I began it as an experiment to learn more about blogging, writing and perhaps to learn more about myself. I did learn a bit about all of the above, and it’s been an interesting experience. I’ve paused on regular updates as I figure out and refine my concept of how I should focus my efforts.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time digging back through 2008, reflecting, learning, and figuring out the proper trajectory of life.

The biggest life change in 2009 will be a stronger focus than ever back on one of my long lasting passions, music. I’ll be writing and perfoming again in 2009, likely as much as in my former band days. I’m stoked.

Another thing I anticipate to spend some time with will be my interest of photography. I just upgraded to a “big boy” camera, the Canon EOS 50D, which replaces the Canon Digital Rebel acquired from my buddy Mike Cavaroc a couple years ago. Can’t wait to capture more imagery. I’ll likely include photography as part of the music effort.

Of course I am continuing design work with the Bank, where things are going very well.

There’s more in store, and as with 2008, I foresee using the web in an integrative fashion to support my efforts. Given a closer alignment with music and imagery, I’ll need to figure out how this site is to evolve. I may convert this blog more into a microblog, since the longer posts tend to drive me up the wall with my petfectionism.

Which ever way things go, thank you for your support in 2008. It was a landmark year in my life, and the viewers of this site were integral to its success.

Here’s to a happy, healthy, exciting new year for all of us!

Austin

In the past few years, I felt a sense of urgency to live debt free.  If for no other reason then to reallocate the money I spent on interest and fees towards things of more interest to me such as, oh, world travel and further education.  There’s also the concept that one is a slave to the debt he or she has, as life choices are often made in the interest of what pays the bills, and not necessarily what makes the bill payer happy.  It was my belief that without any debt, I’d have more freedom to make decisions that would make me happy.

I pursued a lot of sources for information on how to not only eliminate debt, but to also create the mentality that would be needed to live this lifestyle.  It’s incredibly easy to want to go out and buy a big toy on a credit card.  Everyone around us has been doing it, the credit has been easy, and it’s a lot more difficult to say “No thanks, I’ll wait a couple years to buy in cash,” but while this is the difficult way to do it, I see immense benefit.

Aside from the benefit I had foreseen for myself in the debt free lifestyle, our present day economy is currently showing us in a loud and clear fashion that our credit habits as a whole are getting us into a lot of fiscal trouble.  And if things continue their current trajectory, it’s fair to say that credit is going to be more and more difficult to attain at reasonable rates.  This is a time that makes me happy to have learned what I’m about to lay out for you.

Create a Budget

Money, like time, goes quickly and easily in all directions if not directed.  Creating and using a budget focuses one of your most important resources towards what is most important in your life.  In my experience, I find that operating with a budget has saved me at least hundreds of dollars a month that would have otherwise been spent on the “wants” as opposed to the “needs” of life.

Use Cash

It seems that one of the reasons why it’s so easy to spend more money than we have or need to spend is because it’s most typically by way of the credit or debit card.  I can recall when I’ve spent over $4000 on equipment on plastic, and I still don’t have a clear understanding of how much money that was.  After all, it was all a digital transaction, and I ultimately didn’t actually see the money transfer hands and I didn’t have to pay it all in a big chunk.  This meant I was open to, and indeed did, buy more than I should have.  Contrast to the times when I’ve held even a few hundred dollars of cash in my hands and felt as if I was captain moneybags.  The point here is that holding your beloved cash, and having to hand it over sends a clearer signal of how much you’re spending, and choosing to use cash versus plastic in the future may impact your buying decisions.  If nothing else, flashing a wad of bills might give you more of a negotiation stance for the same psychological impact of it looking like more money than if it’s merely represented on paper.

Lock Your Budget in with an Envelope System

The envelope system is simple and it’s brilliant.  You take items in your budget that can be paid with straight cash, such as groceries, eating out, your “blow” category (when you just want to blow some money) and others.  In the budget, you should have allocated an amount of money to each category.  Now, create an envelope for each category.  Fill each envelope with the appropriate cash as you’ve set in the budget.  Now, you use this envelope system as your ATM during the month to pay for all expenses in these categories.  The benefit here is that when you deplete your envelope system, you have no more money, so you can’t overspend.  It locks you into the budget.  If you are responsible about this, not a month will go by that you exceed your budget, because you’re only working within the budget.  If you leave the month with extra cash, feel free to blow it or roll it over, though you might consider adjusting the budget to reflect the true picture of your financial “wants” and “needs.”  You can get fancier with the system and include your cash credits/debits by writing them on the exterior of the envelope.

Set up an initial Emergency Fund of $1,000

Before the step of paying off debt, it’s recommended that you save up at least $1,000 and place it in an accessible (but not too accessible) place so that when you have to buy that expensive plane ticket to see a sick relative, you can acquire it stress-free on the spot with cash.  It’s tough to leave the land of credit cards when an emergency pops up.  It’s so easy to put that doctor or car fix bill on a credit card when you just don’t have $700 or $1500 on hand to pay it.  The problem is that because you may not have this emergency money in a moments notice, you have to rely on debt to get by, and often take a while to pay it back.  Then the $700 grows and grows with fees and interest and adds an unnecessary layer of stress onto life.  The idea behind this initial e-Fund is to 1) Acknowldge that emergencies will happen in life, and 2) You can and should be financially ready so the power is in your hands and not your creditors.

Roll the Debt Snowball

Once you’ve locked in your budget, you’ve set up the initial e-Fund and hopefully removed need to lean on credit again, it’s time decimate your debt.  Get rid of those monthly payments, remove the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a month spent merely for the luxury of owing money.  Many people see the most logical method of eliminating debt as attacking highest interest cards first.  There is merit with this route, as you may save some money in the long run.  I agree with Dave Ramsey’s “debt snowball” personally, which suggests you attack debt from smallest balance to highest.  This means that you take the smallest, say a $400 credit card from AMEX with a $20 per month payment.  You pay it off, take that $20 monthly payment you’d no longer be paying (because the card is paid off) and roll it into the next card, and so on.  It becomes in a snowball in that one cards payment rolls into the next, then the next and before you know it, you have a lot of momentum to attack the big ones.  I think that a lot of our decisions and habits with regard to finance are based on emotional wants, and knowing this, it seems important to have a debt elimination strategy also built on emotion as well as logic.  And for me, it’s an emotional win to see cards get knocked out left and right as I journey on to take out the big debts.  Conversely, it may be a difficult mountain to climb if you go for the big credit card balance first, taking months or years to tackle it until you can finally taste victory.

Set up a 3 to 6 month e-Fund

The $1,000 e-Fund is not enough to cover you for if you’re laid off, have a large medical deductible or anything else more significant in your life.  Upon paying off debt, it’s wise to build up a real e-Fund with 3 to 6 months worth of living expense.  This will allow you the peace of mind to have any number of life emergencies occur and you will be financially ready.  Imagine what it’d be like to know that you don’t have to worry about being laid off from a job because of the resulting financial burden.  If it happened, you’d have money to fund the time you take rest and find a new gig, and your bills will be manageable because you are debt free and live on a budget!

What next?

So, you’ve got your rainy day e-Fund.  You don’t waste a penny on maintaining debt and using it to buy crap you don’t need.  You live on a comfortable budget that suits your wants, needs and what your income can accommodate.  Life is good, you are no longer as dependent upon your job and economy, and more importantly, the money stress is not what it was.

I’ve been applying it in my life for a few years now, and after a lot of hard work, I am on track to be debt free for the first time in my adult life within 6 months.  It’s a truly liberating feeling to know that I will then begin to focus my income on wealth building, investing into my self and those around me as opposed to the typical route of keeping up with financial traces of things purchased long ago.

I’d love to hear of your experiences and thoughts on gaining more financial security in troubled times, so please leave comments…

Austin

What’s better then bringing together some of the worlds most creative, intelligent people, mixing them together, discussing forward-thinking ideas and watching these world changing concepts come to life?  The TED conference is an extraordinary mix of concepts and talent, and if you haven’t heard about it yet, here’s a quick summary from the official website:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

Attendees and speakers are among the likes of Al Gore, Tony Robbins, Malcolm Gladwell, Nicholas Negroponte, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Katzenberg and other notable individuals from various fields.  It’s interesting to consider what it’d be like to wander the halls of this conference, striking up conversation with any of these individuals.  Imagine the cross-pollination that takes place in such a setting.

While TED is a private event, any person with an internet connection can benefit from the content provided each year.  I’ve been listening to the TEDtalks series on their website at http://www.ted.com, and thoroughly enjoying the concepts discussed.  You can listen, free of charge, to talks on subjects such as…

• Humanity’s Origins (Louise Leakey)
• A computer that works like a brain (Kwabena Boahen)
• Positive psychology (Martin Seligman)
• Technology, faith and suffering (Billy Graham)
• Studies of the brain in love (Helen Fisher)
• A year of living biblically (A.J. Jacobs)
• The study of biology to make animation (Torsten Reil)
• Institutions vs collaboration (Clay Shirky)
• One laptop per child project (Nicholas Negroponte)
• Engineering and evolution (Robert Full)
• Birth of the computer (George Dyson)
• The worldwide web of belief and ritual (Wade Davis)
• Memes and “temes” (Susan Blackmore)
• Designing objects that tell stories (Yves Behar)
• 6 ways mushrooms can save the world (Paul Stamets)
• String theory (Brian Greene)
• The new open-source economics (Yochai Benkler)
• Creativity (Amy Tan)
• CERN’s supercollider (Brian Cox)
• Connecting the world (Hector Ruiz)
• Germ domestication (Paul Ewald)
• Big questions about the universe (Stephen Hawking)
• Scanning the brain in real time (Christopher deCharms)
• New thinking on the climate crises (Al Gore)
• Rethinking the music video (Jakob Trollback)
• On the verge of creating a synthetic life (Craig Venter)
• As a young rebel (Frank Gehry)
• Building uniqueness (Moshe Safdie)
• Collaboration (Howard Rheingold)
• The mystery box (J.J. Abrams)
• Compassion (Daniel Goleman)
• Thinking deep on design (Philippe Starck)
• How the law is strangling creativity (Larry Lessig)
• Beauty and truth in physics (Murray Gell-Mann)
• The habits of happiness (Matthieu Ricard)
• Our mobile phones (Jan Chipchase)
• Building “self aware” robots (Hod Lipson)
• And a lot more…

You can view these and other talks by going to http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks.  Also, I recently watched a DVD entitled “The Future We Will Create,” which is an excellent overview of the TED conference,  showing speaker highlights from a past year.  I’d highly recommend checking out this DVD if you’re interested in learning more about the conference, as well as hearing some interesting ideas.

My first foray out onto the crowded streets of Miraflores was only 2 hours in length, but I feel like I really lived for the first time in a while. It is so easy to become entrenched in daily routine, and become so used to ones surroundings and tied to concepts of how to interact with life that some things lose their color. They lose some of their taste. The sensations which were one vivid, become expected, and somewhat dulled. I´ve spent so much time and energy in learning how to live within a certain environment, that even though it becomes mundane some days, it also grants a certain sense of security. It´s a trade-off that is willingly made for “quality of life,” but some times the sense of security, and some times the chosen concept of how to live within the world needs to be challenged every so often to be enhanced.

As I walk the streets of Miraflores, I´m struck with this realization. THIS is why we must travel. This is precisely why we need to make time to get away from work and routine, and get uncomfortable again. This is learning to live again; learning to survive and thrive within another culture, within what even seems like another pocket of space and time, and coming to an understanding of how other humans live their lives, and perhaps in some way, synthesizing a little of this into our own lives.

I can´t think of a better way of having begun my Peruvian adventure. My senses have been ignited, my thirst to learn and experience more is increased and I again realize why Travel isn´t just to go on Holiday and to piss away the time before getting back to work — Travel should be about connecting with other humans, sharing the experience of life and learning to value the diversity and beauty that can be found on this planet.

We´ll be in Miraflores for another day or two, then we´re off to meet up with some friends from Burners without Borders in Pisco who have been assisting in rebuilding the town for quite a while. Words can´t express how cool the BWB crew is, and we´re eager see them again and lend a hand. Then we´ll be off to Cusco, Machu Pichu, Backpacking, and hopefully many encounters with Alpacas!

Until next time,

Austin

1. Do one thing at a time
2. Know the problem
3. Learn to listen
4. Learn to ask questions
5. Distinguish sense from nonsense
6. Accept change as inevitable
7. Admit mistakes
8. Say it simple
9. Be calm
10. Smile

Austin

I’ve been at a steady and healthy pace of losing around 3 to 4lbs per week since training with Alan.  A lot of the progress has been due to the Marathon training, which has had me doing various forms of activity 6 days a week.  A key component to the healthy weight loss has been dietary change.  I have to credit the food diary for helping me to rein in my eating and get it on track so that it can work in concert with the physical training.  In fact, I don’t believe I’d be able to train as hard as I am now if I hadn’t taken control of the diet.  It’s amazing how much what you eat helps or hinders your body’s abilities on a daily basis.

Keeping a daily food diary isn’t necessarily easy at first, but it’s worth it!  It’s important to keep in mind the benefits to keeping a diary, and the vast importance of those benefits to your health and fitness.  Keeping a diary, much like skimming through your bank account to see what you REALLY spent, helps one to have a persistant reality check about what they’re consuming.  After a week of keeping tabs on everything you’ve consumed, and at what times, you begin to see at-a-glance certain patterns, many of which are less than enjoyable to realize.  But hey, some times a reality check is needed as impetus to true change.  I know it always helps fuel the fire for me.

Food Diary Approaches

Google Docs Spreadsheet: http://docs.google.com
My initial approach in doing the food diary was to create a spreadsheet using Google Docs.  This worked fairly well, as I could see most of the week’s entries on one screen for at-a-glance comparison.  Another benefit was that I could share the document with my trainer, allowing him to keep tabs on me whenever he’d like.  I’d say this is a good approach, as Google Docs are free to use, easily sharable and you can create some great spreadsheets if you’re so inclined.  My setup was one tab per week, using rows for each meal/snack and columns for the days.  I also included a cell to enter fitness, supplements and current weight for each day to weave that info into the overall consideration of what I was eating for a holistic picture.  If you’re seeing your weight stagnate or actually go up, you might be able to understand why pretty quickly by glancing at the last couple week’s worth of tabs.

Online Food Diary: http://www.gyminee.com/ or http://myfooddiary.com/
While the Google Doc Spreadsheet was a great, light-weight tool for tracking, I’ll have to say that online food diaries take the concept to a whole new level.  The Online version feels like the equivalent of always having a nutritionist giving real-time feedback on what you’re eating.  The general concept is that you have a profile on a site, and for each food or drink item you enter, the system has a database with nutritional information that is used to calculate the state of your diet.  Using one of these sites, you can tell throughout your day how you’re doing in terms of vitamins and minerals, caloric intake and much more.  Some sites even show how far along you are in terms of daily recommended servings of vegetables, meat, dairy, etc.  Additionally, there are fitness components where you can register what kind of activity, for how long, and it will calculate estimated calorie burn.  The site then compares the data from your diary to that of your fitness and shows you quite a lucid picture of caloric intake versus what you burn.  If there was ever any question as to why your body is worsening in state, stagnating or even improving, this kind of tool definitely helps in gaining insight into why, which can inform the decisions to make things better, or to sustain progress.  A fun twist with Gyminee.com, is that in addition to these tools, they also provide a social network ala Facebook where you can share your progress, meet gym buddies, and more.  Very cool.  These services charge a nominal monthly or quarterly fee.

Other Methods:
Of course, there’s a multitude of methods one can try.  There’s something to be said for the sweet simplicity of carrying a notepad with you and documenting with good ol’ pen and paper.  Or, as I tried briefly, one can use their iPhone or other smartphone’s notepad feature to document on-the-fly.

Each person will approach the logistics of keeping a food journal differently, and that’s to be expected.  I highly recommend giving it a try, and if one method doesn’t work, perhaps try a different approach.  This is certainly a great way to take control of your diet, which is an absolute cornerstone of health and happiness.

Want some motivation to give food diaries a try?  Read the recent San Francisco Chronicle article To drop pounds, write down everything you eat.

Happy journaling!

Austin