Seeking to Understand

There are some people who whine whenever something interesting comes along that has maybe happened in some form before. They say things like, “This isn’t new! It was done X years ago by Y.” Or, “This is hardly an original idea. I had it when I was 10 and knew immediately it was the greatest thing ever.”

Of course I’m not immune to having done this… In fact, I find myself saying things like that a lot and I’m starting to think that I should try to keep myself from doing so. It’s not productive, adds no value, and just brings other people down. Who cares if it was done before? Who cares if it isn’t an original idea? What matters is if you (or someone else) act on the idea and prove it can work or that the idea is better or whatnot. What really matters are the results.

If you have a great idea, just do it. If you see a great idea that has been done, don’t assume you’re the only person on the planet with the immense intellect to notice it isn’t new - you might be missing something. It’s like that classic Mark Twain quote: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

I spent much of the weekend with my wife and some of her friends painting the nursery for our up-coming child. We decided it’d be way more fun to go with different stimulating colors on each wall than just a standard paint job. Here’s the results:

My wife is pregnant! We just got it confirmed yesterday. The nurses estimate that she’s about 6 weeks along which puts a due date somewhere around December 10th. Very exciting!

Next month would have marked two years of trying for a baby, so we were beginning to think it wasn’t going to work out. In fact, had she not got pregnant this month, we were going to start making appointments to get tested in case something was wrong with one or both of us - but obviously we don’t need to worry about that now. Yay!

People say that having a kid is probably the most impactful life event that there is. I suppose it’s a good thing that nature gives several months to get used to the idea first…

Melody and I have three months of emergency funding now! It’s really amazing. That’s three months of zero lifestyle change in the unlikely event we both suddenly stopped making any income at the same time. Totally weird feeling - especially knowing that we can scale things back (cut back or cancel TV, reduce food, reduce eating out, etc.) in an emergency and probably get more like five months out of that cash if we really needed to.

We’re planning on continuing to build this fund up more slowly over the next little while just to get a good buffer, but basically we’re going to move to the next step which is retirement investing and extra big mortgage payments. Without any car or student loan payments or hardcore emergency fund savings, it’s somewhat unsettling how much extra is there each month now…

I still have a hard time coming to terms with this new financial position given how recently it seemed we were in dire straits. The fact that the money is stored away in a different account, though, makes it seem as if it is gone - but it’s not, really. It’s there. We’re rich! ..ish…

This is clearly the most dangerous time when transforming your financial life. There’s some decent money around that appears to be accumulating for once… and you can’t use it. You have to hold back or else it won’t be there anymore and the whole cycle just ends up starting over. It’s really tough sometimes! If you’re stuck in a big debt hole and trying to dig your way out or whatever, it might seem stupid that having money could suck - but it does in its own way. When you’ve spent a long time digging out, it’s really hard not to want to “treat” yourself over and over and over again… And the kicker is, Melody and I have only been at this process for a year! Some people take many years to dig out. I can’t imagine how much of a desire there might be in that kind of situation to go crazy with your new-found wealth and end up blowing it all on one huge trip to Disneyland or something.

So, we’re now more wealthy than we’ve ever been - which isn’t saying a lot - but in some ways, it feels like nothing has changed, too. The saved money is mentally gone. The income now that no longer goes to loans or the emergency fund can instead go toward retirement or the house and that, too, will be mentally gone. So our lifestyle is not likely to change anytime soon - if it were, all of those things will not be able to happen. And we want them to happen. Building equity in the house is important because when we hit that magical 20% mark, we can get rid of PMI and thus build equity even more quickly! The more money we put into retirement funds, the greater the effect of compound interest. These are good things.

Still, though, it’s hard to escape the reality that, for the first time in my life, I could walk into a Best Buy and purchase any one thing in the store - no matter how expensive - and pay cash. Seriously. I wandered through one on Saturday and couldn’t find anything that cost more than our emergency fund stash. In fact, we could afford to pay cash for two of the single most expensive item I noticed while there. As far as I can tell, the same can be said for Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, or just about every store in the mall. It’s totally weird.

The kicker, though, is that while walking through Best Buy this weekend, I didn’t really want any of the big ticket items. The two things I was tempted by that day totaled about $75. I pondered it a bit and decided that was too much to spend all at once and walked out empty-handed.