Lazy Man and Money

What Would Your Ideal Work Be?

by 5 Comments

Last week I saw a Tweet that almost broke my mind:

(Due to my broken mind, please be gentle with me while you read this article.)

I’m so envious that Joe, from the awesome blog Retire By 40, knows what he’d like to be. A marine biologist is so specific. I actually live in hotbed of marine biology so it’s something I’ve talked about with my kids. (This is assuming that Pokemon trainer isn’t a valid career path.)

What would I want to do for work? I’m not sure, but I think Lloyd Dobler narrows it down for me:

“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”

Mr. 1500 took the idea and ran with it.

He went from pharmacy to computer programming in college. That connected with me because I loved programming computers since I was 8 or 9. I also was a pharmacy technician in college. I remember thinking, “Why would anyone want to spend their day looking at back of tablet labels?” I don’t know if I could come up with a career I disliked the idea of more. I’d get physically nauceous most of the time I went to work. It was that bad… but it paid really well.

I got my computer science degree and a few jobs after that. Unfortunately, somewhere around 20 years of programming was enough for me. I was fine if it was just programming computers, but I didn’t like the office politics. I also couldn’t deal with the business development stuff. I’d explain why something was a terrible idea, but I still had to do it.

When I left my last job, blogging filled the gap. Of course blogging is the best career ever… except it’s not. Do you know anyone who has blogged for 12 years on a single topic like personal finance? You get to the point where you run out of ideas and write articles like, “What would your ideal work be?” (Then your wife comes home and ask what you did today and the answer of “stare at my computer and hope that words come out” doesn’t sound so good. Not that this has ever happened to me.)

So what else is there? You can see what else I’m doing here. I do a lot of dog sitting as I often write about. That’s mostly great… except for when it’s raining (mud!) and there are just too many dogs that need sitting. Or worse, there was the time when one dog just freaked out and bit another dog. I suppose it’s good that it is rare enough to have happened only once in 3 years. Dog sitting doesn’t particularly pay well either.

The beauty of the question is that I don’t have to stick to what I’m doing. Almost everything that makes money is in play (sorry Pokemon training).

So here are my ideas on what I could potentially do:

Professional badminton player – My wife used to say that I should try out for the Olympics. I love the complement but I highly doubt I’m even the best badminton player on my own street… and there aren’t a lot of people who live on my street.

Football coach/writer – Sometimes I think this could actually be something I could do. Unfortunately football is so popular that the competition for almost any job in the area is extreme. Also, it seems like 90% of the gigs are just trolling Patriots fans to try to get website clicks.

Guitar musician – The combination of my baby hands and having forgot the one chord I knew 13 years ago doesn’t bode well for this.

Magikarp – I’m making sure you are paying attention.

Teaching children computer programming using toys – I saved the most serious one for the end. It’s so specific that you can tell I’m really interested in it, right? There’s only one problem, I don’t know if I have the patience to deal with children over the long term. My kids stress me out sometimes, but other times teaching them something new is one of the experiences I’ve ever had.

At the end of the day, I think Lloyd summed it up best:

I can’t figure it all out tonight, sir, so I’m just gonna hang with your daughter.

2008 Goals: A Look Back

by 9 Comments

Yesterday I got a little ahead of myself as I looked at my blogging goals for 2009. I should have realized that with the dwindle hours of 2008, I should be looking back at my goals for 2008, and adjusting from there. I haven’t looked at them in a little while – a really bad sign. If I had to guess, Clubber Lang would hit it on nose with his famous line of, “My prediction?… Pain!”

My 2008 goals were complex. I had just left my full-time job in October of 2007 and was unsure if I was going to take another one, or go all out with the idea of earning online income. As fate would have it, I ended up doing a little bit of both. I didn’t have a full-time job all year, but I did consult at an hourly wage. This consulting slowed down some of the gains I might have had if I went for all-out online income. At the same time, I definitely spent major hours on earning online income. I’m going to use my goals as if I was going all-out for online income – I had enough time even after my consulting to hit those goals.

Goals for 2008

Financial Goals
Net WorthAlternative Income
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
$250,000$143,176$5,000/mo.$2,235/mo.
Career Goals
Software DevelopmentBusiness Skills
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
500 hours0 hours2 books each category2 books total
Health
WeightBody Fat
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
175 lbs.176 lbs.17% body fat19.15% body fat
Websites
Lazy Man and MoneyLazy Man and Health
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
55,000 mo. visitors/4,000 subscribers~40,000/~310020,000/1,000~7,000/300

Reviewing the Goals

  • Net Worth – I have to give myself a D- on this one. Why not an F when I was so far off? It’s simply that my net worth is largely tied to real estate that I own and stocks that I have invested in for retirement. When 70% of your portfolio loses some 30% of it’s value – it’s going to be pain. I couldn’t have done too much differently other than moving out of stocks to something safer, but I don’t believe in timing the market. For the real estate, I could have sold, but I would have locked in big losses. I’ll continue to break even on a cash flow basis by renting it out and in a short 26 more years, own it outright ;-). A better goal would have been the income which brings us to…
  • Alternative Income – I thought I’d see a lot more growth the income growth my websites. I have to admit that I didn’t do the best to monetize my sites, which is something that I’ve mentioned in the past. The landscape of monetizing websites has changed dramatically in the last year – some things for the better and some for the worse. For that reason, I would probably give myself a D+. I missed my targets by a lot, but with consulting (which is not alternative income), I probably came close.
  • Software Development – I completely underestimated my lack of desire to ever write software programs again. I used to enjoy the challenge and felt great about solving problems, now I just want the problem solved, so that I can move on to the next thing/goal on my list.
  • Business Skills – I was going to personal MBA, but found that almost none of the books were in my local library. If they were carried at all, they were all checked out far in advance. I got a couple via Paperback Swap, but it took so long to get that I lost interest. Plus I had a pile of personal finance books that people sent me to read. I think I did well by reading a few Malcolm Gladwell books (of which I still need to write reviews for). On the flip side, doing the consulting gave me some hands-on business skill experience.
  • Health – My wife isn’t going to believe it, but I’m actually in a little better shape this year using my two metrics. The Wii Fit taunted me last night saying that my BMI was just barely in the “overweight” category. While I didn’t reach my health goals, I feel that I had a pretty good exercise regimen for much of the year. It feel apart with a long trip to Australia, but I’ve since joined a gym and I’ve seen progress over the last month.
  • Website traffic – I actually passed the 55,000 for Lazy Man and Money a few times. I also got to around the 18,000 for Lazy Man and Health a couple of times. I didn’t average those numbers, nor did I finish the year hitting those numbers. (I find December a tough month for Internet traffic with the holidays and people traveling.)

Conclusion: Jimmy Fallon may say that my progress over the last year had something in common with Derek Jeter… I “suck in three very specific ways: so hard, so bad, and wicked bad.” I can explain away a lot of the problems that I had, but it doesn’t make it better. Perhaps my goal setting was poor to begin with. Perhaps, I should have chosen shorter milestones such as a quarter. In that scenario, I would have at least realized that I wasn’t likely to do any software development. There would have also been times when I might have reached my health and website traffic goals. I may have also realized that setting a net worth is extremely difficult when your assets can fluctuate wildly on factors that you can’t control.

These are all lessons I have learned for when I make my 2009 goals