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Saturday Roundup

A wreath Kolsch Beer - LA Times of Kölsch.
Image via Wikipedia

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This week has been terribly busy. I can’t tell you how happy I am for a 3 day weekend. Right now, the 2 week queue of posts I had before I went on vacation is gone. Have a good weekend!

The Best Posts of the Week:

200 year-old, chilled beer found. That’s a party.

Follow your dreams and eff the haters. There’s a life lesson there.

Affiliate marketing basics by Chris Brogan. There’s definitely more than one way to skin the “make money online“(affiliate link) cat.

One of the first things we’re going to save for after we get out of debt is Lasik. Is it worth it?

Finally, a list of the carnivals I’ve participated in:

Crystal included me in the Carnival of Personal Finance with Bonding Relationships.

8 painless ways to save money was included in the Yakezie Carnival.

Work at Home Scams was included in the Festival of Frugality.

If I missed a carnival, please let me know. Thanks to those who have included me!

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September 4th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Misc | Comments are closed | Subscribe | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post

Getting Out of Bed

Costa Rica... No artificial ingredients!
Image by Wha’ppen via Flickr

Why do you get out of bed in the morning? Is it so you can exercise the privilege of spending 8 hours in a cubicle?

I didn’t think so.

In Okinawa, it’s call the ikigai. In Costa Rica, it’s the plan de vida. It’s your sense of purpose-the reason you get out of bed in the morning. In these cultures, having a strong ikigai can be directly correlated to a statistically extreme lifespan*. All around the world, the plan de vida is the single factor most likely to cause someone to feel they have lived a fulfilled life.

Do you know your ikigai?

For some people, their plan de vida is to successfully raise their children, then their grandchildren. For others, it is charity. Some folks are serial entrepreneurs, always looking for the next deal, the next business. For still others, it is a collection or an urge to travel. There are even some whose sole reason for getting out of bed(other than potty breaks) is work.

The last category is most common with teachers, soldiers, and police. The problem with wrapping so much of your identity up in your profession is retirement. What do you do when your ikigai-your reason to wake up-goes away? In Okinawa, teachers and police tend to have very short retirements because they lose their reason to for living.

What is your plan de vida, your passion? What drives you to keep going? Do you live to write, or to raise your children? Do you <shudder> live solely for someone else’s happiness? When you find it, it will resonate as “this is you”. Finding it is a deep soul-searching, not a light-hearted explanation or a new fad.

Your reasons can, and should, change over time. You can’t live for raising your children years after they have grown up and moved away. Finding this one factor in your life can be the thing that leaves you on your deathbed looking back with a smile instead of regret.

What is your plan de vida?

* From The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest

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September 3rd, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: Life | 5 comments - (Comments are closed) | Subscribe | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post

Hippy Month - September’s 30 Day Project

A photograph of the inside of an unripe wild-t...
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My 30 Day Project for August was…forgotten. I didn’t notice August roll in, and when that fact finally registered, I had already blown the project. With that, and our planned vacation, I decided to take the month off. Yes, I am a slacker.

So, now that it is September, I’m getting back on track. This month, we are going used. For the next 30 days, we are buying nothing new.

The Ground Rules

1. We aren’t buying anything new. No retail purchases. If we need to buy something, it will be used.

2. Food is an exception. Used bananas are gross in too many ways.

3. Consumable hygiene products are an exception. We are not recycling shampoo or deodorant. We are also not willing to spend the month smelling like hippies.

4. My wife is not a loophole. Her shopping counts as my shopping, so this is something we have to do together.

4b. Neither is her mother’s credit card. We are doing this for real.

There is a group called The Compact that started this movement. They went for an entire year. They are hippies. Ick.

I am not a hippy!

My main goal for Hippy Month is to break our consumer addiction. We need to get used to “making do” or doing without. We also need to make a habit out of looking for used and cheaper options, first.

Our secondary goals are to save money and stop accumulation so much danged stuff.

It won’t be easy. Goodwill is far less convenient than Target. It’s so simple to run into a store to replace something that’s broken instead of fixing it or finding a used alternative.

These projects wouldn’t be fun if they were easy.

Anyone care to join me?

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September 1st, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: Finance, Life | 9 comments - (Comments are closed) | Subscribe | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post

5 Reasons to Quit Saving and Start Living

paycheck
Image by owaief89 via Flickr

Live is all about trade-offs. You trade your time for a paycheck. Your trade your paycheck for food, rent, and security. Don’t get so obsessed with saving and security that you forget to live your life. There are many good reasons to put your savings on hold in order to really live. Here are five of them:

1. You have an adequate emergency fund. You will never hear me advise against an emergency fund. If you don’t have one, stop reading this and get one. Go. Without an emergency fund, your budget is a financial crisis waiting to happen. With an emergency fund, you can weather life’s speed-bumps without watching them become total train-wrecks.

2. Your retirement is on autopilot. You are not allowed to stop saving and investing for retirement. Ever. Assuming you have a traditionally scheduled career that involves you working until you hit 65 and deferring a huge chunk of living until then, your income will cease when you retire. Do you know how long you will live? Do you want to spend your retirement broke and bored? Are you relying on the responsible financial management of the federal government to make sure you will still get your Social Security? Invest in your retirement and get this investment on autopilot so you can stop worrying about it.

3. Your income is set. I don’t believe in the fairy-tail of a company being loyal to its employees. The aren’t. However, if you have a stable-ish job, an in-demand career, and some side-income coming from alternate sources, your emergency fund can be enough to carry you through the low times. That’s what it’s there for.

4. You have dreams. If you’ve always wanted to travel the world, follow a band on your, volunteer extensively, or anything else, it’s time to do it. Don’t postpone your passion.

5. Deathbed regrets suck. Very few people lie on their deathbed lamenting the things they did. Regrets tend to be focused on opportunities missed, skipped, or indefinitely postponed. Do the things that are important to you before it’s too late to do them. Don’t abandon your future in favor of current pleasures, but don’t forget to live, now.

Do you have any other reasons to stop saving?

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August 30th, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: Finance, Life | 2 comments - (Comments are closed) | Subscribe | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post
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