Tag: life

how to make money without a job and why you should

 

Spend less than you earn is the wrong way to think! Your time will be much better spent thinking of more ways to make money than it will be thinking of ways to save money. Chances are good if you read this blog that you’ve already given some thought to alternative income, but let’s back up.

“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.” - Oscar Wilde

Everyone has a primary source of income. Usually it is a traditional job - an employer who asks them to show up from 9 am to 5 pm, file a TPS report and pay an ungodly amount of taxes for the privilege of being laid off in a restructuring when the company misses earnings estimates by $0.01. Income can also come from self-employment, a small business, unemployment checks, a pension, or hundreds of other primary sources. Alternative income - which is sometimes referred to, incorrectly, as passive income - can come from rental properties, royalties, investments or other sources. All of these sources could also be primary income to someone but usually these are income streams that people receive in addition to their primary income. To be truly rich one thing is certain: for every ’stream’ of income you have, you should have an alternative. Alternative income is the key to wealth.

Most people have a single source of income. They work for employer Megacorp or Wal-Market and receive a paycheck. Some people may have a trickle of investment income, or occasionally sell something on eBay and then give up after a few sales, but a large number of people consider catching up on the final season of NBC’s beloved quirky comedy “The Office” a better use of their time than trying to earn more money after a tiring day in the office. Their goal is to get by on minimum work, minimum income and maximum “down-time.” Alternative income seems like a lot of extra work to these people, and extra work isn’t what anyone wants.

However, there are many advantages to finding alternative income, not the least of which is being able to get rid of your primary income stream. Having alternative streams of income means that no one stream can direct your life. Do you think you could tell your boss you were going to quit at the end of the month if your wage is your only source of income? Not unless you had an offer letter from your next ex-boss ready. But what if you had 15 streams of income? What if no single stream accounted for more than 10% of your total income? You could do a constant analysis and drop underperformers. You could drop streams that were inefficient, or frankly just made you blue. This is why being a consultant is better than being an employee, and why owning a business is better than being a consultant, and why creating content is better than owning a business - ease of adding and dropping income sources. Consultants and businesses and especially content creators can have more than one ‘employer’ at a time. No one ‘employer’ becomes critical for putting food on the table.

There are two more advantages to alternative income besides diversification of income sources. First of all is the expansion of skills. Creating an income stream from a website you create or eBay sales or a small business is a completely different skill set than being a financial analyst, for example. Not better, not worse, but different. Even blogging about financial analysis is a different skill set than being a financial analyst. Every time you create a new revenue stream, you are expanding your skill set. You are learning something new, and making it that much more likely that you’ll be able to add further income streams.

This leads to the greatest advantage of alternative income streams of all. This is the viral nature of alternative income. For the first 10-12 years of my working life, I never thought there was any point in worrying about income past my wages and a quarterly trickle of dividends from my stock holdings. The truth is that when you start thinking about creating alternative income you’ll find out that something funny happens. Your ideas will snowball. That first idea will spawn two more, and they’ll each create two more. You’ll get excited the first time you make a few dollars that didn’t come from your employer. You’ll see opportunities everywhere and even though many won’t work out, some will. The one that does will give you a lead to another stream. That stream will inspire you to create another. You won’t be content to sit back and wait for your corporate payroll department to mail you that never-changing check every two weeks. You’ll want more, and by wanting more you’ll find more. Once you understand that alternative income is the only way to real, long-lasting wealth every idea you have could be the start of something amazing.

So even if you come up with an idea for generating an extra $10 a month, don’t sneer at it. That $10 a month idea may someday serve as the basis for a $100 per month idea. That $100 stream may help you gain the skills and experience you need to have for a whole new stream that generates $1000 per month. If you see where this is going, you see the possibilities. Keep an eye out - you never know when you’ll come up with the next small idea that could turn out big!

This post originally appeared, in slightly modified form, as a guest post I wrote on Lazy Man and Money. He’s all about alternative income, of course, which is the subject of this post, so his blog is a great place to brainstorm.

Photo Some rights reserved by stevendepolo

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?

updating my financial goals, July 2008

Back in December, while participating in the Carnival of Financial Goals started by Patrick of CashMoneyLife.com, I gave my 2008 financial resolution. I’m pretty happy about where I’m at with it now.


Creative Commons License photo credit: Tigr

Here was my resolution and how I intended to accomplish it:
I will average $1000 per month in alternative income in 2008.

More specifically, these were the SMART measurements I came up with to measure this.

  • Specific - I’m going to expand my alternative income through this blog, through writing freelance articles, through my investments (although those will be reinvested) and through my other blogs.
  • Measurable - In December I will look back, take the total of my non-wage income for 2008, and divide by 12. That number will be higher than $1000.
  • Actionable - I’m already started on this goal - this blog is earning nearly $0.03 per day, I have some dividend-and-interest-producing investments, and I have started submitting a few freelance articles here and there. I just need to increase the intensity of all of these actions!
  • Realistic - If you’ve read this blog for a while you know I believe that just setting a goal down to (figurative) paper means that you can achieve it, but even without that belief I’m sure that if I work hard enough at 10 different income streams I can manage to generate that much, or more, if I make it a resolution.
  • Timely - I will have a good idea if I’m headed in the right direction by February 1, but even if I earn $10 in January it just means I have to average $1090 for the next 11 months. I’ll have a moving target each month, and I’ll know on December 31 if I hit my goal or not.

I followed it up a couple of months later, pointing out that I had come up far short of that goal. I interviewed myself (yes, I actually did - it’s a slightly disturbing one-person two-sided conversation). At that point, I had made far, far less than my original goal.

Well, as Jack Nicholson said in Wolf, “The worm has turned and it is now packing an Uzi, Mary.” I spent some time focusing on this goal and a surprising thing has happened. I am now close to halfway to my goal of earning $1000 a month on average. Considering how badly I did for the first month of the year you can imagine that things have really started picking up. I’m not even counting dividend or investment income at this point.

So how did this happen? I’ll attribute it to three specific actions:

  • My network, The Money Writers, has provided some help with obtaining revenue (namely advertisers) but far more importantly they’ve helped with ideas, tips and support. This is a perfect example of the mastermind concept in action. I wouldn’t be where I am without these guys (and gals).
  • I reengineered the blog and its advertising. Instead of my previous throw-everything-at-the-wall approach, I stuck to about four categories of ads and studied what worked. I tried to eliminate some of my in-your-face ads but put more ads on older posts. I deemphasized or removed ads that didn’t work, rather than hoping they would generate trickles of income; the purpose was to keep the overall experience of reading fun.
  • And I am sure this final point appeals to half of you and disgusts the other half, but I really concentrated on attracting success; not just for this alternative income but in my overall financial life. I decided that from being positive and writing more about what I feel needs to be said - from my gut - success would follow. I hope it has, in the sense that I hope what you read continues to deliver more value to you (in terms of ideas and maybe even just some fun reading it) than it takes from you (in terms of time). Only you would know that! Otherwise, you’d go read CNN Money.

So I’m halfway there, after an awfully slow start. Later in the year I’ll also pull in other alternative income: totally independent (rather than contracting) consulting in a slightly different field, my work-in-progress book, dividends, referral fees that I mentioned before (I have “headhunted” some former colleagues into positions this year - one 60-minute phone call netted me a $2000 fee for one of them, for example). I have a lot of plans, and the only constraint I have is time. Scratch that… I watched 45 minutes of Star Wars II: Attack of The Clowns, er, Clones last night, so I have time. The only constraint I have is myself, and I’m working hard on not constraining myself in anything!

And to quote again from my interview article update: “Well, the playoffs WERE good. 17-14, baby.” Anything is possible, even beating “The Greatest Team in History.” Nothing is impossible. Nothing.

David Tyree New York Giants Super Bowl XLII

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)

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.

4 quick steps to building wealth

1. Find something you can do well and (at least moderately) enjoy doing.*
2. Do it.**
3. Try to save some of the money you make doing it.***
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3.****

I think that may be it. What do you think?


Creative Commons License photo credit: woodleywonderworks

* Notice I didn’t use a phrase like “doing passionately” or “doing because you love it.” You don’t have to love it, but you have to enjoy doing it enough that it is not annoying to you. If you love helping people, maybe working as a nurse’s assistant is enjoyable. If you have a passion for music, maybe owning a record store would be fun. If you have a love of football, maybe being a sports writer is enough. You don’t have to be Brett Favre, always “having fun out there.”

**It helps, obviously, if you enjoy investment banking or building fantastic dot-com startups instead of making rag dolls for the neighborhood kids. However, I don’t think you can discount loving doing it. If you want to make rag dolls, figure out a way to get rich doing it. Launch a rag doll company, or write a how-to on the internet. Somebody got rich on Cabbage Patch Kids, after all.

***As I’ve pointed out before several times you’re always better off thinking of more ways to MAKE money than SPEND money. At the same time, UNLESS you are investing in your wealthbuilding (spending money to increase your skills or education or to grow a business, etc.) you’re better off spending no more than 99% of your income. The difference between spending 99% of your income and 101% of your income is the difference between getting richer and getting poorer, any way you look at it.

****I hope that the general theme of wealth and ‘becoming rich’ doesn’t always come off as a crass pursuit of one more dollar. I realize, for example, I might have made a lot more money continuing to claw up the corporate ladder, but I felt so drained and lifeless doing it that I had to quit (see step #1). I like the idea of doing something more-or-less enjoyable, while making money doing it. It may sound childish, but if you work hard at something that makes you miserable you have to wonder whether you’ll be able to continue doing it well enough to succeed. Something you like doing - even something you just TOLERATE doing - is a better option. If you become wealthy doing it, so much the better; life is easier when you have a little money in the bank.

black friday death

I’m sure I won’t be the only person to mention this event during the weekend, but I was shocked and saddened to see reports of a death in Long Island at a Wal-Mart Black Friday event.

I’m sure others will use this incident to speak about the evils of capitalism and the pitfalls of greed, but after I found out that this was a Wal-Mart worker, not an overanxious shopper, I simply felt sad. Imagining some poor guy - in his early 30s - showing up in the wee hours of the morning to earn a little seasonal pay and dying because he was slammed to the floor by people anxious to get a cheap plasma TV or xbox is just sad. Sad. I hope everyone who thought it was fun to crash through the doors early in the morning to get cheap consumer goods sleeps well tonight. Some things in our society have just gotten out of hand. Let’s take a step back: crashing through a discount store’s doors at 5 am to get cheap consumer electronics does not need to be a death sport.

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…

tennis, a building block


I wasn’t the greatest tennis player in the world, but in high school I played on a team that was usually in the top 2-3 in our district and the top 10 in the state. My home state was a pretty competitive tennis state, so that wasn’t a small achievement. I was on the varsity team in the 10th grade, playing mixed doubles (basically the #4 guy on the varsity team). I just missed the cut to letter, but by my junior year I was up to the #2/#3 guy on the team, playing men’s doubles, and a few times I even played at the #1 position. By my senior year I was pretty much in a good position to challenge for #1 although there were definitely two guys much better than me on the team (both seniors, like me), and one junior who was probably better although not really “into” it that much – he tended to skip practices and miss tournaments, which obviously meant the coach didn’t trust him much.

I had a love/hate relationship with tennis throughout high school. It dominated my daily life more than anything except my studies, really. However, the day I played my last tennis match as a senior, I more or less quit forever. I think I played sporadically that summer but basically I quit playing for anything more than just idle “hit-arounds” at that point.

But I learned a few thing about sports from those days playing tennis, and some of those lessons apply to life past sports, as well.

  • Tennis is an incredibly athletic sport that requires dexterity, strength, flexibility, speed, endurance and focus. I can’t think of another sport that is so demanding in terms of total physical workouts, except maybe – maybe – basketball as played on a “street” level. A lot of pro basketball and even college basketball is standing around passing the ball back and forth. But you know what? Something that involves your ‘total self’ - be it athletic, mental, or emotional - is worth doing. Parenting is an emotional 100%-all-in activity; it teaches you a lot about yourself, just like tennis does physically.
  • It’s a fairly simple sport. The rules aren’t that tough to understand and at its base the rule is basically “hit it back over the net before it bounces twice.” Nothing like baseball, for example. But just because something is simple doesn’t mean it can’t be perfected. Writing is simple - almost anyone with mastery of the basics of typing, grammar and spelling can do it. With Microsoft Word you can probably even dispense with grammar and spelling, and with some sort of speech-recognition typing even becomes less critical. But just because you CAN do a thing doesn’t mean you can DO a thing. I can shoot a basketball. I can’t shoot over Yao Ming.
  • It’s international in appeal. There’s nowhere in the world where tennis, or some form of it, isn’t a fairly-well recognized sport. There are other sports that approach it, such as basketball, and one that transcends it, football (soccer), but generally it is one of the few worldwide sports. But it’s not as popular in the US as it is elsewhere. The lesson I learned here is that just if something is not valued in your country/state/town/tribe/whatever, doesn’t mean it can’t have value to you. Learn what appeals to you and set your course in that direction.

    • I don’t think I’ll ever take up tennis again. I enjoyed it intensely while I played it, and then I put down my racket and walked away without ever looking back (I took up lacrosse instead). Every activity or interest in life is a step. If that activity continues to lead you forward, hold on to it. If it doesn’t, let it go. I’ve taken up many interests in my life - hobbies, studies, jobs, sports and even TV shows - that I cherished, used or enjoyed and then left behind. Make sure that each activity is a building block, and not a filler - if it’s building you up as a person, it’s never going to be wasted time.

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