Done To Zen

Start an emergency fund with 15% of my paycheck. Done. I actually saved a bit more, because I’ve saved the $30.99 I earned from an affiliate program. I have been depositing the $30 a week that I used to spend on eating out into my emergency, as well. So, in total, I have $120.99 extra in the account already.

Save 100% of rent payments. Done.

Open an ING Orange Savings account. Done.

Setup a recurring deposit of $50 a month. Done. (This would be the money I saved by canceling an online subscription.)

Cancel my gym membership. Not done. This is kind of interesting. I had already told my gym manager that I would not be coming back in July, but then I changed my mind again. More on this later.

Get a freelancing job. Not done. I started this but then became incredibly depressed at the thought of adding yet another commitment, so I stopped. The whole point of a freelancing job was to be able to save enough money, so as to feel less stressed. I figured that stressing out to be less stressed isn’t exactly the right way to go about things. I’ll have to figure out a better way.

Write a blog entry every day. Done. :-)

Become thin. Not sure. I mean, with a goal like this, nobody would ever be able to tell for sure whether I got thin or not. This was a vague goal that was in the back of my mind as I started this month. I should have spent more time to figure out what exactly “thin” meant, but I didn’t. I am thinner than I was at the start of the month (or so my family tells me, though I can’t really see any difference myself). Does that count?

Subscribe to 20 personal finance blogs. Done. I’m actually subscribed to 84 blogs. I usually skim through the 250+ unread articles a day and stop to read those that interest me. I typically do this for about 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes during lunch hour, and 1 hour at night, just before going to bed.

Run every day. Not done. I think I ran 5 times this month, and 4 of them only because I was forced to. Ah, well.

Wake up at 4AM every day. Done. Well, there’s one more day left, so I guess I can’t really call it done, but I’m fairly certain that I will manage to wake up at 4AM tomorrow, as well.

Volunteer at the library. Not done. I went to apply, but there was nothing interesting enough at my library to volunteer at. I was hoping to put to use my brilliant computer skills to help people out, but they said I had to travel 10 miles to be able to do so.

Overall, June was a good month. :-)

Chris Guillabeau writes The Nonconformist’s Guide to Personal Finance, in which he states that:

1. No such thing as good debt.
2. Student loans (= debt) are bad.
3. House is a liability, not an asset.
4. Invest in yourself
5. Invest in others
6. Give generously

I agree with all of them except for #3, which I agree with sort of. As long as you purchase a house within your means in a more reasonable market (i.e., a market in which it doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg to own a shack), I think that a home is more of an asset than a liability. A home, however, also means a large amount of debt (i.e., obligation), stress, less freedom to move, etc.

From Philip Greenspun about The Depressing Truth About Early Retirement via Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog

Ask a wage slave what he’d like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like “I’d start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I’d practice the piano for three hours. I’d become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I’d really learn how to handle a polo pony. I’d learn to fly a helicopter. I’d finish the screenplay that I’ve been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV.”

Why hasn’t he accomplished all of those things? “Because I’m chained to this desk 50 hours per week at this horrible [insurance|programming|gov’t|administrative|whatever] job.

So he has no doubt that he would get all these things done if he didn’t have to work? “Absolutely none. If I didn’t have the job, I would be out there living the dream.”

Suppose that the guy cashes in his investments and does retire. What do we find? He is waking up at 9:30AM, surfing the Web, sorting out the cable TV bill, watching DVDs, talking about going to the gym, eating Doritos, and maybe accomplishing one of his stated goals.

If we remove the cable bill, DVDs, and Doritos, this might have been me. On the other hand, I will probably have accomplished maybe two of my stated goals. Looks like retirement is still worth it. ;-)

Jim, over at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, wants to know whether we splurge on experiences or things. Both - leaning towards experience. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with splurging on things if that’s what makes you happy and you can afford it.

Trent, over at The Simple Dollar, talks about Finding Inspiration for Financial Change:

1. Less stress/worries
2. Freedom to change jobs/careers
3. Pursue your dreams
4. Your children
5. What you saw/heard and don’t want to experience
6. Your spouse

22Dollars talks about what to do if you don’t have the cash to pay rent: dipping into your emergency savings, borrowing against 401K, asking for salary advance, taking out a small emergency cash loan (if you’re a student), asking friends and family for help, talking to the landlord, offering labor in place of cash, sell something, and (as a last resort) take a payday loan.

Henry, over at Binary Dollar, gives us the 10 mortgage lessons from 12 phone calls.

Meg, over at The World of Wealth, reminded me of one of the great benefits of financial independence: being able to help your family out if they need it:

[My mom] mentioned my concerns to her father (my grandfather). He began to give her a lecture about how the market goes through cycles and it’s no reason to worry; but then she reminded him that I was planning to sell a chunk of it to buy another property (I had called to discuss the decision with him before officially making it).

“Oh, that!” he apparently exclaimed, recalling my plans. According to my mother, he said not to worry, that we aren’t going to be selling off anything at a market low and that we’d go about it some other way.

[…] My mom continued and told me that he said they would “sell a bond or something” and lend the cash to the account from which I’ll be getting my downpayment. That way when I withdraw funds, I wouldn’t have to sell stock to do so. They would then have to be paid back eventually, of course…

And, just like that, I realized that the 2nd largest benefit of being financially independent (after not having to stress about money) is being able to help your friends and family in their times of need. Feeling helpless is one of the worst feelings of all times, and it is exactly what I would feel if I could not help someone when I want to.

Waking up at 4AM Trial

Today is the 26th day of my 4AM trial. I’ve been staying awake longer after waking up at 4AM over the past week, mainly because I have something to do that I absolutely have to do before going back to sleep (something that isn’t too painful/hard to do, actually). :-) I’m still checking my blog statistics right after waking up, and that’s helping a lot when it comes to jumping out of bed (figuratively-speaking) as soon as my alarm rings.

I still keep the alarm far away from my bed. I made the mistake of placing it right next to me once and almost ended up breaking my trial after so many days of following it faithfully: I had gone back to sleep almost before I knew that I had woken up, but fortunately, I “woke” up again at 4:02AM.

Only 4 days left. Not that I plan on stopping, but it’s nice to know that I am almost done with the first 30 days, at least. :-D

Stop Eating Out Trial

Today is day 12 of the “stop eating out” trial. I found it much harder to resist eating out this week than I did last week. The main reason for this is that my coworkers keep asking me out to lunch. Every time they ask me to come out for lunch is another opportunity to stop the trial. I love eating out, so I keep wanting to argue with myself about why I should break the trial and go out and eat out, enjoy my life, stop paining myself, etc. But I managed to survive so far, but only because most dishes at restaurants are bad for the waistline. So: the main purpose of this trial has shifted from saving the money to keeping fit.

Another Previous Trial

I previously mentioned the 5 30 day trials I did so far. I actually did six trials; I completely forgot about one — I did a trial in April: making my bed right after taking a bath. I read somewhere that cleanliness in the bedroom starts with an inviting-looking bed, hence the trial. That was probably the easiest trial of the year.

So that brings my successful trial count to 6. Another 4 days, and it will up to 7. Another 18 days, and it will be up at 8. :-)

What did I learn this week?

Your coworkers, friends, and family can make or break the trial. Well — at the very least, they can make the trial very painful. Case in point is my “no eating out” trial. A new coworker keeps asking me out for lunch every day — even after I told them that I’ve decided to not eat out because I’m spending too much on it. They are trying to convince me otherwise…

Bumblefucked talks about an often-ignored reason for why being in debt sucks. My own apartment experience wasn’t as terrible, but only because I lived there for all of one month.

Bank of America’s “Keep the Change” Matching Fund via Nine Circles of Debt. From Bank of America:

Saving is a whole lot simpler when you don’t have to think about it. That’s the idea behind Keep the Change. When you enroll, each time you buy something with your Bank of America Check Card, we’ll round up your purchase to the nearest dollar amount and transfer the difference from your checking account to your savings account. You get to keep the change — so every cup of coffee, gift, meal, and tank of gas add up to more savings for you.

The best part of the program is that Bank of America matches 100% of your Keep the Change savings for the first 3 months and 5% from then on. The maximum match amount is $250 per year.

Saving Money on gas by hypermiling via How I Save Money. You simply have to use your common-sense. The tips given are very simple and will take only a little patience to get used to:

1. Know Gas Mileage
2. Don’t Drive Aggressively
3. Coast
4. Accelerate Slowly
5. Neutral Shifts

I’m ashamed to say that I score only 2 out of 5 on this (#1 and #2). I follow #4 when driving on highways and have been trying harder to do it on local roads, too. I admit I hate getting stuck behind someone who seems to take 10 hours to go from 0 to 40MPH.

Budgets Are Sexy wants to know whether you would rather take $500K now or $1 million in 10 years. Personally, I’m all for taking $500K now. I would buy 10 investment properties that will give me a gross cash flow of $100,000. I will retire and explore my passions. 10 extra years of pure zen are more important to me than an extra $500K. Besides, $500K now is worth more than $1 billion in 10 years because you get to invest it.