Category: Uncategorized

Happiness…Pursue the Moment

Brad

I last wrote in June of 2022 that my fiancée and I had recently purchased a house, and outlined what the experience was like at what might have been – but has proven not to be, at least in my area – the peak of the housing boom. 2022 was certainly a big year for us – getting engaged, buying a house, planning, and then having our wedding.

2023 will be about execution – finishing the novel that I started years ago, pursuing a path to business ownership, and growing relationships.

To get there, I plan to make it the year that I live the most deliberately. Each day, each moment – are where things happen. I also turned 30 in 2022, and while I don’t particularly believe in magic moments at certain age thresholds, I do believe in the wisdom gained from additional life experience. If there is anything that my twenties taught me, it is that time is only abundant for those that take advantage of the moment…the present. A lifetime may seem short or it might seem long – in reality, you can argue that both are true.

I wrote in 2019 about the Freedom of Time. Well, nothing has changed on that front. Time is still a diminishing asset and one should include the pursuit of this freedom as a rationale for wealth accumulation. But why not also live for today? I don’t mean this as a pitch for a YOLO mentality, I simply mean…write that book. Start that business. Work on your relationships – make a concerted effort to see your family and friends. Give back to your community. Be outdoors. Whatever it is that you know deep down are the things that are important to you, spend time in those places and with those people. The happiest moments of my life thus far were when I was spending time with friends and family, living in an entirely new city and soaking it all in, and periods where I found that I was learning and growing. Most of which has occurred when I had absolutely no money.

Pursue the moment. And as my father would say…it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

Burnout: What is it?

Brad

I was asked recently to speak to a small gathering of students at my alma mater. My presentation was one of three segments, each of which delivered by a different alumnus on a different topic.

My topic was “burnout”.

Now, I didn’t select the topic and I would have preferred to share personal finance wisdom or my favorite research on personal development. Regardless, I eagerly accepted the invitation and dove headfirst into the assignment.

Upon reflection, I realized, I actually had quite a bit of experience and examples to leverage. Crafting a message might not be that difficult after all.

I started with the statistics as a hook. I needed the audience to buy in and I certainly didn’t want to bore them with an uninteresting lecture after their day full of classes.

According to recent studies…

  • “75% of workers have experienced burnout, with 40% saying they’ve experienced burnout specifically during the pandemic.
  • Prior to the pandemic, just 5% of employed workers and 7% of unemployed workers said their mental health was poor or very poor. Now, 18% of employed and 27% of unemployed workers say they are struggling with mental health issues. (that’s a 3-4x increase!)
  • More than three-quarters (76%) of respondents agree that workplace stress affects their mental health and burned-out employees are 23% more likely to visit the emergency room.
  • Only 60% of workers can strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work.”

Talk about a rosy picture…

I then defined burnout, and it was more or less what one would expect it to be – a period of extreme fatigue, the development of apathy, and a resulting decline in various aspects life.

For college students, it might be brought on by any combination of the following:

-Overwhelming work demands and long periods of intense stress (most common)

-Having the wrong friends

-The wrong level of support

-The wrong major

-The wrong goals

Notably, because any one of these can lead to burnout, other functioning may actually remain adequate.

My research unearthed some interesting gems when I discovered the different types of burnout.

Types of Burnout

  1. Overload Burnout (traditional, what you might think of when you hear “burnout”)

“This happens when you work harder and harder, becoming frantic in your pursuit of success. If you experience this, you may be willing to risk your health and personal life to feel successful in your job.” 

  1. Under-Challenged Burnout

“This happens when you feel underappreciated and bored in your job. Maybe your job doesn’t provide learning opportunities or have room for professional growth. If you feel under-challenged, you may distance yourself from your job, become cynical, and avoid responsibilities.”

  1. Neglect Burnout

“This happens when you feel helpless at work. If things aren’t going right, you may believe you’re incompetent or unable to keep up with your responsibilities. Such burnout can be closely connected to imposter syndrome, a psychological pattern in which you doubt your skills, talents, or accomplishments.”

My eyes got wide when I got to “under-challenged burnout.” I told the students that this was likely less of an issue in college as it is in the workplace but acknowledged this as the category I most identified with. It never crossed my mind that this was a form of burnout.

For the type-A’s out there, this may ring a bell. The feeling of not being in the right place to fulfill your potential. A dearth of challenge and productive struggle. I believe strongly that one must focus on what they can control and to seize any and every opportunity you can. Beyond that, you must seek out growth. It doesn’t always fall into your lap.

In closing, I discussed preventative measures.

Prevention

What is right for me may not be right for everyone. Count on it.

But there are some of what I will call “foundational” components that are universal.

-Sufficient sleep

-Quality nutrition

-Exercise

Beyond this, I am a huge fan of journaling. The genesis of my journaling was not to mitigate stress or burnout, but I have found it to be the best way of unloading what is on my mind.

I have persuaded some close friends to give it a try and it does wonders. They rave about it.

Even something as simple as conversing with a close confidant can be highly effective.

Ultimately, I told them to “find their thing”. Whatever that may be.

The Intelligent Investor: A Review

Brad

I recently completed all 500+ pages of The Intelligent Investor (2003 edition with Jason Zweig). It turned out to be everything that I expected it to be: a collection of sound advice that was well-researched, with all of the main points supported by clear examples and strong logic.

The Jason Zweig commentary following each chapter was welcomed support to what might otherwise be a harder to follow book from a much older generation.

There are no good stocks, only good prices

This was my big takeaway…the key message from the book and one that I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it. It sounds so simple – only buy something when the price is right. As Benjamin Graham rightly points out, Mr. Market is not rational. This could not be anymore evident than it is today as the stock market has been on an absolute tear since it reached bottom in March of 2020. Many of the drivers of investor enthusiasm are well placed making the market’s run-up easy to digest. Now, will it continue to make sense should it continue to blow through the roof?

That’s worth a discussion over beers. At the end of the day, you can’t predict the market.

Hot, hot, hot

I recently changed companies and as part of that transition, I rolled my old 401k, profit sharing, and employee stock ownership plans into a rollover IRA. Thus, I had to exit an incredibly hot market, forcing me to contemplate how best to get back in. I found it quite enticing to start gobbling up the names of some of my favorite companies and brands that I regularly patronize…an urge I knew I must resist.

While it’s a good place to start, due diligence would be required if I were to pick up the new habit of selecting individual names rather than sticking completely with index-based ETFs.

This brings me to my next point.

Speculation

The darlings of today on Reddit’s WallStreetBets will quickly be discarded tomorrow, a vicious cycle of speculation that would likely make Graham sick. His distinction between the speculator and the investor is timeless and ubiquitous. What I was surprised to discover was that he left room for the individual to be both…within reason.

Proportion is the key and knowing which state you’re acting in is critical to ensuring you don’t gamble away your retirement.

In this moment of personal financial transition, I regularly stop and think, what would Mr. Graham do?

A Return to the Office…Kind of

Brad

Exactly 18 months ago on March 16, 2020, I left the office around Noon with a 24” HP Monitor, a docking station, and a collection of cords in my car. The Friday before, word was beginning to circulate that we might be sent home for an undefined period of time and by halfway through Monday, we were instructed to collect whatever items we needed to complete our work and to head home.

Never did I anticipate that working from my living room would be anything but a dayslong adventure. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Fast forward to 2021, and there was still no return to the office in sight.

At the end of July, I took an opportunity at a new firm where employees were a couple of weeks into splitting time between being back in the office and working from home. Despite my new preference of no commute and midday exercise breaks, it seemed only right that I would want to meet folks and get a sense for the new culture. After all, I had seen how new hires in my previous role fared when it came to learning the job, meeting colleagues, and establishing themselves. Some started and quit in the span of less than a year!

What I’ve experienced in the last month and a half working every other day in the office is, well, not what I expected…

My new boss works out of Ohio, his boss works in the United Kingdom, her boss works in N.Y.C., and her boss works in Washington, D.C. Stated plainly, no one in my chain of command works in my location. My colleagues are also spread out which means that there aren’t many people to interact with!

Now, this is unsurprising given that it is one of the largest companies in the world. My point in stating all of this is not to complain (the company is great), but rather, to offer a lens into some of the potential issues and headwinds facing corporations.

Leadership Lessons

  1. A return-to-the-office plan is most effective when management and staff are centrally located (only really an issue for big multinationals).
  2. When teams do return, the cadence of any split time should be based on geography, not by business unit. For example, if one team reports to the office every other day while the rest of the teams in the location are one week on and one week off, there won’t be very many people to see in person.
  3. Build Zoom rooms (again, large company problems) where employees can go when they need to join a meeting with others from a different location. It’s highly distracting to be in a meeting on Zoom where you hear that person over the Zoom call and in the cube next to you in real life.

Coming out of corporate America’s COVID hibernation was never going to be easy, and it’s especially unique for the millions of Americans changing jobs right now. My advice to you all…continue to expect the unexpected!

Share some of your experiences by commenting below or on social media.

What do you want to do with the rest of your life?

Brad

When someone asks you – or formerly asked you depending on how far along you are in adulthood – what you want to do with the rest of your life, it is entirely normal not to know.

I dislike the question for several reasons, but my top two would be: (1) it suggests there is one particular thing that you can or should be doing with your existence and (2) it is often carries the connotation that, in the event you don’t know what that one career or job is, that you are somehow “behind”.

It’s rather presumptuous, particularly when you consider that by some measures fewer than half of the American population is satisfied with their job.

Now, the real question is, if you don’t know what you want to do for work, how do you figure it out? Where should you start?

First, realize that you are not alone…not by a long shot. Many, many people are in the exact same boat.

Personally, I have explored a number of avenues myself. I also recognize that it is unlikely that I will be doing one job, or even remain in one industry forever. Below, I share with you some of the techniques and strategies I have found useful.

Strategies for Career Discover

1) I recognize that my career and my vocation may not be one and the same. In other words, my personal calling may not be fulfilled through my career, and I may not even want it to be. It is quite possible that this may be the case for you as well.

Do you love to write but you don’t want a role that requires you to write constantly because you actually find that you start to resent it? Perhaps you love volunteer work and find that this brings fulfillment. Great! You may be sitting right on top of your own answer and you just hadn’t listened to yourself yet. In that situation, it may look something like the following:

Work/Career ($) + Vocation (Volunteering) = Contentment

The job in this instance is just the venue by which you derive compensation to live and play.

2) Ignore the “follow your passion mantra”. That’s right, I said it.

The best literature I have seen that talked about passion, was in the Harvard Business Review. There were three big takeaways:

i. “Passion is not something one finds, but rather, it is to be developed.”

ii. “It is challenging to pursue your passion, especially as it wanes over time.”

 and

iii. “Passion can lead us astray, and it is therefore important to recognize its limits.”

3) As Simon Sinek says, “Start with Why”. How do you define success? Notice I didn’t mention anything about how society or your perception of how society defines success.

Similarly, what would you consider your currency in life? Is it money? Time? Special moments with loved ones?

Recognizing that this is quite a bit to chew on, I will summarize by suggesting some self-introspection. Spend some time looking inward. That high paying job (doing something you don’t actually want to do) in a city that takes you an hour each way to reach (forcing you to miss your son’s baseball game), may not be what you really want.

4) Last but certainly not least, try and try again. If you initially set out on a path and find that you need to make a detour, do it. Make that detour. Or, if you set your career ladder up on the wrong wall, move the ladder to a new wall. It really is that simple sometimes. In the end, we are human and being human means, we have the tendency to overcomplicate!

You already have the answer, you just need to unearth it.

Cumulative Advantage

Brad

Have you ever, as a result of hard work and dedication noticed that when you are able to get one thing to go your way, other things begin to follow?

Perhaps it was that first promotion that elevated you to a place where the quality of your work would be seen by an even greater number of people? Or, maybe it was your volunteer efforts that inspired many others to join in, multiplying the impact?

The phenomenon contains an explanation.

Success comes one small advantage at a time.

This profound saying about life provides excellent context for personal finance. If you can begin to move in the right direction, and develop consistently in your approach, positive results are an inevitability.

Let’s look at an example.

Jaclyn’s Journey

Jaclyn is a 36-year old nurse, with a husband and two children. Always a hard worker, she has built and maintained a strong reputation at work, solidifying herself as one of the finest practitioners in the hospital.

But, for the duration of her 20’s, her financial life had no direction. She barely contributed to retirement, saved very little, and was a profligate spender. After meeting her husband and settling down to build a family, she realized…neither of them were particularly effective when it came to managing their financial lives.

Eager to do better for her children, she began to self-educate. She consumed information online, read well-known personal finance books, and found a mentor (a family friend with a penchant for financial well-being). She rapidly acquired knowledge, and was soon educating her husband on all that she was learning. Once on board, he too felt they needed to take action. And did they ever…

They set up time on an on-going basis to discuss financial priorities (defining needs vs. wants), establishing budgets, and finding ways to make their money work for them. Their debt-load is now nearly extinct (except for the mortgage…which they intend to pay off aggressively), with investments growing and compounding while they sleep.

Jaclyn’s net worth (assets minus liabilities) has skyrocketed.

It all began with a desire to learn, and a willingness to take action…each step becoming its own advantage.

When you add up each of these small advantages- the desire to be better, the initiation of the learning process, and then action- you have cultivated your own superpower.

Cumulative advantage.

How to Keep Track of Your Expenses

Brad

There are an unlimited number of ways one can keep track of expenses. Some prefer Microsoft Excel (me!), others use QuickBooks, phone applications like Mint, or good ole’ fashioned pen and paper to balance a checkbook (I actually keep a notebook to track basic cash flow, but more on that in another post).

An expense tracker is really a direct reflection of how you structured your budget. In fact, the template may be one and the same.

In order to create the tracker, you will first need to identify how you will categorize your spending. Below, are the categories I currently use and some of the key items or expenses that would fall within each. Some are recurring, some are not.

It doesn’t matter which categories you choose, or even how many you choose, but I would suggest that you stick with your primary categories once selected, for the duration of the year. Tracking can become unorganized and difficult to manage if the way you are outlining your budget and tracking your expenses is constantly changing. The numbers will become confusing; identifying trend lines or creating graphs as a visual aid (for those so inclined) even more so.

What’s most important is not the way the tracker looks, but rather, the way in which you track. Naturally, there are many ways to do this as well. Students of Dave Ramsey might deploy the envelope method, by taking out cash at the beginning of the month, placing a preselected amount in several envelopes, each representing a category of spending. That way, you can’t spend more than what you have allotted. Others might set the budget and let an iPhone application update them in real-time on their spending in each category as the month progresses.

Find what works for you. It may take some trial and error…(My process has evolved over time).

Finally, have some fun with it. It can be a major stress reliever to better organize this aspect of your finances.