Early Retirement
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Call it First World problems; the minor inconveniences of life: the traffic light turned red at the last moment, you’re surprised by a repair, you discover you have to work past the age of 30. We live in such opportune times it’s easy to forget real difficulties exist. Some right in our own communities.
September is National Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month and Melanie Lockert of Dear Debt is asking personal finance bloggers once again to take up the keyboard to prevent unnecessary tragedy. I participated in the first two Suicide Prevention Blog Tours but intended to sit this one out when I got the email. I had no idea what I wanted to write. I said what I needed to say and had no more to add to the heap of literature on suicide prevention. Then I walked to the mailbox.
Certain characteristics tend to show up again and again. If you admire people with money you might notice they tend towards frugality and index fund investing or own a business. You can emulate that easy enough. You might notice many travel and want to do the same. By following their example you increase the odds you will accumulate more resources to travel.
There is no guarantee you will get the same results. A person in prison will have limitations from the rest of the population. Nelson Mandela is a perfect example. He gained the respect of the guards and the people of a nation while imprisoned. He was fortunate that he was released and led South Africa for many years. Other people doing the same thing will almost certainly get a different result.
This blog is about wealth. It might depress you when I say you can search the traits of those you admire and incorporate those traits only to find less admiration than those you worked to emulate. That misses the whole point. Successful integration of quality traits do not guarantee anything and shouldn’t even be the goal! It is the daily effort to improve yourself with the traits you acquired that makes you wealthy.
The daily journey is the reward, the riches you seek. You can examine the admired of your community and work to integrate those positive traits into your persona. But please, kind readers, make plenty of room for you. Explore the qualities already inside you.
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It happens to all of us. A project gets on our desk and we stall out; a credit card bill needs to be challenged with the bank and we can’t get the energy to get it done; a book we really want to read sits on the night stand waiting for the day you actually crack the cover. Like I said, it happens to all of us.
As an accountant I feel overwhelm often. People don’t bring me the easy ones and the IRS doesn’t care about your schedule. They pay me for things that make mere mortals head’s explode. Generally I’m booked out 6-8 weeks, and any time I say yes to something or set an appointment within 6 weeks it means I subtract it from personal time. Then I stall out!
It isn’t the worst or most difficult tasks that cause my tires to spin. I eventually reach a point where fatigue sets in and if your file is in the wrong place at the wrong time (or I made too many commitments), it ends up on the hellish side of my desk where things don’t get done. I keep putting it off because opening the file creates visions of pain in my skull. When fate (a disgruntled client) pushes me to engage the task it usually is something much less involved than I thought.
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“Should I feel guilty when spending money?” It’s a common question when I consult with clients. They are so tuned into frugality they sometimes start associating negative feelings with money. It’s a bad thing to start feeling.
Spending money is NOT an evil activity! In modern society we have it so easy that we tend to either overspend (the vast majority) or become hyper-frugal (a significant percentage of the demographic reading this blog). Both lifestyles are unhealthy. Overspending leads to serious problems when the bills come due and income might not keep up. Debt is a serious issue I ask clients (and readers) to consider purging. The opposite of overspending is the hyper-frugal drive. This can suck the pleasure out of life as fast as a heavy debt burden.
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Most people familiar with Jordan Peterson and his work comes from the litany of YouTube videos. From college classroom lectures to podcasts to interviews, Peterson has covered a wide variety of topics. Sometimes he is controversial in his stance, bringing him viral traffic. Most of the time his presentations are extraordinarily deep probes of the human psyche.
Whether you love or hate him, the one thing we should all agree on is that he makes us think. His latest book (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos) is must-read material. Unlike most books, this one you must own. A library copy will not be enough. You will read and re-read this material again. The message is so deep that one reading only scratches the surface. As I read Peterson’s book I could rarely finish a page without stopping to think about what I just read. Sometime I had to walk away and make sense of what I was just presented. By far, this is the slowest reading of a book for me in over a decade.
For over 730,000 words I’ve been trying to convey a message with this blog. While reading 12 Rules I discovered Peterson said more clearly what I intended in only 500 words. (Yeah, I feel exactly how you would expect.)
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As mankind evolved they needed a way to store value that wasn’t cumbersome. Sure, trading a cow for supplies seems like a good idea, but what about wages? Do you get a cow or a peck of barley for a good day of labor? Well actually, yes. That is exactly what happened. It held back commerce because you needed an immediate need between two or more parties to have an equitable exchange of value. And God forbid you were really good at mass-producing something. The oversupply of that item would make it worthless.
Even before mankind invented money as a store of wealth, people were able to borrow. Rather than make an equitable trade now, you would promise to provide a good or service later. And you better keep up your end of the bargain. The punishment for reneging on a debt was severe. You could lose a hand, be imprisoned, forced into servitude (slavery) or outright killed. No, in the early days of money and prior, it was best to honor your commitments. The alternative was unthinkable.
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Economic growth is pushing towards 10 years as of this writing. The 2008-09 recession was deep and slow in recovery. Fewer jobs at lower wages coupled with the long time frame unemployed people had to wait to even get a job at any wage caused tempers to flare. The minimum wage was raised in 2007, 2008 and 2009 to the current federal rate we have today.
Jobs available as the recession eased were not the same quality as jobs lost. More workers were among the working poor, earning minimum wage or close to it. Eventually a vocal crowd demanded a $15 an hour minimum wage. It all sounded good. And fair to workers making less. Business owners also made powerful points. In the end nothing of consequence came of the movement. The expanding economy lifted more wages, nullifying the demands of the activists. Better jobs with higher wages started appearing, too. People used to a higher income had greater opportunity to explore a pay increase at a new employer if the current employer didn’t increase wages.
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When a senior loses a spouse, their lives change dramatically. No longer do they have a partner to help make major decisions; not only that, they also have to make hard choices about their finances and lifestyle during a period of grief. It can be physically and emotionally draining, which can take a toll after a while. That’s why it’s so important to help your loved one emotionally and with both financial and legal decisions that could affect them for years to come.
Not only will your loved one need help planning for the funeral and other services, they need assistance with small things, like grocery shopping and paying bills on time. The loss of a spouse is a major blow that can lead to depression, stress, and anxiety, and few people have the capacity to think about the details during such a trying time. It’s also important for you to help them figure out their legal needs, such as creating a will, naming an executor of their estate, handing over power of attorney, and naming a health care surrogate.
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