When you
turn 50 you have a very unique view of life if you choose to see it. You can
look back by observing your children and reflecting then things in life that
your found challenging. You also have the opportunity to observe your parents
and see the things in life they find challenging.
If you
can relate to your children’s challenges and remember yourself in their
positions then you have to believe the challenges your parents are struggling
with will be your future unless you change your current trajectory to chart a
new course.
Questions
to ask yourself:
Did you follow your parents path and are your children following your path?
What are their concerns – did or do those things concern you?
Will it matter in 20 years – were your concerns worthy?
Things to
observe:
Time
Stuff
Health
Money
Relationships
My
observations:
My children are concerned about their financial futures
My parents are concerned about their financial futures
My children are not concerned about their use of time
My parents are not concerned about their use of time
A long
time ago I was visiting a relative and was admiring the comforts of life they
had accumulated and commented that they appeared to have done well and
“had it figured out”. Their response was that all this comes at a
cost. They said “I am not a saver, but I am great at paying back”. At
the time I thought, well that’s great, you have the skill to pay things back.
Recently
I had a very similar conversation with an acquaintance and they proclaimed they
were “a terrible saver, but a great payer backer”. Twenty years later
I have a very different perspective on this.
The
problem with not becoming a saver? This is a skill and discipline that needs to
be developed.
How do so
many people end up going down this road?
We often start out life in the hole
We need to acquire things to create a comfortable life
Societies expectations and timelines are unrealistic
The
problem with using debt to advance though life:
Debt requires income
Debt has a ceiling, savings does not
Debt adds risk to everything
There is no wealth building opportunity
The
solution:
Get to a place where you spend less than you earn
Always spend money that is at least one month old
Become in love with a process that will lead you to saving
The
opposite of abundance is scarcity – you think we want abundance but we actually
are seeking scarcity.
One of kind, hand made
Collections edition
Antique, retro, vintage
Latest edition, just released
The problem with scarcity – the biggest problem
with scarcity is worry for the future, fear and anxiety, and all or nothing
mindset
The problem with abundance – there is not off
switch, no ceiling, no limitations, no fear or concern for the future, “it
will always be there” mindset.
Email is
the best example of the destructive power of abundance
Are we
are living in a world where too much is becoming a problem? Too many choice can
cause us to become careless and directionless.
Is
scarcity better than abundance? If you had to choose one over the other
scarcity has the benefit of fewer self-inflicting consequences.
Why I
never sign up for open ended offers or opportunities – there is no opportunity for resourcefulness
or optimization.
Example: Back in the pre-internet era, It used
to be there was nothing to watch on TV at a given moment in time. Two benefits
of this were you watched less TV and when you did watch TV you were fully
engaged and entertained.
More
humans, in the history of the human race, have died from too much nutrition
than not enough. The human body was designed to survive periods of scarcity, we
do not do so well with abundance.
Revolutionary promises:
The Agricultural revolution was supposed to solve hunger and make our lives better
The Industrial revolution was supposed to make our lives physically easier
The Technology revolution was supposed to make our lives more efficient
The Artificial Intelligence revolution is promising to……
Tech.com: Society Doesn’t Know How
To Deal With Abundance – if you look at all of human history,
probably 99.999999% of it has been about dealing with the issues of scarcity.
In fact, our entire original economic philosophy (which is really just two and
a half centuries old) was based on “resource allocation in the presence of
scarcity.” Historically, abundance just hasn’t been an issue that we’ve
had to deal with very much. And the problem is that people try to apply the
mental rules of scarcity to abundance and they basically kick out an error
message. It’s a “divide by zero” sort of problem. You get infinity as
a result, and you think it’s wrong. So the response is almost always the same.
Rather than actually trying to deal with what abundance enables, people try to
force abundance back into a feeling of scarcity — which they’re comfortable
with. That is, they try to apply artificial rules and restrictions to make the
abundance feel like it’s scarce, so that they can understand it again.
Examples
of abundance:
Technology – the internet, tele commuting, TV & music streaming
Communication – email
Global Markets – Amazon
Consumption – low cost consumer goods, single use plastics
Food – weight gain
The
problem with abundance:
No opportunity for resourcefulness
Instant gratification
Requires artificial restraint
The paradox of choice
Without a limit the answer is always more
How to
solve the abundance problem:
Self-imposed limitation – minimalism
Narrow focus – ten feet deep instead of ten feet wide
The abundance mentality…is the paradigm that there is plenty out
there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in sharing of prestige, of
recognition, of profits, of decision making. It opens possibilities, options,
alternatives, and creativity.
We often
over estimate what we can accomplish is a day and under estimate what we can
accomplish in a year.
Money is
the lubricant of life, not enough and life is a grind, too much and your life
has no direction. Too much disposable money can be a cause of being too busy.
Many
people view those that are not busy as being lazy or self-absorbed when really
they are just trying to enjoy life on their own terms.
Is there
a problem…
The
problem with being too busy is it could jeopardize our goals in life and we
often think we have a great reason or at least we think we do, when really we
are just consumed with busy work rather than important work.
How does
being too busy relate to people in your life?
We often
say we are too busy for a particular activity or action, what we really mean is
that something is not important enough for me to consider it a priority.
Ask about
the law of diminishing returns
The law
of diminishing returns – a point at which the level of profits or benefits
gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested
Hiring a
service to do your home chores. Such as house cleaning or year work, might be a
sign that you are too busy.
You can’t
be motivated solely by your goals, you have to love the process to succeed.
Examples:
Problem:
over-weight,
Goal:
wanting to be thin
Better
Goal: wanting to weigh 110 pounds
The goal
has no instructions or process on how to achieve this goal. The best approach
would be to love being a vegetarian, or a vegan, or a gluten free sugar free
vegan. Go ten feet deep on being a vegan and love the journey of learning about
what it means and finding communities of like-minded people who share the same
passion. That is fun and exciting and
you will never lose motivation and guess what you will lose weight and probably
exceed your goal along the way.
Problem:
high blood pressure
Goal:
wanting to reduce blood pressure
Better
Goal: wanting to reduce blood pressure to 120 over 70
The goad has no instructions or process on how to achieve this goal. A better approach would be to adopt a sport, for winter and summer. If you do not excel sports than become a “gym rat”. Go ten feet deep on weight training and love the journey of learning about what it means and finding communities of like-minded people who share the same passion.That is fun and exciting and you will never lose motivation and guess what you will lose weight and probably exceed your goal along the way.
Early
Financial Independence
Good Income – Modest lifestyle
Modest Income – Frugal Lifestyle
Good Income – Frugal Lifestyle
Good
Income – You need to have never ending thirst for knowledge
Always wanting to upgrade your skills
Always have a side hustle
Love being the go-to person
Modest
Lifestyle – You need to become resourceful, stretching the useful life of
everything you own.
Learn how to do some of the smaller home repairs
Learn how to maintain your lawn mower
Learn how to change your snow tires
See the world for everything that could be optimized
Frugal
Lifestyle – All you see in the world is excess
You get excited about thrifting (you can’t drive past a year sale)
You are disappointed when you have to buy new instead of used
Celebration is a
funny thing we tend to celebrate our past, I would like to introduce the
concept of celebrating our future.
I used to think hope
was this fleeting emotion that would come and go, but I recently read a book by
Mark Manson – Everything is F**ked that has changed about hope.
Do not chase
happiness, the pursuit of hope will be far more rewarding. In the pursuit of
happiness would suggest you are currently not happy. The more you pursue
happiness the more unhappy you will become. The pursuit of hope is more of a
journey and less of a destination which will bring a positive mindset.
Hope is not
something that happens to you, hope is something you embrace, hope is something
you believe in.
Hope is the
intersection of three things
Control – show up in our lives as choice
Cause – you have to believe in it beyond your contribution
Community – like-minded people coming together to support each other for a shared cause
People come in and
out of our lives in three ways:
Reason
Season
Lifetime
Developing and
celebrating hope in different aspects of your life:
We get out of debt and then get back into debt or reach our goal and then digress, why? We’re in a diet mentality.
A diet is a systematized, temporary lifestyle change whereas changing one’s lifestyle is an attempt to keep up similar habits for a prolonged period of time.
Why diets don’t work:
https://psychologyofeating.com/why-diets-dont-work/
Diets Are Restrictive — all diets follow some method of restriction. While different programs use different methods of restriction, the concept is still the same: you remove or limit something from your spending patterns.
Diets Aren’t Successful in the Long Term — if financial dieting worked we’d pay off all our consumer debt, pay off our mortgage and never accumulate debt ever again.
Diets Take a Cookie Cutter Approach — diets give us rules to follow, and our unique circumstances, personal history, and individuality are rarely considered.
Depletes Your Vitamin T — trust – trust in yourself, that is. Diets require you to place an incredible amount trust in their product or program.
Is there a season when dieting is okay?
Debt repayment with gazelle like intensity?
How do we stay in that lifestyle mentality long after we’ve reached our goal (debt repayment etc.)?
How to maintain lifestyle changes:
Pick one list you like best!!!
https://www.doyouyoga.com/7-ways-lifestyle-changes-stick/