FORE! Taking The Life Mulligan

I'm a fan of the ESPN Radio Show "The Herd" with Colin Cowherd and I happened to catch a bit of his show today while driving home to have some lunch. Colin was discussing a bit of which teams in professional sports most need a mulligan, i.e. a chance to start over and get out of an ugly situation. For all of you non-golfers... a do-over. Simple enough concept.

But he also went into a little bit of detail about taking a mulligan in life and his overall point was very directly related to my theme of making life better through simplification. He commented about how during his early to mid 30's, he was on the rat race treadmill and as soon as he got off of it... his life improved dramatically. Of course, it's always helpful to find the right mix of job, friends, family and personal satisfaction to make it all really click, but it's a good lesson nonetheless. How often do we put things off because of work or put the things we say are important on the back burner because we will get to it tomorrow? It's probably one of my absolute worst habits... the things I will do later. The cool trips or life experiences I will take part in somewhere down the line. What's that line? Life is what happens when you're busy making plans?

I don't mean to have this entire post descend into utter cliche. But Colin makes a really great point in that adding more "stuff" to your life (the big house, the fast car, the best TV or even just the gnawing need for all of those things) just makes things more difficult than you need... and how does that possibly make you happier? Life tends to throw enough complications at you as it is, so why add further complexity all on your own? You know... like me doing that totally sweet 450 degree spin out on the drive home from youth group Sunday night. Hit me some sweet black ice while driving less than 50 MPH, losing control of the car and being one fortunate SOB not to hit anyone. Oh yeah... really good times there. Nothing quite like that moment when you realize you cannot turn out of the spin and for the next 5 or 6 seconds, you are waiting it out to see what in the name of all that is holy is gonna happen to you.

You can download the MP3 podcast from Colin show's today here. I highly recommend going to the ESPNRadio.com Podcenter to subscribe and get them delivered to you daily (especially if you are not able to listen to the show as it's broadcasted live because that ugly little distraction known as your job keeps getting in the way).

Balanced Life - Bringing Back A Classic

I posted on this one before in the older incarnation of my blog, but it's certainly a good enough one to bring back again. Allen Galbraith goes through his 10 tips on how to lead a balanced life. Heck, I even see my old comment right there from when it was first published! Ahh, the memories of those halcyon days of yore...

It's interesting looking back on this post because in my comment, I say that tip #5 ("Don't buy into the culture around if you don't want to") was the one that stuck out the most, but the more I think about it, the more I think that #7 is pretty critical, "Recognize you have to be healthier than those around you." Why is this one sticking out more than the others?

I think it's because my mind has been thinking more and more about environment and the effect of the people who surround you on your life... the ups, the downs, the failures and the successes. It's something I blogged about just a few days ago here.

While I think most of us (me included) say the brave things like, "I am my own person... what other people do doesn't affect me and my choices", I think that more often than we can admit to even ourselves... those other people do affect us... and probably a lot more than we know. It's not as if we are completely malleable to the will of our friends, family and the dude at Starbucks who puts the extra sprinkle of cinnamon on your Grande low-foam latte. However, the people that surround us every day will have some impact upon us. My thought is that if you are in a rather unenviable balance of being surrounded by more negative people than positive or, those negative people are just louder and more convincing, you'll always have a much harder time at staying in a positive frame of mind. I don't care who you are or how finely honed your mental powers are there, Professor X... it ain't gonna be easy to hold off the marauding horde of doubters and ne'r- do-wells if you are flat out surrounded by those draining SOBs.

Recognizing those others who are the drains is not always easy - they most dangerous ones come in the familiar guise of a good friend or a close family member... but if you stop and take a little bit of time to think about who is in your life and what kind of impact they have upon you... you might be surprised at what you discover. Give it a try since I will be doing that tonight and reporting back later.

America's Cheapest Family

Can you imagine being a family of 7 people and living on a post-taxes annual budget of $35,000 per year? Seems borderline impossible, but it seems there is a family who has done it out in Arizona as detailed in the linked post over at The Digerati Life by Silicon Valley Blogger, who does some really nice takeaway tips from looking at this amazing family.

The one that jump out at me most (since it is where I think I hit my own personal wall) is the notion of organizing yourself properly to attack a life of greater frugality. Oh, as if any words could ever be so true as this! I think of all the times where I spent more money than I needed due to just not planning ahead:

• Not packing a lunch and then blowing money on an overpriced meal at the company cafeteria (which just ticks me off all the more because the food is less-than-delicious)
• Wasting food (especially fresh vegetables) I bought because I got caught up in doing too much during the week and it goes bad
• Buying something I saw in the store the first time I see it when, chances are, it's much cheaper on-line

In fact, I think when it comes to eating, that is where I run into the biggest issue. I like the idea of cooking a lot at once so I have tons of food on hand whenever I am ready to eat... but for reasons that continue to elude me, I don't do a great job of putting it into practice.

My baby steps goal is to getting in a bunch of weekend cooking and store it all away for the week. It's just one step, but one that will avoid a lot of last minute stops at places that are overpriced and (lest I forget) 100 times less healthy than what I can whip up myself.

Simple Living: The Journey's First Steps

Over the past few days, I've gotten a few pieces of fairly unwelcome financial news. Yesterday, I found out I needed about $800 of work on my car to fix up the O2 sensor and catalytic converter so I could pass my emissions test. Then today, I got the really super news at the
dentist that I have a crack in one of my molars and will need a crown… which AFTER insurance will run me $1,200. Needless to say, my wallet is a touch on the sore side this evening as I look over these completely unexpected costs.

All of this is a good lead-in (at least there was some silver lining to all of this) to something I've been thinking a lot about of late and something I plan on posting about quite a bit: what it would take and what it would mean to live a much simpler life. It occurs me quite a bit whenever I incur some financial hit because a simple life means seeking to live below your means and giving you a great deal of personal freedom.

This is not exactly a topic I plan on trying to tackle all in a single post, but I wanted to at least get the concept flowing now for everyone to consider since I'm sure there are a lot of people out
there who long for a little less life complication. So where to begin with a topic so vast? I thought this was a nice little piece over at Get Rich Slowly on how to get more value on what you already have.

It's a pretty interesting concept: Before you pull the trigger to make a purchase, get into the habit of being mindful to ask 2 questions:

1. How often will you use the item; and
   
2. How much enjoyment will you get out of it?

I've started to get myself into this habit of late because it can be very easy for me to confuse need against want. Perfect example. My car was giving me more hassles than I care to think about with the need for maintenance… and of course this was all kicking in after I got that bugger paid off. Feeling fed up with my car (the incredibly sexy 2001 Nissan Altima GXE… Limited Edition… because, you know… they only made like eleventy billion of them), I swung by an Infiniti dealership on my drive out from picking my ride up from service. I took an Infiniti G35x out for a spin and… holy crap, that was nice. I was rather smitten.

Oh sweet siren... call me not to my doom upon the rocks!

But you know what? As I left the dealership, got home and let the euphoria of dropping the hammer on 306 incredibly sweet horses wash away… I realized it was just a car. That's it. A really nice car, but just a car. It wouldn't change who I was as a person nor would it suddenly make me the definition of refined cool (as the commercials would suggest). What it would do is add an additional $650 to $700 per month to my budget with car payments and higher insurance premiums. So for me, it wasn't worth it… at least not yet. My car will crap out eventually and is rapidly approaching 100K miles, but until that time, it gets the job done.

This is a small step, but an important one - to begin to cut myself off from thinking things bring about the happiness or satisfaction you imagine they might as you consider snapping them up. It doesn't have to be something as elaborate and expensive as a finely tuned luxury sports sedan.

So here's to first steps that will, hopefully, lead to more and more steps... and more blog postings.