PP #52: Money Prepping: Free Yourself
Project: Pioneer #52, September 9, 2024 Monday 9am
It’s Monday, and I bet you wish it was still the weekend. Nobody says with their last breath, “I should have worked more.” We work longer and harder than we need to. There are plenty of reasons for that, and I talk about them often, usually in passing. Many of you don’t even need to go to that job you dislike, trust me. Let’s focus on your money in this post, so you can have an easier, less stressful life. I’ll show you how, without much expense or effort.
Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.
It was my daughter on the phone. She sounded tentative. “We’d like to come out with the kids this weekend, if that’s OK.” She quickly added, “But I don’t want to cause you to get all crazy and stressed.”
Wut?? It really hurt to hear that. My daughter is blunt, thank God. Words like that, spoken with love and the best of intent, can be impactful and a wake-up call. I’ve always been Type-A with a bold, italic, capitalized A. Military boot camp was the exact wrong thing for that condition, it further burned that acute sense of impatience and detail into my psyche. It’s made me a bag of stress for most of my life, to the detriment of others. Giavana knows. My kids know. Mama knows. Finally, I know.
I was that guy—each vacation had a carefully researched and curated itinerary for my squadron of young cadets to march along to. “Hurry, we can get to the Funny Falls ride in approximately five minutes, just prior to what the guidebook says is peak lowest wait time, let’s hustle!” Thankfully, they made it through all that, no doubt with emotional scars. They’re patient with their kids. I taught them the wrong way first hand, after all. Yeah, that’s it. That was my plan, alrighty. In my defense, I wanted them to experience everything I never got to, but I was too young and immature to realize it wasn’t fun that way.
The drugs and alcohol were likely a subconscious way to reign it in, or at least deal with myself. What I went through in the post-military years, the basis for Farawayer, those traumatic events, made things worse. No wonder I was a wreck as a parent. Quitting it all, trying to be in a mindful, Buddhist, Christlike frame each day has helped, but there’s still work to do. We are all products of our DNA and life experiences.
I’ve been stressed lately because I put myself behind the eight-ball on some projects, and if you read this journal, you know I have a bunch of them. Some are survival related, so that’s kind of important. Saturday was a day of unexpected pop-up obstacles, so I didn’t get much done. Sunday morning Giavana and I went to our usual awesome breakfast spot. I was trying to hustle on the way home, annoyed at a mo-mo driving slowly in front of me. “Let’s gooooo!” I hissed in my mind, death grip on the steering wheel. I had work to do.
We went through my favorite part of that drive—a stretch of country road where the pretty old trees have grown on both sides and stretched together overhead to form a sort of natural canopy tunnel. I always slow down there, and this time, extra. Took a beat. Reset. Deep breath. Mindful. Blessings counted. I noticed Giavana had been silent. We’re symbiotic at this point, living in this tight pioneer covered wagon side by side. I knew she sensed my earlier stress.
We exited the tunnel and I threw my hands up and said, “Geez, the day is half shot and I haven’t gotten a thing done!” in an exaggerated and comical tone. I knew it was what she was waiting for me to say, and we had a good laugh together. Stress—gone. Dude, it’s a Sunday. Chill. We arrived back at the White House RV and decided to take a nice walk through the woods. Anything else could wait, this is too important. Giavana suggested it—she knows.
Too many of us spend our lives this way. It’s how the system programs us, to get the most from us. Work harder, or you’ll be next on the layoff list. Oh, you didn’t get laid off? Work harder to take up the slack for those who are gone, or you’re next. Hunger games, work harder than your teammate so you’re next on the list to move up, and not get laid off. Hopefully, it’s them. Isn’t that sick? Yes, it makes us sick. Very sick. Our lifespans are shorter than the rest of the developed world.
I don’t do it out of financial need, I do it out of DNA and habit. That’s a whole other problem. But yeah, families out there are trying to pay the bills, put food on the table. We’re bombarded with stuff designed to make us want more, borrow more, keep up with the Jones’, and that makes it all worse. The sad thing is, none of this is necessary. I don’t care how bad you think things are, there are pretty simple ways to fix it, and get on the path to financial happiness.
Most people are in better shape than they think—they just need to get organized and have a plan. And yeah, most of the “remedies” you hear about on ads are scams. There’s no miracle way to magically make IRS or credit card debt disappear, or jack your credit score up overnight, or get that timeshare contract disappeared. There are real ways to accomplish all that. I know because I’ve seen countless people do it in real life. It’s a form of prepping, as well. Financial freedom gives you real freedom.
The reason most of us don’t make progress in cleaning up our finances is that they’re mired in the muck of everything else we have going on. We’re forced to work longer, harder. We’re bombarded with distractions cleverly designed to take our attention. In the little available free time we have, the last thing we want to do is work the unpleasant task of trying to make sense of numbers and our finances. We defer. The system gives us little time, hence it never gets done, hence we continue borrowing and spending, which the system likes very much. It’s a vortex, but you can escape it. If you do it right, it doesn’t take a lot of time.
Maybe you don’t like to read, or feel like you don’t have time to read (see: above). You can listen, right? Do you drive, or go for walks, walk your pet, eat lunch, do household cleaning or other mindless stuff on autopilot when you could be listen-learning? How about as you’re drifting off to sleep (use the sleep timer so it doesn’t go on to long without you…). Find time. Fight back. Free yourself and your family.
I think the best book (audio, eBook, paperback) on this subject is Kiss Your Money Hello! (and Financial Stress Goodbye). It’s concise, funny, and covers all the bases, from paying down debt to investing wisely. Next best is I Will Teach You to Be Rich (but skip the credit card advice!).
Have a plan. I don’t see how folks can go through life without a good money roadmap. The problem is they’re used as bait by sketchy investment advisors and insurance people to get you to buy their very expensive services and products. Finally, there are just a few true high-fidelity consumer facing tools you can trust, rather than the dumbed-down stuff you find all over the internet. I highly recommend pralanaretirementcalculator.com. There’s an upcoming guidebook on using it called Plan Your Money Path, in both Kickstarter (with lots of free helpful giveaways) and preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Pralana will be coming out soon in a new online version. Stay tuned at that website.
Get a good, low-touch app that will monitor your cash flow while you sleep, without much effort, and let you know where your money is going. That’s a first step to stopping waste and reigning it in. We use and love Simplifi, but there are others that are popular, like Monarch Money. YNAB is good, but a bit more complicated. Use the basic features for a tool like Simplifi, don’t go down in the rabbit hole until you’re familiar. Connect your spending accounts (checking and hopefully just one credit card!) and let it do its thing. It will auto-categorize most of your expenses. You can spend a minute touching up anything else, like Costco runs, that might have multiple spending categories, but you don’t even have to in order to just get a high level, “Are we spending more than we’re making?” answer. Credit cards obfuscate that, out of design. Debt is slavery.
Anyway, after the call with my daughter, I was so excited about them coming the next day I immediately started to make a list of stuff I had to get done to prepare. I kept it my secret, and made sure to go about my tasks at a gentle pace. Whatever doesn’t get done, doesn’t get done. Tomorrow’s another day, if we’re lucky. As for the visit, I covered that in my last post, and it was a dream.
I’ll be OK. We’ll be OK. We’re hustling right now because there’s so much going on. We’re phone banking and organizing for democracy, working hard on this election. You should be too! I’m selling my business. Hopefully, when the smoke clears in a few months, everything calms down and we can go about life. I’m looking forward to being fully retired, not semi-retired as I am now, still running a business. I’ll still write, I’ll always write. I’d like more time to catch up on my leisure reading, and watch more soccer and motorcycle racing. Do the whole Twilight Zone series from start to finish. More time to travel, or just relax on a weekend and do nothing, if I’m capable of it by that time.
“Every other day, every other day
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes
You can find me cryin' all of the time” ― Monday, Monday; Mamas and Papas
This pioneer journey continues…
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