Great year

This year has gone by pretty quick I feel like.  I got two new jobs, found out we're having a second baby, finished a coding bootcamp and completely changed career paths.  I also landed a freelance job redoing somebody's website and hope to do many more in the coming year.  I've stayed sober the whole year, which is probably the thing I like the most about it.  I've helped a few people move in and out of there houses.  I've paid down debt, almost bought a house, rented out my first rental property with Ashlee.  I've replaced a transmission in a car and read lots of good books and seen some awesome movies.  I've born my testimony and been a good example to my family and coworkers and friends.  I've lost weight too.  I've played some fun video games for quite a bit longer then I thought I ever would.  I've gotten more techy, like now I'm writing in my journal, but through this app, which is cool/convenient.

In the coming year I hope to be a good husband and father.  I want to go on a date at least once a week with Ashlee.  I want to go and get some counseling on my parents divorce.  I forgot to include that above.  My parents got divorced lol.  I guess that is what happens when you reflect on the things you've done and been grateful for is you leave out the negativity.  That is also something I've done and want to keep doing is cut out negativity.  I've blocked some sites that just have negative news and information on them and sites that are just a waste of time for me.  I also want to grow my freelance business into something bigger and better.  I'm committed to becoming a millionaire or more by January 2020 and I think this year will be a big learning/growing year for me in that regard.  I'm excited to see what happens.

Tell me what happened to you and what you want to have happen in the coming year.  Happy New Years to you all.

Minimum wage is the gateway drug

I thought I heard a quote the other day about how hourly wages are the gateway drug, but a quick google search returned, "Minimum wage is the gateway drug."  When I heard it I thought how true it is.  Rich people are mainly rich by owning businesses and not by trading their time for money.  They get paid based on their results and the value they create.  They don't settle for a time for money trade.  I am realizing this is true the more I contemplate where I want to be financially and where I am currently and what got me here.  Hint: what I've done so far has gotten me exactly where I am and will continue to be my future unless I change.

I think that minimum, I started out there or close to there, is a pacifier.  It gives a tiny tiny tiny fix for a bigger problem, but because it is so easy to get that first job one gets hooked on it and truthfully we don't really think about different ways to make money since clearly this one is already working.

A thought I just had was that if I want to truly be rich and change my life for the better, that includes non-action and poor thinking/acting and poorly thinking about money and what I believe about myself then I'll need to completely challenge and change everything I'm doing.  Why?  Because I'm poor and what I've been doing has me poor.  And don't equate poor with me being unhappy or discontent, because my life is actually pretty great.  I've got a beautiful wife, kid, another on the way, and I've got good skills and education.  I am financially poor however and am still very much in the rat race with no end in sight any time soon on my current path.

This reminds me of how an addict is.  They want to change, but then when faced with all the hard work they quickly give up or try for a little bit but then get overwhelmed.  The realization extends to the fact that addicts in recovery often say they need help every minute or hour or day.  I think this same thinking needs to apply to me in making money.  Clearly I'm not making money right now, but if I want to be rich, i.e. the opposite of poor, then I need to do things completely different.

I think about people working 16 hour days and I'm not sure how that is possible, but that is what I need to do I think.  Maybe not 16 hours per day, but when I have free time to make more money after taking care of family duties.  I think challenging and putting injunctions on not making money when I should be is something I want to work towards.  I think this realization is going to have me questioning my healthy thinking about money and what the truth is about money.

To be continued...with more insights I'm sure.

Halloween is for me, not my kid

I was chatting with my new boss the other day about Halloween plans and among other things he mentioned some interesting things.  One was that kids happen to you, you don't happen to your kids.  He talked about how while they grow up with you, once they're old enough they leave and its just back to you and the wifey.  He also likened them and enjoying them to renting a nice Maserati for a day.  For the time that you have that thing you of course are gonna go all around town (vacations, little league games, church, halloween costumes, etc) and you're gonna flaunt it, take videos of you in it, and pictures with you in it.  At the end of the day though you have to return said Maserati to the store and the fun is over and you're left with the memories.  Same for the kids.  You have them for a few years on borrowed time and then when its time you have to let them go and that's that.  Full time of course.  Its not lost on me that family get togethers, reunions, and grand kids aren't also part of the transition.

I thought it was an excellent analogy and made a good impact.  Especially since it was brought up that while I'm dressed up as the man in the yellow hat today and london is curious george, London won't appreciate it.  My boss though said it doesn't matter.  Its about Me and the Wifey and a little bit about London.  Same goes for Disneyland/world.  He said for the most part they're not gonna remember it, even at 5-10 years old, but you will and you'll remember how fun it was for them and THAT is why you go.  Fun paradigm shift the conversation I had and thought I'd share it with the world as they contemplate the hassle and work that is prepping for Halloween today and tomorrow.

Squirrel!!

I know these days people think everyone else has no attention span.  Then I was thinking why that might be.  I think we get it from, in part, our parents.  How do you say?  I was just thinking about how this afternoon my wife came with our daughter to visit me during lunch and as they were going to drop me off and I illegally had London in my lap who was doing whatever she was doing we blurted out "Look ducks!"  So next time you complain about people being so distracted and have a short attention span just remember, "Squirrel!"

Ah-ha moment?

Sometimes you think about things and you have an "Ah-ha" moment.  I was reading an article by a Navy Seal and he quotes MLK Jr.  He then asks, "If you're not moving forward, what's the point?"  What that made me think of was Heavenly Father.  If mormon doctrine is applied to him then He grew and learned things along the way until He became perfect.  Once perfect and Lord overall, i.e. owning and knowing EVERYTHING, then what is the next logical step to "moving forward?"  It is helping His kids do the same and hence the scripture found in D&C...to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of His children.

There you have it, my brief "Ah-ha" moment that I had today.

Duh

Where have you been all my life SoundCloud?!?!  I'm in music heaven.  Unlimited free music, sweet beats, NO commercials.  Only had to skip two songs on random due to unfavorable lyrics, but man alive I'm in love.

Hack update on Obamacare health insurance

If you read this blog you'll know that I did a post on the year of the hack where I chronicled some things I did last year as it relates to hacking.

This year we're experimenting with going off of my employer provided "benefit" of health insurance and instead opted for trying Obamacare since at first glance we could get the same coverage, deductibles, network/hospitals, max out of pocket for a lower cost.

Only caveat is I haven't figured out where we'll land with tax credits and how that will increase/decrease our return next year (will find out more when we file our taxes later this year) and how that will play into the overall cost/savings of this experiment.  I imagine there will also be a small "penalty" (tax no matter what the court justices semantically called it) we'll have to pay for not having insurance for approximately a month and a half this year.

So for the savings/results/math...

What I do know is that with us switching and even with losing the tax benefit of having my insurance deducted from my gross pay thus lowering my taxable pay or my net pay is dispersed that over the course of a year we're looking at saving an additional $1,100+ -ish in cash!  That's an extra $11,000 over 10 years just by ditching my benefits offered at my work.  Not too shabby.

I figure that with a small penalty of perhaps $20-$50 for not having insurance and even then taxing the credit at the highest rate of around 30% that our $1,100 savings boost would get lowered to about $700 or 7k over the course of ten years.  Still enough to fund the purchase of a nice used car or beligerent vacation with the wifey!

I'll update this post once I've got more info.