Journal Days 1-20

 06 July 2020

Day 1 Results

I began my journey to change my financial habits.

I recognized that my negative over spending habit interconnects with other things that have been going wrong in my life.

I stuck to my plan and put a rule in place that says I can only go shopping for things on Saturdays.

I gave myself permission to buy two beers during my next grocery trip.

I got stressed by an email sent from my kid's school.

I felt like I hit my breaking point today.   The kids were going crazy, and I started thinking about how I deserved a beer at the end of the day for putting up with it.   I thought about going shopping.

I did not go shopping.  I wrote in my blog instead and worked through the stress in a better way.

I feel good, but I also acknowledge that it was really hard to not go shopping today.   I felt like I was being held back and that I wasn't getting to do what I wanted or needed to do to cope with things.

07 July 2020

Day 2 Results

I decided I make bad decisions when I don't get enough sleep.  

I also came to the conclusion that I don't sleep well when I don't exercise like I'm supposed to.  

I've recommitted to walking 9,000 steps a day while listening to my inspirational financial podcasts (to get the right frame of mind), and I'm targeting 9:00pm bedtimes.   

I woke up today and had a good breakfast.

I took my kids outside walking.  We spent time together and we got fresh air and exercise.

I've identified computers as a NO.   I spend alot of time wasting away in front of stock market webpages, social media, and email.  I need to look at some of this occassionally, but I tend to obsess with these things and I have other things that need to get done today that are more important.

I've also identified a computer yes.  I did my daily survey work and earned a $1.50 today.

I've decided blogging is a yes as long as I do it and then log off after I'm done.  

I haven't thought about beer or shopping today.   That's good news.

08 July 2020

Day 3 Results

I noticed that I buy bottled Italian water, and that I use that product as a gateway drug.
When I run out of bottled water, I then need to go to the store to get more.
Since I'm at the store, I'm near the beer I like to drink.
Since I drove all that way, I might as well get the beer. I don't need to drink it right now.
Since the beer is at the house, I can go ahead and drink it today.
I can always get more on the weekend.
Where did all of my money go?
Now I feel sad.
Beer makes me feel happy. I drink beer at parties. Beer is a party.
I should throw a party to celebrate something.
I could celebrate not being sad by drinking beer.
It happened again.
Water might be dangerous for me. I might want to think about holding off on buying more water until I know I can control the rest of it.

09 July 2020

Day 4 Results

I thought about how a plan like this can go wrong.

I wondered what road blocks I would face while I do this challenge.

I wondered if I would want to give up, or whether what I was doing is correct.

I'm surprised I released this whole thing into public consumption.   That's not like me.

I kind of feel exposed.

I might receive negative feedback during this.   

I keep thinking about leaving the house and going to the store at random weird times.

I usually think about leaving the house at night time.   It's hard to not do that when the idea pops up.  

I realize I've been training my brain to do what I've been doing for 15 years.

When you do something that long, it becomes your normal.   15 years ago it wasn't normal at all.

That means I can make a different normal.  I should chose one I like over one that bothers me. 

10 July 2020

Day 5 Results

I'm finding this writing stuff to be therapeutic.    

I wonder if I could collect everything at the end of all of this and create some kind of book out of it.

I've also been wondering if I could start making videos again.  I'm thinking this time I'd have to be the subject of the video.   The camera would need to be turned in on me.

Turning on Facebook and Pinterest to advertise this to strangers and friends was kind of weird.

I found people's responses to be encouraging.

It was cool to see how the Book Warrior videos from before could be recycled and used in a different way.

 I went to the store yesterday and paid for things using money I had.   I'm glad I did things according to the budget, but it still felt really weird doing it.   I didn't like it.   

Sticking to Saturdays is the better plan.   Too much danger when I deviate.

I also keep reminding myself that come September the kids are going to be homeschooling again, but this time the classes are graded and the kids have a mandatory schedule with me that goes from 8:00am to 2:30pm.    It won't be possible to go shopping until the weekend when that starts, so might as well do it now and get used to it.   

11 July 2020

Day 6 Results

You might be wondering how a discussion about passive income fits in with my challenge.   At the heart of it, my small scale overspending problem bugs me tremendously, because I know it is is not only stealing dollars away from my bank account, I also know it takes away from my ability to raise investment principal.   Investment principal is the fuel that produces the passive income that you live off of.  You don't touch the principal, you touch what the principal produces.   So in a way when I divert money away from principal, I'm stealing small, tiny little pieces of future income away from myself that I would have had forever if I had put it where it supposed to go.   When I make a purchase it doesn't seem very big at the moment, but when I remind myself that that money could have produced income over the next 40 years, I start to feel very stupid.   This challenge is trying to help me lock down these small escapes so that I can do the best job that I can with what I have.       

12 July 2020

Day 7 Results

Easy passive income was really at the heart of my challenge.  

I think of myself as a small company living within a larger company.

The household is the larger company and it is working correctly, but it really hates it when the small company tries to interfere with it's business plan.

The small company is what I'm trying to do for me.

I woke up one day having done the same sort of stuff for 10 years.

I lived in my budget overall, but I would take my fun money and just spend it on fun stuff.  

10 years later I noticed that I really didn't have anything saved up for me, and that I was going to have to ask the house for help if I needed anything replaced like my computer.

I'm not against asking for help, but I did see it as symptomatic of a larger problem. 

I wasn't taking care of my future self in any meaningful way.

So back in June 2019 I took a hard look at myself and decided that I had a choice.  If I wanted to look up in 10 years and see zero progress, then my current plan was fine.  

On the other hand if I wanted to have something to show for it, I better change something.

I decided to start investing 1/3 of my personal cash away, just like our family has been investing money into retirement since we first got our jobs.   The idea here is I could use this experience as a teaching tool for my kids.   When my kids came home and complained about how life isn't fair and it's impossible to buy or do things, I could show them this experience and show them how to do it.  It wouldn't just be advice, it would be backed with data.   

 13 July 2020

Day 8 Results

You might remember this chart from another article.   The whole idea here was to set up as many little pieces on the board as possible that I could set and forget.   I had no control over any of the outcomes, because their outcomes were determined by the public.  It's like scholarship applications.   You submit 100, and you might only hear back from one person or you might not hear back from anybody.   The trick here is if you don't apply there is no way you're going to receive any scholarship assistance.   With passive income, I completely expected most of these ideas to show up dead on arrival.   The cool thing about these passive income ideas is I could leave them out there, they'd live on for years, and if I ignored them, something might have happened in the background.     

14 July 2020

Day 9 Results

I noticed today that writing things down like this has been helping.   I used to have this large amount of unspent energy stuck in my head, and it was like I needed to do something to get rid of it.    When I couldn't find a place to use it, I would get edgy.   When I would get edgy my brain has this habit of trying to fill in the blanks with habitual ideas.    Things like, you should go to the store and get something.  

I also noticed it might not happen directly.  It might try to be in good spirit.   It might start with, hey do you have enough of this in the house?   Oh look we're out of trash bags.   You should go make a list.   That then becomes the excuse to take a trip, and why the other things start to happen.   

By writing like this, I find it takes a long time, and I exhaust my habit temptations.   Physical exercise does the same thing.  I become too tired to want to do it.    I also like that I am gaining some clarity about why I'm bugged about stuff, and why I need to keep doing what I'm doing.   I get to answer why I do the weird thing that I don't see everybody else doing.   

Normally it would be like hey that's not fair.   Now it's more like, cool, you're being responsible, and you're doing the tough thing that is hard to do.  The Kids can see it.  I like that. 

15 July 2020

Day 10 Results

I did take my boys out to the forest, and we found out that the tree from yesterday has been removed already.   I got to talk to my kids about what happened, and why the tree fell over.  You could see it was an old tree, and that it had rotted from inside.  It was just a matter of time.   I'm glad nobody got hurt.

It always amazes me how there are silent heroes working behind the scenes everywhere you go, and they can be super efficient and go unnoticed by most people.   It makes me wonder how many people manage the small forest behind my house.  Magic elves that make the world run.  They have my thanks.

Today has been a little more challenging.   The weather has become overcast.   I want to get in the car and buy a beer.   I don't have the money to get it, so that would mean no, but I find myself thinking about how I could do it anyways.   I think I pick up on cues from my surroundings, and those habits like to look for triggers.   I need to ignore this and do something else instead.   Maybe I'll watch a movie.   I need to build new habits that keep me entertained, but keep me from getting into trouble.

 16 July 2020

Day 11 Results

Okay.   Time for some reflection.   I'm 11 days into the challenge and you can tell things are harder then they sound on paper.   My brain doesn't think long term.  It goes to sleep, wakes up and treats each new days as a completely new challenge.  It's like I've never done it before, but I do it every day.   I find myself thinking about the same bad habit stuff at weird times.   Usually at night time when I would go to the store to buy beer.   Some days have been easier, others have been more difficult.

Today was harder.   I know the current health situation outside is not helping with things, but to be honest I haven't really been interfacing it with like everyone else so I don't see it until I go shopping.   This is more of an old school restlessness.   It's what I come up with when my brain gets bored or I feel inundated by things that I feel I can't control.   I guess I would describe it as an inner panic.  I need something to fix myself.   I'm just confused that the stuff around me doesn't seem to do it, even though that is the same stuff that I got excited about when I didn't have it yet.    It's like the hunt is exciting, but then it's boring when you can see it every day and you don't have to struggle for it.  I'll have to keep with this.   I'm getting a little confused.

17 July 2020

Day 12 Results

So I've been thinking about what this blog is and what it has kind of become.   At the root of this blog I decided to undergo a sixty six day fasting period of sorts to break a bad habit.   It's not a fasting period with  food, but it is still similar in that I'm choosing to do without something by choice when I could easily just do it anyways.   I think that's why I started writing self help articles as my outer message.   I wasn't planning on doing that originally.  I was just going to write journal articles about my progress, but then I got to thinking, I'm trying to do this for a reason, there are things pulling against my habit that I know matter.   I need to get those things out onto the surface and talk about them, because at the heart of things, that's why I'm making myself do something that part of me doesn't want to do.

I chose to start this thing on a really weird month because this is a five week month instead of a four week month.   In my head that is screaming unfairness.   When you have a problem, five weeks feels like five of forever.    I totally know this is a first world problem, and that other people in the world do without for much longer.  I'm not comparing myself to the world.  I'm only looking at my own brain, and my brain is completely freaking out, which is sad, because this is not really a big deal.   I'm not even doing something to hurt myself, I'm doing something to help myself.   My addicted brain doesn't care though.  It tries to figure out how to dodge me.   Which of course shows me that the problem that I identified was actually quite big and I shouldn't have been ignoring it.  Now that I'm forcing myself to pay attention, I don't feel as safe and secure as I once did, but I also see this thing as positive, because it means I can adjust things and come out of this better for it.    

18 July 2020

Day 13 Results

If we're going to be honest.  I've been having some trouble keeping up with things.   I ended up spending the last of my money during a grocery fund, so I've had to stop what I'm doing, and backpedal a bit.   I'm only half way through the month, and I'm out of cash.    So normally at this point, I would try to figure things out, and come up with a side solution.   This time though I'm trying to stick with my plan so I have to come up with a different solution.    This solution requires me to just stop and forfeit future expenses.    I just have to decide that this is it, and that my goal matters more then my emotion.  So here we are, looking at a long month, and just saying no.    I'm not used to this, so it will be interesting to see what happens.   

19 July 2020

Day 14 Results

Today I went shopping, and I found out that I don't do a great job of watching what I spend.   I have a list, and I follow the list, but I have no idea what things add up to when I put them into my cart.  I can see that a salad costs $2.50, and that fourteen salads cost $35.00, but I don't retain that information from store section to store section.   I see the short term hit, but I don't feel the overall hit when things get tallied up.   This means that I don't know what the total is when I hit the register, and that helps explain why I get surprise attacked each grocery trip.  I'm thinking that I might need to adjust my habit and carry a calculator with me along with a pen.   If I do this, I should be able to see when things have gotten off target and I can avoid surprises.    I hate being surprised, and I'm smarter then this.  I have a college degree.  I should know better, but college degrees don't keep you on track when you're navigating normal real deal scenarios.   I need to employ my common sense, and get myself on track.   This mistake is getting expensive.   Time to change the cycle.

20 July 2020

Day 15 Results

Pretty interesting day.   I've been helping my wife buy ingredients for this thing called Amish Friendship Bread.   As we've been making this stuff and enjoying it, I had this idea come into my head that Amish Friendship bread is really symbolic.   Food in general can work like that, but this one has a lot of sharing and giving symbols with it that I think I could write an article about.  

Challenge wise, things have gone pretty well so far, but not perfect.   I used up the last of my blow money and I'm only 20 days into the month so I have to just sit tight for over a week.   This has resulted in a bunch of discussions with my wife.   She is concerned, but we're talking through it and that's a healthier alternative to what I used to do.   I will not try to convince anyone that this thing has worked flawlessly.   There have been some hiccups along the way and it hasn't felt easy at any point.  I think the main reason is there is a part of me that wants to resist the process every single day so I'm not really giving the thing a chance like I'm supposed to be.  Luckily it hasn't resulted in actual action yet so things are still on track from that standpoint.  Hopefully my brain calms down and just buys into this thing at some point.   Will make it easier.

21 July 2020

Day 16 Results

Fifty more days until this thing is done.   I feel like I've covered a lot of content in my articles, but as always the articles weren't the point.   They were created to entertain people visiting the sight, and to give some reasoning for why a person would do a challenge in the first place.   Things are normally not simple.  There are usually complicated layers that build up over time and then result in an inspirational moment.   The hidden reason for doing this thing was to see if I could back up my convictions with results.   I'm surprised only sixteen days have taken place so far.   That is a lot, but it's not really when you think there are fifty more days to go.   I wonder what things will look like after everything is done.   Glad pay day happens for me in 9 days.   I really want to make August work better then July did.  July felt very stressful towards the end, because I spent my money too fast at the beginning and felt the burn later because I put restriction in place to block me if I did that.   Behaving is noble, but you don't congratulate yourself at the moment when you hear yourself tell yourself no.

22 July 2020

Day 17 Results

We had a tremendously violent thunder storm hit our area today.   People talk about a rainy day fund.   I totally get it.  When you see the wind blow sideways and your trash can spin around with loads of trash in it, like it's empty, it reminds you that poor planning would have resulted in you being outside in that thing.   When you plan ahead you get to watch from inside.   I was lucky.   I had food and supplies, and was able to enjoy the thing from afar.   It's different when you're in it.   See some parallels there.   Probably will end up writing a blog post about it.

23 July 2020

Day 18 Results

I'm definitely counting down the days.  Can't really help it.  My kid's school keeps making noise every chance they get to remind us what school isn't going to look like this year.   The pandemic has really been screwing up our city's infrastructure.   You can't blame anyone or get mad about it, but you also see that poor planning was running rampant, that people were only thinking about today or tomorrow, and that no contingency plans existed a month out.   I get it.  Life can be distracting enough without planning for what ifs, but the what ifs do come and in this case they did come.   Having a plan would have  helped.   Hopefully we learn from this and become stronger.   

24 July 2020

Day 19 Results

Wednesdays thru Fridays have become the hardest for me.   I used to go shopping for groceries midweek on Wednesday when my kids were off at school.    I could beat the crowds and I wouldn't have anyone in tow to manage.   My kids are still young so they're still learning to behave and control themselves in public places.   I don't mind taking them when I can pay attention to them, but when I'm doing the larger shopping trips I want to stay focused and get the thing done.    They don't have the patience for it, so it can go bad if I take too long.     So the problem now is the schools have closed down, and I can't really do that anymore.   Saturdays work better, because their mom can watch them while I drive around town.   The problem with Saturday is I keep counting down the days from Wednesday until that and it drives me nuts.  I want to be proactive and get the thing done so I don't have to do it on Saturday (not sure why).   So I think about it a lot and as I think about it, I get the jitters.   Tomorrow is Friday.  Only one more day, and then I can break out and go do it.   I just need to be patient.   I'm not a patient person.  I need to do it that way anyways.  Breathe, and maintain.

25 July 2020

Day 20 Results

Something worked out.    I went grocery shopping and I took a calculator with me and I walked to the register with a fair idea of where I had spent my money for the week.  I also knew about some other things that we had come in lower on, and I believed those two things would offset each other.   I'm going to run my budget tomorrow and see what happened.   I think we're going to come in good.  I also didn't shop this week for many of the days, and our house didn't really feel any impact.