🤠 How to Stop Being a Zero and Start Being a Hero!

Day 27:   Don't Blow It!

by Edward Smith

01 Aug 2020 

When Your Fun Stops Being Fun

In my house we have two versions of the budget.   We have the larger house version, which covers everything that the family needs, including our basics like food, electricity, car gas, and the mortgage.   

We also pay each other a smaller allowance called "blow money", which if you manage it, can work  like a smaller personal budget that only covers you.   

Blow money is intended to be fun money that a person uses to blow off steam.  It's what pays for those cool sneakers, or that new expensive belt.  The house allows it.   It's sanctioned.

 The thing is, fun can be taken too far.   Don't have fun at your own expense.

Ten Years of Blow Money and Nothing to Show For It

The problem with blow money is I always blow it.   I mean, that's kind of the point.   Right?

Not a big deal.  Problem is, one day I woke up and it all changed.    

On my Fortieth  birthday.   I began thinking about how the last decade had gone.   I suddenly realized my personal savings were at zero.   In fact they were always at zero.   I never had anything left over at the end of any month.  

I would run out, and then I would be waiting for the next month to start up so I could run in, and get fed more hay by the household.  It never stopped, and I wasn't getting anywhere.

I had become a greedy little goat. 

Ten Years of Blow Money and Lots to Show For It

My wife on the other hand, had taken a different approach.

She would spend some of her money, but then she would also keep some of it.    Over time, her savings kept building up, and then she would go out and buy something larger that I could never afford.   

That started to bug me at a small competitive level, but it also began to scare me at a much larger oh my gosh level.  

I realized, if my laptop blew up, that was it.    I wouldn't be able to cover the cost of replacing it.    I'd have to ask the house to bail me out, or I'd have to start saving up for it right there and then.   It could take over a year or more to get a new one.   I might not have a working computer for an entire year.   

That wasn't going to work.

I decided I needed to do something about it, and right now.   

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🤠 How to Buy Books Online and Have the Books Pay For Themselves

Day 26:   Buying Books Online Doesn't Necessarily Require Cash

by Edward Smith

31 Jul 2020 

You Need to Invest in Yourself 

If you listen to successful financial people, you'll often hear them tell you to invest.    People usually assume investing means to invest in the stock market, but investments can come in many other forms.  Not only should you invest in your relationships, you should also actively invest in yourself.  

Personal education and self improvement are vital and should be pursued during your entire life span.  Learning is how you gain new skills, and it's how you continue to successfully navigate complex issues that exist within our complex world.  

So how do you do it?   It can actually be pretty easy, and it doesn't always have to break your bank account.   Books are cheap, they contain a wealth of knowledge, and if you read them, they can teach you a lot.      

So that's how I found myself looking for books online, and how I first ran into a little thing called Mechanical Turk.

  

How I Afford to Pay For My Books

I buy many of my books online from Amazon.   I've been doing it for over a decade.    The only problem with this technique, is ordering things online can get expensive.   You have to pay for the product itself, and you have to pay for shipping, since it costs money to send the thing from the seller to your doorstep.      

I still do it though, because where I live, stores are spaced out, and you don't always find what you are looking for, when you want to get it.  I hate settling for other things.  I would rather just go online, find the thing I actually want, order it, and be done.   I can see reviews, I can tell if the product is good or not, and once I order it, it comes to me.  I don't have to do anything else after that point.  

Needless to say, having ordered things online, I knew about Amazon, and I was pretty familiar with the Amazon business model.

What I didn't know, is the Amazon brand is much larger then what most people see.   Amazon has quietly expanded into other business sectors, and one of those lesser known expansions includes a thing called Mechanical Turk.

What is Mturk?

Mechanical Turk (or Mturk for short) is an online job board hosted by Amazon.   It get's it's name from a circus show that used to tour the world many years ago.   In the show, a booth with a robotic dummy inside, would show up to your town, and you'd be given a chance to play chess against the robot for money.  The robot never lost.   

What you didn't know, was the game was rigged, and things weren't what they seemed.  Hidden inside the machine lived a small human chess master who ran the booth from inside using a set of hidden controls.   The trick worked because people believed they were playing against the robot, when in fact, the robot relied upon the hidden efforts of a small work force that completed all of the work behind the scenes.   

Amazon's Mturk is not a trick, but it does rely upon the efforts of another tiny work force, much like the one that was used to run the robot back in the day.   These modern workers complete small micro jobs behind the curtain.  You'll never know who they are, but many companies find the work they do to be quite instrumental and useful.       

How Does Mturk Work?

Many of the jobs on Mturk are funded by universities and schools.   Workers sign onto the Mturk website using their personal worker id.   Once logged on, they then peruse a board full of small online micro jobs.   These micro jobs are intended to be done on your computer or electronic device (tablet or smart phone), and the worker gets paid by the employer for each successfully completed job.       

Mturk, jobs vary both in size and pay.  A job can last a minute, and pay as low as a penny, or the job can last an hour and pay out fifteen bucks (I tend to focus on work that pays at least twenty cents or higher).   

The amount being promised can be random, because it all depends on who the employer is, who they represent, why they want the work done, and what they want to pay out.  This information is not hidden from the worker, it just fluctuates from job to job, so the worker has to look around a little before they agree to work a job.   

The workers see everything up front, and they get to browse jobs and choose what they want to do, and for how much.  

That is one of the cool things about Mturk.   It's very flexible.  You're not locked into a work schedule, and you can sign in and out when you want.  Each job includes a written description, and each job states it's promised payment amount at the beginning before anyone agrees to do anything.    

    

It's kind of like a wanted poster in a Spaghetti Western movie.    Out of work cowboys, find a poster hanging up in the middle of town.    The poster tells them what the sheriff wants done, and what the sheriff is willing to pay to get the thing done.   If the worker decides to complete the work, they get to go visit the sheriff, and the sheriff pays them the poster's stated reward.    

Does Mturk Work?

Yep.   It's not going to let you quit your day job, but Mturk really does work.   It's a great way to save up for small things, or to buy presents for friends and family.

Since I've been working as a Mturk worker, I've set a modest goal for myself, in which I work to earn $1.50 a day.   I could do more, but this is where I find things remain balanced.  I don't want to ignore my kids all day, so I do this and stop.   

Most of the work that I do on Mturk consists of opinion surveys.   I find them to be really interesting.  Most of them were created by teachers and educators.   If you read them, you typically learn interesting things about our country.   

The surveys often give you a hidden look into how the country is reacting to a current event or news article.  Sometimes you also get to see where cutting research is heading.  I've seen videos and surveys that give me rare glimpses into the fields of robotics, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.   

When I do surveys, a researcher might ask me some quick questions about a current event, and I tell them what I think about it.   Then the researcher pays me a little money, and I move onto the next job.  It's easy, painless, and I often get entertained during the task.  It's like watching a movie, but someone pays you while you do it.

To earn a $1.50 it usually takes me about an hour of my time.   I then do that every day for a month.  At the end of the month I make around $45.00 or $540 a year.   When I do that consistently, it feels like I open my front door each day, and I find a $1.50 sitting on the ground.   It's like I got visited by a grown up tooth fairy.

So yea.   $1.50 might not look like much, but it's money I wasn't counting on.   If you back that new money up with a plan, it can really do some cool stuff.   For instance, if I earned $45.00 every month, and invested that money in a mutual fund earning 8%, and did that for ten years.  I'd be sitting on $8,232.  Thanks tooth fairy.   Not too shabby, when you remember I filled out minute long surveys to get it.

How Does Mturk Pay You?

Mturk pays out in one of two ways.    I typically go with an Amazon Gift card, because I find the cards pay out faster, they appear online quicker, and I can use them to buy Amazon products quickly.  Payments release to you every couple days, weeks, or months (depending on how you set things up).   

You can also get paid in cash.   If you do that, the cash is deposited straight into your bank account, but it can take a little longer to get it.   What I like about cash, is you can use cash for whatever your little heart desires.   Invest it, pay down a house bill, buy lunch, do whatever you want.  It doesn't matter.   Everyone loves cash.   You can't do that with a gift card.   

Mturk feels really cool when it works.   Nothing beats having your Amazon bill come across to you as a zero dollar amount.   You rack up a bill, but then the Mturk gift cards hit, and your bill cancels out. You still receive the items, but your budget never feels any of it.   When that happens, it feels like Amazon rewarded you with free swag or that you beat the system.   You feel smarter then the other guy that paid actual money for the same thing.

Conclusion

So that's my experience with MTurk.   Mturk is a great small scale way to earn extra cash in the comfort of your home.   It's perfect for stay at home dads that can't leave the house.   

Even when you find you're stuck at home with the kids, you might find a few moments, to bust out a quick job, and make an extra quarter.   If you use Mturk money in a smart way, you can actually save or invest it for the long term.    That small amount of money can really turn into something big later on, and to think all you were doing was answering questions, and entertaining yourself.   Easy money.   Go get some today!

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🤠 How Amish Bread is Both a Metaphor for Life and Financial Success

Day 25:   Bread Etiquette Is a Winning Recipe  

by Edward Smith

30 Jul 2020 

When it Comes To Dough, It's What You Know

Food is a great teacher.    About a month ago, a co-worker of my wife showed up to work and gave my wife a clear plastic bag full of a bread starter.   The starter was for a bread dough used to make Amish Friendship Bread.    

Amish Friendship Bread, like the people that the bread appears to be named after, work as a perfect metaphor for both life and how to live.   If you are an attentive student, Amish Friendship Bread will teach you how to become a better person, and it can even help train you to keep your financial habits healthy and in balance.   Let me explain.   

 

Friendship Bread Encourages Delayed Gratification

Amish Friendship Bread starter kits do not impress when you first encounter them.   A bag of bread starter can look a lot like a bag of brown spit.   Don't believe me?   Here is a picture of a sour dough bread starter that I found on the following website, which looks about the same https://breadtopia.com/make-your-own-sourdough-starter/

Bread starters can be a little awkward at the beginning.

Bread starters don't plan out things this way.   It's not even the starter's fault, but like many other things that begin life ugly, don't judge this thing too quickly.  Bread starters can be like butterflies.  Give it a chance, and the bread starter will transform into something beautiful.    Bread dough is sneaky that way.   Things are not always as they seem.      

Deep inside this bag of primordial goo lives a tiny army of hungry critters looking for a sugar snack.  If you pay the sugar price, these little lifeforms will activate and go to work for you.   They work non-stop both day and night, and their hard work really pays off.   

Give them about a week, and you will find your bag jam packed full of some of the most magical, yummy, sweet bread dough, that the world has ever graced bakers with.       

Picture of our current round of Amish Bread Dough. 
It's been building itself up for about a week.

This is next level kind of dough.   It's not your run of the mill store type bread.   This is the good stuff.    The kind your mama used to make, when she would make bread from scratch, and the house would be filled with the explosive smells of yeast, butter, and wonderful bread baking.    

There is nothing else quite like it in the world, and all it takes from you, is some waiting, patience, and an ability to look past what is in front of you, to the beyond, where good things await that haven't even occurred yet.   

We made a loaf of soda bread from part of the Amish bread dough (two weeks ago).
 Soda bread is kind of like sour dough, except you add in small fruits to it like raisins.

Friendship Bread Teaches Prudent Investing

As mentioned above, Amish Friendship Bread, like investing, teaches you the value of  delayed gratification, but it does so much more then that.   Here are some examples.   

When you invest, you need to commit to the thing long term.   You need to know what it is you're investing in.  You need to know how long to wait.   You need to understand the ingredients.  You need to understand how it works, and you need to be willing to keep paying into it if you want the thing to do it's job.   

Most importantly though, you need to leave the thing alone once you start it, and you need to refrain from taking everything out and using it all up at once.   There has to be a leftover, untouched portion.  That's the secret step that keep the magic producing more magic.  

Bread dough, like a good investment, can pay out dividends over and over again forever.  It's all up you though.  That dividend depends on you leaving some principal money behind each time.   The principle money is the starter.   It's the active ingredient that produces more dividend.    

If you want infinite bread, don't break the bread machine.   That's where the bread comes from.  

With investing, don't break the principal.   That's where the dividend comes from.   It's the same thing.   

Friendship Bread Teaches The Importance of Giving

  

This one should be easy to follow.  How do you think you got your Amish Friendship Bread starter kit in the first place?   

Someone selflessly gave it to you.   It didn't cost them very much, but this stuff is a valuable treasure.   It's alive.  It keeps growing.   

You really can't put a price on it.   It was never intended to be sold.   If you embrace the spirit of the Amish Friendship Bread program, you will come to realize that this starter kit represents something really important.   It represents connection between members of the community.  

With your kit, you use it to make dough, but if you ration it, you also end up making more dough then you really need, so the dough encourages you to give some of it away to other people (much like what happened when someone gave it to you).   That's why you end up giving some to your neighbor.  Having had it happen to them, they in turn repeat the process and do the same thing.  

Now imagine that keeps happening over and over again.    Bread is shared between person and person.   It doesn't stop.   Low and behold, the dough has grown exponentially, and so has the good will and spirit that were ingrained within it.      

Bread sharing teaches a lesson.    Small things when shared, become bigger, and bigger things can change things in big ways.   Bread dough contains potential.   Just like you.   

   

Want to have an impact?   Be like bread.   Expand and share with those around you!      

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🤠 Learn Why You Should Give and Why Giving Makes You Powerful

Day 24:   Give Giving a Chance  

by Edward Smith

29 Jul 2020 

Giving Isn't a Conflict, It Suits You

I'll be the first to admit, that when I'm trying to save up to pay for something, I find it extremely hard to set aside money for giving.  

When you're focusing on the math, and you feel like money is tight, giving can feel counter intuitive to meeting another goal.  It can feel like a tax.    It can feel like you're losing out.   Giving slows other things down.   It redirects money away from you, and puts it into the hands of other people.    

It can feel like an optional nuisance.  It can feel like a distraction, but giving can also feel like other things.

It can feel good, it can feel meaningful, and it can give you a sense of pride.   That's a lot of stuff to think about.    

So a question must be asked.   Why give?    

Giving Though Hard, Is 100 % Correct.  Do it!

You should give, because giving is responsible, it's how you do your part, it's how you make a difference, and it's how you protect your community from harm and mismanagement.

Giving should be a serious part of your budget, because the issues being addressed are very serious.  

You should treat giving like you treat your groceries, heating/air conditioning, and your mortgage.  Like any core expense, giving should get it's own category at the beginning of the month, and that money should only be used for the specific purpose for which it is intended.  In this case, giving it away.   

You get to choose the amount, but giving should not happen by accident.   Giving should be intentional, and it should be your choice, but you should always choose to do it.  I choose around 10% of my take home pay.   Like any other important thing, you must learn what works for you, and you must manage it and be proactive.

Giving is What Keeps the World Spinning

Giving is not just a nice thing to do, it's the upkeep that keeps the world running.   You're part of that world, and your world isn't working the way it's supposed to be.   It's broken.   It's constantly being neglected by people, and it's up to you to do something about that.   

You've seen the mess.   You know where things are going wrong, and you've seen how those things don't get made right, unless people like you take a stand and take action.     

Giving is your voice.  It's your vote.   It's how you decide what happens and how it happens.  

It's not up to other people.   It's up to you.  Tag!   You're it.   Step up to the plate.  Make your mark. 

You have the power.  You have the tools.   

Giving is Your Job

When you do your job, and earn income, you take control of part of the world's money supply.  It sits in your bank account, and you are promoted to it's boss.   That money can do anything.  It is infused with limitless potential and it reeks of possibility.   You determine that money's destiny, and your decisions determine whether the destiny is good or whether it's evil.   

     

Giving Should be Inclusive

My house and I have been giving to worthy causes for over two decades.   

When we started, we started small as a couple, but as our family grew and we had kids, our donation efforts became bigger, and our kids became a major part of it.   As of this date, we have plans to expand on this idea, and our kids are part of that plan.   Once the house is paid off, our giving fund will explode.   Our kids are going to see it as it happens, and it's going to change how they see things going forward.

Giving Teaches Kindness and Love 

Every Sunday, my wife and my kids donate money to our local church.   My kids know the church staff, they physically put the money into the donation plate, and they talk to the people while it is happening.  It's not just money going out the door, it's a physical connection between my kids and another human being.   

Our church funds missionary work overseas.  My kids have donated to those missions and have sent letters to the missionaries thanking them for their hard work and sacrifice.   My kids have received letters back, thanking them, and my kids have kept those letters, because those letters fill them with pride.   

The church also identifies families around the area that are in need of food and supplies.   My kids roll up with me to the curb, and help me carry things out to the volunteers.   They were with me on the shopping trip, they helped pick everything out, and they helped deliver things to the end point.   They got to see it all, and they were heavily involved in the entire process.

Christmas Became the Season of Giving

My two kids have gone to toy stores with me and filled up shopping carts full of toys during the Christmas holiday.   Nothing communicates Christmas better to two small people then that of physically giving things to others.   It's better then any gift you can get.   We celebrate this milestone with a nice dinner afterwards.   It's become a new Christmas tradition.   

We've attacked toy stores like our household won a shopping spree.   It's unreal what you can get, if your intentional and you budget for giving ahead of time.   

I notice that never seems to happen when I'm being selfish and am buying stuff for myself.

When you do it for others, it works out.   You get to the end, your cart is full of a bunch of cool things and you feel the weight of it, because none of the stuff is even for you.  

I guess it's like what happens when you visit another person's house and everything is different, unfamiliar, and super interesting.  It's even better though.   The toys represent something more than that.   They represent selflessness and love for a complete stranger.  

You get to give these things away, and you get to make someone else's Christmas awesome.   My kids see all of that.  They've part of it.   They're the reason it happened.   

When you involve your kids in this type of thing, it does something to them.   They ask lots of questions afterwards.  My kids have told me how it makes them feel.  It makes them feel good and it makes them feel proud.   Guess how that makes me feel?   Incredible.

Conclusion

Giving is the best way to use your money.   It's a need, not a want.   Your soul is starving.   Your soul craves something.   Giving is what your soul craves, and it's what the world needs right now, and it's what it's always needed.  Giving is like paying money to improve your health, but it's your spiritual health.   Best medicine on the planet.   Go get some by giving some today! 

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🤠 How to Use Faith to Keep Your Future Self Committed While Blind

Day 23:   How Do You Keep Yourself Going? 

by Edward Smith

28 Jul 2020 

When Missions Outweigh Potential Defeats

In my last article entitled:     🤠    How to Create Meaningful Goals and Seduce them With Your Passion you learned that a mission can inspire you to continue forward even when it would be easier to quit and give up.  

That's good, because at my last job, things were pretty nuts.

The place was crazy, but I believed in the crazy, and was passionate about seeing the crazy succeed.  At the heart of things I saw what the owner was doing, and I was excited about what the company was working to accomplish.   

The company was changing history in front of me, and the world would never be the same afterwards.   It was thrilling.  It was meaningful. 

That mentality kept me safe  and sane for years.   Feeling that way about something, was super important, because the day to day working environment was often hostile, inefficient, filled with drama, and could get extremely personal and emotional.   

If you wanted to stick it out, you had to have thick skin, and you had to be willing to suck things up when people were being mean to you.   It was like a rocky marriage.   One that you cared about.

Being Married to Your Important Goals is Key

Working at my old aerospace company was like being married to someone that you love for the long term.   In that situation, it doesn't matter how you survive your best days, it matters how you survive your worst.   

Marriage requires stamina.   When you're married, you're married to that person every day, no matter how things go.  You're going to fight.   You're going to get mad and throw things, but what you do after matters more then the thing going wrong itself.   

If you're smart, you're going to stop yourself, and you're going to take the time to listen to the other person.   You're going to look for places where misunderstandings can be repaired or turned into  compromises.  This person matters to you.  You want to succeed with this person.  This person is your mission.  

When it comes to your mission, never give up, and always retain your faith.   

Faith No Matter What!

You have to be willing to believe in something even though you can't see the results in front of you.  You have to push through the smoke, because the good things lie beyond the smoke.   Reach for them.   Your faith was justified.   The good things are out there.   

These things only become available to those who embrace hard work and choose to persevere.  Struggle is the secret spice, that when accepted into the total meal, compliments the flavoring of any great plan.   

When it comes to faith, doubt is not allowed.  You must remain faithful to your cause.   Your cause matters.   At a higher level, your sacrifices are completely worth it.  There is no question.  You accept the short term pain.  You learn to toughen up.  You become passionate.   You obsess about it, because this is something that you want.  When you want something bad enough, it means something!        

Conclusion

Having made it past the one third mark of a sixty-six day challenge, I find myself reminding myself that my goal is worth it, and that being resilient remains the key.  I believe in myself, because I believe something cool is on it's way.   

I haven't seen it yet, because its' over a month out, and it hasn't happened yet, but I believe in it still, and that unwavering faith keeps me going.    On day sixty seven, when the challenge is complete, I'll have sixty-six reminders of what it took to earn this day.   All of them will become prized possessions.   

Those sixty-six days will be valuable.  They will have beat out ten years worth of guessing and dreaming.   Those sixty-six days are intentional, and they were engineered specifically to align with my inner faith and purpose.    

Want to try it for yourself?   You can start today.   You can start any day.   Define your mission, become passionate about that mission, and watch as you make progress towards it.   

Goal setting, with intentional planning and upkeep, transforms you into an unstoppable force of nature.  Believe in yourself and empower your future self to make it happen!   Your future self is counting on you.   Begin the journey right now!   It is your destiny!   I'll be rooting for ya!

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🤠 How to Create Meaningful Goals and Seduce them With Your Passion

Day 22:   What Should a Goal Look Like? 

by Edward Smith

27 Jul 2020 

Goal Setting Requires Rigor and Upkeep

If you haven't realized it by now, a sixty-six day challenge is not just a dream.   It's meant to be a measurable plan, set up to happen within a measurable amount of time.   

This plan has a specific target goal, it sets measurable milestones against itself and it reviews actual outcomes against original intentions.    

Periodic reviews are mandatory.   Reviewing works to ensure the plan remains on target and whether the plan requires tweaking or adjustments.   As new facts become known, the plan can change, but the momentum behind ensuring the plan succeeds must never waver.    

To make something meaningful happen, and to meet a deadline, you have to proactively manage the project with this kind of rigor.  

Unexpected things will occur, but consistent management of the project must remain actively in place throughout the process.   If that doesn't happen, things are destined to get off track pretty quick, and when that happens, the plan won't know what to do.   When a plan becomes lost, the intended outcomes become lost along with it.   

You Have to Believe in The Mission

Welcome to day twenty-two of sixty-six.  If you have been following this whole thing, we're now one third of the way complete.   This begs the following set of questions:   

Why am I still here?  Why did I stick it out for this long?   

Why am I doing this?    

Want to know?   It's because of the mission.  You have to believe in the mission.

Back when I worked at my old aerospace company, I believed in the mission (I still do).   That's why I stuck with things for as long as I did.   I could have left at any time.   The door was always open.  

As I mentioned in a previous article.   The average employee at my company survived two years.  Nobody would have blamed me had I quit after that point.   My honor was intact.  My resume could be updated and nobody would be the wiser.

I stuck it out though.   I stuck it out for another five years.   I took on more responsibility and more pain, even though I never had to.   I chose to.  I believed in what I was doing.  The whole thing was worth it.

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🤠 How to Second Guess Yourself and Be Wise With A Second Chance

Day 21:   It's Okay If You Do It Right 

by Edward Smith

26 Jul 2020 

Financial Redemption Is a Choice

If you read my last article entitled   🤠    How to Take Advantage of Your Unexpected Win and Avoid Losing Out!, you would have learned how we were able to sell our overpriced house and turn the whole thing around.  It took some decision making and some habit changing, but we learned our lesson, cleaned the whole thing up, and were now looking pretty.

Flash Forward to 2018

By this point our California house was sold, we had moved across country, and had finished living in a hotel for three months.  With the ability to pay for things in cash, we were able to quickly close on a three story, 2,640, square foot town home that cost $495,000.  

It was more then what we originally intended to purchase, but this time it was okay, because we took our time, did our homework, and things were drastically different.   

We were able to pay cash for more than half of the house's value.  That meant that instead of buying a $500,000 home, it was like we were buying a $150,000 home that was worth $500,000.   We also had done our due diligence, we knew what we could afford to spend, we refused to go over that amount, and we refused to get over our heads.  We had a plan.

We could have gone smaller or bigger in this scenario, but we found a house that struck the perfect balance between what we needed and wanted.    We were super careful, and we stuck to our plan and our correct numbers.   Walking into the new location we found out that the $350,000 homes were older and were usually in bad areas of town with gangs, higher crime rates, and drug trafficking.   

The house we found was in the middle price range.   It was the perfect size for a family of four, it was located in a great area with great schools.   It was only seven years old.  It wasn't too large, and it came with a ton of modern amenities.   It met all of our needs (and even came with extra stuff we didn't know we wanted).    Best, it was very much in our price range and we could manage paying for it easily with only one job.       

Returning Balance To Our Lives

Now our financial numbers were back to normal.  Our house payments were only 25% of our take home pay.   We were able to put down a down payment of 70% instead of 15%.   

We now had choices and wiggle room.   Since we had shrunk our other expenses, we decided to take the money and use it in a wise way.   We voluntarily, kept paying higher on our mortgage bills each month, even though we didn't have to.   We did this to, to reduce our timeline and it has always been something we were able to stop at any time.      

Thanks to that decision, we are now on target to be completely done with house payments forever in two years.   

Eight years of time, two more years of paying it down, and we will have paid down a thirty year mortgage in about ten years.  Life is super funny that way.  We turned a potential financial disaster into a life changing win.  

My two sons will enter middle school, living in a fully paid for house.  They both witnessed the struggle.   They saw what we did. When it's all over, it will be the new family story.   

The story started with a new house, in an overpriced city eight years ago.    It will end with my kids receiving a super awesome education about perseverance and grit.  That lesson is powerful.  It will serve them well in life.    All in all, things worked out marvelously.

Paying Ahead, Gets You Ahead

That's How You Turn Failures Into Victories

Wars Are Not Lost in a Single Battle.  Keep Fighting, and Turn Things Around.

Want to See my Next Article?  Click this Link!

    

       

 

 

🤠 How to Take Advantage of Your Unexpected Win and Avoid Losing Out!

Day 20:   When You Win, Protect Your Win!

by Edward Smith

25 Jul 2020 

Don't Risk Your Winnings, Know When To Cash Out

In my last article entitled:   🤠    What To Do When Your Risky Idea Blossoms Into Something Beautiful and Unexpected,   I talked about how selling our house gave us back our equity and led to an unexpected win.

Things were just getting started.

The house inflation situation was still out of control, and it was getting worse.   The house we bought for $535,000 five years ago, had now sky rocketed to $690,000.    Crazy people were on the move again!   This meant we were able to sell the house for a profit of $155,000.  No strings attached. 

Since we were getting our house's $100,000 equity back from the sale, this meant, we were walking into our new location with $250,000 and the houses in the new area were going for as low as $350,000.   Instead of barely owning a house, we were thinking we could be the person who almost had a paid for house.   A major shift in our story.      

It got better again.   

Our Investment Side Hustle Came Through

We also had $100,000 invested in the stock market outside of retirement that we were hiding for a rainy day.   

When we first did it, it was a long shot, but we had this idea at the time since we had so many years left to go on our California house, this investment could grow bigger and bigger with compound interest and become sizable.   Then one day it would get so big, that it would pay off the balance of our house.  We liked this idea more then just throwing it at the mortgage because it gave us a backup plan to get out with some cash, if things didn't work out with the house.

Now that we didn't need to do that anymore, we were able to free up this money and use it as it should have been used to pay down the new house.  It was like we found additional new money that had been off limits before.

When we arrived in our new town, and began looking for homes, we walked in with $350,000 cash.    

None of this was expected, but all of it was super amazing.   Delayed gratification can be painful at first, but if you stick with it, it can take care of you later on.

Want to know what happened when once we moved to our new place?   

Click This Link and Find Out!

   

🤠 What To Do When Your Risky Idea Blossoms Into Something Beautiful and Unexpected

Day 19:   Knowing When You Did the Right Thing!

by Edward Smith

24 Jul 2020 

Never Give Up

In my last article, entitled  🤠    How to Take a Tragedy, and Turn it Into a Victory! you learned that my family moved across country, and that this decision allowed me to stay at home, and become a full time dad.

In California, every dollar that I made was vital and important.  Here we had wiggle room, and extra money could be used to move things faster or work as play money.   I could work anywhere and make minimum wage.  Or I could stay home and take care of the kids and not make a dime.   It didn't matter anymore, because every dollar that I made was a bonus that we didn't really need.

We saw the opportunity for what it was.   This one decision, though painful, would likely fix a decade worth of  mistakes and would make our household stronger.    We'd get a reset, and this time we could do things right.  That was the day we decided to sell the house, and that's when things got super interesting.

Inflation Works Both Ways.  Befriend Your Equity!  

Paying more for our mortgage each month voluntarily was one of the smartest financial decisions we ever made.    If you can do it, you should do it.   Not only do you cut off years from your mortgage, you make your house more valuable and useful from a financial perspective.    It becomes leverage, and leverage is a tool.   Here is how that worked.

Every month we paid around a month and a half worth of mortgage instead of the required one month's worth.   By paying ahead, we essentially made our 30 year mortgage turn into a 20 year mortgage, which was our initial goal when we first started.   It gets better though.   As we pumped the house full of extra cash, that cash didn't disappear, it just remained dormant.  

The house acted like a savings account and the dollars were all sitting there waiting for something to happen.    When we decided to sell the house, the buyer would be told to pay a price.  If they paid the price, the house would become theirs, and we would end up with all money that was left over after our outstanding loan was subtracted from the house price (not counting closing costs, repairs and inspections).

This meant, that the more money we had paid down on the mortgage's principal before this point, the more equity was sitting in the house, and the more money we got back after the house was sold.   

Our habit of paying down our house aggressively for five years, had actually worked out in our favor.  There was now $100,000 of our own money sitting in the house.   When the house was sold, we were presented with that amount in cash.  An unexpected win.

  

It got better after that.

Want to know how?   Click this link and check out my next article!

Quick Disclaimer:   I don't promote the use of reverse mortgages.   This scenario was positive for us, because we were cutting ties with the house completely and were taking our winnings and running.   

Never take money away from your house if you intend to keep your house.   You're giving part of your house away.   Why would you reset a loan backwards when you're making progress and are getting closer to being done?   If you're short on cash, get a job.   If you like giving money away, go donate it to a church or worthwhile cause.   Reverse mortgages are predatory and are bad for your health.

Your eventual goal here is to pay down your mortgage to zero, and own your house in entirety.   Once you do that, ignore it, and enjoy the benefit of never having to pay another house payment again.   If you do that, your house will reach it's golden "the end" moment, where the story is done, and you just leave it alone after that point and enjoy living in it.   Use the opportunity to start something new and keep your house out of it.  Houses are for living.   They're not toys.   Don't play house with strangers!       

Want to see my next article?   Click this Link!

🤠 How to Take a Tragedy, and Turn it Into a Victory!

Day 18:   When Life Gives you Lemons.  Move!

by Edward Smith

23 Jul 2020  

If you read my last article entitled:    🤠    How to Survive the Nightmare Scenario of a Home-aggedon!  You would have read about my story where I bought a tiny house, in an expensive town, that was too expensive for our family.  You also would have learned how I was working in a job that had a high fatality rate and didn't look like it would last.

Seven years after I started working at my job, the company changed managers, the new managers began replacing the current employees with people that they knew from outside, and I didn't fit in with the program anymore.   

I began getting negative reviews, out of no where, I was put on probation, but before the probation period could finish, things escalated overnight, and I was walked out the door.  

I was told the company couldn't wait any longer, and that I was too expensive to fix.   The company had no choice but to move things along quicker then they would have liked.   

Two months later there would be a major company-wide layoff, where thousands of employees would be let go.  I was just the preamble.   After the larger layoff happened, everyone that I had known was basically gone, and everybody that now worked there was a stranger.   

The owner hadn't been getting results, so he cleared the whole place out and started things over with fresh blood.   It had happened before when I first started, but I was spared the first time.   I wasn't spared the second time.   Since I had seen it before, it wasn't a surprise when it happened to me.   

Luckily, We Had a Plan

I had a good idea that something was up, so my wife and I spent a lot of time outside of work looking into things ahead of time, so that we would have an exit plan in place in case things went the wrong way.    I knew that people typically received a severance package when they were let go, so we were counting on that as a possibility.

We also thought about whether living in California with one job was doable, and for how long.   We looked at what else could be done in case California didn't work out.   

That was how my wife ended up finding out about the East Coast, and how her company had a second office there, that was short on people.   The company was begging people in California to move, but nobody wanted to do it.   

Zig When Others Zag

Other people liked the beach, the sun, and the sand so much, that leaving wasn't even a possibility.   The East Coast was unknown, and it snowed there.  For Californians, moving to a place with snow is like sentencing them to life in prison.

To make people want to move to a colder climate, the company had to get creative.    Several lucrative and generous incentive packages were created to encourage people to take the plunge.  It was like how the government in the 1800's convinced people to move out West.  They gave you an offer you didn't want to refuse.

In this scenario, my wife's company agreed to pay for the entire move.   They agreed to pay for our lodging while we found a house.     They covered all of our meals and incidentals.   They paid us a bonus for selling our house, and they helped pay many of the fees and contracts associated with the transition.   

From our perspective, it was a deal of a lifetime and it was very very attractive.

 Cost of Living Analysis

Having lived in California, we knew the cost of living for a place can make or break a dream.   We looked into it and discovered that the housing prices for a 1,000 sq foot home, could be as low as $350,000.   

The new house would be the same size as we had now, but $185,000 in debt would be eliminated instantly.   This miracle was made possible, because the house was now located in a normal housing market instead of in an over inflated one.     

We also looked into our other expenses and discovered that many of our other bills were cheaper in this new location as well.   The savings were substantial across the board.  After we ran the numbers, we found out we could live on my wife's single job, pull our kids out of daycare, and I could be a full time stay at home dad.

This meant that if I got another job, I could do whatever I wanted, and it would just be extra on top of whatever we needed.   We never had that in California.   

Want to know what you can do when you take a chance, and someone hands you a serving of freedom?   

Click This Link and Read My Next Article!

🤠 How to Survive the Nightmare Scenario of a Home-aggedon!

Day 17:   Home Sweet, Home My Gosh!

by Edward Smith

22 Jul 2020  

Living in a House of Charm Filled with Fear

Our first house was very charming.   

It also stressed us into near submission.   

If we had just been paying our mortgage with nothing extra, the cost of doing it would have been close to about 35 percent of our take home income.   

We were better then that!    Since we wanted to pay off the house in fifteen years, we decided to pay extra each month on top of what was required.   That number amounted to around 50 percent of what we were both taking home every month.   We offset that by living small.   Have you ever wanted to live in a nut house?   What we were doing was working, but it was crazy!

Delaying Gratification For Big Dreams

We were willing to do this crazy thing though, because we had a dream to beat the odds and we wanted to own the house in it's entirety as soon as possible.   

My job was starting to look shaky after we signed the mortgage, and we didn't think we'd have long term job security to look forward to.  So our intention here was to use my job to push ourselves forward as fast as possible through the mess, in the hopes we'd beat things before things got messy.   It wasn't a totally bad idea, but doing it in practice was painful to maintain and it kept us from doing a lot of other fun things.

Worse, to make any of it work both of us had to keep our jobs.   Our kids had to go daycare, and there was no room for job loss in the plan whatsoever.   We were living on a knife's edge, knowing full well we could slip at any moment.  

We knew as soon as one of us lost their job, we'd probably end up having to sell the house or risk losing the house to foreclosure.  I think we were kind of okay with that.  It would have given us an easy out, and renting wasn't looking entirely bad anymore.   

Little did we know, the decision to pay more each month above what the mortgage statement said, actually was really smart and it ended up saving us later, but we wouldn't know that at the time.  In fact, we wouldn't find out for another five years.  

Seeing the Warning Signs at Work

At the time of my new house purchase, I was working in a place where people got fired constantly.  It usually happened for the smallest of infractions.   

When I worked there, the average life expectancy of an employee was around two years.  We joked about it, but it wasn't really funny.   I witnessed hundreds of strangers and friends get fired and walked out the door.  When you weren't ignoring it, it sometimes felt like death row.  You knew it was just a matter of time.   

Many of those fired were extremely talented, qualified people and leaders with years of experience in their given career field.   These were not stupid people.   They were the best of the best.  In any other place, they would have been lauded as super stars and would have been taken care of.   

Many of them had walked away from their own companies as CEOs to work here, because the place was unlike any other place around and it was exciting.

At this place though, they were just another expendable person being walked out the door by a burly security guard when something would inevitably go wrong.  When we closed on our house I was at my two year mark.  I wasn't a super star, and my degree wasn't even in something that related to what I was doing.  I had sneaked my way in, using a temp agency.   My lack of experience was starting to show.

We had no illusions.

We thought about it all of the time.  

The sad thing, is we both had good paying technical jobs.   We were making well above the national average for people bringing home paychecks, and we knew people in other parts of the country making about the same thing as we were that were living easier lives then we were, for about half the cost.  We felt very stupid and stuck. 

Then something happened, and we were able to break free and correct everything.   It turned out some of our other financial decisions had been good ones, and they came to our rescue during our hour of need.

Don't Get Stuck by Stupid!    

Check Out My Next Article by Clicking This Link!

🤠 How to Avoid Moving into More Trouble Then Your Household Can Handle

Day 16:   House Insurance Doesn't Cover Anxiety!

by Edward Smith

21 Jul 2020  

Knowing Something Smart Doesn't Prevent Stupid

In my last article entitled   🤠   How to Avoid Being a Fruit:  Stop Comparing Yourself to Apples and Oranges, you learned why I wanted to purchase my first house.   Doing it was a great life lesson, but it came with some scary extras, and I could have done the whole thing a whole lot better.   In retrospect, I wish I had, because it would have saved me a lot of sleepless nights.  

Letting Emotion Cloud a Clear Head

By 2012, I had already read Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover Book, and so I didn't really have any excuses for what went down.   I knew a few things when it came to buying a first home.   

I was supposed to put at least 10 to 15 percent down as a down payment.   I was supposed to only buy houses with monthly payments that did not exceed 25 percent of our monthly take home income.  I was supposed to take out a 15 year mortgage if I couldn't pay for the entire thing using cash.

We had a whole bunch of supposed to's in stock, but we never used them like we were supposed to.

Emotions Can be Stronger Then Math.   Trust Math!

When we decided to buy our first house, we crunched the numbers.  To make it work, my wife and I, working together full time, could only afford a house that was worth $500,000 or less, and that was only if we were willing to take out a 30 year mortgage to do it.    

Obviously a lower house price would have been better.   A higher price was pitting us against our absolute maximum limit, which meant things were being set up to become harder, and things were more likely to fail.    That's how you take a great idea and turn it sour.

Paying Too Much For a House Isn't Smart

Yo!  I hear ya!   $500,000 is a ton of money, but it didn't look that way in that town.   When everyone else is being crazy, crazy starts to look normal.   We didn't live in a place with houses that sold for less than that.   

California's real estate market was super inflated.  It was not the place that new dreamers made dreams come true.  It was a place where foreign millionaires bought beach huts, tore them down and built multi million dollar hotels and mansions.  

It was an older person's town.   Set up to provide high priced commodities to an elite group of people with money.

There were no rules or regulation.    Prices for homes were allowed to climb up as high as people were willing to pay for them.  You competed against everyone, and everyone else paid cash money in amounts you probably hadn't seen in your entire lifetime.   Money spoke, and house sellers listened.      

We were just two young people looking for their first home.  We didn't have that kind of money, so we had to look where others wouldn't.

Choosing to Get Eaten Alive

After several long months of searching, we got a lucky break.  We found a small 1,000 square foot, single story, three bedroom home, built back in 1947.  The owner sold it to us for $535,000, which was well above our comfort level, but we decided to make it work.   

A home that size would probably sell for around $300,000 in a normal market.  We weren't living in a normal market though, so we weren't given the choice of paying a normal market price.   It was either this or go back to renting.   We  were emotional, and decided to go with a house.   

It was the cheapest, best thing on the market.   It was in good condition, and it was something we could get if we were willing to stretch a little past our comfort zone.   It was located in a safe neighborhood, next to all of the good public schools, and we were able to close on it, because the house was small and most of the other buyers wanted something a little bigger.    

The Question Here.   Was it a Good Idea?   When You're Choosing Between Renting and Owning, You Don't Have to Own Your Own Place.   Do What is Smart For You.

We Decided to go with Home Ownership.   Was it smart for us?   

Click This Link and Read My Next Article to Find Out.

🤠 How to Avoid Being a Fruit: Stop Comparing Yourself to Apples and Oranges

Day 15:   The Joneses Can't Afford it Either!

by Edward Smith

20 Jul 2020  

Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should

When I first moved out West, I had just gotten married.  I had no kids.  I had no pets.  I had no job to speak of, and I had a high school diploma but no college degree.   I was a nobody in a strange new town.   A town full of beach mansions on one end and spider infested apartment buildings on the other.   

I lived in the apartment building full of black widow spiders along with five other tenant families.  There was one washing machine in the entire building, and the washing machine was broken most of the time.   

Like with the spiders, the owner didn't like to do anything about it.   He lived on the East Coast, had inherited the place from his mom's estate, and never saw the place in person.   For him it was just free rent money.    

Soul Searching Next To the Sand

During this time, I lived pretty close to the beach.   When I would get frustrated, as I did often, I would take walks down to the ocean to blow off steam.  It was magnificent.   Nice water, nice sand, nice sun, and nice looking people.

I remember the houses.     

Along the beach, for miles, as far as the eye could see, ran a prosperous collection of beach side mansions.   Multi-million dollar homes, with backyards that led directly to the sand and water.   I used to wish about making it in that town, and how some day, some how, I would live in a house like that, looking out over everyone and everything.   

I figured you just had to get your foot in the door, with the right person, at the right time.  I mean, how else were these people able to afford houses like that?   There had to be some kind of system.  You just had to crack the code.

I had big dreams and big ambitions, but no actual plan.   

I also didn't have a lot of money or experience.   

I didn't know what it took to run a house.  I had never been a homeowner before.   All of the houses that I ever lived in belonged to other people.   I lived with my parents or I rented.    

When something went wrong, I told someone, and then it would get fixed, or it wouldn't get fixed.   It was totally up to the person in charge. They owned the place.  I just lived there.

Flash Forward to 2012

By this point a bunch of things had happened.    I completed college with a Bachelor's degree.   I had two cats and one kid.   I had moved to a rental house away from the beach in a scary neighborhood, and then had gotten a good job at a top end aerospace company.   The house situation wasn't ideal, but things were improving.

After two years of both of us working and saving up, we felt pretty good about our future.   

We were tired of renting, so we decided to put down the money for our first house.   

Classic "Keeping up with the Joneses" mistake.   We knew friends and family that had completed school and were living in houses that they owned and weren't renting.   The places were really nice, and we felt like we were getting left behind.

It's kind of like when you graduate from high school and then you start going to college because your friends are going to college.   It doesn't even matter if you can afford to go.  You have no idea what those other people did to get to where they got to.  You didn't experience their journey.   You only see the results, not the struggle.    

When you imitate without knowing how to relate, things can get bad quick.

Don't Let That Be You.   Comparing Yourself to Others Can be Expensive and Stupid.      

Want to Know How the Stupid Thing We Did Turned out?    

Click this link and find out.