Let’s get the physical part of this blog in gear. I’ve got a lot of developments on that front to better enable me to work out the way I want to at home, especially in this time of coronavirus.

It had been surprisingly difficult to purchase the gear I wanted because of shut downs, but back in November one website finally had some of what I wanted, so with some encouragement from my lovely wife, I went for it. I got:

• $761: A bar and rubber weights from Vulcan Strength to allow me to do olympic lifts (note the bar is important for this – the axle of the bar rotates separately than the ends where the weights go).
• ~$442: A power cage/squat rack plus a bench from Amazon and a few related accessories like this and this.
• ~$790: this super fancy direct drive bike trainer plus a cassette and a couple related small items.
• ~$200 of construction supplies to make my homemade weightlifting platform (2 layers of 4’x8’ OSB + 1 sheet of ¾” 4’x8’x plywood in the middle, a ton of screws, and then some ¾’ foam matts on the side).

Rough total for this home gym: $2,193. Whoa! That is not chump change, at all. On one hand I could probably do body weight workouts and add a kettlebell, and certainly I could have waited it out on craigslist… but hey, I can definitely afford it and the good news is that by having exactly what I want it has really encouraged me to get on a regular workout schedule, and made it easy to just get started.

I’ve worked out every day I’ve intended to and basically alternate weights and the bike with a rest day thrown in after a very hard workout.

If I was in another financial spot I wouldn’t have done this and can’t recommend it. But for me, in a high intensity, high paying job, I needed something to make it inviting and easy to get started working out. This is a luxury, but it’s also an investment: in my health. I basically went from zero to working out everyday, so for me, this $2.2k is peanuts compared to the incremental benefit I’m getting from it. It’s also created a dynamic where I want to make my investment worth it. When I’m not feeling like working out I can remind myself that I purchased this high end gear to make it easy, and it’s just sitting there. That’s usually enough for me to get started, and when I get started I end up completing a full workout.

The impact on my mood is huge. Working out, especially with heavy weights, calms me down, makes me satisfied with a feeling of tranquility. And right now, that feeling is worth more than any $ sign. This isn’t an endorsement of all spending with no consequence, but it was short sighted of me to wrestle with the decision for so long as it makes almost no impact on my financial situation, and has motivated me to focus on my fitness.

And the thing about many people in the FIRE community is we are so focused on just the financials, but really if your investments are  “only” at 10,15, or 20x your annual spending you do not have money problems. At all. So it only makes sense that this is not the area to fret about once you have your money game under control, and that we should take a broader look at our lives and focus on the areas we’d like to improve – not as something to do AFTER we reach FI, but right now as part of living a full and rich life. 

After that last long and rambling post catching my future readers up to date (hahah) , I’m ready to get onto a more frequent schedule. I got to thinking about the financial situation we’re in right now, which is honestly insane to me despite our spending being higher than planned, and despite the stress and related stress spending: we are way ahead of where I thought we’d be by now, but why?

First, what is our financial situation? We’re Millionaires. It’s a bit wild to write it out like that but it’s true. And with our spending under control, we are essentially financially independent. What’s crazy is just two years ago in my first financial blog post we had a net worth of $472,602. In two years we went from $472k to a cool $1M. How?

While that $472k included home equity the investment portion was ~$373k. With that let’s try an over-simplified exercise. Using VTSAX as a proxy for market performance, we can see that at 12/31/18 we were hovering around $62/share, and now we are around $93. That is a 50% increase over that time! Don’t forget dividends!

That means that before adding in the home equity then converted to shares, more bonuses, 401k’s, etc. that money we made and saved long ago fueled $187k of incremental net worth ($373 x 50%)!! 

That is wild to me. In the past two years I didn’t need to actually do anything to earn that money. I didn’t even have to save more: we had already saved that money and dumped it into VTSAX. We did our part many years ago and simply left it alone.

I found this to be really powerful, and also highlights how bad we humans are at understanding the present value of money. That $50 we didn’t spend going out to dinner one night is worth a helluva lot more than $50 today. If we string many of those $5, $10, $50, and $100 decisions together it adds up really fast. Spending less is really an unstoppable wealth building machine.

I’m thankful for me and my wife from 6 years ago doing a house renovation and investing it instead of buying a luxury car, and for 22 year old me investing in my first 401k at 8% of my salary. And that’s the lesson: Current spending is more expensive than you (and I) think it is and current savings is even more powerful, because the opportunity cost or benefit is massive.

Another take on this is an article from the BBC explaining the Exponential Growth Bias. So if you’re working hard, facing challenges like how to control spending, just remember you suck at understanding exponential growth, and the benefit you are reaping is way more than it looks like!

You know, this probably applies to things besides just personal finances, which is why I’m going to shut down this computer and go lift some weights. After all I did name this blog PHYSICAL and Fiscals.

The past year has been a wild ride and I think it’s high time that I updated this neglected blog with what life has looked like, where we are at now, and what it all means going forward.

Since this is going to be long, below is a bulleted list of high-and-low-lights – if you have any questions or want to know more about any parts of it let me know in the comments:

• May 2019:
  •  We are living in coastal New England with a 1.5 yr old, in an affordable house but that lacks space for making / doing projects especially in the cold northeast winters.
  • I am working as a financial controller for a division, mostly working from home in a high stress job but that pays well.
  • My work contacts me about a new job opportunity to be a finance director for a division, but I must relocate to Dallas, TX. This relo part isn’t very appealing, but I go through the interview process.
  • My wife and I discuss/debate relocation… we originally moved to our current town/state to be near family.
  • I nail the interview and had plenty of internal support from my current boss. I get offered the job while traveling out of state for business. I call my wife, in that moment we made a quick decision to tell them we’ll relocate for 1 year but then have to move back (this was a huge mistake. My wife felt pressure that if she didn’t go along with this I’d resent her – the mistake was mine. I should have slowed down and thought about how this impacted our life and happiness not just our FIRE number).
  • Job is offered, I accept after negotiating a salary of $170k/yr + a 30% variable bonus ($51k +/- based on personal and company performance). The company pays relocation one way, and I have to maintain my employment with them or I have to pay it back prorated over 18 months (mistake #2 – having this weight over my head comes back to haunt me. I don’t like having this obligation as it constraints my freedom – it’s like a debt. I subsequently vow to never put myself in this situation again).
  • We tell our families and friends. Mixed reaction.
• June 2019:
  • I fly out to Dallas, TX to meet the new team including the business leaders I support and to look for where we want to live.
  • I stay at a hotel. It’s hot as fuck in TX.
  • Job is a mess and disorganized, but this is the part I’m good at and I dig in.
  • Temporary housing kicks in, I find an apartment for us after a week of searching in Dallas as it is walkable and near parks/whole foods)
• Summer, 2019
  • Wife rents out our house to tenants
  • Wife and son fly out to Dallas to visit in temporary housing. I fly back and forth a couple of times. They stay in the northeast for a few weeks. Honestly I don’t recall all the details and don’t want to go look them up. It was a slog and it sucked being apart and it sucked for my wife as reality set in and we uprooted everything.
  • Receive a $20,000 bonus with 1 year retention agreement as a reward for a special project I did (mistake again! I am uncomfortable with this hanging over my head… especially at the times that work doesn’t go well. And I should have stood my ground that  this was a bonus for work done, and that the retention is irrelevant).
• September-ish, 2019
  • We are in Dallas. I’m working late, highly stressed.
  • Wife and son go to playground, walk dog, visit Dallas Arboretum, go to the Katy Trail and try to make the best of the situation.
  • Apartment is noisy, but fine.
  • Life is… about enduring this time knowing it is only a year (what a shitty situation to be in, fuck)
• Fall, 2019
  • Technically fall doesn’t exist in Dallas, it is just hot as fuck all the time. People at work say this is the nice season….
  • Work is stable locally with my team and business (and I’m actually getting kudos), but I have a blow up with my new boss. Doubt if this is the right role for me creeps in. We meet in person in 2 weeks, get it on the table, talk about how to best work together going forward.
  • I’m resentful, and I hate having the relocation payback over my head and was naive that they cared about me as a person. I become more negative towards work
  • We try and be frugal and from a macro standpoint we really are, but we are spending a lot of money at the excellent local bar/market: https://foxtrotco.com/stores/uptown. It is one of the only escapes after a long day, and feels normalish.
  • Being on the path to FIRE this is a bit frustrating as while our income is higher our expenses are too. We’re still netting more money, but I didn’t fully understand this relationship between stress triggers and consumption. My worry about the FIRE spending aspect is an additional stress, and in retrospect really unfair to both me and my wife.
  • I read “How I found Freedom in an Unfree World” by Harry Browne. A good summary is here. I think about the price to exit the “Boxes” that good ol’ Harry talks about which for me is the fact that this was a huge mistake to move to Dallas and I have too much work stress. The price is both the relocation money and the $20k bonus I had received with a retention agreement (I have to pay it back if I leave) expiring August 31, 2020, plus being locked into a monthly lease, bonus payment coming in 6 (short, ha) months. I feel trapped.
  • VTSAX and the ‘stache are quietly doing their thing. Dividends paid and reinvested, market values starting to creep upwards. The unrelenting force of the American economy pushing forward.
  • Wife does a great job making sure our son has as normal of a time as possible and even makes some sweet friends. She amazed me at the resilience she showed despite the shit show. 
  • Family visits and stays with us. Magic.
• December, 2019
  • We are stressed. We are tired.
  • We are using up the resilience that we have. Even now looking back we are somewhat depleted from this past year and need to build up our reserves. 
  • We visit my family in Vermont. Magic. We stay in the “East Wing” of my mom and step-dad’s house with a private bath. It’s small and perfect. Sitting at my mom’s kitchen counter and talking late into the night and stress fades away in those moments. I feel safe and loved and work doesn’t have the same hold for that glorious week.
  • “Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A novel coronavirus was eventually identified.” WHO starts to investigate.
• Q1, 2020
  • We start talks with our tenants about buying our house, especially knowing that eventually it won’t be big enough for us and is already lacking in space. They are flakey, late with rent, and can’t get approved. They end up having a friend who “fell in love” with the house and is interested in buying. There are starts and stops, but we make arrangements. One less thing to deal with.
  • COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, is a big fucking deal. Even personal finance bloggers write about it.
  • Confirmed case of coronavirus in our apartment building. Vague descriptions from the management company that they have done or will do additional cleanings in the elevator that the individual normally uses. To get from our apartment to outside you need to open our door, go down an elevator, through a security door, then a security gate. Or… go through a set of doors, enter the parking garage and go down the 3 flights to leave the building – we usually did this to avoid running into unmasked individuals and to avoid touching anything. 
  • Coranavirus was not taken seriously by many and it was really uncomfortable. As cases began to grow we made our decision: it was time to get outta dodge.
  • We booked flights, arranged a pod to move our stuff, I sold my car to some friends in Dallas, my wife’s car and our dog was driven home by a friend we met through Foxtrot for some hard cold $, I told my boss we needed to move back to New England ahead of schedule, and we found an inexpensive apartment to land in – in fact it’s the college apartment my wife and some of her friends lived in that we got on a month-to-month (with 2 month notice) basis for $1,100 a month. While we still had to pay rent in Dallas for a few more months it was well worth it to get out when we could (one of the powerful moments of working towards FI – we can do this).
  • We keep investing in the 401k and have saved up some cash with the idea of buying our next home and to have some flexibility. The stock market doesn’t know what to do with itself:

• April, 2020
  • Bonus is paid out. We invest.
  • We make our move back! The morning we were leaving I brought the last of our items to the Pod – luckily our friends at Foxtrot market (notice a theme?) let us park it in their lot – and when I went to shut it the metal door jammed… all of our stuff inside, a flight we had to leave for shortly, and I couldn’t shut the door to our pod. I considered leaving all our stuff or trying to cancel our flights, or… I don’t know. But then I took a big breath, and carefully worked the metal door, pushing and pulling, straightening, and then… it came free! That was the last challenge Dallas gave us. From there we headed to the airport, flew home and landed in Boston where our family had met us with a car to borrow.
• May, 2020 – Current
  • We sell our house to the friends of the tenant. We invest.
  • We settle in a bit. A couple of weeks of quarantine and things are as normal as possible during this covid craziness.
  • Social distance visits with some friends and family.
  • Work has a voluntary part-time program. I apply for it and my boss originally accepts. They then change the program, remove me from part time and deliver me and everyone else at my grade and above a 10% pay cut as part of covid response initiatives for a couple of months… I tasted that extra freedom I thought I’d get.
  • We exhale a little bit, and we start slowly recovering from the past year’s disruption, but I think we all have some open wounds from the stressful times. We are ready to put down roots.
  • We ride on our bikes, go for a lot of walks, and swim in the ocean. We start planning again.
  • Housing has gotten more expensive and it is a seller’s market with limited housing inventory and a lot of competition. We look at a few houses, but so far nothing great.
  • I started a keto diet and lost some weight – down to 246 lbs as I type this  from 274.4 lbs from my last update, not all since I started keto but definitely the last 15 lbs or so. Update on Nov 30: I’ve now changed things up, have continued to lose weight and began regular lifting/biking. Things are looking up!
  • When the dust has all settled from an expensive year triggered by stress spending, extra expenses from paying double rent in two states for a few months, plus a 10% pay reduction these last few months, how did we fare financially? Let me just leave this here:
    • Net worth as of 12/31/19: $734,888 (up $262k vs 12/31/18)
    • As of today (July, 2020): we’re up almost another $100k since year end, fueled by the year-end bonus, high salary overall, some nice investments on the dip and a core of frugality: 

Holy. Shit.

• Update: I wrote this and it sat in my draft folder for months, so now it is the end of November and uh… we keep marching upwards with more contributions and more market returns, and it turns out that things are getting wild in the net worth category:

As I said…Holy. Shit.

Overall

• I learned a lot this past year, and it was really hard. But I’m still learning and growing as a person, and things are looking better than ever.
• My biggest lesson I’ve learned is to not put financial/work expectations above my family/health needs.
• I’m back! I want to keep this blog much more updated – I have many draft articles and ideas to write about as I continue this Life project and work towards the happiest life I can design.

PS – Did I mention it’s hot in Dallas? 

“Jesus H Christ we must be a mile from the sun”

If you spend any time around the Financial Independence movement you quickly come across the 4% rule, which basically says you can withdraw from your investments 4% inflation adjusted forever without running out of money. The inverse of this is take your annual spending x25 and this equals the investments you need to cover those expenses.

There is some debate around the edges, but enough other people have written about this we’ll use this. More reading here and here plus a great podcast episode here among many others sources you can find with a quick google search.

It’s really powerful to understand this but to the uninitiated it can feel overwhelming: if a professional couple making $60k take home incomes with zero savings is spending essentially all of their money this means they need $1.5M to be financially independent, which if you have a savings rate of zero is unattainable and overwhelming.

At first glance it is hard to understand how making coffee at home vs Starbucks, cooking at home, or even a $300 a month car payment can even put a dent in this. But, it’s shocking once you understand this: for middle-class America the path to Financial Independence is most easily attained by spending less.

Let’s take that $300 car payment for an example. Even beyond factoring all the other costs of driving, avoiding a car payment alone means you need $90k less in assets ($300/mo x 12/year x 25) to support that cash outflow, forever. That is crazy. So is this table:

If you spend $3,500/month you need over $1,050,000 to be Financial Independent. But if you can spend $2,000/month you only need $600,000. This means you need $450,000 less money to support your lifestyle, forever.

It is just insane. And if you can live on $1,500 a month which is far more than anyone needs for a happy life, you only need $450,000 forever. Alternatively if you spend $2,500 but have $1,000 from renting part of your house or a part time job, you still only need $450,000 forever. 

And $450,000 just isn’t that much money if you are middle class in the US and you learn basic frugality skills and invest it. I’m sure the average person wouldn’t agree with me here, but check out this chart assuming 7% annual return: 

In the first part of this article I noted that if you dropped your spending from $3,500 to $2,000/month you need $450,000 less investments to be Financially Independent. But that’s only half the story: if you take that $1,500 a month and invest in, in 15 years you have $475,443 in investments. That’s a combined $925K net positive to your financial life!!!!  All from cutting $1,500 a month in spending and still being at a super comfortable level of living expenses.

If you don’t like my numbers for starting and ending spending, you can pick any that you want, but the math will be the same: $1,500 less in spending a month = $925k of incremental-needs-adjusted wealth. Boom.

And if you are someone making a middle-class income spending 100% or more of all your money, spending $1,500 less in a month isn’t that hard. But, it’s also not all or nothing. If you spend even $500 less in a month the math still works out to be $150k less investments needed + $158k of future invested value = $308k of incremental-needs-adjusted wealth. Your financial picture gets brighter for each step you take.

It is clear: Spending Less is an Unstoppable Wealth Building Machine.

What a shit show.

The stock market has been on a wild ride lately, resulting in plenty of predictably irrational behavior. But for all that is holy – toilet paper hoarding?

The restaurant / bar down the road has done an impressive conversion to a take out / delivery joint with items on take out menu including take away drink kits with pre-measured booze and mixer, and rolls of toilet paper for 3 bucks each.

The internet has even more examples of this nonsense: here and here as just a couple of the many examples of hysteria.

I’m definitely not a medical professional and I certainly don’t have expertise in the coronavirus, but I know enough (and my wife IS a medical professional) to know that if you get the coronavirus, goddamn toilet paper isn’t a cure and won’t fix your breathing problems, so all of this is nonsensical. Also, if you are shitting that badly already see a doctor and invest in a bidet.

Another hoarding is example is this dumb-ass getting upset because a store is limiting the amount of Mountain Dew he can buy at once, and not letting him buy 552 CANS at once. First of all, no, you know what – I don’t need to explain it, it is absurd on so many levels. You are hoarding literal poison.

Why all of this hoarding behaviour? It is simply fear and the worst of group thinking. “People are buying toilet paper, I need to stock up too before it is out!” The mass hysterial is driving obnoxious behavrious. It’s kind of like the stock market!

The substantial value of the underlying companies in the beloved VTSAX index fund have not materially changed in the big picture, but everyone is scared that everyone else is going to sell, so they sell too, driving volitility and the price of the stock market down.

Meanwhile, people like us (long term investors) are putting more money into the stock market – we actually put in ~$48k in the past couple of weeks and bought stocks at a massive discount to the price just a month ago!

On a final note of this random and rambling blog post, it was a beautiful day here and I enjoyed 2 walks, 2 bike rides (one solo and one with the whole family), a delicious home cooked meal, and the security to know that no matter what happens I’ll always have enough.

Right?

After helping get the baby ready for bed tonight I went down to our apartment’s fitness center to work out. I haven’t worked out in a long time. I’ve had a narrative in my head that I don’t have time to work out because work is so demanding / work is so demanding so I’m too stressed out to exercise.

By default many nights I was dulling the stress and anxiety of work with a beer or two (or three or…). It was so hard to get started. After working in a high stress environment all day, commuting home (currently have a commute while we live in TX for the year… wtf was I thinking?), playing with my son, dinner, and getting him ready for bed, I was exhausted. And I still hadn’t decompressed from the stress of the day.

Getting calls from my boss at 8pm for “urgent” issues really doesn’t help that feeling, but that is a subject for a different blog post.

But I’m trying to make some changes and be more intentional, with recent efforts to:

• Learning how to play guitar;
• Undertaking a dry January;
• Starting to exercise;

This post is about exercise, so let’s get to it. I went to the fitness center and there was only one other person there, on a treadmill, which was great so I had the entire weight lifting area to my self.

I started with some squats, first a set of 10 with the barbell only to warm up, then another with 50 lbs added on which I repeated 2 sets of 10 reps, and finally I did a final set with 70 lbs.

As a side note I used to be a competitive olympic-style weightlifter. Competed in junior nationals among other things, but I’ve let that part of my identity fade away over the years. When I first got under the bar and lowered down I could feel my legs shake a bit, a creak from my knees, but then the familiar motion kicked in and I felt good. I love squats with heavy weights.

By the 3rd set my legs were getting sore, and I now they are going to hurt tomorrow. because I swear I could feel the micro tears in my leg muscle… AND IT FEELS FUCKING GREAT!!!

I feel great because I started and I know this is the beginning of building a habit, because when I lift I’m in the moment and not anywhere else: my anxiety goes away. I feel great, because I know this is what I need to be doing to make my life better and to build long-term happiness.

And I’m just (finally) getting started.

Last year we did a 12/31/18 financial update and found that we had a respectable $472k of net worth. While this is certainly a lot of money, it’s still a work in progress on our goal of FInancial Independence.

Now it’s time to look at how we did in 2019, here are the numbers:

Holy shit. That is a big jump, but how did it happen? Savings plus a great stock market performance:

The remarkable thing here is that our investment returns were more than we saved! The other remarkable thing is that we didn’t save as much as we had planned to. I’ll be honest, when I reviewed our expenses in 2019 it was a bit shocking how much we spent – we spent more than in 2018 even though we had planned on getting our spending down. We found that it’s been harder to be frugal now that we live in the city as we don’t have our community and instead of beers in the backyard, it’s us going to the local cafe/patio bar. In other words – 2019 could have been even more spectacular financially, if we had our shit together on spending to the level we are hoping to have.

It’s still amazing though, basically even though we screwed up on spending goals, because we don’t have new cars, we don’t shop as a hobby, and ultimately we are frugal relative to other people in similar career situations, we still saved a shit ton of money and are marching towards millionaire status.

It’s a good feeling. Looking towards 2020 we plan to sell our house we are currently renting out to the current tenants, buy our “someday house” and focus on frugality and living the good life. Financial independence here we come.

This is a post I wrote over a year ago but never posted. A recent event which entailed late night work texts, emails, and calls while on vacation and holiday reminded me that I had written this and resurfaced those deep feelings of a loss of personal sovereignty by being an employee. I don’t like this feeling.

I was informed at work this last week that I, a person who is a direct report of mine, and the broader team to work over, and then meet, this weekend, Sunday afternoon, with one of the executives about a proposal that is due to the customer 8 days later.

Early in the project I had warned that we’d need all of Monday to ensure the project was ready for internal executive review. Instead, this was chucked out the window, the explanation being that “we need to meet on the weekend in case Mr. Exec doesn’t like something, so we have time to fix it before the internal review – at 4pm Monday afternoon.”  What the actual FUCK?!?!?

Fuck this. I work too hard during the week, worry too much, and do everything I can during the week to have the threat of a weekend review with an Exec hanging over my head.

For a company that talks about Wellness as a core value, perhaps they should take a lesson in treating your employees like people, not expendable resources, vs requiring us to work until almost 7pm on the Friday before asking the team to work all weekend. Fuck this.

I’m sure the reactions to this can range from similar outrage that I’m experiencing, to oh come on, it’s just one weekend. To that I’d say, yes, but it’s one weekend I’ll never get back with my almost 1 year old son. And I didn’t even work all weekend, but the weight of this has been dragging in my mind the whole time. I didn’t sleep well, and I’ve been finding myself checking my work email. The question comes down to a philosophical question of who owns my time? Apparently, my employer thinks they own it on the weekends.

I had a few options on how to respond. I essentially caved, and grumbled to myself, and then later quite loud with my wife. Why? It’s a matter of confidence. I made the decision it wasn’t worth rocking the boat, getting a bad review (conveniently scheduled 1 week from this request).

If anything this has steadied my resolve to become Financially Independent. Nothing is worth this. But, the other consideration is do I need to wait then? No, of course not. I have options even if sometimes it feels like I don’t. Next time I can politely decline, but agree to do whatever they need during normal working hours and live with the consequences of that – most likely a lecture, etc, possibly a lower bonus or raise. Alternatively I can quit – we have the resources to make ends meet for quite a while, although it would seriously slow down our FI aspirations. 

But overall this is an example of the tyranny of having a full time job in today’s corporate world. The needs of the company are put first, and the fear of job loss or other painful but smaller consequences require obedience and the deterioration of individual sovereignty. There has to be a better way, and I think that way is FIRE.

Christmas Eve has always been one of my favorite days of the year. Our family celebrates with an excellent meal, holiday treats, and a present for the littles usually in the form of matching pajamas. It’s a time to be together and have some fun and celebrate the year. I actually prefer it to Christmas day itself.

This year was no different. We are up in New England for 10 solid days of festivity and visiting our family and friends, and it’s been a blast so far with a few days to go.

I’ve noticed the best parts of this trip are focused on traditions – new and old, spending real time with the ones we care about (real time isn’t watching a movie together, it’s engaging on a direct level with active participation), and surprising each other with joy. Here are just a few of the highlights so far while we’ve stayed at my parent’s house:

• We colluded to surprise my wife by having her Mom show up unexpectedly and join us for a few days of festivities which has been exciting and sweet
• A nightly spades (card game) competition after the baby goes to sleep – we’re still fine tuning our strategy…
• An epic game of hide-and-go-seek with my niece and nephews.
• On Christmas Eve we had a raucous time when my brother-in-law took out his guitar, drums and tambourines, and began playing holiday songs that everyone sang along too and the little ones jumped and clapped and banged on drums and wailed maracas in the air.
• In general we had all of the excellent adults hosting each other with grace.

And this morning the adults all happened to wake up early and start our first round of coffee before our now 2(!) year old slept and had time to chat and reflect. There is something about having an early morning coffee after a night of festivities.

But the interesting thing is that when I go back and reflect on all of the best parts, none of them are related to consumption of any kind. Even the present opening on Christmas was like an adrenaline boost for the kids as they unwrapped each, and that turned into pure overload. The kids were great, but the focus had shifted. Away from each other and onto things.

We met my brother for lunch at a restaurant. Having a coffee and chatting before the meal and was great, and the ongoing conversation throughout was a nice catch up with plenty of laughs. But the meal was shitty and service was slow. I couldn’t help but think we could have gotten all of the benefits of this meal out with a walk together, plus that means less money spent, and instead of consumer crap food we would have exercised. In this case, consumption wasn’t just a non-value add, but it  actually detracted from our joy.

What experiences have YOU had this holiday season? Were they tied to spending, eating and drinking, or like me did you find that holiday joy does not come from consumption?

Small actions and decisions, added up over time become your results. It’s easy to think of small actions as one-off’s and inconsequential. But they aren’t inconsequential, because they form our reality.

What you eat is a form of voting and you have to be able to control the force of your vote.

Voting for healthy and nutritious food is not only fine but useful and necessary, but voting over and over with force on food beyond your needs is voting for extra pounds and wasted resources.

You can be voting for freedom or voting for a beer belly and money you’ll never recover. Voting for widening your moat from worry, fear, financial hardships,  and risk upon job loss or voting for a never ending financial treadmill.

You can change how you vote at any time, every day. And it matters immediately.

At the end of month when you sweep your excess money to Vanguard, that is a vote towards freedom. If at the end of the month you spent a thousand dollars on shit you don’t need, you actively voted against financial freedom.

You can rewind your vote by selling shit you don’t need and escaping obligations like a car payment.

How you spend your time is voting for the you want to. If you spend your Saturday afternoon walking in the forest, listening to music and podcasts, or reading, you are voting for a renewed you. If you spend it binge watching Game of Thrones, you are voting to not improve your life, and to exit your thoughts. You are pushing a pause button, but worse.

The hard part is that when you vote for freedom it seems that you don’t actually get that freedom for a while, but this isn’t true. Every time you vote for Financial freedom you are building up a castle, and widening the mote from worry, fear, demanding bosses and coworkers, office disagreements, and most other forms of bullshit

When you vote for a salad over a food-like substance for lunch you don’t see immediate results when you look in the mirror. But every vote you (ahem, me) make for healthy salad immediately starts building your health.

Believe in the reality you want. And keep voting for it with each and every choice.