Tag: family

home before dark

Related to an earlier post about consulting, I had an interview with a ‘traditional employer’ back in the mid-2000s. I’d had a long standing consulting relationship with the company and was even offered a position with them about a year into working with them. Once every six months there would be a brief flurry of interest about bringing me on board as a regular, full-time employee. The last time this happened, when I received an offer, I wasn’t ready to join for many of the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post: I wasn’t willing to give up the flexibility or decent hours that I enjoyed. Another reason I didn’t share with them was my general state of mental exhaustion with audit and Sarbanes-Oxley. I just couldn’t bear doing that full-time forever, and hoped to start transitioning more to finance and systems.

So we went through another little series of feints at one point and I was left feeling a little queasy. A new group had been formed in the company to do work similar to my area of specialty, but probably a little more technical than my usual ‘big picture’ work. I interviewed with two women, both of whom were very pleasant. I had spoken with one of them before as a consultant, but she didn’t remember me and I didn’t bring it up. The other one I hadn’t met before, but she placed a great deal of trust on the recommendation from the woman I had reported to for the on-and-off couple of years I had worked with the company.

Both of the interviewees made cheerful - almost gloatingly so - references to how hard they were working and how much travel they were doing and how they worked weekends and late into the night. It made me a little bit sad and a little bit angry both at myself and at the culture I live in.

They were proud of spending so much time away from home. One of the women told me how important it was to get along with the team because you spend more time at work than you do with your family. True, perhaps. But I thought ‘how sad for her family.’ When did that sort of thought process become normal? I think it is important to get along with your coworkers, but the way in which it was presented made it seem like it was a choice, and that the choice should be to focus on your colleagues even at the expense of your family.

Corporate professionals aren’t really compensated fairly. I wonder how you would feel if you calculated how much a Fortune 500 company makes in profit per year and then think about what your share of that profit was. If they have a good year, does your gross go up? No. If they have a bad year, do you get laid off? Maybe. The upside goes to the executives and the downside goes to the employees. I think half of the corporate workforce would like to say “hey, if I work hard and I’m successful, I want to be paid more.” I guess you might argue that’s what promotions do, but there are definitely plateaus there. I took a huge leap when I went from staff to management but once I hit management it definitely was a declining rate of increase each year. I make a lot more as a consultant, and if I work long hours I get paid overtime. If I work less, I get paid less. If you’re a corporate employee on a salary, please do this exercise: keep track of when you arrive and leave at the office for a month, and then take your monthly salary and divide by hours worked. Include time spent at home checking email, too. It’s the only way to be honest with yourself about what your ‘true’ salary is.

Are people just really good at hiding their emotions? I saw dozens of people in the office churning away at their work, seemingly content. Maybe they were just hiding it better than I am, but I wondered when exactly I lost that burning desire to claw my way up the corporate ladder - and to do it cheerfully. I definitely had it – I worked long hours and played the political games with the best of them for most of my early career. But somewhere in there my will to sell my life to my employers just died. I view my work as a distraction from my life, rather than the other way around. Article after article that I read tells me that unless my work and my values and my goals align, I will be miserable. That may be true, but a significant component of that equation is simply the number of hours you spend on work you aren’t that interested in.

What is the effect on young families? I really dread the consequences of generation after generation of kids growing up in America seeing their parents once or twice a week on the weekends. One of my favorite quips is that no-one ever wishes on their deathbed that they had only spent a little more time in the office.

Does it matter if it ‘matters’? I have done my bit of mentoring and helping younger people become successful throughout my career, I guess. I have paid my taxes and earned enough to create a good home for my wife and kids, which took some effort after 2008. I don’t work for Halliburton or the Carlyle Group. One of the biggest disconnects I had with the big client I mentioned at the beginning of the article was my suspicion from my time working there that something was rotten in Denmark. My suspicions were borne out in 2008, of course; just read The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.

But I didn’t take the job offer, obviously, and after 7 years of consulting I still come home while it’s light out 99 out of 100 workdays. That may not be everything, but it’s something, and my hope is that for my kids it’s a big something.

the whole life sabbatical (part 3 of 3)


Creative Commons License photo credit: mistress_f

In part 1 of this three-part series I talked about walking away from various responsibilities in your life. In part 2 I talked about whether it would be easy to leave them. Now I’m going to bring it together with my thoughts on “walking away from it all.”Would it make you happier? In each area, it really depends on how happy you are now. Simply dropping a responsibility doesn’t make you happier. It can, however, free up enough time to allow you to pursue other activities that DO make you happy. I will argue this – almost no personal growth is possible without giving up something; without walking away from something else.

Work: For most people, this is the big one. I have a picture of a “workless” life and a picture of a “better work” life. I think most people say “oh, I couldn’t be happy without regular work, something to do, yada yada.” That’s not the case with me - I really get a lot of enjoyment out of learning and engaging in the regular business of day to day life. I’m not sure I need an avocation, per se. But I realize nobody is going to pay me to play with my kids all day every day, so I imagine “walking away from my work” ending up as walking into another job. I’d just like the hours to be flexible and more or less self-directed. But I do recognize this point: nobody will get a dream job, a dream career, the flexibility they’ve always desired without walking away from the one they have now. In order to achieve fulfillment in your work/career, you must be prepared to walk away from everything you have now.

Family: In the example I mentioned (should you take an infirm elderly relative into your home or support them by placing them in an elder care facility), it’s a tough choice people make all the time. My family has done so. You can’t ever abandon your family, but you do have to be able to let go and move on to develop other relationships. I see less of my brother than I did when I was younger and we lived together. I see less of my parents than I did when I lived at home. I even spend less time with my wife once we had a son, and now that we have a daughter, also, I have to spend less time with him. But each time when you take a little time away from someone, it doesn’t mean – or at least it doesn’t HAVE to mean – that you lose any of the strength of that relationship. In some ways it makes time you spend with those people even more intense, if you value them. By giving up time with one person you can grow your relationship with another – and it’s not a zero-sum game. I don’t love my brother or parents or wife or son any less as more people have been added to my family – if anything, it makes me appreciate everyone even more.

Finances: Walking away from your financial responsibilities is one of the best things you can do for yourself – unless you enjoy having a financial responsibility to your digital cable. Each time I’ve jettisoned a financial commitment it has not felt like a sacrifice – it’s felt like freedom. I have a long way to go, and some responsibilities are better than others: I don’t mind my mortgage because it allows me to keep my investments liquid and enjoy a pleasant home. But completing the lease on my car and buying the next one for cash, and ending that once-a-month reminder of money floating away was a source of huge satisfaction. Sometimes I think happiness can be defined more easily – on a financial basis – as the lack of things, rather than the possession of things. I will be wealthy, but I want that wealth to be expressed in a house and financial freedom and security for my family and travel and experiences, rather than in Wii’s.

Life: And finally, life. Can you walk away from your health? No. Can you walk away from other parts of your life? Yes: you can walk away from everything about your life that’s negative. How many people do you know who cling to failed relationships, or bad habits, or make themselves sick by living in unhealthy environments? Life is the one area you have to learn to walk away from. Don’t accept the idea that you have to have some misery in your life. Don’t accept “no pain, no gain.” There is gain without pain.

So what was I getting at with these posts? Too often I read about, and think about what I need to GET or ACQUIRE to achieve goals. Too often people think I NEED that to be happy, or I have an OBLIGATION to stay in this situation. Try not to think of life as a series of things you HAVE to do. These are not powerful words. Try to think of life as a series of experiences you WANT.

Identify what’s not working for you, and walk away from it – what are you waiting for, your next life?

the whole life sabbatical (part 2 of 3)


Creative Commons License photo credit: ribena_wrath

In part 1 of this three-part series I talked about walking away from various responsibilities in your life. How easy would it be to leave them?

Work: If you stop to think about it, you have almost nothing stopping you from quitting your work. If you own a business, you can sell it. If you are an employee, trust me - if you quit you will be a distant dusty memory to your former coworkers in a week. If you are a freelancer, refer your clients to your freelancing network. I am sometimes stunned in a corporate environment by the loyalty and responsibility people imagine they must demonstrate before quitting, when the same company might lay that person off and tell them to clear their desk in 15 minutes. I don’t advocate just walking out, but if you stopped your job today, the world would continue. You would find new work tomorrow.

Family: You have to take care of your children and parents. But consider this: you have a responsibility to provide your children with food, shelter, education, love, trust and hope for the future. Do you have a responsibility to provide them with a Wii? An iPhone? An Ivy League education? A home? There is a line there that everyone must draw for himself, and I’ve seen it done in both extremes: parents who sacrifice everything for their children or brothers who care for unmarried sisters or children who go to great extremes for their in-laws…as well as people who walk away from even the responsibility to put food on the table. With family, your responsibilities are easy to walk away from, but for many of them you cannot walk away and look at yourself in a mirror. However, you can say to yourself “I have no obligation to buy my child a car.” It will not destroy your family.

Finances: You can walk away from your financial responsibilities to the extent that you’re prepared to lose things. The biggest obligation you have is taxes. Fail to pay those and you’ll go to jail. But if you make less and less money, eventually your obligation to pay taxes will drop away. Other obligations, at the end of the day, are optional, although some are easier to downgrade than eliminate completely. If you have a huge mortgage, you could sell the house and live on the streets (extreme) or live in a smaller house with a smaller mortgage (less extreme) or rent. If you spend $300 per month on entertainment, you can eliminate it completely - but at some point even “free” entertainment costs money (you need shoes to walk in the park, for example). You can’t walk away from finances as easily as you might think. You can walk away from some of them, but leaving them all behind is almost impossible.

Life: Obviously, you can let a LOT go in this area. You can start eating crap, quit exercising, and in various ways neglect your life. It might be a nice change for a while, but there will be consequences down the road. I often wonder how far you could push this “life sabbatical,” though. Could I get by on raw vegetables, fruits, bread, cheese, tea and water for food (i.e. forget about cooking)? Could I exercise by just walking or biking everywhere (i.e. selling my car)? Could the lack of stress be the biggest health improvement I could make?

In part 3 I’ll look at whether you should walk away from your life and take a “sabbatical”.

the whole life sabbatical (part 1 of 3)


Creative Commons License photo credit: urbanshoregirl

Have you ever just wanted to chuck it all and walk away? To just walk away from your commitments and responsibilities and start over again somewhere else? Why didn’t you?

I started thinking about the practicalities of walking away from my entire life of responsibilities after learning an acquaintance had done it. I divided my responsibilities up in a few different groups: work, family, finances and life. Each one has different implications in terms of walking away, and before anyone thinks I’m about to start discussing walking away from your family or your finances - don’t worry! I have a different mindset, and hopefully it will become clear what I’m getting at in parts 2 and 3.

First of all, what ARE your responsibilities?

Work: Chances are good that you work for a living. Maybe you are an employee, or a freelancer, or a small business owner. Your responsibilities for each of these types of work are similar but not the same. If you are an employee, you work at a business. Maybe you serve customers, or work in a group, but for the most part you have nobody who relies on you for their livelihood; the company pays their paycheck, not you. If you are a freelancer, nobody depends on you for their livelihood but customers may rely on you, particularly if you function almost as a “part-time” employee for their business. The most responsible position of these three would be a small business owner. If you have employees, you have people who depend on you.

Family: If you have a spouse, or elderly parents or children or any close family you support (or help support) you have a tremendous responsibility to them. You may share that responsibility (for example, if you are married and have kids you and your spouse both provide overlapping types of support) but in many cases this dependency is total and desperate (think elderly parents or newborn children). How easily could you walk away from family (or even close friends who are like familiy)? People do it all the time. Divorce and abandonment are extremes. I’m thinking more of cases like this: do you bring your aging parent who requires almost-around-the-clock care to live with you if you are able? Or do you send them to an assisted living/nursing home facility? It sounds cruel, but should you neglect your other family to care for someone who probably needs better care than you can provide? It’s a difficult question.

Finances: You have commitments to be paid - rent, mortgages, taxes, utilities and so on. Some are less critical than others. Your cable TV is a fairly mild commitment you could end without much worry. Your electricity? Less so. Your taxes? I wouldn’t advise it - we can’t all be Wesley Snipes. This area is fairly clear cut morally, although there are gray areas - would you walk away from a mortgage if your home plummeted in value, in order to get a fresh start? I would, but some people think this is irresponsible.

Life: You have responsibilities to things in your own life that cannot be pushed aside. Food must be eaten, health must be maintained and medical care is sometimes necessary. You can switch from caviar to tuna fish, but you can’t stop eating. You can decide to stop taking multivitamins, but if you suffer from diabetes you’ll still need insulin. You may even have responsibilities to your friends, your neighborhood and your church/temple/mosque/etc., but these could vary so much it’s hard to make an overarching simplification, and I wonder if those are truly responsibilities. I suppose if you are a community-centric person they might be. I will argue that you have almost no other responsibilities. Do I have a responsibility as a citizen for certain things? I guess so. Voting, jury duty, paying taxes and so on are all “national” responsibilities, but let’s face it - you can walk away awfully easily from most of those. Whether you should is another question.

So did I miss anything? And don’t tell me it’s impossible to walk away from any of these commitments, because you can, without a doubt. These are the major areas of obligation in most of our lives, other than a sense of civic duty. In the next two parts I’ll talk about (1) whether you could walk away and (2) if walking away would make you happy. We all say we want freedom - but do we?

Corporate coffee cost cutting

Over the course of my audit and consulting careers I have worked in a number of different office environments. I have worked in polished-steel and black marble floored high rises in Manhattan. I have worked in banks, in suburban office parks and in drab skyscraper cubicle farms. I have worked in hotels, in family-owned businesses and even once in a closet which had been converted to an office.

Most of these offices spaces shared one characteristic, which seems to be dying away: a coffee maker. I am not a huge coffee drinker, although I like coffee. I have a cup at home and maybe one more when I arrive at the office. However, I have recently cut back on my one cup at work and drink tea I buy at the supermarket instead. Why? Because in the last 4-5 years I have noticed that coffee makers are disappearing.

There may be a number of reasons, first among them safety hazards. But I think the root problem might be a horribly misguided corporate cost-cutting effort. I think most corporations look at a coffee machine and think:

  1. We must be spending a fortune on Maxwell House!
  2. How much does all of that filtered water cost?
  3. Think of how much it costs to replace a coffee machine once every decade - it might be $25 or more!
  4. Think of how much time we lose when employees meet at the coffee machine and chit chat while pouring milk, adding sugar and stirring!!

Three of the last four corporate offices I’ve worked in did not offer coffee. One had a horrific machine that dribbled out some instant powder and then some hot water to make some swill. One served Starbucks coffee, brewed with filtered water and changed out by the office staff once per hour to keep it from getting burnt or stale. And two simply had no coffee available except in the company cafeteria on a different floor.

So how much is keeping a coffee machine on each floor costing the company? At the company where Starbucks was provided, I would linger occassionally talking to someone at the machine, sure, but usually I walked over, got a cup, and was back at my desk in 2 minutes holding a nice, pleasant cup of coffee. It made me more enthusiastic about the work and the company (stupid, I know).

However, at the two companies offering nothing I had to go downstairs to the cafeteria, get some coffee that’s been sitting in one of these giant brew-pots for hours (so it’s too harsh) and pay approximately $1.50 for a small cup. I have to wait in line to pay, and the whole process probably takes 15 minutes or more. I am irritated at paying the money. I am irritated because if I want a splash of hot coffee to perk up my cup after it’s cold, I can’t. You don’t get the friendly hanging-around-the-coffee-pot chatter that’s one of the few bearable moments in most cube farms. And the company loses far more productive time from me.

I understand there may be safety concerns, but I doubt it. I see microwaves and hot water dispensers in break rooms. The technology is there to buy safety or timed coffeemakers, or work with an office coffee vendor to ensure equipment is cleaned and working properly without any effort on your part.

Going outside the office isn’t an option - the nearest coffee shop is a 5 minute walk away so by the time you go out, wait, come back you’ve wasted even more time. Plus, I just don’t like going “off campus” because then I really feel obligated to go off the clock on my hourly rate. I know I should just switch to drinking tea (hot water is free, still) or water, but I really enjoy that morning cup of coffee.

So what do you think? Am I being unreasonable and whiny or are these corporations being penny wise, pound foolish?

follow the white rabbit to financial freedom

Trinity: Please just listen. I know why you’re here. I know what you’ve been doing… why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You’re looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when I found him, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, reader, just as I did.

What is the secret to financial freedom?

If you are deeply in debt, or spending more than you earn to acquire stuff, you are living in a world that is less than what it could be. Corporations and consumer society have constructed an elaborate world that is filled with shiny things and toys and useless items. In this false world, you are told that true happiness comes with the acquisition of things, that your attention should be focused on today, that tomorrow will take care of itself. In this Matrix, it’s always Black Friday and it’s always the Presidents’ Day Sale.

Morpheus: What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

But just maybe, while making a call on your iPhone, driving your leased car wearing your latest fall fashions on your way to the mall on your one day off from your crushing commute and your boring job, you had a sudden thought. Maybe the world isn’t supposed to be like this. Maybe we weren’t all meant to be shopping units in the corporate world’s vast consumer Matrix. Maybe our happiness doesn’t come from owning CDs, or watching American Idol, or buying a Wii. Maybe there is another world - the real world - where your work and your life are one and the same because you love them both, where you can do what you want, when you want, where you have time to give to people and experiences, not just to commuting and working for a faceless employer. No, it’s not possible. Your neighbors look like they are doing fine, and they have lots of stuff, right? This is how it has to be. This is how it has always been.

Morpheus: I’m trying to free your mind. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it. There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

Maybe you’ve started reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad or Dave Ramsey or Your Money or Your Life. Other people are trying to show you the way out. The trouble is, you set down the book and remember “I need a new belt! I want to rent “Wild Hogs”!” Only you will start the journey out of the Matrix, and it will be difficult - there will be roadblocks everywhere: pricey restaurants, bigger homes, newer cars, fancier cell phones. The Matrix will do everything it can to keep you, because its existence depends on your continued function as a shopping unit. Without shopping units to generate power, the consumer Matrix will weaken. You have to stop, today. Put down your credit card. Stay away from the store. Cook a meal at home. Turn off the TV.

Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?
Morpheus: You’ve never used them before.


When you finally leave the consumer world, you’ll notice that your old behavior is now awful to consider. You’ll see credit card debt, still-functioning cell phones gathering dust in cabinet drawers, barely-worn clothes in the back of the closet, half-empty rooms never used in your house. Your eyes will hurt looking at all of this STUFF that you valued so much, because you never really SAW before.

Morpheus: Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?

The dream is the 9-to-5 world. The dream is a 3000 square foot home for a family of 4. The dream is a $400 per month car lease. The dream is an iPhone, a Wii, digital cable, the latest fashions. And the dream is a nightmare. You have to wake from that dream and realize that in the real world there is VERY little you need other than shelter, food, friends, family and basic clothing and entertainment. In the dream you have no time - but you can have all the time in the (real) world if you just wake up.

Neo: I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

(with many thanks to The Matrix)

giving gifts in the office

dunder A pet peeve of mine, for a long time, has been the corporate office “pitch in for a gift” routine. If you aren’t a corporate employee, what happens is that there’s usually one perky busybody in every department who decides to buy a flower basket when co-workers gets sick, or a teddy bear when they have a baby, or an item from the registry when someone gets married, or even a little gift for everyone’s birthday. This busybody goes around and asks everyone for a “donation,” knowing full well that for most people refusing is an embarrassing proposition.

I have never liked this business of pitching in.

  • 1. I don’t always like the person for whom the present is being purchased.
  • 2. Sometimes the reason for the gift is trivial - someone is having a birthday? What, are we 12?
  • 3. There is a subtle discrimination - someone who has been around longer, or has a better position, or is simply more popular gets bigger or better gifts.
  • 4. If the busybody is encouraged, soon you are shelling out $10-$20 a week for “voluntary” gifts.

I am also very uncomfortable accepting such gifts, and have often said point-blank that I don’t want any gifts. Maybe I have a distorted view, but to me if I receive a gift I feel an obligation to return it the next time I’m asked to contribute. Then I’m “stuck” as a regular contributor.

Now that I’m a consultant - and technically not “part” of the department - I find it easier to refuse. I am stingy enough with gift-giving for my family and friends (and myself) that I resent any “required” gifts for my co-workers. I know, in a sense, that this just reflects the realities of most people’s lives - that they spend more time with their co-workers than with their friends and families and therefore want to contribute to the morale of their workplace. Yet every time I’m asked to pitch in $10 for a co-worker’s cheese-and-sausage gift basket I see $10 that could buy my son some books, or $10 to add to my nieces’ and nephew’s custodial accounts, or even $10 that Bubelah and I could put towards an occasional evening out. I am selfish that way.

So am I crazy? Do you have people asking you to contribute to “departmental” gifts at the office? Do you participate? Am I just being a jerk?

(photo credit by makelessnoise)

what your trash says about you

I’ve noticed that I can make a few snap judgments about my family’s life based on our trash output. We are not a particularly “green” family, although I am passionate about environmental issues. Trash output is one are where I definitely talk the talk but walking…not so much. If you take a close look at your trash, you’ll notice that the decisions you make on a daily basis affect both the quantity and “lack of quality” of your trash. I have noticed a few areas where we can make improvement:

Reduce the volume.

The mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle” is universal by now. The focus is far too often on recycling. Recycling your plastic bottles is a good step to take, but not buying them in the first place is infinitely superior. I’ve written about this before, but the excess packaging that surrounds us has become insane. Given a choice between two otherwise equal items, I’ll go for the less excessively packaged item most of the time. Every time you buy loose fruits instead of fruits in fancy containers, for example you’re doing well. Using a reusable bottle for your daily water instead of a Poland Spring drink-and-toss bottle is an improvement.

Consider your long-term choices. We didn’t think much about disposable diapers - we just headed right down that path. With a 500 year decomposition time our decision to use disposable diapers will affect our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-….grandchildren (you get the picture). I buy so many items without stopping to pause and realize: that crap is going to be here FOREVER.

Don’t throw it away.

Hoarding items can become an annoying habit or a frugal, environmentally friendly way to live - but the border between them is razor-thin and constantly shifting. I’ve saved boxes before, and let’s face it: if you’re a member of Amazon Prime, or shop through drugstore.com, you get boxes all the time. However, if you get an Altoid tin, it can make an excellent storage container for nails or other small items in your tool storage area (just make sure you have a labelmaker handy)!

Composting isn’t easy or fun. In an urban environment, or a condo association, it may be outright forbidden. At the same time, if you can do it I think it would feel much better to throw organic waste into a composting bin rather than tossing it in a landfill. It might be a “self-smugification” action, but so be it.

Give it away. Often if people have large items they don’t want anymore it’s easiest to put them in the dumpster. We finally jettisoned old, broken down bachelor furniture I had dragged around for many years, but we gave it away rather than dumping it (my first instinct). If there is a Salvation Army or Goodwill near you, take a shot. Freecycle or hit craigslist. Sometimes it’s hopeless - my massive 500-pound Sony TV is so heavy that nobody has ever been interested, even for free.

photo credit: mugley

Money.

I’m going to be beating a dead horse here, but the amount of trash you generate is probably proportionate to the amount of money you spend. If you spend a lot, you probably generate a lot of trash. Cut back on your spending, and you will generate less. It’s not always true - getting a free cell phone with a 2-year contract and getting a $500 iPhone both generate a lot of junk packaging waste. But as a general rule, you’ll be better off with trash if you spend less.

Separate.

I am lazy. Throwing an unwanted Land’s End catalog in the trash is not hard. Bundling it up for recycling takes five more minutes, and that’s usually five minutes I FEEL I don’t have.

Make choices at the source. We can recycle our plastic and glass bottles in my community - but not aluminum cans, or juice boxes, or paper milk cartons. Buying containers that can be recycled, as opposed to ones that must be thrown away makes a slight - but important - difference.

Think about needs.

This relates to reducing, but simply think about needs. Are you going to go throw a gallon of milk a week? Buy a gallon, not quarts of milk. Are you going to eat 50 apples before they go bad? No? Maybe buying 6 or 7 is enough, even if you’re missing out on a good deal on 50.

You may think you need those steel-toed boots for gardening, but you know what? You’re not Sven the Hardy Pioneer, you’re Sven the Twice-a-Year-Hole-Digger. Use your sneakers. The boots are going to end up in the dump practically unused.

Think about the future.

I have noticed that there is often a conflict between health and the environment. I like to use paper towels. We have small kids, and I like to know that after I get raw meat on my hands cooking I’m not washing and wiping my hands on the same rag I might use to wipe my son’s hands after an energetic painting session. Paper towels give me peace of mind about hygiene.

Yet at the same time, I have always been blown away by this thought: almost every single thing you have ever thrown away - paper towels, apple cores, packaging, a bottle you forgot to throw in the recycling bin - is still lying in a pile somewhere on this planet. EVERYTHING. If you threw away a yo-yo in 3rd grade, it’s sitting in a pile somewhere. Forget the environment for a minute. Forget the toxins in the air from manufacturing that yo-yo, or transporting it from Taiwan to you, or the plastics it’s made of: that yo-yo still exists.

Everything I ever threw away still exists. It didn’t become fairy dust. Someday there may be a magic incinerator that can turn trash into edible food, or oil, or fuel (a la Back to the Future). Yet the simple fact is that future generations will come and go hundreds or thousands of times over, and that stupid plastic packaging that your iPhone headphones came in will still be sitting there. Daunting.

green acres 2011

Steve’s note:  This is an older post I decided to drag out, simply because it’s quite amazing for me to read my mindset, about a year before we pulled up stakes and left New York City for a small town in the South… and perhaps it’s a good case lesson in why you shouldn’t be so sure about what you think you’re sure about…

Remember, this is all written late 2007 – the real estate bubble has popped but the financial crisis is yet to come.

This past weekend I took the Brip Blap crew (myself, Bubelah, Little Buddy and almost-out-and-about baby #2) on a drive over to Queens to a birthday party for the daughter of Bubelah’s friend. This couple recently purchased a nice house in a nice neighborhood with nice schools and near to the epicenter of their ethnic community. The house was a fixer-upper when they bought it, so they had to put in some substantial money to fixing it up. They have not yet finished doing so, and the total cost, to date, is over $1 million. Although that is in the almost-worthless-US-dollar, it is still a substantial amount of moolah.

Switch to a couple of days before that. Out of curiosity, I looked on Ye Olde Internet for real estate in a small town in Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia that Bubelah and I have visited and really like. A house, finished in grand style similar to our friends’ house but far bigger with a substantially larger yard was listed for about $500,000. Bigger house, bigger yard, all finished (no fixing up really necessary) for half as much – and probably half the property taxes, too.

Switch to years earlier and swoop down South to the ancestral estates of the Brip Blap family, sprawling across 3 acres of land in the Deep South. My parents have vacated their home in the South to move closer to my brother’s family (and closer to mine, as well). Their Deep South house – which I am sure they will not mind me referring to as “stylistically dated” (but a very nice home) – is a little smaller than the Pennsylvania and Queens houses, but on a huge lot with practically no property taxes. It might sell for about 15% of the cost of the Queens house. 

So where do you draw the line? I know I could move to Kansas (no offense, Kansanians, I pick on Kansas because of the free land being offered there) and build Neverland II for what a decent-sized single family house would cost in Queens OR a 650-sq foot studio in Manhattan. Bubelah and I have often toyed with the idea of moving to Florida, a place we both like a lot, as well, and I am sure real estate on the beach is a lot more affordable today than it was two years ago. I used to joke about moving to Portugal, but I suspect with the dollar’s value where it is that wouldn’t be much of a bargain.

I think it says something about your core values if you choose to spend big on a place to live. I know there is a point at which we all draw the line, because I don’t see huge numbers of bloggers from the Soft Coasts moving to the heartland, nor vice-versa. Our friends in Queens spent big because they feel THAT IS IT. The home is in the midst of their community, near family, good neighborhood, schools, etc. etc. They have planted their flag, and staked their financial future to it; they will not have financial freedom in the next 10 years (or 30). But they are happy with that decision.

My point? I know financial freedom is not my #1 goal when I analyze it in this context. Bubelah and I could move to my parents’ home in the South and neither of us would need to work at a day job, starting tomorrow. With our various side-income producing ventures, given a little growth, we could probably support most of our needs. The schools are fine (I’m a product of them, and I think I can do sums and read a comic strip as well as the next person). But we won’t do it: family, climate, etc. enter into it but the kicker is really that neither of us can imagine living in a small town anymore. But this does mean, then, that our number one value is not financial freedom, as I often like to say it is. Our number one value may be family, or a more liberal big-city atmosphere, or the ability to eat Turkish cuisine frequently (best.food.ever) – but whatever our #1 value is, it is not financial freedom. So for now, no green acres!

But then… farewell new jersey…

should you have children?

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with a subject to blog about, so tonight I’ll borrow Syd’s thoughts:

If you decide not to have children, you’re also going to have to learn how to fit in to a world that doesn’t understand you. When people find out that you don’t want kids, be prepared for their shock. But take comfort in the fact that it’s not as bad as their reaction would be if they found out you were secretly a serial killer.

from How to Fit in Without Kids

It’s an interesting debate. My wife and I certainly talk, with curiosity, about people we know who have chosen not to have kids. Yet ten years ago, I counted myself among those people. Until I met my wife I had little interest in having children; actually, if I’m honest with myself, I had none. I don’t know why, exactly - I had a good childhood, I was happy with family life. I simply didn’t care that much about having kids. When I look back, and try to be honest with myself, it was selfishness. I was busy with my life for a lot of years. I worked very hard, I played very hard… I traveled, I socialized. I spent a lot of time doing stuff for me. Children just seemed like they would be an inconvenience to that life. And I was right.

It’s a trite and tedious comment to say that once you have kids, everything changes. It’s true, though. My life revolved around ME until I was a husband, but even then I had plenty of time for myself. Bubelah and I were both working and could do things as separate people. We didn’t have responsibilities. Sure, we thought we did - we thought the family visits and the social events and work-related crud were responsibilities, but now I know that pales in comparison to nighttime feedings, pouring juice, wiping butts, preparing food, playtime, storytime, sicktime, and bedtime. And when work bummed me out I could take a vacation. You can’t do that with a kid. You certainly can’t do it with two (or more).

So I get Syd’s article. Now that I have two children I look at childless couples and - sadly - my first thought is usually “wow, too bad, I guess they can’t have kids” - as if no-one could rationally choose that path except through the accidents of biology. But then I reflect, and I think that the world would be much better off if people could seriously and thoughtfully consider their rationale for becoming parents. How often is it societal or parental or other types of pressure that lead people into thinking they ‘need’ kids? How many people NEED to reproduce? The world’s not lacking for people, last time I checked.

I’ll throw out one more trite saying: now that I have kids, I can’t even vaguely conceive of life without them. And I’m not just being sentimental, because it’s hard to have kids and many times they are just not fun. My son and I had a meltdown last night when I punished him (no bedtime book) for calling me a name shortly before bedtime. I was mad, he was mad. It wasn’t fun, and I didn’t feel the joy of parenthood at that moment. As I write this I had to jump up from the computer and put my daughter back to sleep after she cried - for no apparent reason. But I still feel an overwhelming sense of closeness to my children that’s impossible to dismiss. I’ve felt endless hours of tiredness, boredom, irritation, and so on, but those hours have been tempered by moments and flashes of pure joy - first words, hugs without reservation and the usual glowing types of experiences parents tout. They’ve been cut with many hours of cute songs, fun play, interesting outings and charming displays.

I love my kids. But does that mean everyone needs children? No. No more than my love of warm weather means everyone should move to a temperate climate. Choices are made about one’s life, and although we tend to make children a central life choice, it’s not the only choice and in many senses may be only one of many. Where to live, what work to choose, who to associate with as friends, religion, diet, money - these are all important, too. You can live a full life with children, but you can live a full life without - just as you can live a desperate life with children, or without.

What you shouldn’t do is judge other people’s choices. There’s an old saying that has always seemed to me to be the epitome of reasonableness and nightmarish lack of concern for other people: “the world needs ditchdiggers, too.” That’s harsh, but you know what? It’s true. Well, in the same sense, not everyone NEEDS to have kids. Some because they shouldn’t, and - let’s face it - some people don’t want them, even if they’d make great parents. It’s a shocking thing to say, I think, coming from a parent; but it’s true. So parents - treasure your kids. People who aren’t parents - and don’t want to be - will be just fine the way they are.

how kids (can) make you poor

Raising a child can cost up to $250,000 - and that’s from a study done almost 20 years ago. That’s only the cost through high school - college is another problem entirely, unless you don’t plan on paying for your child’s education (and I don’t). Having a kid is expensive. Having a second is less expensive - hand-me-downs and shared costs can reduce the individual costs - but a larger family is going to cost a fortune. The simple fact is that you won’t become AS rich with kids.

I’ve seen the question of children play out a dozen different ways with friends and in my own life. My parents had kids (my brother and me) when they were barely out of their teenage years. I have friends who waited until they were almost 40 to have kids. One couple fervently and frequently insisted they would never have kids - and show no signs of changing their minds. In each case, the decision to have a child (or children) was deeply personal, and made for a number of reasons - but seldom considering the cost. The simple fact is that you’ll be better off financially without kids. Kids are expensive.

It’s a potentially sensitive topic … and most people don’t want to have that conversation. “Kids bring so much joy into your life!” “Kids are their own reward!” I’m biased - the cliches are all true. My son’s a supernova of energy, creative and amazingly verbal. My daughter’s charming and almost impossibly cheerful. They are joys. But to be realistic, I have to admit that because of them I will not be as wealthy as I could have been. I regret nothing, but I also understand that I’m going to have to work harder accumulating wealth than I would have without children.

So how do we plan to compensate? If you have kids, how can you avoid spending more than you need to? It’s not the nature of my blog to talk about ways to save money on Cheerios by buying the store brand - although you should. But I do have a few “big ideas”:

  1. I’m not paying for my kid’s PRIVATE college education. If Little Buddy or Pumpkin want to attend a private school, they’d better develop tennis skills or become world-class scholars. I’m not paying for Pumpkin to attend an Ivy. I’ll help, but if they can’t pay for a private college, they can go to a public university, just like Mama and Papa did. We did just fine.
  2. We will readjust our lives around their education early on, though. We moved to Florida to escape crappy public schools in Jersey, and made sure we landed in a school district considered one of the best in the state.
  3. I will strive to teach independence. This sounds stupid, but I have seen so many of my colleagues in corporate America talking about their mid-20 (or even mid-30) year old children living at home. I know I can talk big now, but I left home at 18 and my children will too. If they can’t afford a home, I’ll tell them to move to a cheaper locale. An unmarried 35-year-old living with their parents needs to experience life.
  4. We will resist consumerism. A couple of years ago, one of my neighbors bought one of those big car-battery powered cars - with a working FM radio - for their daughters. Little Buddy loved it. I was tempted to get him one. He didn’t, and doesn’t, need it. I have fallen victim again and again to the urge to buy toys. Sometimes it makes sense: I bought him a farm set that he plays with daily. Sometimes I fail: I have bought a half dozen balls (football, baseball, soccer) and he is utterly indifferent to all of them that don’t have Spiderman on them. But I see a sickness in most parents around me: the need to buy distractions. I struggle to remind myself that learning to pretend my wooden blocks were race cars taught me to IMAGINE things. My parents would have done me a disservice by buying me Leapfrog, or whatever the 70s equivalent was. Learning how to live with less - at least as far as toys - is a gift, not a burden.

But none of these cost-saving ideas can compensate for the fact that a childless couple (or a single person) will simply be much better off than a couple with kids. I won’t recommend one choice or the other, because it’s such a personal choice. But don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: in the short term, having kids is no big deal. You can afford formula, diapers, baby clothes. But in the long run, having kids will change your career choices, affect your ability to save and limit your choices about almost everything. Make sure you’re comfortable with the long-term cost before you take the leap.

teaching and being taught, and links

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this on this blog or not, but I spent a fair amount of time as a part-time schoolteacher for both middle school and college freshmen as a substitute teacher and later as a graduate assistant. I taught intro to calculus and accounting in grad school and substituted for math, gifted ed and other subjects when I was still chasing my starry-eyed dream of becoming a math professor. I was good. My students liked me and I don’t recall if I’ve ever had a negative review or bad experience teaching (I don’t think I have). I continued my teaching/training throughout my corporate career, leading new employee classes and training in software for over 15 years. I like training and teaching. Nowadays I do little of that as a corporate consultant - nobody wants me to train, they want me to DO. And now, if not yesterday.

Well, I get glimpses of the past and flashbacks now that I have kids. I spent a couple of days at my children’s preschool/pre-K school where Little Buddy attends pre-K and Pumpkin goes to daycare (or preschool or whatever you’d like to call it). I do realize from time to time, when I self-analyze my abilities, that I do have one ability if nothing else: kids like me. I can engage them in learning and don’t make them nervous as some other parents do. I probably would have made a decent grade school or middle school teacher if I could have supported a family on that salary. That’s a sad observation, frankly, but one for another post.

I’ll make one other observation, too, unrelated to personal finance or careers: my children’s school concentrates heavily on play, and I like it. Not learning, but play - directed, but not with any intention towards teaching any specific subject. It’s interesting as a parent to process the conflicting emotions that arise from watching this: you want your kids to learn but I also (mentally) slap myself and say “Pumpkin’s not even 3 yet - she deserves play time.” I’m a firm believer in the concept that kids need play time - creative time, self-directed - to develop themselves. They’ll have plenty of time to be crammed into desks and forced to learn times tables later, I guess. Just my parental opinion, I guess.

MonaVie Blackmails Me?: Stunning that a company, or a rep for a company, would stoop this low. Read the article to see how low a supposedly ‘legitimate’ company can stoop. You can also read MonaVie: Multi-Level Marketing Gone Haywire for more idiocy. I can’t believe anyone falls for MonaVie’s crap after I’ve read stuff like this.

Blue Cash Rewards Increase: I’ve owned a Blue Cash card for years, so this is good news. I’ll take it…

Social Lending Arbitrage Beats Projections: I still think Lending Club is a good bet - if you’re interested in trying it they have a $25 signup bonus right now. I’d treat it like any other investment - it has its ups and downs, but it can serve as a reasonable diversification strategy versus the market.

Personal Finance the Krav Maga Way: Since I’ve seen all the Krav Maga signs up around my neighborhood, I thought this was an amusing - and timely - post.

Small but Alarming Indicator: This is unpleasant - but not unexpected - anecdotal news. On the other hand, Bubelah just attended a small business workshop where they barely had enough room for the interested attendees, and I remarked that it must have been all of the laid-off people thinking about launching small businesses (and good for them if they were)…

Life After Debt: What It’s Like in the Third Stage of Personal Finance: Just an interesting read, on many levels (fitness, travel, etc.)

and more…

  • The Downside of Owning REITs
  • Talking about Deflation
  • The Key to Effective Budgeting – Master The Yes/No Factor
  • Book Review of Leah Ingram’s Suddenly Frugal
  • How Much Mortgage Can I Afford?
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