From the Manager-Tools.com podcast:
“Our inefficiency during the day hurts our family and makes us ineffective because we waist time during the day that had we used that time wisely we would have been much for effective focusing on doing the right things.”
- Mark Horstmann
This quote hit home with me. When I have an inefficient day (and today has started out as one), it effects not only my clients, but it effects my family and the focus I want to have in my life. Good stuff.
Last weekend before I headed out on yet another business trip my two year old dropped a toy into the toy-let. I mean toilet. My wife was in the bathroom and attempted to reach into the toilet before the princess drowned, flushed and caused blockage that only mouse-produced royalty could cause. After washing her hands like she had an OCD disorder she came downstairs and alerted me to the problem at hand. I went to the hardware store later that evening and picked up an auger (also called a snake) but had no luck getting the princess to come out of her cave. Apparently the dragons had gotten to her and she was going to need a knight to rescue her. I was thinking a hired knight that charged $45.00 an hour or more.
It turns out that I’m cheap because after some searching on the interwebs I figured that I had a chance at disassembling my toilet/floor connection and getting the princess out myself. So I went to the hardware store and purchased a new wax ring to re-seal the toilet upon successfully removing it from the floor, some caulk (to reseal the grout that was attaching the toilet to the floor as well), and a large plastic drop cloth to put the toilet on so that extra water could be prevented from getting all over our tile floor. As it turned out the drop cloth was not as effective as it could have been but we’ll ignore that problem because this story is less concerned with my failure to contain all of the water.
I had the help of my brother-in-law who kindly used my utility knife to separate the grout from the toilet’s base and then helped me power-lift the toilet from the grout, caulk and wax ring that were underneath the already heavy toilet. The toilet came up, off onto the plastic, and I took an auger to the drain pipe in the floor hoping to retrieve the damsel in distress. No luck, the number-two ogres must have her trapped somewhere else. I rocked the toilet backwards and to my pleasant surprise the “princess of poop” was wedged sideways just inside the mouth of the toilet! I removed her from the ‘can’ and threw her away. I may be cheap, but my daughters don’t get a second chance with girls who hang out in such low class establishments.
I placed a new wax ring down on the floor making sure the sticky wax surface was facing upwards and the gasket was facing down into the floor pipe. I then lined up the bolts that hold the toilet to the collar in the floor so that they would be parallel with one another and hopefully lined up with the toilet’s holes. The most important next step was to take some scrap wood and place it on either end of the toilet’s home and give myself time to line up the bolts and toilet’s fastening holes before removing the wood (with the help of the brother-in-law again) and seating the toilet on the wax ring – you don’t want to mess that up or you could have biological gunk all over your bathroom floor or a waxy mess that you have to replace. We got the bolts and toilet lined up and then removed the wood slowly and positioned the toilet so that the grout matched up just right.
Mission accomplished! In about an hour the princess was saved (and then trashed) and the toilet was cleared – flushing like it was brand new. I had saved money, practiced something mechanical and out of my comfort zone, and got to feel the pride of having done something myself where before I was going to hire it out. There is nothing quite like taking care of your family to bring out an enjoyment of things as mundane as a toilet. Plus now I can tell stories and have G-rated potty humor.
My wife and I have a great marriage. I’m not going to lie: she’s awesome and I’m truly blessed to be married to her. She’s got patience, talent, intelligence and determination. I could list off a long series of qualities she has, but I’ll spare you the reading time because this blog isn’t about how much I love my wife. However, we do have disagreements at times about where our money should go. Not severe disagreements, but disagreements about how our priorities fall. I always find that the resolution doesn’t come from a technique that you can master to get what you want. The resolution that comes comes from a character trait that I have had to cultivate, one that is against every single strain in my pride, but critical to success: humility.
There are very few things that I can think of that have been more valuable (with the exception of my faith). Humble priority setting will help keep your marriage focused on the things that matter, keep things growing, and keep your marriage hat like dynamite.
If you have ever managed people then the manager-tools.com podcast series is for you. Why does this relate to money management? Because if you’re looking to get ahead to increase your income then you will need to be a better communicator and more than likely a manager of people as well as finances. The advice on that site is free (with for-money advice also available), the advice is practical, and it is sure to at least begin to prepare you for life in the wide-weird-world of management.
If you’re currently just an employee then you’ll want to listen to this stuff simply to learn how your manager may be trying to communicate to you. Sometimes managers don’t know that they’re doing a bad job of communicating and you may learn from these audio lessons how to help your manager manage better – heck, you may even want to pass them along to your manager.
If you’re a parent these are valuable because they even apply some things to rearing a child. And let me tell you: rears of children should always be managed. If you’re a manager you should listen to these because odds are you’ve never been trained to be a manager, you’ve just been thrown into it. I have recently been chucked in front of the wheels of an oncoming management train myself and this sort of thing is going to be handy.
I would recommend starting at the bottom of the page and working your way up so that you can get a feel for their methodology. Its not difficult to listen to and you’ll want to keep a pencil & paper or a word processor open to take notes. I have a page of notes from one podcast already and am just starting my second. This stuff is dynamite strapped to the body of a dead manager – go ahead and light the fuse… its attached to you.
So we’re going to play the credit hard ‘price shopping’ trick around here for a while. We’re working aggressively to pay off all of our debts and rather than use a credit counseling service (which others recommend and I don’t have a problem with in principle) we’re going to attempt to just get aggressive about paying things off and attempt to dump this debt for a life of freedom. Right. Freedom is a great concept, but I’m not naive enough to think we’ll get there in two days.
That being said, there’s lots to be free from in the world of finance and I want to set my mind on those goals for the short term and on financial independence in the longer term. I’m reading a book right now (a review will more than likely be forthcoming) called Seven Years to Seven Figures. In the first chapter it has a quote that I really want to share with you my readership:
“[Dale Carnegie] …said that while it is true that most people don’t succeed because they don’t have clearly defind goals, some people fail to make progress because they have too many.”
So we’re trimming down the goals that we have. They’re distractions. They’re the things that illusionists use to keep you from seeing how their tricks work. They cause you to fail to understand what is happening and instead keep you in a suspended state of mediocrity. This requires me to set my goals out in a list and hone them down into the one thing I’m going to focus on. I’m not going to worry about anything but nailing my debt down to zero for the next several months. Like Trent at the Simple Dollar I’m going to restrain myself and live with as few expenditures as possible so that November shines as the first month of focus [that conclusion was independent of Trent's but nearly exact in timing]. This is the first step in the race.
Bang – the gun sounds – I’m off!
Today after church I got the opportunity to talk to another fellow at church who is older than me and I asked what he was up to. He said he was cleaning out his house before he dies. This was a little disconcerting in that you usually don’t hear of people preparing to die. However, as he went on to explain his thinking I was both impressed and I thought, “I will need to do that, and I want to tell others about this great mindset.” You see my friend has had to clean up after three older relatives who died.
He had to go into the houses of people who have collected things their whole lives and, with the help of others who were appropriately involved, attempt to throw out the unwanted, pass out the sentimental things, and give away or sell things of value that are still not wanted by others. He said he’s just trying to do some of these things before he gets so old that he can’t do them. He’s thinking of his son and daughter who are not in need of that burden, but would much rather go through the grieving process being able to focus on the good memories of their parents rather than sifting through stuff.
If you have parents who are getting old take a moment to discuss this idea with them. You might choose to pick up the book ‘It’s All Too Much!‘ so that they have some good motivation. The idea is not to get rid of everything, but to get rid of any clutter or excess items that are not going to be valuable to family members. I recently had another friend tell me that they moved their parents across town and they had several weeks of garage sales to get rid of stuff as well as finding things like fifty gallon drums that were empty but there because at some point in time they’d been ‘left’ there… nobody needed them, nobody wanted them, but they’d been collected and forgotten. Take the time now to go through those things while everyone is hopefully cognizant, and get ahead of the potential stress. You may enjoy the memories reminisced now together rather than having more reminders of past times later, but diminished by the distraction of ‘junk.’
Only a tiny, tiny percentage of young baseball players make it into professional baseball. Our local home team is the Colorado Rockies, they’ve just now, moments ago, made their way into the playoffs vying for the position of representing their league in the World Series. What continues to amaze me in all of this is the salaries of the players. The players are signing multi-million, multi-year contracts that should allow them to retire at whatever age they choose and take up coaching, broadcasting or sitting on their backsides. I was just looking on the CBS sports site at the Rockie’s Roster and salaries for their players.
For example if Matt Holliday had no endorsements, no external cash flow from bonuses resulting from post-season playoff action, he would make $4,400.000.00 this year. With a salary that big you know he has to be paying a lot in taxes (though maybe a smaller percentage than we would think) , but after taxes he’s got money that he can put into investments that should help him clear a good chunk of interest every year until his grand-kids inherit a piece of the action. Assuming a 10% investment of that money ($440,000.00) at 12% interest for the year that would earn Matt$52,800.00 in interest. Ten years, without adding any more money to the investment (at 12%) would give Matt a compounded value of 1,366,573.21. Now, lets assume that he adds $100,000.00 to that every year between now and his retirement in ten years (which may or may not be reasonable… but we’re just playing with numbers) that would have him earning a grand total of $3,332,031.54 in his investment account. The good thing is that the number is going to continue to grow. Assuming that he makes 12% from that point forward from interest for do years, but lives off of 4% of that interest (effectively only earning 8% in compound interest) he’d end up with $15,530,456.21 at the end of 30 more years. Living off of the four percent interest the first year he’d get $133,281.26 to spend on whatever he wanted. Assuming he’s already got a paid for home and set of vehicles that’s a lot of money to do whatever you want with – and its also assuming he’s not working for a salary as a coach or as some sort of public personality.
Sports is amazing world to look into, a tiny percentage of the players make it big, a smaller percent can demand such huge salaries, but if you look at players like Alex Rodriguez who got paid $22,708,525.00 for this last season (again, just for the regular season and without any endorsements or other bonuses) it jumps to even more astronomical numbers. Ten percent of that salary is $2,270,852.50. That is to say that one tenth of A-Rod’s salary covers more than 50% of Matt Holliday’s salary. In essence the same assumptions made earlier about Holliday’s income and investment potential can be multiplied five times to represent A-Rod.
To set it all into a greater contrast evaluate this: The best paid team in the Major Leagues is the New York Yankees. They get paid a collective $189,639,045.00 a year to play professional baseball. The lowest paid team in the league is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays who get paid $24,123,500.00 collectively. One player on the Yankees gets paid almost as much as the entire team of the lowest paid players. The three best paid Yankees make a collective $67.7 million. The Devil Rays paid their top three paid players a collective 8 million dollars for the season.
All of that is to say: don’t sweat your income in contrast to others: even in the big leagues there’s a disparity. Get your job done right, get your job done well and look for opportunity. You never know when someone may be looking for a professional in your arena to pay a quarter of a billion dollars for the next ten years 
I’m working on the online grocery price comparison application (no name yet, if you can think of one, let me know… and I don’t want something missing a vowel, please). I’m hoping to have something for people to beta test in the coming weeks. Features planned include the following:
What’s missing? Can anyone make a suggestion based on what you’re after? Currently its oriented to the US, but I do hope to make it internationalized in the future.
Sometimes people switch jobs often as they pursue the next higher paying salary, the next cool status symbol oriented position or the next ‘dream work scenario.’ I have worked with one company for seven year now and am loyal. I’m loyal because the company does what I like to do, the company pays me well, the company management respects me and my opinion, and they treat me like a human being. I’m a long term relationship for this company and in my reviews it shows. They consistently give me raises that reflect my value to the company. It should be noted that long term loyalty may be an important aspect in what can be a high quality life. If you can work long term with consistent benefits, low stress, reasonable financial reward and a positive morale at the company you may have the chance for a better financial situation as well, here’s why:
A company that keeps your ‘maintained’ in a state of happiness as an employee or contractor or some sort of working relationship is going to be able to let you focus on finances when you go home at night, or any other task you need to focus on. The company isn’t killing your life outside of work and that company is going to help you have a balanced emotional wellbeing. There is very little that stress is going to add to in your life but the chances of a medical problem or worse. If you can focus on your finances, even if its not for stellar wages that would make everyone jealous, but instead are for reasonable wages that keep your needs met then you can devote the appropriate time to maximizing your return on investments, stay out of debt, and prepare for the future.
A good company standard for employee morale is going to help the company have (potentially) more productive employees. Employees are less likely to call in sick when they’re not really sick as well. Look for long term employment opportunities. Seek out companies that have good, strong values that match your own. Consider all of the benefits for sticking around in contrast to the ‘greener grasses’ of other companies. Its not that leaving a company is a stupid idea, but you have to consider the cost of that moving on verses sticking with your current situation so that you can focus on other things that will have longer term benefits.
Why else should you stick around at an employer? Why should you move onto another job?
Since writing about medical school stuff based on a reader comment before I’ve had a sprinkling of hits from various search engines when people type in medical school and student loans. The title of this post reflects one of those search queries that lead people here. What is interesting about this phrase is that it indicates two independent parties operating without unity in a relationship that desperately needs unity. Your husband should have asked you if you wanted to go to your parent. Period.
If you feel burdened or overwhelmed by loans for school or whatever type they are: don’t roll the loan into a loan from a family member! These sorts of loans destroy relationships and as Dave Ramsey says, “Thanksgiving dinner tastes different when you’re eating it as a slave with your master right there at the table with you.” I’m not sure how this particular situation worked out, but I can imagine that you should talk to your parent and confirm that such a situation didn’t cause a blow-up and confirm that you are going to talk to your husband.
When you talk to your husband make it clear that the debt is something that you own together. Because your marriage makes you one person you need to attack debt together. Don’t let the concept of co-habitation enter a marriage: its not fifty-fifty, its one hundred percent from either party. Marriage vows often contain some element of, “For richer or poorer.” This is for good reason: your finances can impact your marriage, but there is no reason to let them direct your marriage. You take control of your marriage as two adults who are passionate about unity and bring your finances together, unified, owned and rested on. If you can’t sleep at night due to bills then the two of you need to bring your situation into control so that you are able to rest, keep unity, and allow for your marriage to be solid.
If your parent chooses to contribute to your debt payment make sure that it is a gift – because otherwise your relationship as parent and child will simply flounder.
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