Time to Buckle Down and Get Back to Work

I started writing this a couple of days ago, but between being sick and the annual Fincon conference I didn’t get it together to post. Hopefully, I’ll be better by next week and can live up the title.

I recently wrote about my wife practicing early retirement. We went straight from that to a family vacation/road trip to NYC and Hershey, PA. It’s our attempt to squeeze all the fun we can.

The sad part is that no matter how much we do, I can’t help focusing on the things we didn’t do. We didn’t get to Thomas Land this year. We didn’t get to the local “Fools’ Rules” regatta. The event requires entrants to build a vessel out of non-marine items in two hours, and sail it to complete the course. It sounds so awesome, but the timing has never worked out for us. I bought baseball gloves for the kids and haven’t gotten in a single game of catch.

I know I shouldn’t focus on the things that we didn’t do. I’m probably breaking a cardinal rule of blogging by not depicting everything in the most optimistic way. My optimistic and pessimistic sides are often at war with each other. In this case, I can keep my pessimistic side in check by going back to my pictures of the summer and all the things we did do. That’s when I start to realize that we did 80-90% of what we wanted and the other 10-20% were outliers.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been spending, spending, and spending some more. We don’t budget, but instead focus our spending mindfully. It has always worked well for us in the past. However, it seems that when you aren’t mindful it doesn’t work. Who knew ;-)?

It’s not like I bought a jet ski, or a Patriots’ jet ski, or a Patriots’ jet ski autographed by Tom Brady. My wife hasn’t done the Broadway equivalent of that (which I suppose would involve Lin-Manuel Miranda), either. It’s been a lot of small things, mostly restaurants lunches and dinners.

However, it’s time to heed the immortal words of Daniel Tiger, “That was fun but now it’s done.”

It feels like a rubber band snapping back after you stretched it too far. The kids are back to school tomorrow. The personal finance blogger conference (FinCon) is tomorrow. I literally hug the kids and send them off, and then drive straight to the airport for D.C. I haven’t even packed yet.

I know some friends who travel often and it’s easy for them. I rarely travel. I am extremely anxious about everything. Did I forget [X] or [Y]? I always make sure that I have phone chargers. That calms me.

In any event, it’s time to focus on being productive outside of “family fun” activities. I have a list of more than 50 blog posts that I want to write. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve written everything that can be written about personal finance in 13+ years. However, there’s always more to write. In my case, I can rewrite my old articles 4 or 5 times until they become coherent – LOL.

I’ve got a lot of other non-blogging work to do. My fantastic tenants of 5 years bought their dream home. Another tenant has bounced yet another check (she’s been good at recovering, but it is concerning.) I’m 99% of the way into a new business partnership. I will write more about that in the future, but since they read the blog, I’ll have to run all the language by them first. It is very, very boring stuff, so even though I’ll be vague, you wouldn’t want the details anyway… trust me.

I’ll be back from FinCon around the 9th. I’ll have much deeper posts about personal finance. The first will likely be a monthly alternative income report for August. These have been a little formulaic in the past, but it will be interesting to see how extreme spending and vacation (less blogging and no dog sitting), work together. It sounds like a disaster, but I think our focus on personal finance will pay off.