Its time to end the world in every glorious way.

I plan to have it paid in full in 18 months, double that if the bottom falls out of my awesome life but it will be paid off early. I refuse to carry the debt beyond three years if I’m able enough to avoid it. Check my new pimp ride! And yes, its red.

Making that purchase was the result of a week of frustration. I could barely concentrate on anything else. Buying it was almost cathartic. That’s one reason it had better last. I splurged a bit and I’m happy so far, but if this thing doesn’t last me for a good, long while, I’m gonna be pissed. I opted for the extended warranty, bumper to bumper and power train for six years or 72,000 miles. Likely six years unless I get the travel bug. I seriously doubt that I’ll travel 72k miles before then.

This car thing has dominated my thinking so much that hardly anything else had room to insert itself. Maybe I can get back on track now.

Do I take control of my health or do I continue down the road of denial and irresponsibility?

There are many ways to get the excess energy into our bodies, healthy and unhealthy alike. Regardless of the vessel its still an excess. We don’t use it so our bodies store it as fat. It builds up over time while we’re distracted by life: going to soccer games, watching television, playing video games, and stressing out over deadlines at work. In order to lose the weight, we have to break the cycle and reverse the process. Every little excess adds up and to break it down we have to create little deficits. The larger the deficits, the faster we burn the excess, but the higher the risk to our health. So to lose weight properly we must sustain our determination and initiative. We must have a plan.

The Plan

Gaining twenty pounds over eighteen months doesn’t sound too absurd. As I mentioned above, it only takes an extra serving or self-indulgence per day. However, taking eighteen more months to lose that twenty pounds does sound absurd. It sounds absurd because we’re accustomed to the luxury of immediate gratification. I want to declare it unacceptable, a waste of precious time in my youth to be stuck with the baggage of my irresponsibility. I want the weight gone and I want it gone now.

That’s a lovely, exciting, and emotionally charging declaration of desire, but its just not realistic. History has shown that unearned rewards are rarely utilized wisely. People win millions in the lottery and find themselves poor six years later. Just like they lose weight only to gain it back six months later. We see this reversal because people rarely learn from windfalls. They don’t know how to maintain the fortuitous gift they’ve received. Even in the case of losing weight at the gym, earning the reward with hard work, if it isn’t habit you probably won’t keep it off.

After all, maintaining something is merely habit. If you have good money habits, you’re far more likely to invest your lottery winnings and sustainably withdraw it over the span of your life (and leave it to your heirs). Similarly, if you build good eating and exercise habits then you’re far more likely to lose the weight and keep it off. By hitting the gym every day for two or three hours and losing the weight in a two month marathon burn, do you really have the discipline to keep it off? Can you sustain that exercise schedule or any exercise schedule for that matter? Is it habit?

Honestly, I don’t like exercising in a gym. I don’t even like making it a point to exercise every day. If I lose twenty pounds by exercise alone and don’t develop the dietary habits to maintain a proper weight then you’ll be reading this again in another eighteen months. So I’m going to take the long view on this. I’m going to correct my dietary habits to support consistent and gradual weight loss and then maintenance. When the fat’s gone, then I’ll look at building muscle. But its all going to be framed by the long view.

The plan is simple. First, I need to determine my daily caloric needs. How much food do I need to sustain my current weight and get adequate nutrition? Second, I plot the caloric deficit necessary to lose the weight over the same length of time it took me to gain it. At first blush, that seems like 120 calories, considering it was a 120 calorie excess that got me here. Third, I take that deficit from my daily needs and restrict my diet to the result, starting immediately. However, that’s not all. I also need to figure out a regular cardiovascular routine that burns the same number of calories on average in just 30 minutes per day. I’ll execute the routine three days per week. So ultimately, I’m creating a 120 calorie deficit per day and also burning an extra 360 calories per week via cardio. Assuming I’ll falter with the cardio and miss some sessions, that should be a running deficit of 840 calories in the worst case and a full 1200 in the best. Thus, it may take me another eighteen months to lose the twenty pounds I’ve gained, or it may take just over a year. Either way, I’m committing myself to a gradual schedule with a disciplined diet and sporadic exercise.

That’s a weight loss plan that fits my psychology.

Cost of Surviving

Below are my necessary expenses to maintain my independence. They do not include healthcare/health insurance costs yet. I will try to update the table if I can get good numbers for those. Also, the rent and utility figures are a bit off. My water/sewage/pest control bill is automatically tacked onto my rent every month. All totals are rounded up to the nearest dollar.

These are the costs of surviving comfortably in a Nashville suburb. I’ve lived in two places over the past year on the West and East sides. The majority of that time was spent on the West side in an apartment complex with significantly higher rent each month. Below is a breakdown by location. I included an extra $60 in the monthly utility cost for the East side because my security deposit on my cell phone bill was credited to my account recently. Consequently, I haven’t had a phone bill for the last three months. Also, the totals for the West side are simply the difference between my yearly estimates and those for the East side (I recently made the move).

As you can see, between the two locations my monthly cost of surviving went down by $330. Most ($243) of that was a reduction in rent alone! Differences beyond the rent are more difficult to see because of missing data. For instance, I dropped down from Full Basic cable with DVR and HD packages and High Speed Internet from Comcast to Limited Basic (~20 channels) and High Speed Internet after my promotional rate ran out. These types of mid-field changes and up front discounts fudge the numbers quite a bit. There is still value to be gained though, as I can clearly see that I’ve reduced my necessary monthly expenses by moving. Now for the horror show.

Cost of Living

Over the course of the year I tried to keep things simple. If it wasn’t a bill, I called it Entertainment. However, that simple division didn’t seem wise once I decided to analyze where all of my entertainment money was going! At one point I checked my monthly entertainment expense to find that that it was more than my rent on the West side. Not a good situation with no savings or emergency fund! In light of this analytic difficulty, I decided to start splitting up my categorization. Below are the expense results preceding this reclassification effort. I will try to finish the effort and discuss the finer details of my extravagant spending at a later time.

Oh wait, my average for the year is more than my average rent on the West side! The one thing missing is my gifts/loans budget. That was a hefty $6511 this year. Calculating the percentage of income that I spent in each category will have to wait for the big non-essentials breakdown, because its a bit complicated by the fact that I increased my salary by about 25% halfway through the year. I can estimate a few things though. My total expenses for the year were $34,273. My Cost of Surviving was %48.5 of that. I spent another %32.5 on entertaining myself in various capacities. Then I gave away or loaned out the final %19.

Never let it be said that I am not a generous man.

• Property Audit
• Information Audit
• Financial Audit
• Time Audit

The property and information audits are complete. The financial audit is currently in process as I write a custom application for expense analysis. I haven’t even thought about the time audit. I expect it to be a simple affair though. It is a matter of simply scheduling my priorities and intentionally acting upon them. This past weekend perfectly demonstrated the efficacy of this simple strategy.

Looking ahead, I expect to have time audit finished and be well into a proper expense analysis by Wednesday. The end of the financial audit should be in sight by the end of the week. The most interesting part of this effort will be what comes next. How do I best utilize the results of these efforts moving forward?

I feel a shallow shame for missing my deadline. I let myself down, but it doesn’t feel that
serious. I’ve lost touch with the motivation behind the endeavor. This should feel like
a betrayal of that motivation, but losing the connection to it destroyed the causal relationship.
The great tragedy in this is that I am now missing the power of that causal relationship.
Success promotes further success. This failure is a setback.

I’m going to make the consequences of this failure as simple and effective as possible. I
have a number of projects in flight at all times. Currently I have the laundry list, GRE studies,
various programming projects, Left 4 Dead level design and testing, three movies en route from Netflix,
and this blog to tend to, amongst other things. That is quite a lot to fill my time. Apparently
I value the movies and games/level design most, because that’s all that I’ve accomplished over the last week.
Next to spending ample time with my greatest distraction of course!

So, in order to promote getting shit done I’m going to revert back to basic disciplinary methods.
I’m grounding myself from the above activities until the laundry list is complete. After that
I’m going to schedule a dedicated time each week for attending to these less valued demands on my time.
This is time management 101 and, frankly, I’m embarrassed to be here.

Property Audit

My property audit has begun, but it is not finished. I sent three boxes of books, dvds, and games home with my brothers in the first week. I still need to revisit the remaining items to get dispense of some more. I’m finished with the books though, I’ll be keeping what survived.

Next up is my clothing, then general household items (particularly in the kitchen). Keeping the minimum property that I actually use and selling or giving away the rest is my goal. I must whittle down the useless mass contributing to my inertia.

Beyond these meager efforts, procrastination has reigned supreme. But then of course that’s not the whole story. My biggest distraction will forever remain because I simply refuse to get rid of her.

Property Audit

As I’ve mentioned before, I spent a lot of money in 2008 and have nothing to show for it. The majority of my property was carried over from my pre-professional life. I own books, movies, games, and other things that I’ve collected over a decade or more. Are these things at all useful to me anymore? Do I honestly continue to value them as I previously did? If not, then why do I insist upon keeping them? Its time to lighten the load.

Information Audit

Most people don’t like to think about death or disability. We prefer to assume that everything will continue like it is, that shit doesn’t happen. But I’m not like most people. I need to audit all of my critical information. There needs to be a central, secure repository for account numbers, passwords, contractual responsibilities, etc. that my loved ones may get to in the event of my death or disability. I also need to draw up wills as a part of this process, living and otherwise.

Financial Audit

Automated savings is the name of the game. My 401k contribution is automatically taken from every paycheck. I need to setup both Roth IRA and an emergency fund contributions the same way. I don’t want to automate my bills, that feels like removing responsibility. My ultimate goal is to save 50% of my salary after tax and live off of the other 50%. Reducing my bills to the bare minimum should leave plenty of room every month to have lots of fun. Having to sit down and write the checks will constantly remind me of the spread and thus motivate me to keep them down.

Time Audit

Time is our most precious resource. How we spend it matters. Who we spend it with matters. Making the people and activities that are important to me a priority is the sole purpose of this effort. The primary metric for happiness is simple: no regrets.

Accountability

To make myself accountable for these endeavors I’m allowing 3 weeks for completion.

I’ve been struggling with the identity of this chronicle for a while now. I have changes in the works, but they’re not being executed quickly enough. I admit that I’ve been lazy lately, but this is truly pathetic. Setting a tenable pace for accelerating my pursuits is at the forefront of my mind right now. I have a lot of interests and pursuing them to meaningful ends is going to require the sacrifice of simplification. I’ll start with a machete and work my way down to a scalpel.

Goodbye non-essentials. You’ll hardly be missed. Now I just need to make myself accountable for these changes. Expect a laundry list soon.

My new home is quite a downgrade from the last one. Cost and quality are bedfellows and I hope to save an extra $200-300 per month for the sacrifice. That’s a fully funded Roth IRA. The new place isn’t without ‘character’ though, it has an awkward layout, horrible climate control, bizarre light switch placement, the original ’80s appliances, and a host of other amenities that I’ll simply have to adapt to. On top of all that, my unit is on the back of the building, a good walk from the closest parking, and faces an ugly corporate building right next to I-40.

Retirement had better make up for this.

I thought I knew what financial independence was. I thought it was the point at which you were out of your parents’ house and off their dime. It was simple really, get a job, get a place, never look back. My naivete is understandable in hindsight. I’ve never seen someone gain financial independence. Flight from the nest was the closest I’d come.

I learned of my mistake from one of J.D.’s excellent articles at Get Rich Slowly. I’d certainly thought of the concept before, but never seriously considered it. Financial independence is the point at which your investments are sufficient for the returns to support your lifestyle. That’s fucking brilliant!

As with many things in life though, its more easily described than achieved. So what would it take to achieve it? Let me run a few numbers.

I have a savings account at a federal credit union that currently earns me %1.25 interest compounded monthly and paid quarterly. My current lifestyle costs me approximately $1500 per month. In order to live off of the returns from my savings account, that rate of interest must stay constant and earn me $4500 every quarter. That requires a principle investment of approximately $120,000. Oh and don’t forget the IRS, they’ll want a cut. Tax rates are always changing, but we’ll assume an income tax rate of 25% total (state, local, and federal) because it makes the numbers easy and its not entirely unrealistic. So that $1500 per month that we thought we needed? We’re gonna have to jack that up to a cool $2000. At %1.25 return compounded monthly and paid quarterly, you’ll actually need closer to $160,000 in principle investment.

Do you have $160,000 in the bank? I sure as hell don’t. How long would it take someone to save such a gloriously emancipating sum? That answer depends entirely upon your expendable income. In order to save, your monthly income must be greater than your monthly expenses. That sounds easy enough, so what’s the spread? Can you save $1000 or $500 per month? Assuming that your earning potential is flat (pessimistic, I hope), at the former it would take you 13 years to save the principle. Double that for the lesser savings each month. Assuming our nation doesn’t go socialist, our economy doesn’t completely collapse, your cost of living stays the same, and inflation doesn’t eat the value of the dollar for breakfast, that’s thirteen years of saving to reach financial independence. That’s not so bad eh?

That was a rhetorical question. I don’t want to wait thirteen years to gain my financial freedom. Do you? Oh, in case you didn’t notice, that figure doesn’t account for inflation. Assuming an average rate of inflation at %3.0, your money would actually be losing value. So what the hell should we do?

There’s no easy answer to that question. For the majority of people, saving even $500 per month sounds like a pipe dream. I’m not the majority of people though. I’m a moderately successful twenty-six year old male. Compared to my necessary expenses, my income is more than adequate to run with those numbers. However, I want numbers a bit more pessimistic (i.e., realistic).

First of all, inflation eats the value of the dollar at about 3% per year, so if my naive understanding is correct, I really need to earn 4.25% interest to outpace inflation. That means a simple savings account won’t do it. So yet again I ask myself, what does it take to achieve financial independence?

I’m beginning to think the answer to that question is the American Dream: entrepreneurship.

The new topics will be similar to the old topics: money, women, power, and health. In a word: Success.

Eschatic.com will remain my personal record and public for everyone to see. However, new articles will be shorter and more polished. It will be an excuse to write every day, to keep the habit and get some practice. Given that it is meant to be a personal record though, the list of topics is a free-for-all.

ChroniclesOfClass.com will no longer be redirected here. It will be its own beast again with longer well-written articles on specific topics and basic ads to begin generating revenue. I fully intend for it to become a respectable web property. I hold it to a higher standard.

Wait, fuck that, I’m holding everything to a higher standard! Great expectations are a call to action. That’s what this is really all about. Consider the bar raised.

I am the storm coming.

I have managed to learn a few things along the way though. For instance, the market will pull the rug right out from under you. Interest rates and lending policies seem to change weekly, if not daily. The world of real estate can be a complicated place. You have to choose between seller’s agents, buyer’s agents, and dual agents. Then you have to know the proper etiquette for approaching open houses and unlisted properties. Oh, then you have all of the paperwork. You’ll be asked to sign contracts or agreements left and right. Just remember, until you sign your name, you haven’t agreed to anything.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Well, for part of the time that is. I’ve also been playing lots of Left 4 Dead, loving my job, spending time with family, and ignoring just about everything else. Honestly, I’ve allowed myself to get distracted. I’ve simplified things too far. At the root of this simplification is laziness and its about time I picked myself up a bit.

I need a course correction and that starts with a haircut.

So I finally got out of the house and down to The Flying Saucer. Its a pretty hip place with a fucking badass wall of taps pouring forth the nectar of life like its fucking Rapture or something. Lo, I saw the barley horse, and he who sat upon him was called Hops! It was an okay time except for two things: I allowed myself to get bored and I didn’t work the group. In other words: Fail!

I was invited to go by one of the guys at work. He apparently invited a lot of people, they invited more people, and we ended up basically sitting around like a bunch of wanks sipping beer and munching bar food in separate groups because its impossible have a group conversation in a crowded dive. The take-home here is a lack of shine. I don’t shine if you don’t shine. I should have played that group like a ukulele and polished up the night. Oh, there was also the minor problem that I was the first to leave.

Yea, I fucking said it. Technically, its way past my bedtime even now, so I’m cutting this thing short. Suffice it to say I got out for the first time in…a year.

So I’ve been getting shit done lately. My ugly ass couch has been reupholstered in a more attractive and comfortable brown. I can’t say its perfect, but I did a damn fine job. I also bought myself a birthday present; I built a new PC. Its one hell of an upgrade and I’m sure that I’ll enjoy playing some of the hot games I missed over the last year or two.

I’ve been at the new job for a month now and I must say that I’m enjoying it. I think there is a lot of potential there. Best of all, my manager told me why they hired me: “Its obvious that you have the drive to succeed.” Yes, I do. Thanks for noticing. My new challenge is fulfilling my ambition.

Ultimately, I’m closing the distance again between myself and my success. I may never know precisely where it passed me, but I now recognize some of the ways I blinded myself to its passing. I spent a shit load of money for instance. What do I have to show for it? Nothing. I also spent a great deal of time with an activity that I thought I despised: watching television. I am now weaning myself off of that habit again. Its about time I picked up a fucking book, or learned to play a real musical instrument, or practiced writing something other than simple blog entries. Whatever I do, it shouldn’t involve sitting on my newly upholstered couch in front my forty-two inch hi-def LCD TV every night.

Life’s too damn interesting to live vicariously.

For my birthday, I’m building a new computer. In true geek style, this is prompted by my desire to play one of the latest and greatest games. My current system simply can’t cut it with any game less than a couple of years old. I’m preparing to purchase the parts soon and should be rocking by next weekend.

Next up is the furniture. I’m not getting new furniture yet, just refreshing what I have. I received a hand-me-down sofa and recliner when I moved into my apartment. The sofa is naked now, stripped to its frame. I spent the greater part of yesterday meticulously removing staples and stripping off the upholstery and batting. Now that I’ve seen how its put together, I think designing and building my own furniture would be nothing. This sofa was constructed of the cheapest wood possible. It looks like old freight pallets. The only saving grace is that they used solid wood, not plywood or particle board. I dare say that’s one reason why its so heavy. I’ve considered lightening it up a bit, reforming the shape of the sofa a bit, and adding some nice luxuries like proper hand hold for moving. All of that would require some wood work though and I’m afraid I’m not quite up to that task in my current residence.

So that’s what’s new. I should start upholstering the couch next weekend just as soon as I can get the fabric and extra batting. With any luck I’ll have a brand new computer and a brand new sofa by my 26th birthday next Sunday. You didn’t forget my birthday did you?

So, I’ll postpone all meaningful judgements till another day. In the meantime, I have some serious shining to do.

I welcomed the new year with a sense of wonder. The height of my success was dizzying, and the future held more potential than I could imagine. With a new degree, new job, and new girl it was a new life by most measures. I was champion entering a new league.