Goal Additions

Inspired by Early Retirement Extreme, I have two new goals:

1.) pay the house off in five years
2.) save 75%-80% of my income for the next five years after that.

This will at the very least allow me to take a few years off after I'm 40.

It might be a simple idea, but the math of saving 75% of your income blew my mind.  If you save "only" 50% of your income, for each year you work, you get one year saved up.  But if you save 75% of your income, you have demonstrated you can live on 25% of it, so for each year you work, you save 3 years of income.  80% savings is even crazier: for each year you work, you save 4 years of income.

A Post by my Bride-to-Be

This is a guest post by my lovely bride-to-be:


My fiancé, the goal nerd himself, would be so proud of me today.

Today, I had a wonderful experience of coming ahead of the money curve by $100. How so? Due to an unfortunate buy that would not work for our wedding, I returned the item and received $70. I still needed the item, so I bought it elsewhere for better quality for ten dollars less.

Then I found a gift card to a New York & Co. for $20. It had been sitting inside my house and/or card for over a year. Gift cards may just be my favorite kind of gift since I can wait to buy items and make the money last longer. It's also fun to find them lying around the house way after a birthday or holiday has passed and yet I still get a chance to celebrate.  Now the store was having an 80% off sale (gosh I love back to school merchandise switch-overs). I bought just enough clothing items to come to $19 and some odd cents. The salesclerk told me at the cash register that I saved about $71 through the sale.

So to sum it up, I started with -$70 (since I already bought the dastardly no-good-very-bad-item in the first place). By returning an item to the store because it wasn't going to go work, I gained back $70 putting me at $0. Then I bought a better version of the item for less money. Since I only spent $60 instead of $70, I had now gained $10 for the day. Next I used a gift card, which is essentially free money, to buy about $90 worth of clothes. Now I have a $60 item, $90 worth of clothes, and still $10 back in the old bank account.

I was so excited to tell my goal nerd that he suggested I post the story. It is an incredible high to be thrifty and get more bang for the buck these days. Yay us!!

Stop Cussing for $20

Before the experiment

My fiancée Beth grew up in an environment without cussing. I did not.

She has always been bothered by the amount I curse. At first I thought she was being ridiculous, and that she should just get with the times. But it persisted in bothering her. A few years before trying the experiment, a swear jar occurred to me. I told her that before we had a child, I would use a swear jar. I also told her that I wouldn't be able to start immediately because there were too many other projects going on in my life.

I refused to promise I would stop without a system. I feel too many people, men especially, promise to change just to stop getting nagged at. There is another term for that: self-deception. Another word: a lie.

I don't like lying. And the worst people to lie to are 1.) myself and 2.) the love of my life. It is ridiculous to think you can break a habit through will power. Instead, I knew I needed a system. So I made a system. My rules were simple: I pulled out $2 for every f-word, and $1 for every other curse word. I had some cash on me because I had come back from a trip, so it was easy to immediately pull out some money for every curse word. Here is a chronicle of what turned out to be a very effective process.

Day 1

The first curse word I caught myself saying I had to do some mental back-tracking to realize I had said it. I want in middle of an impassioned tirade about, of all things, young adult literature. I realized I had gotten myself worked up and speaking quickly, so I paused, and thought about what I had said and realized I had said "by having so many young characters altering the very fabric of society, young adult literature kisses the a-- of kids." Beth and I were in the car, so I pulled out a dollar and placed it on the dashboard.

I was up to $4 a hour or so before sunset and thought I was in the clear. But I ran an errand and as I was driving home a car was really close to me. Exasperated, I said the f word, and immediately realized that would cost me $2. It stopped any more cuss words, and I got home safely. Then, later, I was online and saw something I thought was stupid, I said it was "f--ing stupid." Well, that remark was f--ing stupid of me. And it cost me $2.

Daily Total: $8.

Day 2

On this day I also looked around for a bracelet so I could start with a complaint bracelet. Though I think it is a bad idea to focus on too many things at once, I thought it both complaining and cursing were tied to negativity, so I might as well give it a shot. I also learned on the second day that a lot of cursing is built into our automatic phrases that are the building blocks for our speech. For example, I pulled out a dollar after saying "I got (blank) to do." Another example, which I have not said, are "hauling (blank)", and "f--ing funny," which I unfortunately did say.
Daily Total: $7.

I had only done this 2 days and I was at $15. I thought it was going to take a hundred dollars, maybe hundreds of dollars to break the habit. The next day, however, lead to a decent reduction.

Day 3

I caught myself a few times in the morning before saying bad words. Also, I listened to "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore and noticed how much cursing there was. I couldn't sing along, and that was a odd experience. When I took a shower, it was a bit too hot. I said the s-word. Later in the day when my foot fell asleep, I managed to say "shoot," instead, with much profusion on that replacement word. Unfortunately, I got started on a mini-rant. I ended up pulling out $2 before it was done. But Beth later agreed with me that those $2 probably prevented another 10-30 cuss words. So, I think the system fulfilled its purpose. Also, I of course changed over my complaint bracelet.

Daily Total: $4

Day 4

I only had to catch myself once this day. I knew I owed Beth a huge-(blank) apology for something. It was the first day on the experiment I didn't say a single cuss word.

Daily Total: $0

Day 5

I listened to the Macklemore song again (what can I say, I am a fan of thrift). In an idle moment I caught myself with my head bopping, mouthing "You hell-a wont." Of all the things in that song, that's what got me.

 Daily Total: $1

That brought me to $20. Now, it's not that I've never cursed again. But the amount has been drastically reduced. I was amazed by how quickly this procedure worked. Though I will grant that summers are a very peaceful time for me, so that probably had something to do with it.

Cooking Game

Purpose:

Build motivation for cooking at home.  Keep track of our savings.

Rules:

Every time we cook at home, we add $10 to our total.  We have piece of paper on our refrigerator so we can track.  I have the paper divided into two columns: the right column is for how much we have saved since we started, the left hand column tracks how close are to our next increment of $160. When we hit $160, we celebrate with something small (think a movie rental and popcorn at home).

I think $10 for each meal is about right.  If we go to a sit-down restaurant, then the cost difference is almost always over the $10.  However, it is possible to eat so-called fast food for much cheaper.  In that case, I can only try to justify the $10 with future medical bills and future quality of life.  If you want to try this and go with $5, or a different amount, that's fine.  I'm not the boss of you.

Let's do some fun math for a second:

If we eat in 1 time  a week for 10 years, the total will be $ 5,200.
If we eat in 2 times a week for 10 years, the total will be $10,400.
If we eat in 3 times a week for 10 years, the total will be $15,600.
If we eat in 4 times a week for 10 years, the total will be $20,800.

I guess if you wanted to add lunch in that could be:

If we eat in 6 times a week for 10 years, the total will be $31,200.
If we eat in 8 times a week for 10 years, the total will be $41,600.

And 10 times is $52,000.  I have seen game-show prizes of that amount. That's life-changing money.  If you are willing to patiently work at it for 10 years, then you are able to give yourself life-changing money.

Why Goal-Nerd, Why?

The only reason this blog exists is because I had a goal to write a blog post every week starting on July 1st, and every day for the last week I have been more focused on my writing than the coding of a new website.

Oh well, a goal completed is a goal completed.  It kind of reminds me of those stories where a genie is found, but the genie interprets the wishes however he sees fit.  I have no problem being that crafty genie about my goals.  Either, I should accept my own creativity, or I should write down far more specific goals, but with tinier, more specific steps.  (By the way, managers of the world, that is the same restraints you should put on yourself: either accept the decisions that come from delegation or be hyper-specific, step-by-step on every time bit of the process.  Hmm . . . that gives me an idea for a post on what will become my main blog  . . . This is how I prevent myself from getting around to creating the new blog).

Trust.

By getting things done, I learn to trust myself, which gives me the mental lee-way to accept when I pull fast ones like this blog.  Which allows me to get more things done.  See how this is a virtuous cycle?

I am continue on with my goal of "after July 1st," posting at least every week, with the eventual goal of posting twice a week.  When next week comes around, I might be posting here again, or I might have a brand new blog. 

To get that new blog, the genie of my future actions must be tamed.  Time for a new goal: making a new blog.  I should divide that into several sub-goals, and work on those sub-goal each day, perhaps finding out that I need even more sub-goals.  Here's the sketch, though:

0.) draw how you want to website to look (did it a week ago!)
1.) watch basic tutorial on how to code a blog from php academy (I'm really rusty)
2.) code most basic blog possible using old domain name
3.) test post using with things like quote marks, etc (see if I can break it).
4.) If it breaks, fix it.
5.) get blog to have all the features I want
6.) test appearance of website to get all features
7.) Get a new domain name (ha!  haven't even done that!)
8.) Massive headache of porting pictures, etc.
9.) put in first three posts
10.) link to new blog and start promoting it

I will start on the step 1 tomorrow, and I will only put a deadline on each individual step.  That way I can monitor progression through the steps and see what adjustments need to be made.  This is just a better way to do it.  Writing out these steps took more and thought than just jotting down the general wish of what I wanted to see and appending an arbitrary deadline for "motivation."  It didn't motivate me, and I found an easy way out.  And this is me managing myself.

I think I might as well be a good manager to myself.