Getting weird

Wow.   Just wow.  Can you forgo housing whilebootstrapping a startup?

I'd honestly contemplate it if I wasn't married with kids.  All things considered, it seems like an awesome idea and sticks back to the general idea of "how bad do you want it?"  Going without housing for four months would be one of those amazing situations and goes to show that "the little man can't get ahead" and "the man is keeping me down" are just excuses. 

But we're here to learn from the crazy guy about how to quit listening to those people and take charge of your own destiny, so let's work on that for a bit, shall we?

Ok. 

First things first.  You need a good bank.  What qualifies as a good bank?  I don't know, but I do know what a bad bank is.  Look for something with excellent customer service, a logical deposit schedule, and putting customers first.  Just because they are "large" or have lots of ATMs doesn't make it worth a darn.  I use USAA , but I'm lucky like that.  My ATM charges get refunded every month, so I use whatever ATM I happen to be closest to.  Also, some Wal-Marts have money stations that act as ATMs and give out amounts other than $20 bills.  The one I use often will dispense $1 bills.  Talk about precision.  And that helps when making a budget.  My totals don't always come out to nice $20 rounds, so if I need $150, I don't have to pull that extra $10 out to get what I want.  Plus, Wal-Mart charges $1.50, which USAA also refunds.  So it's worth driving out of the way to get what I want.

While you are thinking of a bank, treat them like used car salesmen.  Don't be mean and rude, but realize there is another one five blocks down the street that is more than happy to take your money.  Banking is a PRODUCT, not a privilege. 

Once you find that bank, or if you decide to keep your old bank you have one thing to do. Get rid of overdraft protection.  Overdraft charges run about $30 per situation, and will kill every single penny you make.  Plus, the shoddy banks will charge you overdraft plus under minimum balance plus whatever else, so a $.10 over charge turns into a -$80 hole from one transaction.  Get rid of it.     

Now here's what's going to happen the next time you try to overdraft your account: the clerk is going to look at you and say your card has been declined.  You're going to make all sorts of ludicrous statements.  And then you are going to realize one simple fact: I do not have the money to purchase this.

And that shock and embarrassment will hopefully cause a behavior change.  Or at least, that's what we want.  That behavior change is going to be required if you are going to change your life and your family tree.  Living within your means is hard, but it's worth it.  The biggest problem is getting the years of stupid out of your head dumped in by sales and marketing people.

Passive Income

Now that the day has slowed down, I'm finally capable of sitting down and writing for a bit.  Operational changes can be complete havoc on my day, and any hopes I have of following a schedule is hopeless.  Doesn't help that I'm several days behind on testing another new rollout.  But, I digress. 

Anyways.  I said I was going to take about "income I don't have to work for" this time, so I will.  My method is quite simple.  Go to Yahoo! Finance.  I use it because 1) It's free, and 2) It's free, and 3) The FREE information provided gives me what I'm looking for.

Now, I am going to talk about stocks.  I am not going to talk about buying stocks like a house flipper.  I'm not going to talk about buying stocks like the midnight cable TV guys.  I'm talking about buying a stock and ALMOST NEVER selling it.  Why?  Because you're going to buy 1 stock for one (that would be ONE) and only one reason.  There are reasons you would sell, but I'll get to that in a moment. 

What we are looking for are dividends.  Dividends are payments made by companies to the shareholder.  Some give dividends quarterly, some yearly, and some never.  I want to find a stock (or mutual fund) that pays a dividend MONTHLY.  Why?  Because my bills come every month, and I want income EVERY MONTH to pay those bills.  I may be diligent and driven, but I can't plan three months of bills out and expect it to work regularly.  So you are looking for a stock that pays a dividend every single month.

Here is the one situation in which you would sell this stock: if they decide they aren't going to pay the dividend.  The stock you are buying can choose to do that.  But if they don't pay every single month, sell and go buy somewhere else.  We're buying them for the long term because they are willing to fork out cash every single month.  If they miss a payment, FIRE THEM and get someone who will pay you every single month. 

Now that you've picked your stock, the question comes as to where to reinvest the dividend and make compound interest work for you, or not reinvest.  It sounds stupid, but it helps my brain to NOT reinvest the dividend.  That's because that .37 cent payment shows just how much fine my retirement will be.  And that's the whole point, right?  It's much easier if you can look and say "yup, I can afford to live on that".  But getting a tiny payment gives a constant reminder that I need to invest more to get more. 

If you don't need that constant reminder, you are a better person than I am and compound interest will make you rich and famous. 

Now, would I do this as a "retirement strategy" in tax-advantaged plans?  No.  A "retirement strategy" assumes you are going to work until you are 62 1/2 or whatever ridiculous age the government comes up with and then retire.  What if I have the money to retire at 40?  What's wrong with that if I have the income to support it? 

If I follow the typical Roth plan, then I can't touch that money without huge penalties and interest.  I do have a 401k, but I no longer contribute to it.  I use highly risky funds and an income fund.  Hopefully, they will ride the roller coaster up and down and eventually be worth something.  But I'm not going to bet on it.

Waiting

Waiting.  

I often want to charge headlong into every problem I see.  It just doesn't work that way quite often.  The singular momentum that builds up and moves us to action often has to be made subservient to everything else we need to do.  As of recent, I've become a time nut.  I've spent a lot of time examining how I spend my time and what I get accomplished with my time.  It's just not what I want.  I think I can do more. 

But my goals require following a certain path.  That certain path isn't exactly laid out, but it is laid out enough to where if I skip a step the entire thing may fall apart.  And that is something I don't want. 

But here I am, back to waiting.  Mostly waiting for two different things to complete.  Ubuntu has to install on my back PC so I can begin testing some of the ideas I have.  I've heard Nagios is a very good program for examining the current status of a system. 

Which leads me to the next day, and once again system examination.  After reading part of the speech by Julian Castro, I'm inclined to remember several very similar speeches from the RNC convention.

All of the speeches are essentially rags to riches stories.  All are about immigrants that started off with nothing and ended up becoming something amazing.  As a constant studier of systems, I'm inclined to think Julian Castro and Mitt Romney have more in common than they think.  They may have come to different conclusions, but their systems are probably remarkably similar. 

Romney, being Mormon and a fairly decent business guy probably kept his debts low, lived within his means, and then increased his means.  Castro's grandmother probably had old time values, so she probably never borrowed any money.  Not borrowing any money would have kept her well ahead of anyone else, even if she hadn't increased her means. 

So based off the generalized example of both, the goal is simple: get rid of debt, and increase means.  Now, being the non-business inclined person, Castro's grandmother probably didn't rely on the wonders of capital gains, so she spent her whole life working in what Robert Kiysoaki would have lamented to be the wrong sector.  I haven't read Cash Flow Quadrant in a while, so I don't remember the exact terminology he used. 

Essentially, Castro's grandmother and many others never take advantage of "money they don't have to work for".  As such, they work an 8 or 10 hour day, and that is all their life produces.  8-10 hours of work.  Mitt Romney learned the benefits of using his money to make more money.  In the end, it seems like most of Mitt's income is generated by things he doesn't have to show up to do.  Hence, he can work his 8-10 hours a day or not, and still get paid.  

So the question becomes: how do I make money when I'm sleeping?  

Maybe next time for that one.  

The "to-don't" list

I'm sure there was more I was thinking of when it came to my wife deciding to wake up at 5 AM, which ultimately led to me waking up at 5 AM.  But my brain jumps around like a squirrel on crack, and today I'm just going to follow it.  My brain is on the "to-don't" list.

The "to-don't" list is much like the fabled "to-do" list.  I've come to conclude that the to-don't list is more important than the to-do list.  The to-do list creates a list of things that "need" to be done.  And those are generally well understood.  I should exercise more.  I should keep my check book balanced.  I should study for the next thing I'm going to take on. 

But the "to-don't" list is an unsung hero.  I heard about it in Jim Collins' book Good to Great.  Collins describes it as something more important than a "to-do" list because it is just as important to understand what you shouldn't do as to understand what you should do.  That sentence made absolutely no sense, so I'll explain. 

I have a tendency to have about a thousand ideas running through my head at any different time.  Those involve 3D world creation and architecture, programming, thoughts on robotics, learning Java, learning some version of Microsoft server software, and countless others.  The "to-don't" provides me clarity in what I should and shouldn't be doing.  Even though all those other things are fun little toys to play with, they aren't going to get me where I want to go if I performed them rigorously for the next ten years or so.  In other words, they are nice flights of fancy but they are JUST THAT: flights of fancy. 

Now learning or performing some of what I listed could potentially get me a different job with faster promotion and pay characteristics.  But at the moment, I'm going to give my effort towards my current job.  At the moment, I'm not betting the farm on my current job, but I am planning that to be my advancement. 

Secondly, I took that list of what I wanted to do and developed my "to-don't" list and turned it into a sequential "when" list.  The goal is to never stop learning and improving.  So right now I've got my reading list broken into two parts: practical application and theory. 

The theory portion of learning fits in the category of reading generic business books or IT related books like Time Management forSystem Administrators by Thomas a Limoncelli , the aforementioned Good to Great, or Stephen R. Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

My technical list includes a different but just as important variety of books.  Right now, I'm working on Cisco ICND part 1 and 2.  Afterwards, I'm probably going towards Cisco Voice, and then towards the MCTS 70-680 exam for Windows 7, and finally off towards learning Java. 

Let's face it: I work a technical job and technical information is what I need.  Especially when it comes to fixing stuff. 

Anyways, the "to-don't" list has clarified what I need to do to succeed.  In part, it's taking the vagueness and wanderlust out of my random ideas.  What good is random ideas if they don't come to some sort of fruition, anyways?

Lessons Learned part 2... reorganization

2) Reorganize your life around your goals.

This is the one that I have found to be the hardest.  To my wife, it was simple making a change.  Once she had her goals in place, she changed her day.  It was nothing more complex than waking up at 5 AM every weekday to go to the gym.  On the other hand, I'm a bit more ambitious and want quite a bit more.  I also saw my wife had a great idea, so I was simply going to follow suit.  For me, it provided a way to start learning and studying for the CCENT and eventually the CCNA. 

My life is rather hectic.  I used to wake up about 6:45 AM, slug back some coffee, wake up the kids, get dressed, and be out the door by 7:45 AM.  From around 8 AM to 6 or 7 PM was work, then supper and playing with the kids until 8 PM.  After that, I'd kick back and relax until 11:30 or 12 PM or so and go to bed.  And I'd get up and do it again. But I decided to change.  I spent too much of my time at home doing things that were counter-productive to what I wanted.  Sure, World of Warcraft is fun, but it costs me money and doesn't make me money.  Secondly, it's a giant time sink.  I don't know how much time I've wasted doing little or nothing. 

So instead, I rearranged my life around what I wanted to accomplish.  It's all based off a simplistic concept: learn more to earn more.  The whole idea is based off something I think Dave Ramsey said, "10 years from now you will be the same person making the same money except for the books you read and the people you meet."

So, the goal is to read more books.  My schedule has changed to something like this.  Wake up at 5 AM.  Read the Bible until 5:45.  Study work related stuff until 6:30.  Wake the kids up.  Head to work at 7:45.  Work from 8 AM until I get off between 5 and 7 PM.  Eat and play with kids until they go to bed at 8.  Relax until 9:30 PM.  Read until 10.  Go to bed no later than 10:30.  And that's Monday through Friday. 

Part of my job requires me to drive around a lot, so I spend my time listening to my own self-created audio books.  This is something new I've started trying.  Essentially, you take whatever material you want to learn and record it to an audio CD.  Throw the CD in the CD player on infinite repeat as I drive around all day. 

I'm expected quite a few things out of all of this.  I expect a much more stable and consistent mood.  Often, listening to the doom and gloom present on most radio stations is even to make us believe that our lives are going nuts just like the rest of the world.  Note to everyone:  Real Titans Don't Whine.  So I quit listening to reality as presented on the radio.  As a Christian, I should be doing that anyways.  If you want to succeed, quit listening to what the rest of the Chicken Little world says and spend some time understanding where you want to go. I think Dave Ramsey put it best...  "Throw a brick through your TV and get a clue about your own life."

I refuse to have my fate tied to Washington, or any other town.  I will succeed, or I will die trying.  There is no other option.  And I do have to credit Jim Collins Good to Great  for his Chicken Little analogy.  He said it much better than I could have.