There comes a time when it’s too late to tell people how you feel.
There will come a day when the person you mean to talk to won’t be there. Don’t wait for that day.
“There’s always tomorrow” isn’t always true.
The Luxury of Vacation
This was a guest post I wrote last year to answer the question posed by the Yakezie blog swap, “Name a time you splurged and were glad you did.”
There are so many things that I’ve wanted to spend my money on, and quite a few that I have. Just this week, we went a little nuts when we found out that the owner of the game store near us was retiring and had his entire stock 40% off. Another time, we splurged long-term and bought smartphones, more than doubling our monthly cell phone bill.
This isn’t about those extravagances. This is about a time I splurged and was glad I did. Sure, I enjoy using my cell phone and I will definitely get a lot of use out of our new games, but they aren’t enough to make me really happy.
The splurge that makes me happiest is the vacation we took last year.
Vacations are clearly a luxury. Nonessential. Unnecessary. A splurge.
When we were just a year into our debt repayment, we realized that, not only is debt burnout a problem, but our kids’ childhoods weren’t conveniently pausing themselves while we cut every possible extra expense to get out of debt. No matter how we begged, they insisted on continuing to grow.
Nothing we will do will ever bring back their childhoods once they grow up or—more importantly—their childhood memories. They’ll only be children for eighteen years. That sounds like a long time, but that time flies by so quickly.
We decided it was necessary to reduce our debt repayment and start saving for family vacations.
Last summer, we spent a week in a city a few hours away. This was a week with no internet access, no playdates, no work, and no chores. We hit a number of museums, which went surprisingly well for our small children. Our kids got to climb high over a waterfall and hike miles through the forest. We spent time every day teaching them to swim and play games. Six months later, my two year old still talks about the scenic train ride and my eleven year old still plays poker with us.
We spent a week together, with no distractions and nothing to do but enjoy each other’s company. And we did. The week cost us several extra months of remaining in debt, but it was worth every cent. Memories like we made can’t be bought or faked and can, in fact, be treasured forever.
Human Interaction
Life may be like a box of chocolates, but it is certainly not a game of Sorry, where one person wins at the expense of all others. It is entirely possible for everyone to win in most voluntary interactions.
For example, if my company gives me a $10,000 raise, it would seem like I win and they lose. I’m getting more money, at the expense of their bottom line, right? Maybe. But what if that raise spurs me on to make an extra $100,000 for the company? That makes it a good investment and a Win/Win scenario.
When I’m dealing with one of my side-business customers or an advertiser, I’m definitely pushing for the Win/Win. Of course I want them to pay me as much as possible, but I also want their repeat business, which won’t happen unless they walk away happy. If I insisted that each of my customers pay the absolute top dollar, I may come out ahead in the short-term, but what about next month or next year? It’s much better for both of us if we can find a happy middle ground.
The four basic forms of interaction are:
1. Win/Lose. This is where I win and you lose. Haha! The problem with a Win/Lose is that the loser isn’t going to come back to play next year. He’s not happy and he’ll probably tell his friends how unhappy he is. This is also the interaction that people are mistakenly assuming when they complain about excessive executive interaction. The CEO is making a million dollars while the folks on the assembly line are stuck with $15 per hour? It’s entirely possible that, if the CEO weren’t doing his job, nobody else would have one. That is, like it or not, Win/Win.
2. Lose/Win. This is where I give up everything, hoping you’ll eventually throw me a bone. It’s a cowardly interaction that won’t work well when dealing with someone playing #1. I’ll keep giving, you’ll keep taking. You go home happy, I go home sore. When it’s done, I won’t do business with you ever again.
3. Lose/Lose. Nobody wins. We fight so hard to get what we want, forcing the other side to give up as much as possible, while they are doing the same. At the end of the day, the hatred is flowing so strong, there’s no possibility of a relationship.
4. Win/Win. Yay! Everybody wins! Everybody’s happy! This will involve some compromise, but hopefully we can reach the happy middle ground where we are both smiling. If I’m looking for a deal that involves you paying me $1000 per month, is it better for me to push to get exactly that, or let myself get talked down to $750? If the $1000 is more than you can afford, so you quit with hard feelings after one month, the ongoing $750 is much, much better for both of us. It is actually in my greedy self-interest to give up that 25% to build our relationship.
Winning doesn’t have to be done at the expense of others. If you do it right, we all win.
$1,000,000 Business Idea
I’m sick of working my day job.
I’m sick of working my side hustles.
I’m sick of working.
To make up for all of that, I’m going to launch a new business. My business model is guaranteed to generate $1,000,000 in revenue the first month.
Seriously.
It’s going to be a father/son enterprise, and to prove that the business model scales, I’m going to help him generate another $1,000,000 in revenue the first month.
This plan is infinitely replicable and infinitely scalable. Steal my business plan and you can have a million dollar business, too.
Ready?
First, my son is going to sell his XBox for $100. Yes, he’s taking a loss, but that’s the cost of getting into the business. Oh, and he’s selling it to me.
$100 for him.
Second, I’m going to sell it back to him for $100.
$100 for me.
He sells it to me for $100.
$200 for him.
I sell it to him for $100.
$200 for me.
If we do this just 9,998 more times, we’ll have generated $1,000,000 in revenue. At 1 minute per transaction, I figure we can both be running million dollar business after just 2 weeks of full-time work.
That’s a two-week vacation every single month.
Phenomenal plan.
Some of the haters are going to explode with comments about “profit” and “expenses”, but I don’t care. Cash flow is king. They can sit at home and whine about their $50,000 jobs while I’m making millions. Sure, my profit (the money leftover after expenses are taken from the revenue) is on the low side, but I can make that up in volume.
Millions.
If I do this every month, I’ll be sitting on a $12,000,000 business. I bet I can sell that for 5 times my annual profits.
Any buyers out there?
Any entrepreneurs ready to copy my business model?
Anybody have a better grasp of the difference between cash flow and profit than I do?
Delayed Gratification, Take II
How much would you pay for a kiss from the world’s sexiest celebrity?
That was the focus of a recent study that I can’t find today. There is no celebrity waiting in the wings to deliver the drool, and the study doesn’t name which celebrity it is. That’s an exercise for the reader.
This was a study into how we value nice things.
The fascinating part of the study is that people would be willing to pay more to get the kiss in 3 days than they would to get the tongue slipped immediately.
Anticipation adds value.
Instant gratification actually causes us to devalue the object of our desire.
This goes well beyond “Will you respect me in the morning?”
The last time I talked about delayed gratification, it was in the context of my kids. That still holds true. Kids don’t value the things that are handed to them.
The surprising–and disturbing–bit is that adults don’t, either. If I run out to the store to buy an iPad the first day I see one, I won’t care about it nearly as much as if I spend a week or two agonizing over the decision.
The delay alone adds to the perceived value. The agony turns the perceived value into gold.
If I spend a month searching for the perfect car, the thrill of the successful hunt adds less value than the time it took to do the hunting.
Here’s my frugal tip for today: Delay your purchases. While it may not actually save you any money, you will feel like you got a much better deal if you wait a few days for something you really want.
Optimized to Go, Part 1
Last weekend, we held a garage sale at my mother-in-law’s house. It was technically an estate sale, but we treated it exactly as a garage sale.
A week before we started, a friend’s mother came to buy all of the blankets and most of the dishes, pots, and non-sharp utensils so she could donate them all to a shelter she works with. She took at least 3 dozen comforters and blankets away.
Even after that truckload, we started with two double rows of tables through the living room and dining room. The tops of the tables were as absolutely full as we could get them, and the floor under the tables was also used for displaying merchandise.
Have you ever had to display 75 brand-new pairs of shoes in a minimal about of space? They claimed about 16 feet of under-table space all by themselves. Thankfully, the blankets weren’t there anymore.
We also had half of the driveway full of furniture, toys, and tools.
We had a lot of stuff.
Now, most people hold a sale to make some money. Not us. We held a sale to let other people pay us for the privilege of hauling away our crap. As such, it was all priced to move. The most expensive thing we sold was about $20, but I can’t remember what that was. Most things went for somewhere between 25 cents and $1.
At those prices, we sold at least 2000 items. That isn’t a typo. We ended the day with $1325. After taking out the initial seed cash, lunches we bought for the people helping us, and dinner we bought one night, we had a profit of $975.
At 25 cents per item.
We optimized to sell instead of optimizing for profit. At the end of a long summer of cleaning out a hoarding house, it all needed to go.
In the next part, I’ll explain exactly how we made it work.
