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If you’re like me, your clothes fit too well, you have too much money in your savings account, and your mood is steady enough to support a champagne flute pyramid.
Sunday morning before my kids wake up is sacred time in our house. I make my wife a real coffee drink (Americano), make myself a mug full of pseudo-coffee dessert (brown sugar cinnamon latter with whole milk that I’ve dubbed the “brown bear”) and we sit and talk in our den. With the neighborhood cat perched on my lap and a stack of books within arm’s reach, it’s the most relaxing hour of my week.
Not today.
I could pinpoint the exact second when I lost my audience. I wasn’t surprised because it was the exact same spot I lost the audience the last time I gave the talk. And the time before that.
The main reason I’m not terrified of an impending existential threat posed by AI is because of how badly some of the facebook algorithm’s recommended purchases miss the mark for me.
As all three members of my nuclear family can attest, I’m at my most childish and petty when my special journaling pens go missing. I’m now going to try to make the case that these sporadic tantrums should not only continue to be tolerated but are actually completely reasonable.
When was the last time you updated your Impulse Purchasing Protocol (IPP)? If your answer is “What in the world are you talking about, Jesse?”, I have two things to say to you:
Admit it. After savoring the twists and turns of my January, February, and March Monthly Experiment Recaps, only to be stood up at the altar from April onward, you assumed I threw in the towel and wimped out on the project starting with sugar-free April.
When was the last time you changed your mind about something important? I’m not talking about crowning a new favorite restaurant or deciding that you are “officially done with shorts”. I’m talking about a making a purposeful, meaningful change to what you believe about something that made a big impact on your life.
I’ve never really believed that some people are inherently luckier than others but I have a friend who has been snake-bitten for as long as I can remember.
Rule #1: Don’t lose money.
Rule #2: Don’t forget about rule #1.
These are Warren Buffet’s famous rules about investing and this concept has been adopted by other supremely successful investors.
You’re walking down the street on a sunny Saturday morning, savoring the 75%+ of your weekend that still remains, when a question pops into your head. Unbeknownst to you, this seemingly innocuous query is the single most dangerous threat to your financial well-being.
When you first start exercising, it all sucks. Deciding what type of exercise to do sucks. Deciding where to do it and how often to do it sucks. Deciding what type of clothes to wear sucks. The exercise itself really sucks and then feeling tired or sore the next day also sucks.
If I asked you to name what is most important in your life, you would tell me some combination of your family, your friends, your faith, your career/work, and maybe a specific cause or two. But what if I followed that question with this one?:
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been really good at establishing new habits. The witches’ brew of a type-A personality, a borderline obsession with traditions, and a constitutional resistance to spontaneity has made it much easier for me than for most people to ingrain routines into my daily life.
Ben Franklin often started his days by standing in front of the bedroom window he left open all night, naked as a jaybird. Look it up. He called it an “air bath”.
Like so many important things in life, getting your financial shit together is a series of steps, each one building upon the skills and knowledge gained in the previous.
The 2019 Monthly Experiments started off with a bang. Knowing that this month tends to be my busiest at work, I front-loaded the project with something I hoped would increase my overall productivity and improve my ability to focus.
I’m sure this only applies to me, but if I’m being completely honest, I haven’t universally kept my New Year’s Resolutions.
If you haven’t read and acted upon Step 1, do that before reading this post. The first step is foundational for everything that follows and without a solid foundation, you will never gather your financial shit together to a sufficient degree.
I weighed 130 pounds when I graduated high school. Not a great look for someone one unyielding quarter-inch shy of six feet.
I want to let you in on a little secret: I’ve discovered the best productivity system in the history of the universe.
Late last year, while riding a pre-workout supplement high at the gym, an idea for a social experiment popped into my head.
DadBods come in dozens of different flavors. One of the most common, and most dastardly, is a Financial DadBod.