Chuck Your Spoons In The Trash

Greetings and salutations.

First of all, an apology for my prolonged absence. Life has been a touch wild and very busy, and as usual it’s a balancing act of many, many priorities. However, I’ve missed writing desperately, and want to keep going.

This brings me to today’s topic, and boy, as usual it’s a controversial one : why I don’t like the Spoon Theory. To give you an idea of exactly how much I feel this, my working title was “Absolutely F*ck the Spoon Theory”.

If you don’t know about the Spoon Theory, you can find the original article explaining it by the creator, Christine Miserandino, at this link: https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/

In summary, Miserandino invented the theory as a way to explain her experience with lupus. It’s an extended metaphor where spoons represent the energy one has available for various tasks, and then patients have to choose how to spend their limited spoons, compared to healthy people, who have a far greater number of spoons to start with. This is why you will often hear people with chronic illnesses referring to themselves as “Spoonies”. To be very clear, I don’t fault anyone who identifies with this metaphor or finds it useful. If it works for you, then feel free to use it.

But the Spoon Theory is absolutely not reflective of the life I choose to live, and it’s so widely espoused it’s becoming toxic for me. My problem has been that I have had so many counsellors and programs and therapists who have encouraged me to use this metaphor that is such an incredibly inaccurate representation of how my energy and life actually work that I feel burnt out from the whole thing. I’d love to know that I’m not the only one struggling with feeling like the most universally known metaphor for what I am supposedly experiencing is a complete contrast to my actual life. 

Here’s my major issue with the Spoon Theory: there is a massive assumption that you have far more autonomy and freedom of choice over your life than you actually do. 

Let’s say that someone gets 12 spoons in a day that they have to choose to use. Every task; cleaning, cooking, medical management, work, visiting friends, all take spoons, and you have to choose where to use them. The reality is, most of those choices are a total illusion. Your survival choices come first. For me, that’s work. I have to work to pay my bills and support myself. It’s not a choice, I’m not choosing to “put spoons towards it”. 

Next, let’s look at medical management, one of the other massive “spoon stealers” in my life. Guess what- also not a choice! If I drop that ball, at best, I’ll be violently ill and at worst I’m risking serious allergic reaction, or permanent injury or something else. So here is yet another task that is exhausting, and awful, and daily, that there is no way I can get rid of or not spend energy on. At best, all I can do is try to stabilize my health the best I can and manage as much of it as I can on autopilot. But, as many of you know, health conditions are dynamic, and this is incredibly limited. 

Let’s look at cooking and cleaning, and banking, and all of those little tasks that every person in the world like grocery shopping and renewing their driver’s licence, getting oil changes, paying taxes…and on and on and on! Again, none of these are choices! Guess what happens if you don’t clean or cook? These are not “optional activities” , they’re necessities of life. Your only real choice is to 1. Do it yourself or 2. Invest more energy into earning more money so you can pay someone else to do it. So once again, I am “choosing” to spend spoons on something that is not really a choice at all. 

This in summary is my issue with the Spoon Theory: the illusion of choice in things that are not choice. You have no choice. No matter how much you are suffering, you have to push through and do certain things. There is no other option, so why would you hold onto a theory that suggests you have far more freedom than you do? 

The only choice you have is how you spend the tiny bit of energy that is left. I don’t say that to be a pessimist- I say that to be a stoic. I don’t disagree that life is about choices, especially with chronic illness, but I think the Spoon Theory focuses on the wrong choices. What you’re actually choosing with the Spoon Theory is what consequence you want to face : do you want to exhaust yourself and feel terrible, or suffer the consequences of not doing the thing, which again, is not really truly a choice for any mandatory activity of life. 

Here is what I use instead of the Spoon Theory, that works well for me:

1. I don’t bother explaining my energy levels and abilities to people

The Spoon Theory was invented to try and explain what the experience of having lupus-related fatigue was like to someone without lupus. I’ve tried explaining the fatigue of my conditions to people, I really have, but it’s a wasted effort. Fatigue and energy are 100% subjective, and I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I’m not obligated to make people understand my experience, or educate them, or help them be more empathetic. That’s their choice. My conditions and disabilities make me tired, and not much can budge that tired, and that’s all anyone actually needs to know. 

2. Brutal Honesty

I don’t think I’m doing my medical team any favors when I present the impression to them that I have choices I don’t have. Rather than saying things like: “I need to work on pacing and planning and budgeting the energy I have,”, I say “I need more functional hours in a day. I have no choice but to work full time to maintain my benefits and my housing, and losing this would be more destructive to my health than anything else, and there are no more optional activities to cut and no way I can pace what I need to do.” 

Yes, this is brutally harsh, and no, nobody has actually helped me with this. But at least I said it, and I’m not pretending that I have everything all together when I don’t. 

3. Stoicism 

There’s a lot of wisdom in ancient philosophers, particularly some of the Greek Stoics regarding suffering, life and how to endure. I’ve found this far more useful than a lot of chronic illness type theories and ideas, which honestly, I felt like encouraged me to be a victim and just live in a world of illness. Disabled and chronic illness life is hard, but everybody’s life is hard in some way. Life involves suffering- rise up and face it, and give up trying to run away. 

4. Minimalism

Wow is this ever a work in progress. The people who know me in real life are laughing right now because they know this is currently not really a word to describe my life. But I’m working on it, and it does work. The more I can simplify and minimize my life, the more time, energy and space I have for the things I love and want to do. 

5. Romans 5:3-5

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. 

That pretty well sums it up. I need to stop trying to run from suffering, and embrace it and let it build perseverance and character in me. I haven’t found a whole lot in the Bible that espouses pacing out your work, budgeting energy, and worrying about getting it all done, but I have found a whole lot that assures us that Jesus provides for our needs and somehow it all works out. I realize that explanation doesn’t work for a lot of people, but you might have a similar spiritual belief that gives you the energy to get through. 

So anyways, if anyone is looking for my “spoons”, I’ll be using them to eat ice cream, not budget out what I “get” to do in a day. 

A Big Announcement: Starting a Side Hustle

I hate blog articles that make you read through the entire thing to get to the point, so here’s mine for today, with details to follow: I’m starting another side hustle, but I’m not revealing what it is in this post. If you’re still intrigued, read on, if not, I’ll likely be announcing it here eventually. 

So yes, I have officially made up my mind about the next side hustle I’m going to get up and running. My goal has always been financial independence, and greater independence with a homesteading lifestyle. To get those things, I need to build up side hustles to increase my income and to be more independent and less reliant on a corporate job. I already have two side hustles – a tutoring service and room rentals in my house, but I’m now getting ready to add a third!

I’ve been thinking and praying on and meditating and discussing what I’m going to do next for a long time, but I feel like I’ve finally hit a place of peace, determination and energy when I’m ready to get this show on the road, no matter what it takes. I’ve been trusting in the Law of Attraction, and the idea that if I just held the idea and vision of running a business in my mind, an idea and way would come to me. I’ve had a lot of ideas, but I’ve finally decided, and felt inspired enough to pursue one of them.

And boy, am I excited and TERRIFIED! It’s a business unlike anything I have ever developed and run before, I have no idea what I am doing, and it’s going to be a huge learning curve, however I’ve got some ideas and focuses for this new startup.

First, I’m just going for it, full steam ahead, as fast as possible, and springing into action. I feel like in the past I would come up with a business idea, think about a million hypothetical questions, decide I wasn’t good enough to pull it off, and ditch the idea. Now I’m doing the complete opposite- I’m going to work under the assumption that of course I am good enough at this, and I can do it. I’ve been really inspired lately by Bob Proctor’s teachings, and one thing he encourages is for you to just spring into action. Rather than overthinking, deliberating and doubting, just dive in! 

Second, I’m doing this lean and scrappy, as well as fast. I’m not investing in this as a full-time business at this point. My goal is not to have a passion project – my goal is to have a business, so I’m trying to keep my costs low, and work creatively so that I can maximize my profit. I’m doing it all by myself.

Next, like I mentioned above, I have a huge learning curve. Better product things, website builds, social media, marketing and photography, and a whole bunch of business issues are facing me, and I have to learn all of these things I’ve never done before. Again, my goal is to learn as fast as possible, to go from zero to functional as cheaply and as quickly as possible. 

And last, I’m taking this blog along for the ride! This business is going to be a part of my snowball that is rolling towards financial and life freedom. I want to provide a transparent look of the behind the scenes aspects of starting a side hustle, as always with the added plot twist of being disabled and chronically ill. 

So wish me luck, and if you have any great resources for starting up a side hustle, I’d love to hear it! 

Carly  

Book Review: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

Oh boy, this was an interesting one!

First of all, I’ve been wanting to read and review this book for a long time. This has been largely triggered by….quite honestly food. An interest in Russian food was what led me to an interest in Russian history, which was what led me to this book. I mean, I knew about it, like most people, but I don’t think I could really tell you that much about it. 

To be very clear I went into reading this book with some predetermined goals and some firmly established biases. I wanted to read this book to find out more about Marx’s ideas about economics, not for his political opinions. I 100% went in knowing that I was not going to change my views that, so far, Marxism has been a disaster and whatever economic benefits this book proposed has come at human life cost far greater than whatever financial benefit there is. My reading of the book didn’t change either my goal of economic understanding or my fundamental horror at what the result of Marxism has been. 

However, I did learn a lot of interesting things from my reading that I didn’t anticipate, but they’ve also made me a bit more critical of the book in general. As is common with me, what I find interesting, challenging and controversial all roll into one, and here were my biggest findings for those themes: 

• How much your understanding of this book is reliant on your understanding of Russian geo-politics
• I felt like the arguments and ideas built up in the book only made sense if you had a strong understanding of Russian history, a subject I’m absolutely not pretending to be an expert on. The little bit I do know helped me immensely, and I did a whole lot of Googling in between. But the fact that I felt like it took so much extra input to get more of an understanding of the book makes me wonder if it’s actually as universal of an idea as what it seems to be, or if it is more specific to one  particular historical time period and culture 

• How…well….innocent the whole thing was
• Like I said before, I went into the book with a preconceived idea about how how the massive loss of human life attributable to Marxism completely negates any potential economic benefits. But the strange thing is that all happened after the book was written. When Marx wrote it, it was so much more, well, innocent, than how it turned out. Yes, there were things about social revolution, and getting rid of people like landlords, but it is nowhere close to the level of tragedy that it led to.

•  The complexities of Marx’s categories
• I had a decent idea of Marx’s ideas of proletariat and bourgeoisie before I cracked into the book….or at least I thought I did. I was very, very, wrong on this point. It turns out these categories are far more complex than I had understood, and it turns out there are tons of nuances and subtleties of these categories that I didn’t realize. I feel like I need to know more about all the subcategories of these classes to actually make the book make sense. 

And my biggest takeaway and criticism…

• The economic ideas of the book don’t match with the complexities of modern finance
• This point is kind of related to the idea that I stated above, about the different types of bourgeois. Reading the book made me feel like our world is now too financially complex to have a clear segregation of bourgeoisie and proletariat, thus rendering basically the entire book kind of useless?
  
  Think about it – by virtue of the way Western finance now runs, even very “simple” people own and buy investments, and have significant crossover between the categories of “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat”. Maybe you work a factory job – making you a proletariat. But part of your paycheck is invested in the CPP – you have no choice over this, but owning such an investment would make you a member of the bourgeoisie. Own a house – is that bourgeoise or proletariat? How about if you rent out a room in it to cover your mortgage, and make no economic gain? How about owning a car? What about running a side hustle, or working in the gig economy? What if you own a car and use it to be an Uber driver sometimes, and sometimes use it to drive to your factory job?  How do those things fall into Marx’s categories?
  
  I think the defining question would be: who owns the means to production? The thing is, pretty much everyone owns some of the means of production in one way or another. We all certainly own the means of production for intellectual capital.  So, if you were to use Marx’s ideas today, would you only consider the ultra-ultra-ultra rich to be the bourgeoisie, and literally everyone else is a proletariat? I don’t think so, but I think the system is so complex and integrated that we’ve lost some of the definition we would need to have these two distinct categories. It’s a weird question I’ve been thinking about since I finished the book. 

So, my overall opinion after reading the book still stays somewhat the same: I thought this was a great read for home historical knowledge, and is a definite must-read for understanding 20th century geo-politics, but it fell flat for modern economic theory. I don’t think rampant unchecked capitalism is our best way forward for the future, nor do I think it’s spiritually correct, but I don’t think The Communist Manifesto provided a viable alternative. 

Five Tips For Renovating While Disabled and Chronically Ill

If you’ve ever wanted to paint your walls, but wondered if you can actually lift or open a paint can, this is the article for you!

In addition to crushing my mortgage, I’ve started working on some home renovations, first and foremost because I want certain things changed, and secondly, by investing in and doing my own renovations, I can boost the equity in my home and get a nice return on investment. I enjoy doing this kind of project, and always have, but I will say it’s significantly more challenging now that I’m disabled and chronically ill.

Even though it’s challenging, it’s still worth doing, and you can make it a lot easier on yourself. Quite honestly, in many ways I’ve found renovating with a disability far easier and far more enjoyable than when I did renovations as an able-bodied person. When I renovated as an able-bodied person, my concerns were getting things done as perfectly as possible, as quickly as possible, to minimize the disruption in my life, and there wasn’t a lot of planning put into the projects.The house would get ripped apart, go through frantic renovations in a super short period of time, about a million trips to the hardware store, and then thrown back together again. It was exhausting. 

Now, my renovations are completely different, and so much more enjoyable! I plan them out in meticulous detail, and savour the planning. I gather the supplies, all of them, in an organized, complete way. I complete the renovation, step by step, and budget out the energy I need for prep work, renovation and clean up. It’s lovely. There’s no rush, and there’s no chaos. 

That’s the large-picture-overview of how I do renovations now. Out of that, I’ve found five main tips that have helped me be successful in tackling these larger projects that I would have never had the confidence or believe I had the ability to do.

1. Think About Safety Differently

The most important thing I have realized about renovating while disabled and chronically ill is that I need to make my safety the first priority, and think about it differently. Tools, renovation steps, and the physical requirements are made for able-bodied people, and they don’t necessarily work for me. 

Think about the safety implications about what you are going to do, and think about how that needs to be hacked to work for your disability. If you’re using power tools, can you actually operate the on-off switches or kill switches with your hands, or do you need to hook them up to a power bar with a button you can hit quickly? When you’re climbing a ladder, can you see the rungs, or do you need to invest in a ladder with the steps coloured differently so you can see them? Can you safely lift a paint can, or do you need to set it up on the ground so you just have to tip it? Do you have scent sensitivities or allergies that might be triggered by your renovation products, and do you need to wait until certain weather conditions so you can open all the windows and air out your home? Get creative, and think about how you can do things differently so it’s safe for your condition. 

2. Plan Meticulously, and Fall in Love with It

Spontaneity is not going to be your strong suit if you are disabled or chronically ill and renovating. You are going to have to get very, very good about planning out every detail of the renovation. So plan in detail, and execute your plan. 

You will want to plan out what supplies you need ( and do a one-time pick up from a hardware store, even better if you can order online!), the timelines for every step of the renovation, and what parts will be more or less physically demanding. The more you can plan out in detail, the easier it will be to achieve. I also found it important to start enjoying the planning process, which I had always previously hated. Enjoying planning has made the difference to me between feeling confined and stuck in my disabled body, and actually enjoying what I am doing. 

3. Budget Time In Four Stages

Thinking about renovations in four stages has been really crucial for me. The four stages I look at are:

• Planning : planning out what I will do, purchasing supplies, coordinating a budget are tasks at this stage. There is no disruption to the home here. For me, this stage usually starts on Pintrest and ends in the Home Depot!
• Prep Work : getting everything ready to execute the renovation. In this stage, you may need to move furniture (if you’re painting), wash surfaces, get your work station or power tools set up, lay the drop cloths, etc. There is some disruption to your home, depending on the renovation
• Renovating : the stage of actually renovating! Here is where you are painting, resurfacing, hanging wall paper, whatever! This is the stage that we typically think of for renovations. There is very likely disruption to your home. 
• Clean Up : Here’s where you clean your tools, put everything away, move the furniture back and fix all of that disruption to your home! 

Previously, I was only planning my energy and time for stage three – the renovation. But by the time I go to the renovation, I was exhausted! And by the time the clean up was done, I had triggered a flare, I was exhausted and miserable. Now, I budget my energy and time for all four stages. Maybe I plan the renovation on the weekend, and pick up my order from the Home Depot on Tuesday, prep and move the furniture on Friday night, renovate Saturday morning, and clean up Saturday afternoon, and move the furniture back on Sunday morning. Yes, it takes more time overall, but I’m getting more things done, because I actually have the energy to do them. 

4. Support Your Health As Much As Possible

I know that when I’m renovating, I’ll be pushing my body hard, and I need to support it. Renovations are not the time for me to be dealing with a flare, or healing a major injury, trying new challenging foods or playing with med doses. Try to do everything you can to reduce the strain on your body and health when you are renovating, and things will turn out better. I am also not afraid to delay planned renos if my health is suddenly acting up. For me, it is better to wait a week until I am feeling up to doing something and able to enjoy it, rather than pushing through it. 

5. Kill Many Birds With Very Few Stones

A pleasant surprise of my renovations has been how many things I’ve been able to accomplish by doing them, that weren’t related to renovating at all. It’s provided a great amount of social interactions that I hadn’t planned on, and trying to socialize with people is something that I’ve often had to socialize. 

Think about how you can use renovations as an opportunity to socialize and connect. It can make your renovations easier, plus you’ll be connecting with other people. Do you have friends that you can go over some home renovation magazines, or a Pinterest board together? Is there someone in your life who enjoys panting and can come and paint with you for an hour, or can come with you to look at paint colours? The trick here is to shift your perspective to make it enjoyable – you’re not needing people to do renovations with you because you’re not able to do them, you’re enjoying their company while doing a common activity. Keep your relationships healthy, and do ask for help when needed, but also realize where you can build in some social connection, thus reducing one more thing you would have to plan for and spend energy on. 

Let me know your best tips for renovating when disabled/chronically ill, and what projects you’re tackling! 

Carly 

The Magic of Mortgage Math

Again: Nothing in this post should be construed to be financial advice. Consult a professional. 

I’m a recreational mathematician – math is for everyone, and there are indeed people who do mathematics just for fun and personal enjoyment.The best thing about recreational mathematics is that it lets you hack life and gain all kinds of neat advantages, from hitting targets at work easier to how to pay off a mortgage. It turned out that when I studied my mortgage, and put some effort into figuring out how it works, there were a lot of things I learned. 

First of all, mortgages are incredibly regional, even though the underlying financial product is very similar from place to place. What I mean by this is that, like many things in life, the advice available on the internet is heavily American, and doesn’t apply to most of Canada. When I read articles on the internet about how people were able to pay off their mortgages in extraordinarily fast time frames, they were always American, their mortgages were tiny, and they definitely were not disabled and rebuilding their second career. Most of the mortgages I was reading about were between 25 to 50% the size of mine, and my mortgage is not that large. They were laughably useless articles for someone living in Ontario – these articles or blogposts about paying off a mortgage that size in ‘only five years’ wouldn’t even be worth reading in southwestern Ontario, because of course that mortgage could be paid off in five years. 

In summary, the available advice to me was completely useless. 

I would also argue that mortgages are somewhat different than other financial products available, specifically for two reasons. First, mortgages are really the only financial product you routinely obtain that is directly tied to a necessity of life: housing. Virtually every other necessity of life cost is directly expensed, and not put on a balance sheet. Second, we think about mortgages differently than other debts. When we list out our debts, we don’t typically include the mortgage. Mortgages are so normalized that we don’t even realize that they are tying us down. 

My first step to hacking the math behind my mortgage and blasting that sucker away was to get really clear on the why of why I wanted to change my financial plan and accelerate paying it off. 

1. My mortgage is really the only expense I can feasibly eliminate in my current stage of life.

The reality is, until I’m fully ready to head off grid, I’m not getting rid of my hydro bills, my car insurance, the internet or phone bill, or a grocery bill. My mortgage is the one expense that can go away, 100%, forever. And once it’s gone, I have a massive amount of cash flow available to invest every single month. 

2. The tax deduction myth

There is a fantastic myth that exists that the tax deduction you get from the interest of a mortgage somehow justifies having the mortgage. In the three years I’ve had a this mortgage, my tax returns have never even come close to being one monthly mortgage payment. The idea of having hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that I have to pay for every month to get a meager cash back reward once a year doesn’t make any sense.

3. Financial Statement Perks 

Remember when I said I learned a whole lot about the importance of financial statements from Rich Dad, Poor Dad? One thing I realized is the difference between paying a mortgage and paying rent, and how that looks on a financial statement.

Let’s say that you pay $100.00 of rent. The financial transaction looks like this in the books: 

	Debit	Credit
Bank Account		$100.00
Rent/Lease Expense	$100.00

The key points here are that the source of money is the bank account, a balance sheet item, and the destination is the rent expense, an income statement item. It’s a cost that’s being directly expensed. 

Let’s take a look at the transaction if our mortgage payment is $100.00 a month: 

	Debit	Credit
Bank Account		$100.00
Mortgage Payable	$90.00
Interest Expense	$10.00

In this situation, the bank account is still the source of the money, but look at where the money ends up. $90.00 is being debited against a mortgage payable – a liability on the balance sheet. Every month you pay, that liability is being decreased, and the equity you own is going up. The balance, $10.00, is directly expensed on the income statement as an interest expense. 

In the end, paying rent directly expenses these payments, and none of the value or equity stays with you. Paying a mortgage means you retain the equity, and it stays on the balance sheet. 

So, paying off the mortgage early is a great thing, but how in the world am I planning on doing this? I have two main strategies:

• I’m slightly de-accelerating investing. For an investment to be worth it, I need a guaranteed interest rate far greater than the interest percentage on my mortgage. Once the mortgage is gone, I’ll have far more cash available to invest
• My goal is to make as many prepayments as possible onto my mortgage, on top of the normal monthly payments. Here’s where the real math magic happens:

 Let’s imagine that my mortgage is $400.00 per month, which would work out to $100.00 per    week. Therefore, you would assume that if you prepay $100.00, it would pay off your mortgage one week sooner. 

Dead wrong. 

The way my particular mortgage works, it’s actually far closer to two weeks. Every dollar I prepay on my mortgage virtually doubles. If I can prepay off a significant part of that mortgage, it’s like getting the mortgage for 50% off. It’s the best deal there is. 

Coming up next is increasing my cash flows to make more prepayments! 

A Six-Month Review of my “Reset Method Budget”

Disclaimer: None of this should be taken as financial advice, and you should consult a professional for any financial decisions. This is solely my experience.

I started off 2021 with a new financial plan to move towards my farm dreams, and decided to reassess at the six month mark, and see how things were going, and reassess from there. I’ve hit the six month mark, and here’s what I’ve found is working, and what I’m changing up to accelerate my dreams.

None of this would have been possible without looking at the journey I’ve been on.  I’m very happy and proud to say that, since having to leave my first career when I became too disabled and chronically ill to work, I’ve recovered enough to be able to go back to work in an entirely new career, and after eighteen months of hard work and a lot of support, I’ve completely replaced my teaching salary, plus extra, and a better benefits package. Best of all, I’m at a workplace that actively wants to include and listen to the voices of disabled people, and is a much healthier culture. 

 Here’s where I started off in January in terms of basic financial goals: I wanted to stabilize my month-to-month finances after the wild year between 2019 and 2020; I wanted to increase my savings rate into my investments; and I wanted to increase and build up the amount of fluid cash I was holding in my checking account. I did this by picking a (somewhat) arbitrary “reset” amount every month, that would increase every month, and saving everything above that amount. I have the weird gift of being skilled enough at math and interested enough in personal finance that I can track my running checking account balance and every expense in a month in my head with fantastic accuracy.  I tracked investments in a giant mess of an Excel spreadsheet. 

I will say that my “Reset Method Budget”  worked well for a lot of reasons:

•  With starting a new job, it helped me get more used to my new salary and what that looks like from a financial perspective.
•  Last year, when I was too sick to work full time, I wasn’t able to save as much money as I would have liked to, and it made me feel surprisingly insecure, and using this plan to watch my bank balance go up every month, on top of savings, was an awesome boost for me.
• Because I can track expenses in my head extremely well and have done this for years, this plan took extremely little time to pull off. I paid my credit card from a banking app on my phone once a month, and then transferred money out of my checking account to investments once a month when the month opened. In total, I was probably spending an hour a month on banking. 

Re-evaluating at six months, I realized there were a few flaws in my plan, and I’ve modified things to move forward on buying a farm quicker:

• I realized I was budgeting out of fear. The whole career rebuild situation took a giant chunk out of my financial self-esteem, and I was holding onto those ideas. In reality, I’m perfectly able to work in a reasonable job with accommodations, and deserve to work in a place that values me and everything I can bring to the team. 

Getting over this is going to take some time, but this is mostly an internalized ableism and not an actual financial issue. 

• My new salary is made of two components – a base salary and a variable portion based on performance. I wasn’t splitting this out, and it was hard to track them 

I’ve set up a separate bank account at a new bank with a high interest savings account. I’ll be saving my bonus pay there, and using it mainly for my house renovation projects. In the long run, I think it’s better for me to live off my base salary, and save my variable pay to pay for special projects. 

• Most importantly – my financial plan did absolutely nothing to deal with my biggest financial obstacle – tackling my mortgage 

Not only is my mortgage my biggest expense every month, but it’s also the only debt I owe. Eventually I know I’m going to have to flip the equity and capital gains in my condo to buy a farm, so the faster I can pay off the mortgage the more I can save, and accelerate moving. I’ll have a more detailed post coming out about crushing that mortgage soon, because when I started looking at the math behind it, what I found was wild and unexpected. 

I haven’t finalized my plan to accelerate paying off my mortgage, but I’m holding this as a top priority, along with continuing to build revenue streams to help things along even more!

Carly

Book of the Week Review: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Well, here it is: my review of my book of the week, Robert Kiyosaki’s classic money text Rich Dad, Poor Dad. For full disclosure, I’ve read this book before, but I was in a far different financial position, knew nothing about accounting, and  took completely different things from the book. Reading it again has been great for me. 

If you want to buy your own copy of the book….. Please do so at a local bookstore or just borrow it from the library. You won’t find an Amazon Affiliate link here because I don’t particularly support Amazon and think the benefit of you supporting a small bookstore or library would far outweigh the very small benefit I would gain from hawking Amazon links. 

If you’ve not read Rich Dad, Poor Dad before, the basis of the book is that the author, Robert Kiyosaki, describes the lessons he learned from his “Rich Dad”, the father of one of his friends, and compares it to the lessons his biological or “Poor Dad” taught him. Some of the advice Kiyosaki received, and thus gives, is a bit controversial, and people tend to either love it or hate it. 

After re-reading it again, while I can’t say that I wouldn’t be lining up for the very pricey Kiyosaki seminars or classes, and following all of his advice, I gained a lot from this reread. I’m feeling revitalized and committed to following some of Kiyosaki’s wealth building ideas, and am hoping to read more of his works in the upcoming weeks. Here are my biggest takeaways from the book, the points that I agree with Kiyosaki on, and what I’m doing:

• Wealth is a mindset, and the way you think and speak matters

One of the powerful examples from Rich Dad, Poor Dad is how Robert Kiyosaki described how his rich dad and poor dad spoke about and thought about money. Poor Dad used language like “I can’t afford it”, “Money isn’t important to me” or “Rich people are greedy”, while Rich Dad phrased things differently: “How can I afford it?”, “It’s important to know how money works”, “Rich people are generous”. I think this mindset shift is probably the most powerful part of the book. If you can change just one thing, let it be this.

• Financial IQ is absolutely critical

If you want to be wealthy, you need to understand money. While it’s not so clearly stated in the book, my latest reread emphasized to me how important it is to understand two particular financial statements: your income statement and your balance sheet, and the interplay of the flow of cash between them. 

The entire premise of Rich Dad’s plan is essentially: stack your balance sheet with a particular class of assets, cash flowing assets, and let that funnel into your income sheet. The key point of financial IQ presented in the book is differentiating out these cash flowing assets from liabilities. Having a reminder of these different types of statements was a great reminder for me, and it helped me to refocus on a very clear goal: build your asset column. 

• The way to get wealthy is to be an investor or business owner

It’s extremely difficult to get wealthy using the ideas of Rich Dad, Poor Dad if you are an employee. The emphasis is on knowing the difference between your job and your business. Obviously that type of self-determination appeals to me, and I 100% agree. When you are working for someone, you’re building their bottom line and getting paid out of their expenses. When you work for yourself, you’re building your own bottom line. 

I do have a few reservations about Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and some points that I somewhat disagree on…

• The book is extremely pro-capitalist, anti- government program, and the author went on to co-author a book with Donald Trump 

I don’t think there’s going to be money in the Kingdom of Heaven, and the only purpose of money in this world is to start building it now and to help others. Blatant capitalism that increases social disparity, inequality and marginalizes those who are suffering isn’t the end game here. Since I’m disabled, and rely incredibly heavily on government healthcare to survive, I find the blatant disregard for the importance of government programs in the book to be a bit off putting. While I’m glad that Mr. Kiyosaki, and everyone who feels this way I guess, has never had to find themselves in a place where they don’t have to feel government programs are essential, it reads to me as a narrow-minded view that doesn’t really look at the many different realities that people live with. 

• Some of the information seems downright wrong

Using a corporation to tax shelter personal-ish expenses, using debt to leverage out investments, and not having a house as an asset jumped out at me as some conflicting and not great advice. If you want to pay a corporate tax rate, and not a personal tax rate, you need to set up a corporate structure that has a separation of business and personal finances. Money you transfer into the business would likely be considered a Loan from Shareholder, and money transferred out would have to run through a payroll or be considered a loan on the company’s books. Corporations are not personal savings accounts, and if you pierce the corporate veil, you can be liable for business debts in court. Likewise, Kiyosaki may be comfortable with using debts to fund the purchase of cash flow assets, but that is in reality a bit more complex than the book makes it sound. 

The most controversial statement in the entire book is the one Kiyosaki is the most famous for: Your house is not an asset. He asserts this because a house does not put money in your pocket, and costs you in expenses to maintain. From an accounting standpoint, a house is most definitely an asset, and just because something costs you in expenses doesn’t change this fact. It may not be a cash flowing asset, but it is definitely an asset. That’s like saying owning a fridge isn’t going to save you money compared to having to go to a grocery store all the time to buy fresh groceries because it costs you electricity to run. 

With my reread, here’s what I’m focusing on doing differently:

1. Always minding my own business and keeping a money positive mindset

I’m committed to using my job to become better at minding my own business, and pushing towards working for myself. I need to keep up my positive vibes and trust that I can become wealthy and achieve my financial goals.

2. I’m thinking about my financial life more in terms of my balance sheet and income statement, and studying the flow between the two.

And yes, I’m still listing my house in the asset column. 

3. I’m focusing on buying and building cash flowing assets. 

The most important question I’m asking myself about every new purchase is “How much money does this put in my pocket every month?” Not every asset meets this criteria, nor should it, but it’s a valuable question to ask. 

4. I’m committed to thinking more about how to apply Rich Dad, Poor Dad to disability life. Living with multiple chronic, disabling conditions requires you think about financial planning very differently from the vast majority of the population. There’s no guide to this in Kiyosaki’s books, so I’m trying to figure it out for myself.

Keep building up that asset column, fellow future farmers, and tell me about how you’re doing it! 

Carly 

Work for Yourself Wednesday

I’m changing up my Wednesday a bit, with working on a few new things. 

There’s a few big new focuses that I’m working on: first, I’ve started some home renovation projects. I know that part of financing my future farm will either involve selling my current home and reinvesting the equity, or keeping the ownership and renting it out for cashflow. 

Home renovations while disabled and chronically ill is a whole other blog post. Overall, it’s been going well, and even with just doing a few small projects so far, I’ve learned a ton. Tonight I worked on patching up a wall that was damaged from me removing the old kitchen backsplash before I can finish my new background installation, and move on to refinishing my kitchen countertops. Frankly, with the rate at which real estate is increasing in value, the investment of my time into improving the equity of my home is well worth it. 

Next, I’ve started to work on a larger, intellectual property project. To my mind, intellectual property is one of the best ways I can work for myself. Really, there is very little investment into creating intellectual property, because ultimately, it’s just taking time and a word processor. 

To close out my night, I also got some things prepped for my next round of soapmaking, and invoiced my tutoring client. 

Keep working for yourselves! 

Why I Read A Book Every Week

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I try to read a book every single week, and I’m generally successful at this. I’ve been doing this for about ten years now, with some breaks when my career was extremely demanding, or when I was in school programs that demanded a lot of reading. 

At first, I just started with the goal of reading a book a week because I noticed that when I was in university, while I was reading a ton for school, I wasn’t really reading. When I read for school, my goal was to read as fast as possible, pull out what the professor wanted to hear, and spit it out in a lecture, online post, or essay. I felt like I was losing my capacity to actually read – read books I wanted to, learn from them, and enjoy them, so I consciously worked to bring reading back into my life. I’ve now realized there has been some amazing benefits to this for me, and these benefits have become my primary “whys”. Here are some of the most profound benefits: 

1. I learn a lot of new things

This is such an obvious point, but it bears repeating. I learn a lot more from reading books than I ever thought I would, and certainly more than I would from a lot of other things I could spend my time doing (more on that in number 4!) 

By a large number and variety of books, I’m able to learn so many things that will help me move towards my dream of self-sufficiency. Obviously, there is a limit to the concrete skills you can learn from a book without practicing them in real life, but I’ve found books have been instrumental in formulating my personal philosophy, financial advice, and the scientific knowledge I’ll be using. Of these, I’ve found the most important benefit is developing a strong personal philosophy. By reading a ton of books that both supported and challenged my personal philosophy, I’ve been able to make it rock solid and I know I’m on the right path. 

2. Social Perks

Reading a book a week has been so good for me socially, which has been a completely unexpected benefit. Always having a new book on the go is an easy conversation starter, and a great way to get to know people. When they tell you about their favourite books, if it seems interesting, you can slot it into your list. Books have also been a great thing for me to carry and do when I’m waiting, usually for medical appointments, because they require a level of focus that is a great grounding technique for me. 

As terrible as this is, I’ve also found there have been some “social perks” to being a book reader, rather than a phone scroller. I am absolutely not suggesting this should be your motive for reading more, but it’s worth considering the difference in impression you make by being a “book reader” rather than a “phone scroller” when you’re waiting for things. I know that one of the things that made an impression in my last job interview was that I was happy to sit and wait for my interviewer, and when they came out to meet me, I was reading The Undoing Project  by Michael Lewis. The fact that I was sitting there reading, and not mindlessly scrolling, made them think twice about me. 

3. There are emotional benefits to finishing things

This has been a huge benefit for me. Every week that I read a book, I finish something that I intended to do. I believe that actively finishing something is one of the best things that I can do for my mental health. I know that I feel best when I am achieving things, and can cross things off a list of accomplishments. Reading a book every week means I am achieving something positive, intellectually motivating and fulfilling every single week, no matter how I am feeling otherwise. 

4. It makes me happier than the alternatives

If I wasn’t reading, what would I be doing? That’s a question that I often ask myself. For me, reading falls into the category of “passive entertainment” – it’s something that I’m doing for fun and pleasure that doesn’t require the physical energy of completing a project or doing something active. The other things I do that I would consider passive entertainment would primarily be browsing the internet or watching content on YouTube or Netflix. While these aren’t inherently bad things to do, I am not as happy after doing them as I would be reading a good book.

I think movies and TV or video content in general can be a great thing, but for me, they are instantly gratuitous, don’t allow me to build up valuable skills, and are best treated like “junk food”- fine in moderation. By adding reading to my life instead of these activities, I feel happier, less bogged down, and rejuvenated. 

5. I’m motivated to preserve my neurological capacity 

This is the sad one. I have quite a few conditions that cause neurological issues, and because they’re rare, caused by a combination of a few conditions and every brain is unique, there’s no roadmap to tell me what to look forward to. It’s a somewhat scary future that my optimism prevents me from thinking about too much. 

Therefore, it’s my job to work to maintain my neurological capacity as much as I can, for as long as I can. Books feed my brain, and the more I can keep that up, the better I will hopefully be in the long run. 

Here are the main ways that I’m able to achieve an average of a book a week, over such a long period of time:

• I use audiobooks liberally

Yes, audiobooks are a form of reading, and are fantastic. I use the free app Librivox to access tons of free audiobooks in the public domain. When I had my office job, I used to listen to them in my car for ten minutes every morning. It was amazing how many books I got through this way. 

• I pick my pace

If I’ve got a particularly long or difficult book, I take more than a week to read it. I’m the one picking the pace, and I have the freedom to make it accessible. 

• I plan the books I want to read

A high rate of reading is difficult to achieve without a plan. I like to make a list of twelve books I intend to read each season, and then work from that list. 

• I don’t stress about reading the “right” books

I alternate between easy and difficult books fiction and non-fiction, and different genres. The goal for me is just to read more books, not to read the world’s finest or most pretentious literature. I never worry that I’m reading the “wrong” books. 

• I follow my interest chain 

I try to link books together to follow a chain of interest. For example, I’ve been interested in reading The Ringing Cedars of Russia series, which has led me to read a Russian cookbook, The Communist Manifesto, Murder on the Orient Express, as well as watching the movie of that, and a documentary about the Russian revolution. By linking together texts and interests with recipes, activities and films, I can keep my interest high and stay motivated

Happy Reading!

Carly 

Intensity and Focus

Let’s Get This Going!

But first, a plant update: My baby indoor basil sprouts are still growing well, and most of my other seed trays have sprouted as well. I’m slightly concerned about my tomatoes, which seem to be lagging a bit, so hopefully they will catch up. 

I’d like to articulate a struggle I’m having, and share my action plan of how I’m going to attempt to overcome this. The crux of the issue is: I have so many hopes and goals, and have a definite vision of what my dream life looks like, but am struggling so hard to feel like things are moving forward and that I’m making any type of progress. I know that I am in fact moving forward, but it feels absolutely glacial. And that speed is soul crushing. 

Here’s the way I’m looking at this: my progress to my dream life, with all the good things – homesteading, farming, living more naturally and independently in my own unique way, is a snowball. And I just need to put the energy in to get the snowball rolling, and it will pick up more and more speed, and just keep rolling. So let’s get the good vibes rolling!!!!

I believe, through my studying of the Bible, the Law of Attraction, and seeing others realize their dreams, there are two things I need to optimize to start that happiness snowball rolling and put the energy in are: 

Intensity and Focus

The more intense and more focused I am, the faster this is going to go. People who get what they want have a powerful, focused, intensity on their definite chief aim. Therefore, my new question has to become: how do I build more intensity and focus on what I really want? Here are the ways I’m working on intensity and focus:

1. All positive vibes

I believe that changing my energy levels and elevating my vibes is one of the best things that I can do to activate change. To that end, I’m committing to reduce and cut anything that I feel is lowering this in me. I want positive input, all the time! Here’s to more inspirational audiobooks, and doing things that make me truly happy, just for the joy of it. The other part of this is that I have to actively work to reduce the things in my life that bring in stress, unhappiness, or discomfort. This means I need to deprioritize the emotional weight I’m giving my day job, my health situation, and my current circumstances. 

2. Rhythm replaces strength

I know I need to be more devoted to prayer, meditation and mindfulness. I’m quickly discovering this is the only way for me to stay consistently focused and on track. To that measure, I need to have a consistent rhythm and routine for doing these things, otherwise they get lost. The more solid of a routine I have, the easier it is to pull off when I don’t feel like it. 

3. Prioritize visual changes

I need to see changes to know that they are happening, so I feel like for the next while, to build up that intensity and focus, I need to prioritize changes that I can easily see, every day. I’m starting to renovate my kitchen, but I know that I want to change some things with my wardrobe and appearance as well to make the me of today look like the me I dream about. I also want to create a vision board space, where I can have even more clear visuals of what I want to achieve. Which brings me to the next point…

4. Write it down

Much like the definite chief aim, I need to have my goals and plans written down, in a very clear way, that I can see often. Writing things down is a powerful shift from dream to goal, and the more articulate and accurate I can be with my writing, the better. 

5. Fall in love with numbers

I need to do some serious math and have numbers that I can focus on. Even if I need to revise the numbers in the future, I need to have an idea of what the goal is. FIRE number, farm budget, how much I need to make to support myself- these are all values I need to calculate and focus on now. 

6. Get aggressive with time

I do my best with focusing intensely in small blocks of time. When I have the energy to accomplish, I need to focus and get things done. I’m developing this capacity through W4YW, but am also prioritizing using my planner, digital calendar, and power hours and weekends to make significant progress to my goals.

I’m hoping that after I try a few of these shifts, I’ll be able to report more on how I’m moving towards my dreams!

Carly