Good morning, friends!

Hope y’all have some fun Thanksgiving plans coming up! We’re doing our usual double Turkey celebration (first half of the day going to my family’s gathering, the second half my wife’s), which is great on one hand (double dinners!) but bad on the other (double dinners!! lol…).

And then of course there is Black Friday… which I will decidedly NOT be attending as I’d rather make love to a one-eyed porcupine! (They’re much sweeter, those one-eyed varieties ;))

At any rate, lots of great reads and ideas collected for you down below, and while you’re out feasting with your loved ones this week, marinate on this question we just posed at Budgets Are Sexy!

Would you rather…

Have unlimited money to buy things online but you can never buy anything in person (can’t go to restaurants, shops, movies, games)

– OR –

Have unlimited money to buy things in person but you can never buy anything online (can’t get anything delivered, but could walk onto a car lot and buy a car with cash)

My thoughts, and the right answer to this ;), here –> Would You Rather… Buy Everything Online or Everything Offline Only?

Gobble gobble,

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Favorite Reads This Week:

Biker Liz @ The Frugal Girl –“Today, we’re meeting a reader who has managed to live for 2.5 years with no car (and two small kids!). I am so impressed by the amount of biking and walking she and her family do, especially since it’s the functional sort, to get yourself from point A to point B.”

The Arizona Experiment! @ Mr. Money Mustache — “A big part of the fun is that this will force me to invent a whole new life for myself, away from the easy comforts of the big community and plentiful construction sites that keep me so busy here. It will be both a big change and a significant challenge, which is exactly what all of us need on a regular basis to keep life full of meaning and joy.”

Chapters @ Happily Disengaged — “Going to jail really woke me up. It was both the worst and best thing that ever happened to me. If can split up my life into two parts, there’s before jail and after jail.”

Get Rich Slowly, Get Started Quickly @ The Escape Artist — “Spending is like anything, the more you do of it, the less special it become… maybe you would be happier if you had more freedom and more control over your life?”

The 20 Greatest Decluttering Tips of All Time @ No Sidebar — “Decluttering is less about the quantity of items you remove and more about the quality of life you’re creating. Each discarded item is not just making room in your home, but also making space in your mind for clarity, peace, and joy.”

How Crazy is Dave Ramsey’s 8% Withdrawal Rate Recommendation? @ Early Retirement Now — “Most of us in the FIRE community have graduated from Dave Ramsey. Or even better, many of us, myself included, never even required his services. We should all safely ignore his 8% withdrawal rate advice now. But I feel sorry for the Ramsey listeners. I hope they are smart enough to get a second opinion elsewhere before implementing his crazy, unhinged advice. But, for the love of God, please stay away from Suze Orman!”

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Passage of The Week:

“The only thing that matters is how much you love.

Your purpose on this earth is to love.

We are all connected.

See the light in each person.”

Surprisingly (unsurprisingly?) this comes from “Yoga Girl“, a book I’m reading by Rachel Brathen that’s turning out to be about a lot more than just yoga! It’s a fantastic read so far (especially if you’ve had a lot of pain in life – mentally or physically) and it’s shaping up to be one of my favorite reads this year.

You can find it on Amazon for only a few bucks right now… A great mantra to keep in mind this holiday season!

(Yoga Girl got famous from starting an Instagram account years ago amassing more than a million followers!! But it’s her “story” that’s really interesting here, and then of course all the pretty yoga poses ;))

Have a blessed weekend 🙏

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Good morning!

I’ve been thinking a lot about my health journey lately and all the events that have led up to it, and I’ve found it’s all come together rather interestingly.

It started with a friend convincing me to start playing soccer again after a 10 year hiatus, so I joined his weekly casual league (which plays at 10pm btw!! TEN AT NIGHT!!), which then led to me paying more attention to my body and all things health just so I could keep up 😆

A number of days later I then get a recommendation from a reader to look into veggie juicing for all its nutritional benefits (thanks Madiha!), and one thing led to another and now I’m a daily drinker of the Good Stuff! Fast forward a couple more weeks and a random encounter at the coffee shop led me to finally trying out yoga and now I’m an addict to that as well, lol…

Then, most recently, I joined a gym for the first time, well, EVER!, and now I consistently show up at 5:30 in the morning for an early Boot Camp class. Which, as the recurring theme here continues, started out because a different friend of mine goes to the gym and it was motivation enough for me to give it a try too. Even though, ironically, we never hang out together because he likes to lift weights solo while I need group exercises to keep me straight.

It’s been a wild two months to say the least, and some days I don’t even recognize myself as I am *not* a health/gym/yoga/veggie guy whatsoever! But it’s been a process I’ve very much enjoyed so far and can only hope continues 💪

If you didn’t catch the themes throughout all this, here they are:

1) Taking one small action increases the odds that *more* (similar) actions will follow! Whether it has to do with health, career, or more pertinent to our group here – our finances. But you have to take that first action to get the habits cascading!

2) The world provides hints when your mind (and ears) are open. And especially from those you love. If you noticed, almost every single nudge up there came from someone I know who recommended something at *just* the right time when I was open enough to receive it. I don’t know why other times were so closed off, but I do know that the opportunities are all around us if we’re paying enough attention.

So, take from this what you will, but if I could suggest just one thing it would be to take that *first* action towards whatever’s been sitting on your mind lately and see where it takes you. Worst case you can finally stop thinking about it, but best case it starts your own chain reaction of events!

And then be sure to let me know what you tried out :)

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Favorite Reads Around The Web

Kristy’s Early Retirement Spreadsheet @ Budgets Are Sexy – Sharing this one first as it too illustrates our “first action” theme here! In this case it was a BIG first move as Kristy and family decided to relocate to the beach, but one thing led to another and now she’s well on her journey to a financially free life and shares her juicy spreadsheet in the process :)

5 Common Failures in Personal Finance @ The Best Interest — And this post talks about how the cascading can apply to *failures* as well! “People tend to think of tragedies and failures as single moments of failure. But that’s wrong. Instead, we must realize that every failure is a chain of events. There are multiple inputs into a failure. Thus, a “failure chain” can be interrupted or diverted at many different points.”

One Size Fits One Regarding Retirement Spending @ A Teachable Moment – “Going to Starbucks daily is much cheaper than owning a highly-priced, actively managed fund that is almost assured to underperform a cheap market index fund over long periods.”

Living on a Floating Island in Canada @ Insider – “Catherine King and Wayne Adams hand-built a floating home together in Canada 31 years ago. The home is known as Freedom Cove and is made up of several buildings floating on Styrofoam. As idyllic as it looks, the upkeep is tough work, which King is now doing solo after Adams’ death.”

PhysicianOnFIRE.com gets Acquired @ LinkedIn – “PhysicianonFire.com has relaunched with 2 new physicians at the helm — Jorge Sanchez, MD, and Nirav H. Shah — alongside serial entrepreneur Vinci Palad! We all have found financial freedom through different journeys. Financial stress is a huge mental health burden doctors face given how much work we defer. We plan to build products, services, and content for you to give you what you need.”

Random Acts @ Humble Dollar — “First and most important: budget for kindness. I’ve found that if you allocate the sum ahead of time, it’s much easier to part with the money.”

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Video/Thought of The Week:

I’m not sure I’m brave enough to give up alcohol yet, but in the spirit of “being open” and seeing where things lead I’ve found this recommendation by Jim @ Route to Retire to be pretty impactful.

It’s SUPER long and kinda boring, not gonna kid you, BUT I guarantee you’ll think differently about alcohol after, even if you only watch the first 30-40 mins. It led to Jim giving up alcohol for OVER A YEAR now!! Congrats buddy!

And if you have a subscription to the NY Times, there’s an article that covers it more briefly below too if you don’t want to stare at the screen for hours :) In a nut shell though, alcohol is poison and no amount of it is “good for you.”

What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health | Huberman Lab Podcast @ YouTube — “In this episode, I discuss the physiological effects that drinking alcohol has on the brain and body at different levels of consumption and over time… Indeed, even low-to-moderate alcohol consumption negatively impacts the brain and body in direct ways.”

Even a Little Alcohol Can Harm Your Health @ NY Times — “Recent research makes it clear that any amount of drinking can be detrimental. Here’s why you may want to cut down on your consumption beyond Dry January.”

Thanks for reading ✨

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Good morning!!

Lot’s of wonderful beautiful things to share with you today!

#1. I’m giving out a bunch of new $$$ books on the blog!! Covering everything from savings tips to hustling hacks to making yourself rich to my personal favorite – bettering yourself with each passing day. All you have to do is tell me which one you want in the comments of the post and you’re entered! More here

#2. The 401(k) Champions contest is now open for the year! Where you answer a brief question about your love of 401(k)s in essay form, for a chance to win one of three $1,000 cash rewards. Last year ALL THREE winners came from my audience here, so hopefully the trend continues and YOU are one of the lucky winners this year ;) Enter here –> 401kchampion.com

#3. I have a new obsession: yoga! Been meaning to try it for years, then one day last week I decided to just muster up the courage and start and I’ve now gone 8 times in one week, lol… I guess when I like something I really go ALL IN 😂 Look for a blog post on it soon, but if it’s something that’s been on your mind lately too – make it your mission to try it out this weekend once and for all! You never know what’ll go on to change your life #Namaste

#4. My 11 yr old has his first cell phone 😬😬 I wanted to wait a couple more years, but apparently in 6th grade they’re basically required, ugh… BUT! We found a place that lets you use all the main communication features of a smart phone without all the *internet access* (ie a phone that just calls and texts and does a few apps like games, but can’t get on social media/etc) so that made us a bit more comfortable… Even though of course this is also easily solved by picking up an old school clamshell phone!, but apparently that’s “not cool” so at least it now *looks* like my kid has a bad ass smart phone and no one has to know it doesn’t do any of the juicy stuff, lol..

The company is called Gabb btw if you’re in a similar position (I’m not affiliated with them at all): Gabb.com. Costs us more than it does our *own* phone plans! ($30/mo vs $20/mo w/ Mint Mobile!) but hey – it does the trick and has been working out pretty well over the weeks!

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Okay that’s all the news for this week… When you’re done with the above, check out some of the articles below that I’ve hand-picked for you – especially that first one. It’s where the title of today’s newsletter comes from which cracked me up as much as it did inspire me 😆 👍

Your friend in adulting,

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Favorite articles this week:

Tomorrow Is Not Your Friend @ MiniHabits.com — “It’s natural to think of tomorrow in an opportunistic way. Tomorrow is a new day and a fresh start… but so was today! Remember when you thought so yesterday? Since we only live in today and it accurately predicts what we’ll do later, tomorrow is relatively worthless. And that’s not all. Tomorrow’s mere presence seems to lead us into poor decisions. Not only is it not your friend—tomorrow is your enemy!” (shout out to Apex Money for finding this gem)

Why Getting Fired and Dumped Were the Best Things to Happen to Me All Year @ A Lawyer and Her Money — “We don’t talk enough about the kind of person you become when you are pursuing your goals. We don’t talk enough about how the person you marry, the person you work for, and the people you associate yourself with – all these people affect who you will become, who you are currently becoming.”

Lifestyles of the Monks and Irish @ The Best Interest — “A group of monks rowed 12 miles out to sea (no motors, mind you) to a steep, barren, half-mile diameter rock completely exposed to the elements. Then, in the words of Eamon, our island guide, “They spent their lives hauling rocks and praying.” Fun!”

The 4 Types of Leverage to Supercharge Your Income @ Of Dollars and Data — “If you want to supercharge your income, you have to use leverage. Whether we employ labor, raise capital, craft content, or write code, each form of leverage offers its own unique benefits and challenges.”

The Magic Loop @ Lenny’s Newsletter – “The Magic Loop is a process through which any employee may systematically grow at a company. It is reliable in its results, with a simple core of five basic steps. In this post, we first present the Loop in its most straightforward model. We then follow up with variations, optimizations, and special circumstances that users will find over time.”

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Quote of the Week:

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” – Mahatma Gandhi

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Good morning fiscal friends!!

Been a fun couple of weeks over here…

First, I find a handful of rolled coins in my safe that I had long forgotten about (!!), and then I use said rolls (+ $100 more) to pick up a new long board to add to my family of boards!

Take a look at this beauty…  It’s a surfboard on wheels!!! Lol…

[That middle board is pretty big in itself, so comparingly this new one is a behemoth!]

[$80 worth of change found – woo!]

I also finally put together two bigger than usual posts that I’ve been working on that I hope you’ll like…

The first is the story on how I became addicted to juicing this past month (veggie juice!!! A game changer!!) and the other on how I figured out a bunch of coins I was evaluating for a client WERE FAKE!! $500+ worth! (Never fun to realize)

• You can learn more about my new juicing habits here (you need to watch the doc featured in it!): I’ve turned into a juice freak!! 🥦🥬🥕
• And you can read all about my counterfeit detecting here: An 1895 Fake Morgan and More!!

Hope your week has been just as eventful!

More great articles worth your time down below – particularly the first one 🙏

XOXO,

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Articles I enjoyed around the web this week:

The Beginning, Again @ Love Bomb Team — My boy Nate reboots his old weekly missions!! “Change the world in just 10 minutes a week!” Come join us! :)

Finding Hope @ Humble Dollar — “I quickly learned that my wife had been hiding accounts, credit cards and a post office box from me… I discovered that we had a combined debt of $200,000, not including our mortgage. I was embarrassed that I was so out of touch and let things get so out of control.”

What Would Sunshine Do? @ No Sidebar — “Sunshine is the best me that I can be but she isn’t the best. She still makes awkward small talk with strangers and creates way too many dishes when cooking dinner. She tries her best though and that is what is most important to remember.”

The Many Flavours of FI @ Money Flamingo — “Financial Independence is a fantastic concept and a very worthwhile goal. However, the truth is that the plain vanilla version (aka standard FIRE) isn’t an ideal fit for everyone…This has led to the birth of many new “types” of Financial Independence that reflect the different values and priorities, life circumstances and financial objectives within the broader FIRE movement.”

17 Questions That Changed My Life [PDF] via Tim Ferriss — “Reality is largely negotiable. If you stress-test the boundaries and experiment with the “impossibles,” you’ll quickly discover that most limitations are a fragile collection of socially reinforced rules you can choose to break at any time.” [Thanks to Apex Money for finding this one!]

Does all the financial advice you need still fit on an index card? @ Wallet Hacks — “Over ten years ago, Harold Pollack interviewed Helaine Olen and famously said that the best financial advice for most people could fit onto an index card… I was curious: How does it look after ten years? Does it still fit in a world where people shell thousands on an NFT or cryptocurrency? What about when interest rates are the highest it has been in decades?”

Time to FIRE Spreadsheet 2023 (Template for Google Sheets & Excel) @ Accidentally Retired — “There are many amazing retirement simulators out there like Empower’s and CFIREsim This is not one of them. In my Time to FI Spreadsheet, you plug in a few things and you’re done! It’ll give you a general idea of your “Time to FI” and you can begin to eye potential retirement dates.”

Change Your Environment, Change Your Life @ Rich In What Matters — “An area of my friend’s life that had felt stagnant now felt revived, all thanks to changing her environment. An uncluttered space shifted her outlook to a more positive space.”

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Morning!

If you’re reading this right now, it means I have Covid.

On the plus side, I’ve had nothing but time to read and write and think so there’s lots of great articles for you to gander down below 😁

I’m also feeling MUCH better than I was in the beginning (thanks Paxlovid!) so things aren’t looking too bad over here… Another cple of days and I can re-join society again – woo!! (Isolation is truly the worst… I literally stream Coffitivy 24/7  just to feel like I’m around people still, haha… (all it does is stream “coffee shop sounds”!! Genius!)

Pre-covid, however, I stumbled across 3 new life hacks for me and blogged about it here: 3 Random Life #Hacks. It covers mowing lawns, trash can ease, and remembering stuff when you’re naked 😏

Maybe you do some of these too??!

In other news, huge shout to Pat Flynn for totally making my kids’ year this week… You may remember him from his old school blog, Smart Passive Income, from a decade ago, but unbeknownst to me he started getting into Pokémon too and is apparently a pretty famous YouTuber now!

I had no idea. Until last week when I heard a voice that sounded awfully familiar on a video my boys were watching, and when it panned to the guy’s face I saw my old buddy Pat there! I screamed “I know that guy!” and my kids promptly LOST IT, haha… They couldn’t believe that I not only knew him, but even more impressively that we were friends! (*loose* friends, I should say… if we were that close I’d have known he was a famous YouTuber!! ;)) I DM’d Pat this, and he thought it was hilarious and told me to secretly shoot him my address and he’d send them over something special in the mail.

A few days later a big ol’ package landed on our doorstep and included not only a BRAND NEW box of Pokémon cards that were just released (!!!) but also came with three autographed cards from him and a nice letter thanking them for watching his show!! So nice!! They were mindblown and it’s all they’ve been talking about for days now :)

So thank you, sir!! You made 3 little boys (and their dad) super happy!

You can find Pat, and his Pokémon antics, @ DeepPocketMonster – it’s exceptionally good.

And that’s it for this week! Thanks for reading, and beware of the Covid!!!

Yours in isolation,

PS: That $1 note up top was found in my change! “Ben T. Is #1″ is scribbled in red, and then I think “Love, Gigi“? Hopefully they got together in the end ;)

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Articles I enjoyed around the web this week:

Hold Fast @ Happily Disengaged — “I’m not sure why the wack trend in the FIRE community these days is to demonize frugality and saving discipline. A rush of books and figure heads have come out that have pushed this alternative FI thread that sacrificing and delayed gratification is somehow suddenly a bad thing.  Why the big change?”

My $1,000 Monthly Pension @ We Want Guac — “In my work towards financial independence, I have stumbled upon a monthly pension granting me $1000 every 30 days.  I didn’t really review this until I sat down with my financial officer.”

It Happened Out of Nowhere @ Millionaire Habits — “It’s funny what happens when we stop using pharmaceuticals to mask legit problems. We stop the “Everything’s fine” charade and start fixing shit. I bet on myself. It paid off. I quit my job nine years ago.”

Tesla: BOOM or Doomed? @ 1500 Days — “On a silly whim, I bought Tesla stock back in 2012 and held on for dear life. It’s been a crazy ride, but now I’m a Teslanaire.  I got extremely lucky. Like unicorn lucky. But never forget this:  Most companies will die.”

The Second Bowl of Cereal and Other Economic Theories @ Poor. Choices. — “Cereal is great, but only a psychopath would eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast.  In fact, I’m pretty sure Lord Voldemort ate cereal for breakfast. It’s in the 5th book. Look it up.  No. True cereal aficionados know cereal is the perfect afternoon or late-night snack.”

How to Avoid Type 2 Money Mistakes @ Wallet Hacks — “Type 1 money mistake is one that is clearly bad at the time you make it. Paying for a Netflix subscription but never using it. Type 2 mistakes are more pernicious. It’s harder to identify because it’s the type of error that hurts you far into the future, long after the decision was made.”

If Your Employer Refuses To Negotiate Salary, Try These 11 Creative Counteroffers @ Bitches Get Riches — “When an employer refuses to negotiate salary, they’re giving you leverage to ask for other things. Today, I’ll give you a few ideas for creative counteroffers that will make your life better and sweeten any job transition. Even better, I’ll suggest some simple scripts you can follow to maximize your chances that they’ll say “yes.””

Friedrich Nietzsche: Amor Fati and Rejection of Objective Truths @ Darius Foroux — “Combining Nietzsche’s “amor fati” (love of fate) with his concept of “perspectivism” provides a powerful mental model for dealing with the challenges of today. I call it “open-minded resilience.””

Never Look Down the Road Not Taken @ Of Dollars and Data — “After winning the NBA championship in 1980, Johnson was offered sponsorship deals from Converse, Adidas, and Nike. While Converse offered the most money, Phil Knight, the head of Nike, told Johnson that instead of cash, he could give him shares of Nike.  Johnson, not knowing much about stocks at the time, took the Converse deal. After all, money talks.  But, when Johnson ran the numbers years later, he realized that the Nike stock he turned down would be worth nearly $5 billion today, or 8x his current net worth.”

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Collaboration of The Week:

Santa Cruz + Pokémon skateboards!! AHHH!!! You literally OPEN THEM UP like packs of cards and get surprised by the board you get! And not only that – they have special golden ones you can “pull” that I’m sure will fetch a butt ton of money for those who find one, lol… They’re just like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket, only golden skateboards!! So rad!! 🤩

More here (they come out on the 13th) –> santacruzskateboards.com/pokemon

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