you’d like to learn more about the process outlined above, I recommend checking out the book Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez.

Filed under Book Reviews, Budgeting, Career, Consumerism, Debt, Employment, Family, Freedom, Frugality, Goals, Investing, Lifestyle Engineering, Money, Opportunity, Potential, Preparation, Prioritizing, Retirement, Savings, Spending

People are Idiots and I can Prove it! by Larry Winget

February 1, 2009 Leave a comment

People Are IdiotsPeople Are Idiots and I Can Prove It! 

The 10 Ways You Are Sabotaging Yourself and How You Can Overcome Them

Larry Winget

Chapter One: You Said You Could Prove It; Okay, Prove It!

How are people idiots?  Larry seperates people’s idiocy into a variety of different catagories, including “People who purchase crap from televison commercials”.  There are a few categories that become a recurring theme; Health, Parenting and Finances.  For each category listed, he lists off examples of how exactly people are idiots.  One of my favorites is his rant about savings:

“The average fifty-year-old in America has less than $2,500 saved.  Let’s say you go to work when you are twenty-five.  (Most people go to work much earlier than that, but I will keep the math easy for you.)  You went to work at twenty-five and you are now fifty years old.  In twenty-five years, you have been able to save only $2,500?  One hundred dollars a year is the best you could do?  $8.33 per month is all you could manage to put away?  You just couldn’t seem to do better than $2 per week?  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Average Fifty-Year-Old, you are an idiot.”

Chapter Two: Why People Are Idiots

In this chapter Larry lists the 10 ways that people are sabotaging their success and then goes on to analyze each one in depth.  There are also worksheets provided in this chapter to get you thinking about how you are being an idiot and what you can do to overcome them.  If a person takes the time to really consider the worksheets, this could become a very “hands on” chapter, and possibly a chance for people to really think about what they are doing in their lives.

Chapter Three: How Do I Stop Being an Idiot?

This chapter is boiled down into 3 steps: Recognition, Education and Application.  Larry points out that unless you realize that you have a problem then there is no chance of fixing it.  He goes on to talk about education, saying “People would do better if the simply knew better.”  My favorite part of this section is his discussion on receiving bad information.  He talks about how his mother would always tell him that if he didn’t wear his hat during the winter that he would catch a cold.  In fact, catching a cold has nothing to do with whether or not you wear a hat, but for his mother, because she had been taught that way, it was the truth and there was no convincing her otherwise.  The next step is Application.  Application is simply taking action.

Chapter Four: Take Action for Success

Here Larry presents a list of steps to take to change your life.  It is actually pretty obvious when you get right down to it, but sometimes that is what it takes to get someone to realize that they can do it.  The number on the list that seems most important is #8, Become Totally Committed.  I like that one because if you don’t become totally committed, then you are only doing something half-heartedly.  If you can’t dedicate yourself entirely to doing something then you are eventually going to fail anyways.  Be committed!

Chapter Five: Action Lists for Success

This is an incredibly long chapter of lists within lists and even more worksheets.  There are topics in this chapter from how to take responsibility to how to have less stress in your life.  With each section and the list within it Larry does provide some solid ideas for how to begin improving immediately.  If you want to be happy and enjoy life, Larry offers this advice: “Create your own set of circumstances.  If you don’t like the way things are going, change the direction things are going.  You are in control.  Refuse to accept your condition, and go to work to create a new condition.”  Sound advice, I agree.

Chapter Six: It’s Easy to Keep Being an Idiot!

I’d sum up this chapter with the quote that begins it, “What is easy to do is also easy not to do.” -Jim Rohn

Chapter Seven: What Do You Think?

Now that you’ve read the book, you are entitled to have an opinion.  Of course, Larry doesn’t give a damn what you think about his book, and he says so.  It’s nothing personal, it’s just his way.

What Did I think?

Honestly, I loved the book.  I’m the kind of person who likes things which are straight to the point and Larry’s style does exactly that.  It is a quick read and can be read within a couple of hours.  I would suggest spending more time with the worksheets and actually consider what he is writing about.  Once you get over his sarcastic approach, there is a lot of useful information.  Grab a highlighter and mark up what strikes you as good advice.  I would recommend it to anyone looking for some concrete ideas of how they can improve their lives who doesn’t mind the “kick in the pants” approach.  If you are a sensitive person who get their feelings hurt pretty easily, this book wouldn’t be for you.

Filed under Book Reviews, Motivation

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