Hello everyone!
I stumbled on this blog about 6 months ago and it clicked with many of the same life lessons that my father instilled in me from a young age. These lessons were re-enforced with my first job opportunity as a dog sitter at a young age, where most of my profits were converted into shares of index funds and forgotten about (by me...) in the middle to late 90s when the stock market was doing well. Fast foward a few years later when I own my first hand me down jeep, working low wage jobs on weekends for gas money, and facing a couple thousand dollars of insurance bills, Im up against the wall and thinking about asking my parents for a small loan.
Surprisingly I rediscovered that my past self issued me a loan using long forgotten effort which had grown to a sum that would keep me on the road for another year or two through the later half of highschool. Not only did I successfully avoid debt, but I was shown solid proof that delayed gratification can reap a reward worth waiting for.
Ive been a big Clark Howard fan for years as well, and I see a lot of the same intelligent analysis of how to most efficiently spend/save money and how to build wealth in the MMM community.
Clark, however, is such a nice guy hes not willing to lay out the gritty, ugly truth about human nature, conspicuous consumption, self-defeating weakness, and the simple fact that we all suck. And we need to train ourselves to be badasses.
So thank you for saying what we all suspect about ourselves when we are alone and our ego is taking a quick nap from defending every poor decision our lizard brain has convinced us was necessary.
Ive had a slow change in attitude in the last few months. Overtime used to be a trigger for a crappy weekend, now it brings the promise of working a day now to shave off a month of work on the back end of my career. Im currently wrapping up a 5 week period of working 7 days a week, 20 hours of overtime a week, maximizing my income while the opportunity is here. Its been the kick in the ass I needed to make my own brown bag lunches every day instead of eating at the cafeteria.
Ive cut my cable bill, cut my cellphone bill, cut my internet bill, reduced my grocery bill substantially, limited restaurant spending, made it a goal to use my costco membership far more often, expanded my cooking ability beyond the couple dozen dishes Ive always made, and increased my money market account balance while I dollar cost average my way to a million dollars.
I plan on reaching my goal in 10 years, currently 12% of the way there, and in no rush at all since Im enjoying the ride.
Please excuse any spelling errors, I have fat thumbs and Im using a cellphone to type with (which blows my mind after growing up in the 90s).