Journey to FI - November Update

Continuing on with my theme of monthly FI updates, here is November.

Income:  Income maintains steady from our day jobs this month, but we get a nice bump due to getting our newest rental filled.  We got a tenant in and they are paying $975/month.  Being that the house is paid off, I consider about $800 of it profit.  The $175/month is enough to cover taxes and insurance for the year.  I will save the $800 for a couple months for the emergency fund.

Expenses:  Again, spending for the month was high due to our rental renovation project.  Our total for the month was almost $9,400.

Remaining Money:  Still putting all remaining income toward our debt pay down.  I have gotten rid of all the outstanding credit card debt.  Now only my wife's care payment remains.

Debt:  Another month of good progress reducing our outstanding debt down another $5,000 this month.  As I mentioned above, all outstanding credit card debt has been eliminated so now only the car payment and our monthly expenses remain.  I actually added to our cash savings this month.

Savings:  Since I contributed to our savings for this month I will add this category.  For the month we accumulated a modest $2,000 or so in cash savings.  Our retirement investments are separate and are contributed every pay period.

Summary:  Another successful month in the march toward eliminating our non mortgage debt.  I will work hard to keep it this way.  I think I may just keep the minimum payment schedule on the car as it is on a 1.49% loan and I can get more return on my money if I do other things with it.  We will see.

Goals for the Coming Months:  My next goal will be to relax and accumulate some cash for a while.  It has been a stressful year working on 2 rentals so I need a break.  I also need to save up and decide what I want to do next.  I would like to move to our dream home in the next year or so.  I think I will push to set us up to do that.

I hope you enjoyed this update.  

Journey to FI - October Update

It has been another long stretch between posts for me.  I guess that's what happens when we are busy around the holidays.

I did continue to update my monthly tracker so I do have all the data.

I will be posting a few quick updates for the missing months over the next few days.

Here is October's update.

Income:  Still maintain our consistent income from month to month for budgetary purposes.  Our income does fluctuate based on my wife's sales.  She is very successful so we always make more than I budget.

Expenses:  Spending for the month was high due to our rental renovation project.  Our total for the month was a tad over $12,000.  At some point I should dive in and separate our personal vs. business spending, but I am not at that point yet.

Remaining Money:  From my original post stating that we have $5,425 in remaining money, that is strictly from a budgetary standpoint.    That money is all spent at this point because of our rental renovation and debt pay down efforts.  Don't worry, we have our rainy day savings in case of any emergency need for cash, but for the time being, all extra cash is paying for property renovation costs.

Debt:  Our debt was reduced drastically due to the fact that one of my 0% interest offers was expiring so I pushed hard to pay it all down.  That was about $11,000 alone.  Between that and our monthly mortgage and car payments, we reduced our debt by about $13,000 from September to October.  This is a huge impact.

Summary:  After my first month of tracking these metrics outside of Mint.com, I find it exciting to see our net worth grow.  The debt pay down is the big reason for the swing.  Another factor that drove our net worth to increase was the increase in home values.  I am simply using the Zillow value which I believe can be 10-15% off, but it is still a reasonable indicator, to some extent.

Goals for the Coming Months:  Continuing on from last month's goals, I am still working to eliminate the non mortgage debt.  It has decreased significantly from last month, but there are still some expenses from the rental renovation to pay off.  I believe we will be done quickly.

I hope you enjoyed this update.  

Journey to FI - September Status

Building on my last post regarding my personal/Family journey to Financial Independence, I will jump back a couple of months to give a snapshot of our monthly progress.

This first status will be from September when I created a chart that I update monthly.  I will soon post the October and November updates as well.  After that, it will likely be updated around mid month as I try to do my update after I am paid on the 15th of each month.

Income:  We have a pretty consistent income from both myself and my wife.  Our income does fluctuate due to my wife being in sales.  For budgeting purposes I use a conservative amount for her income.  Within our budget, we generally try to use my income for bills and living, and my wife's for saving/investing.  In addition to our personal income, we had $4,100 of income from our 5 rental homes.

Expenses:  Expenses are an area that we really need to work on.  We have some pretty set expenses in terms of our mortgage and child care.  However, we do overspend in other areas, which we are trying to focus more on sticking to our budget.  Our rental expenses for the month were $2,531 for 4 mortgages and our monthly repair reserves that we set aside.

Remaining Money:  We had a remaining "profit" for the month of $5,425.  This money was already allotted as payment for the money we were incurring on renovating the rental property we were working on throughout the summer.

Debt:  In September we had a total of $287,448 in overall debt which includes a mortgage for our personal home and 3 rentals, about $18k of credit card debt, and $3,900 on my wife's car.  As of the creation of my monthly status for September, my goal at that time was to eliminate all of the non mortgage debt by January 1, 2017.  An important point to note is that all of the credit card debt was either just the accrual of our monthly personal expenses or costs associated with rental renovation, all of which are paid in full each month. Any other credit card debt were previous costs of a rental remodel that were on a 0% credit card.  No interest was being paid.

Summary:  This was the first month that I put together this tracking document to give myself a 1 page summary of our financial snapshot.  I do include on my sheet our cash and other assets, but I do not plan to share that.  We are relatively low on cash due to the purchase and renovation of 2 properties since March 2016.

Goals for the Coming Months:  My top priority in the next couple monthly updates will be to eliminate all of our non mortgage debt.  As I alluded to in the debt section, we have a significant amount of credit card debt that is on 0% interest cards.  These 2 card offers expire in October and November so all extra income, and perhaps some savings will be thrown at that in order to avoid any interest.

All of these efforts are to build toward my long term goal of Early Retirement.  My absolute end date is my 40th birthday, but I believe we can achieve that much sooner.  I hope.  I will be 33 in 2 months from today.

I hope any readers enjoy this little snapshot into our lives.  I also hope this may inspire you to begin looking at your own finances and get you on track to achieve your goals.

Good luck.

My Personal Journey to Financial Independence - The Genesis

For much of my life I had the mentality of a person who's life journey outlook entailed the standard goal of getting a comfortable career, working my way up over time, then hopefully being able to retire in good enough health to enjoy it.  My plan included having a wife and kids, living in a comfortable home and enjoying vacations and spending time with loved ones.  I did not necessarily work overly hard in school, but did well enough to go to a good college.  While in college I began a co-op program, which later turned into a full time job.  Once I graduated, I swore that I was done with school forever as it had taken my 7+ years to get my bachelors due to doing school part time while working full time.  However, I soon realized that to get the high paying career I wanted, a Masters degree would be extremely helpful.  So, I was enrolled a short time after that.  I did actually work hard for the Masters and completed the degree in a year and a half.  This immediately paid dividends as I was promoted to a better position and given a roughly 15% raise as soon as I completed the degree.  Fast forward another year, and I was offered a job with another company for a 30% pay increase and better opportunity.  That was too much of an increase to pass up at that point in my career so I took it.  Jump ahead another 2+ years and here we are today.  In the last 3 years I have gotten married, moved to a different city not far from my hometown, have a daughter, and accumulated 5 rental properties.

The strange thing is that in the past few years I have become increasingly aware of the opportunities to not continue with the "standard" life journey of work till your sixties and retire.  I do not mean to just retire a couple years early in my mid fifties.  I am talking about drastically different lifestyles that lead you to being able to retire in your Thirties or younger.

I believe this came about when a friend referred me to a couple of sites where the blogger talks mainly about Financial Independence and Early Retirement.  My first exposure to such concepts came from reading Financial Samurai.  Initially I was just amazed by some of the stories and concepts that he discussed.  Eventually I began to look at my own situation in his posts.  He would look at things such as target net worth based on your age and alternative sources of income, normally referred to as your Side Hustle.  

Sam's articles inspired me to realize that there is MUCH more to life than grinding away in a cubicle to provide greater gains for someone beside myself.  I certainly was not in a place to quit my job to focus my efforts elsewhere, but I needed to figure out what my side hustle would be.  

If you have ever or decide to read Financial Samurai, you will see that Sam is a big fan of rental properties as a source of Passive Income.  The goal of Passive Income is just as it sounds.  Income that is generated by minimal effort.  Basically, making your financial investment work for you.

Being that I 1. Already owned a house and my then Fiance also owned one, and 2. Lived in one of the most depressed Real Estate markets in the country Metro Detroit, I thought this was an opportunity I should take advantage of.  On the other hand, I was also going to try it out of necessity as my house was severely underwater at the time due to a 2007 purchase and the real estate collapse that followed.  I would not have been able to sell and was considering speaking to an attorney about my short sale or foreclosure options.  But I decided to go for it.  I am reasonably handy and can fix just about anything, so I did some renovations and rented my house for about a $200/month profit.

And that was the first real step in my journey toward my future goal of Financial Independence and Early Retirement.  In the 2+ years since, my wife and I have accumulated 4 more homes which provide us a monthly profit of $2400/month as of this post.  I plan to get into more details on the properties in another future post.

All of this leads me to state my goal.  Ultimately Financial Independence and Early Retirement for myself and my wife.  I have built out some other shorter term goals that will lead us to that point, hopefully sooner than my expectations.

Here is my timeline of goals:

7 Years(Age 40) - Financial Independence and Early Retirement for my wife and I. This will be achieved when our passive income gets to approximately $10,000/month.  I believe this metric will change over time as we improve our budgeting and spending habits, but as of today, this is what I feel comfortable with.

2+ Years(Age 35) - Net worth of $1,000,000 combined.  This goal should be easily attainable due to our household combined income being roughly $250k/year including our rental income.  Most of this is attributed to my wife's high salary and great stock option and 401k that she has taken advantage of over the last 8 years with her company.  Her income allows us to invest in our rental properties.  A large part of this plan is dependent upon her continuing to work.  We may have another child within the next 2 years so that may alter things.

1 year - I have a goal of adding at least 1 more rental property per year as a way to increase passive income.  This will be dependent upon the real estate market though.  If the market is still up, I may look into alternative investment options.

This is a very rough outline of my plan. A plan that is always being tweaked and modified due to the new things I learn and other ideas I come up with.

I plan to begin a new series of posts to update the status of my goals and a snapshot of where we are in our progress.

Stay Tuned.

And as always, I appreciate any feedback.

Living With a Spending Problem

Today as I was reading through some of the financial articles that I like to browse, I came across one that I think summarizes most peoples financial issues.  I should clarify that a bit.  The article doesn't really summarize that, the article explains a phrase that I feel summarizes most people's financial woes.  Here is the article.

"They don't have an income problem, they have a spending problem."

I assume I got this from one of the financial writers that I enjoy reading, but I recall a conversation I was having a few years ago and that was my comment on the topic.  If you consider your own finances or just about anyone else, most would have out of control spending in some form or fashion.

Most people simply live their life and spend what they make.  Saving is not the priority it should be. Spending is what its all about.  We have a problem with instant gratification and cannot put off having things for a later time.

The interesting part of the article is that its focus is on high income individuals who still live paycheck to paycheck.  The assumption should be that the more you make, the more stability you should have, but that does not seem to be the case.  Many people in that category probably assume that their high income will have them set for life.  That is the thing about emergencies.  No one ever sees them coming.

These issues can all be addressed simply by following the simple budgeting process I laid out in my previous post. Check it out Here!

It all comes down for having a plan for your money and being disciplined in sticking to your budget.  Once you get some momentum, it can be very exciting to see your balances grow and your debt disappear.

Good Luck.

Budgeting - The first step to financial success

If you are anything like me or most Americans, it is highly likely that you have some hopes and dreams of striking it rich and not getting up to go to the office the next day.  I think we all would love the opportunity to spend our time doing anything besides our normal day job.  We all have passions, hobbies, and obligations that we would rather be doing.

In reality, many people are able to spend their days doing all those other activities that they would rather be doing.  The difference is that they got there through hard work and discipline rather than having some large inheritance or winnings.  It was with a goal and a plan that they were able to live the life that they really wanted.  The life of Financial Independence.  The plan that they used to get there is called their BUDGET.

Anyone who has ever read any personal finance book, blog, website, or article knows that there are a million different "experts" on the subject of personal finance and budgeting.With each of those experts comes their own version of the simple method of understanding and planning your income and spending.  Most follow the same rough path to get to the same place with your money.  That place is to spend less than you earn each week, month, and year.

You may think that I will try to provide some new ideas on how to budget and get you where you need to be, which is to have a surplus of cash.  I am not going to do that.  I want to try to simplify the principles of budgeting to make it a less daunting task.  I will also share some of the difficulties that I run into that I am sure others can relate to.

Step 1:  Understand The Income Flow
The first step in planning how you will spend your money for a set period of time is to fully understand how much and how often you will have money coming in.  It is important to focus on the Net Income for the purposes of budgeting.  Net income is the amount you actually bring home to spend.  Gross income includes all the money taken out for taxes, insurance, 401k deductions, etc.  If you work a regular number hours per week you should be able to expect to receive almost exactly the same pay every pay period.  This allows us to understand how much money is available to live on.
Personal Application: 
For me this is the easiest aspect.  While there are two incomes in our household, we primarily live off my income and my wife's is saved and invested.  If that was not the case and we used her money for monthly expenses, being able to understand our income could be very difficult.  That is because my wife is in sales and her income can vary by several thousand dollars per month, depending on her success.

Step 2: Understanding Spending Habits
Once we know how much money we have available to live on, we need to study where we normally spend it.  There are several online tools available that allow you to see where you have been spending your money.  This can also be done by reviewing your bank statements.

The most important part of this is to identify the unavoidable expenses, that typically are pretty consistent.  Items such as mortgage, car payment, gas, groceries, child care are all categories we should know what we spend each month.  Other categories such as vacations, dining out, and entertainment are things that if not planned, can fluctuate drastically.
Personal Application:
In our house this is probably one of the more difficult tasks.  We fully understand our regular monthly expenses such as mortgage and car payments, etc.  The confusion for us comes with our real estate investing business.  Occasionally we will need to put some of our personal money towards a project for our business, and this can skew our spending.

Step 3: Plan your spending for each category
Once you fully understand where your money is going, you need to allot that portion of your income to each category.  One category that most people forget, but is probably the most important, would be savings.  Most personal finance experts follow the rule that you need 3-6 months of expenses in savings and readily available.  I think the higher end would be perfect to avoid any big emergencies.

There are many methods of generating your savings but the best ideas in my opinion are the idea to pay yourself first and make it automated.  If you make yourself and your savings the top priority when it comes to allocating your cash, you will be in good shape.  The ability to automate savings also makes it so much easier simply because of the fact that if you do not see it, then you will forget you even have it until the day comes that you need it.  This really allows you to build your account quickly.

Once you have your 3-6 months of savings accumulated, I would suggest making an automated investment account to help realize the positive effect of investing in mutual funds.  That is a topic for a later date.
Personal Application:
For our family we allocate our spending in a pretty simple fashion.  All monthly payments come out of a joint account.  All personal spending comes from our own separate accounts.  We pay our utilities and insurance bills each monthly automatically using 1 credit card which gets paid in full automatically.  We also have a credit card used for our groceries and other household expenses.  These are all paid from the joint account.

Step 4: Stick to the Plan
At this point you should be living by your written budget.  Over the first few months you will probably have to tweak and adjust your budget as you learn more about your spending.  That is just fine tuning.  Unless you have an increase in income or a change in your expenses, there should not be any large changes.

Part of sticking to the plan is being disciplined to not blow the budget.  Do not splurge if you do not have the money.  Learn to say NO.  It is the best way to stick to your budget.  A couple other methods I like to apply to spending would be to evaluate if the purchase is a want vs. a need.  I also like to analyze a purchase by thinking of how many hours I spend working to make that purchase.
Personal Application:
Our plan seems to constantly be evolving and changing due to new ideas and opportunities that we decide to take advantage of.  The budget should be looked at as a living document that is always tweaking.

Step 5:  Enjoy Life
If you can follow these steps to create and follow a monthly budget, I think you will 100% enjoy life more.  Knowing where your money goes and how much is available to you will absolutely simplify your life and decrease your stress.  You should no longer have to worry about money.

In addition to enjoying life, you should be able to accumulate wealth pretty quickly which will allow you added benefits later in life.
Personal Application:
We definitely enjoy our life, but its always work before play.  The plan is to work hard now so we can both retire around 40.

A few added topics that can be considered in a budgeting discussion are:
Cash vs. Credit Card spending:  This is a highly debatable topic that everyone seems to see differently.  I think the most important thing is that if you use credit, pay it all off every month.  I believe that the answer to this topic is based on each individuals income and maturity level.  If you can successfully manage your budget using cash for 6 months or longer, then I would say you should incorporate a rewards credit card that is used to auto pay regular utilities and gas bills.  As long as its all paid off each month.  Do not use credit as your emergency fund.
Reducing Expenses: I personally feel that once you have your budget in place and are working hard to stick to it, it is a good idea to look for areas we can reduce spending.  This is a good chance to find things that we can analyze as a want vs. need.  I personally have set a goal for 2016 to reduce our household monthly spending by 20%.  To this point I have gotten rid of a storage unit and changed my cell phone service and have saved $150 per month.  This is roughly 8% reduction, but I still have time this year to find more savings.

That will be all for now.  I hope any readers will enjoy this quick article on budgeting and hopefully it will help you get where you want to go financially.

Book Review - Bigger Leaner Stronger by Michael Matthews

If you could not tell by the title, this book is all about fitness.  In the introduction the author Michael Matthews gives a good bit of background into is journey to becoming a successful fitness trainer, writer, and blogger.  In many ways I feel like I had a very similar journey, though the fitness journey is never complete.  In the book he details his many years of working out moving from the new popular program or new fad diet, only to see minimal results.  After years on that path he decided to ditch what was popular and find out the science behind fitness.

Exercise

Most people believe that exercising is the way to get fit.  After reading the book I have learned that it is merely a part of getting fit, and possibly a smaller part than we may think.  The plan that is laid out in this book is to teach you how to burn fat and build lean muscle.  This is the key to achieving the "Spartan Warrior" physique that most men strive for.  In terms of exercising to achieve that goal, Mr. Matthews presents a plan that is rather simplistic yet effective.  The main goal of the program is to progressively overload your muscles by lifting at a lower rep count while using roughly 85% of your max for each particular lift, after you have properly warmed up.  In terms of what lifts to be done the focus should be on 4 compound lifts.  Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift, and Overhead Press.  These should be done in the 4-6 rep range and if 6 reps are achieved, weight is added for the next set.

The book goes into detail on training frequency and rest periods as well.  It teaches you how to lay out a program for yourself that you feel may be most appropriate and also gives a few templates based on a 3, 4, or 5 day training schedule.  One aspect that I know I will be using is the rest periods that are explained.  When lifting at such a high ratio of your max, more rest is required.  In the book he explains that many studies have shown that rest periods of 3-4 minutes are optimal for weight lifting programs.

Diet

As I mentioned that exercise is a part of the fitness equation, diet is a much larger piece of the equation.  There is a great deal of detail on the science of how food effects your body and fitness levels included in the book.  The science behind weight loss breaks down to a simple equation of energy in - energy out.  If you bring in more energy(food) than you expend in a given period of time, you will gain weight.  To fully understand how to manipulate this equation you must understand how much energy you expend in a day, or your Basal Metabolic Rate.  He explains how to figure this out along with many other aspects of healthy eating to lose, gain, or maintain your weight.

A huge portion of the fitness calculation is the macro nutrients that you get through food and supplementation.  The macro nutrients are Fats, Carbohydrates, and Protein.  There is great info in the book on how you should plan your macro nutrient intake in order to achieve your goals.

Science

To me the thing that makes this book different from many other books and articles that I have written is that Mr. Matthews makes it a goal of the book to be sure that the reader understands exactly how anything you put into your body works and effects your body as it relates to eating for fitness.  The amount of detail is extremely helpful to change the way a reader may think about foods or supplements.  I think this is the most interesting aspect of the book.

Final Opinion

I think this book is an extremely informative guide to how to modify your life and fitness routine to achieve a healthier lifestyle or fitness goal.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who feels they have hit a wall in their training or are just beginning their journey.

I personally will be implementing the lifting methods and routines that were laid out in the book as that is how I worked out years ago when I was in my best shape.  In recent years I have gotten away from that and I do not feel or see any progress.  I think with using these methods and putting a big effort into increasing my protein intake to approximately 200g per day will help me to achieve my fitness goals of 300lb bench press, 350lb squat, and 400lb deadlift.

You can visit www.muscleforlife.com to learn more about the author and his writings.

I hope you enjoyed my feedback on the book.  I tried to keep it brief but detailed enough to provide some background.  I appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,

Travis

Life advice - Chapter 1- Goals

Id like to begin a series of posts that I would aim toward a target audience of young people.  I think most of these pieces of advice that I will write about are generated from my thoughts of things I wish I knew as a teen or young adult.  This info covers a wide variety of topics that I think would be helpful to most young people, or even people who are getting a late start on the path to success.  These will all apply to anyone, but my goal is for young people to learn from my experiences and get a bit of a jump start to their future dreams.

The first topic of advice I want to dive into is setting Goals.  In my opinion, goal setting is the beginning of all of our successes and failures.  If we do not have a target, then we are just wandering aimlessly through life.

The Goal
The goal can be anything.  Most people should and do have many goals.  Perhaps that is an inaccurate statement.  Most people have many Dreams.  A dream only becomes a goal when you put a plan in place to achieve it.  The goals can cover any variety of topics.  I personally have a significant list.  My list of goals cover financial goals, fitness goals, relationship goals and several other areas as well.

Goals can be big or small.  In most instances starting with a small goal is a good thing.  This allows you to feel the emotion of success and often will drive you to bigger and better goals.  I think a good goal is one that you view as challenging yet still attainable.

The goal should be quantifiable and have a timeline for achievement.  For example, saying you want to lose 15 lbs can be a goal.  But when you say I want to lose 15 lbs in 8 weeks you change the goal to have an expected result by a deadline.  You have a point in time that dictates your success or failure.  This also adds to the goal by making it more challenging.  It places pressure on you to focus on how to achieve the goal.

The Plan
As I said earlier, many people have dreams but it only becomes a goal when you have a plan.  Planning is the key to success in just about anything.  I believe the saying goes "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."  That is very true.  If you have not put any effort into visualizing how you will reach your goal, then you will be wandering aimlessly.  Maybe not totally, because you have an idea of what you would like to achieve, but you may wander off the correct path at some point.

The plan can also help to make the goal more attainable by setting milestones along the way to the ultimate goal.  As I said before, a smaller goal is more attainable and can help you build momentum toward the final destination.

Adversity
Along the way you are bound to run into some sort of adversity.  The key to overcoming that is to realize and accept what adversity is.  In most cases, it is something that is beyond our control.  Sometimes that fact can make it even more difficult to accept because it feels like outside forces are working against us.  The truth is, they are.  Life is always throwing us curve balls.  We must learn to accept those difficulties and focus on a solution that will minimize the impact on your end goal.

Achievement
Achievement is when you finally reach the end of the plan with success.  If you followed the plan with discipline there is a high probability of success.  At this point you will have spent a good amount of time planning your goal out, tracking your progress, dealing with adversity, and enjoying the small victories along the way.  The process will often feel like a roller coaster in that there are many ups and downs on the path to success.  The progress and achievement of your milestone goals will help keep you committed and driven to reach the final result.

Keys to Success
1. Discipline.  You must be disciplined to follow your plan.  This means you will have to sacrifice some things in order to achieve your goal.  Often it is a good time, friends, family, or many other opportunities that we must forgo in order to achieve our goals.
2. Focus.  This goes right along with discipline.  You must maintain focus on your goal in order to reach it.  If you have too many other distractions going on, then you need to analyze what is important and realign your priorities.
3. Patience.  Too often people fail at goals because they aren't willing or able to be patient to get there.  I personally fall into this trap.  I often find myself altering a good plan in ways that I think will expedite my achievement of the goal.  Often, this will set you back in some form or fashion.  Part of this goes to trusting that your original plan is a good plan to reach success.  One thing to remember is that success is a marathon, not a sprint.

Additional tips to help reach goals
1. Write your goals down. Physically writing it will help it become more real to you.
2. Tell close friends and family what your goals are. They can help encourage you as well as the fact that you will be motivated by not wanting to be seen as a failure.
3. Set aside time each week or month to evaluate your progress.  Maintain a progress sheet to detail how you are as a "plan vs. actual" tracker.
4. Milestones.  Break the goal down into milestones to help make it more attainable.  As I said before these small victories will motivate you for the long haul.

Thanks for reading and I hope this can help you achieve success in all aspects of your life.

I appreciate feedback.

My return

          So it has been a long time since I have written anything here.  I really want to get back to it and make it a regular habit.  I think my idea when I originally started this blog of posting my thoughts on how individuals can improve their situation in life is a good one.  Sure there are plenty of others like this out there, but if someone reads what I have posted and it helps impact their life, then I have achieved my goal.

          Speaking of goals, that is one of the topics I plan to delve into in a later post.  While I have not been posting anything here for about 5 months, I have been keeping a list of ideas for topics to write about.  Goal Setting is high on my list.  I think it is a critical part of life and anyone successful would tell you the same.

          One of my goals that I have written down is related to this site.  As I said before I want posting here to become a regular habit.  So, my goal in relation to that would be to post at least 1 time per week.  I think that is frequently enough to keep me active, but also allows me a decent amount of time to develop some of my ideas and write them out.

          So if anyone actually reads this, welcome.  I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say and can apply it to some aspect of your life.

Taking advantage of high interest savings

Earlier this week I was reading my regular financial blogs and websites and thinking about the different ways that those articles can be applied to my life.  One topic that was touched on was the interest rate on savings.  This is probably an often overlooked area for many people because, lets face it, most banks basically give you nothing.  Add to the fact there is such a low national rate of savings and the interest rate is probably not a big factor for most people.  However, I am trying to find whatever means necessary to grow my net-worth, even on my emergency fund and general savings that just sits there.

I admit that we do have more cash on hand than most investment advisers would say we need, but I would like to move in the next year or so, so I am saving a lot.  So this money that we have is our emergency fund and a general savings which would total probably close to 10 months of must have expenses.  I should really know exactly what our expenses are, but I have not calculated the total lately since some significant life and financial changes.

So, once I got the idea that there was a better option out there, I had to begin my research.  We all know where that leads.  After a good old Google search for high interest savings, there was a multitude of good information.  Low and behold, one of the top suggestions was an article on one of my regularly read sites, The Simple Dollar had an article about their best savings accounts of 2015.  I thought it was a well written article that gave pretty solid info about the various providers.  It included info regarding the interest rate offered, minimum balances, fees, and any other aspects that set the provider apart from the pack.  Often times I see the interest rate fluctuates slightly based on the added options that they offer.  Less options usually means higher rate.  Translation, the more options means it costs the provider more.

After reviewing the article I decided to visit a few of the individual sites and see for myself what I liked about it.  

Capital One 360: This was the first site I visited.  They offered a rate of .75% which was the lowest of the options I looked into.  They also offered a tiered reward based on the amount of your initial deposit.  The bonus started with deposits of $5000 and reached the highest tier at $50,000.  The actual bonus was from $50 to $500.  All in all, nice to offer the bonus, but over the long haul it would not take me long to get more than that bonus with a higher rate.  The best feature about Capital One 360 is the ability to have separate "mini accounts" I will call them within your main account.  This is a great option to divide your money among the various savings goals you have.

Ally:  The Simple Dollar actually rated Ally as the best overall savings.  This was in part due to the high savings rate they offer of .99%.  Well above the Capital One option.  Another big aspect of Ally getting the highest rating was the online offering.  The site is very user friendly and also offers mobile options.  There was no minimum deposit or monthly fee.  Interest is compounded daily to help you grow faster.  

Others: I also looked at the Synchrony option as well as Discover and American Express.  These all offered rates close to the 1% with various combinations of minimum balances and monthly fees.  Overall they were very similar in offerings.

In the end I decided to go with the Ally financial savings account.  I am a big fan of ease of use and do not like a very busy website to navigate.  They also have the option to deposit checks using a mobile device, which I like to do.

As I mentioned in the beginning this decision to get this account was in an effort to grow my money more quickly.  That being said, a savings account growing at .99% is not going to do a lot to create log term wealth for me.  That means I now need to look into other options to create long term growth.  I have heard various things about brokerage accounts and ETFs, but I am not knowledgeable enough on those to make that move yet.  Look for that post in the future.

Holiday Travel with Points

Happy Thanksgiving to any readers out there.

For this past weeks holiday I traveled with my family to see my wife's relatives and introduce our new baby.  There was a little stress leading up to it for me due to the holiday's typically being a high volume of travelers.  Also, traveling for the first time with a baby seemed like it would have been rough.  However, I am happy to say, it was actually one of my easier traveling adventures.  I must have been lucky to chose flights that left at low volume times because we did not have to deal with much traffic at the security check points or any hassles whatsoever.  It was definitely a smooth trip.  But this I attribute more to luck.  The most low stress aspect of this trip was the cost.

The total cost for the flight for 3 people, hotel, and rental car was about $10 for the flight taxes.  The joys of traveling with points.

This was achieved through the use of multiple credit card offers over the past few years that have allowed me to accumulate points that I allot specifically for travel.  Rarely do I use points for anything else.

Flight
For the flights, we traveled for a total of about 20,000 points through Southwest Rapid Rewards.  This total covers myself, my wife, and our baby.  The low point spend was because we only had to pay for myself.  Because I was able to accumulate 110,000 Rapid Reward points this calendar year, I was awarded a companion pass.  This means my wife fly's for free, anytime I do through Dec. 31 2016.  What a great deal.  In addition, because our daughter is under 2, she can fly as a lap child, which does not require a ticket.  Some may wonder how I accumulated so many points in a year, but in fact it is very easy with the offers that are available.  Early this year, southwest offered 50,000 bonus points for a spend of around $2000 in 3 months.  I took advantage and opened a personal and a business card.  I used the personal card for all my expenses to easily cover the minimum spend, and the business card was used for all the renovations on our latest rental property.  This also easily got us over the minimum spend to get the points.

Hotel
We decided that we wanted to stay for 1 night in Baltimore to try to see a bit of the city on the last night of our trip so I looked into our options.  I found that there was a Hyatt Place located near the airport and decided that was a good option.  It was a good option because I had previously opened a Hyatt Visa card that came with 2 free night stays anywhere in the world.  1 of those nights was used last year in Paris on our Honeymoon so I had 1 remaining.  All I had to do was call and request to use my night at the Baltimore Hyatt Place and it was booked.  Simple.

Rental Car
I was surprised that the rental car was the most expensive part of our trip in terms of points.  I am used to booking cars through work and the corporate rates are much better than the general rates.  Either way, I decided to use my Chase Ultimate rewards points to book a small SUV for our trip.  I could have booked a smaller car to save, but with a baby and stroller, plus luggage, the SUV made sense.  In the end I used 26,000 points for a 5 day rental.  Not too bad at all.  We actually got upgraded to a large SUV for free anyways, so that was a bonus.

All in all, I am happy with how that all worked out for us in terms of cost for the trip.  We really only paid for food at the airports, which is expensive.  I think the point of this post is to just make people aware of the opportunities out there to travel on a budget.  I know many people say they would love to travel but cannot afford it.  I would tell them there is always a way if you do your research.

That being said, I would not advocate this method of generating credit card points to everyone.  We all know that not everyone can control themselves with the plastic in their hand.  If you are someone who carries a balance on anything besides a 0% interest card, I would not recommend this to you.  Mainly because it will end up costing you more than the benefit, but also because you not only have to spend the minimum spending, you generally have to pay it off in that time.

I hope this post can help someone out there to realize their travel goals while staying on a budget.

The Basics of Change

I believe that just about everyone out there wants to change at least one thing in life, most people more than that.  Whether it is financial situation, health and fitness, education, job, living situation, or any of the multitude of other facets of our life we could possibly want to change.  However, despite our desire to make these changes, most of us don't.  Too often I hear about people who say how they wish they could BLANK.   And yet, they do little to put themselves in the position to do what they desire.  At some point we become settled into our situation and eventually lose hope for change.  In many cases this becomes a topic that we subconsciously complain about.  And this is part of what drove me to write this, because I am of the believe that if you do not like your situation, you have every opportunity to change it.

Why don't we change?
The reasons that we do not take the steps to make these changes in life are endless.  
-Fear:  Fear of failure. Fear of ridicule. Fear of the unknown. Oddly enough, fear of success.  Most people do not want to step out of their comfort zone into the unknown.  This fear is a controlling force in their life that holds them back from reaching their potential.
- Conditioning:  People are often programmed to believe that they are only as good as their parents and relatives before them.  They are so ingrained in how their family has lived that they do not realize that they are in control of their future.  The past has no bearing on each individuals potential.  Everyone has obstacles in life of varying sizes and qty, but we all have our struggles.  How you deal with that adversity is what forms you and prepares you for the success you will be down the road.
- Education:  Oddly enough, there are people out there that believe they are not intelligent enough to have better than their current situation.  I find this to be a very sad situation.  We all have opportunities for learning and bettering ourselves, that do not cost much if any money at all.  While I am college educated, I believe some of the most valuable knowledge I have gained has come from books I have read on my own.  Libraries are great resources to gain knowledge.  The Internet has also put knowledge in the hands of anyone who seeks it out.  Learning should not be a hurdle to making a change in your life.
- Money:  I can understand that money is a hurdle to making an immediate change, but with proper planning and execution, money problems can be overcome.  It may take making changes in other aspects of your life such as spending or working more, but money problems can be overcome.

This list could go on and on, but I think these are some of the biggest factors that restrict us from doing little things that can improve our lives.

How do we change?
I think change can be accomplished with just a few steps.  In a lot of my studies and experience I have seen various models for organizational change and optimization.  All of these same principles can be applied to any aspect of our lives that we wish to make better.  I will lay out the steps that I believe can help us all improve.
Step 1: Awareness-Where are we?
I call this step awareness because we need to understand where we currently are.  Financially, if we are to really be aware of our situation we need to understand our in flows and outflows of money, as well as any debts and bills.  While this can be as simple as writing down all of our spending on a piece of paper and tracking that way, the world of technology has made it so much easier with various software and apps. I use the finance example because it is something I am interested in and track pretty regularly, but the principle applies to anything. Losing weight, job salary, educational goals, etc.
Step 2: Where do I want to be?
This can basically be considered goal setting.  We need to understand where we want to be.  Whether it means to become debt free, lost 30 lbs, or increase our salary by 25%.  Knowing where you want to go is the only way to make a proper plan of action.
Step 3: Gap analysis/How to
Now is the time to see exactly how far we are from the goal.  Is this a short term or long term goal?  Will this change effect other aspects of my life in order to achieve it?  What resources do I have to get there?  All of these questions can be addressed in this step.  That is because, all of those questions should be answered in order to make a plan.  The plan is basically the "How to" guide to achieving your goal.  It is a road map of the steps you will take to get there.  Part of the plan should include any risks you see that could interfere and how you will address them if they do happen.  Also, any budgeting or resources that you need along the way should be identified at this point.  There are plenty of what ifs that could be considered at this step and I am sure this is where a lot of people get afraid and stop.  However, some risks cannot be identified anyways so there is always something that could go wrong.  Do not let the what ifs stop you from moving forward.
Step 4: Make it happen
Now is the time to move forward with implementing your plan.  Some may call it taking the leap of faith, but I think its just taking the first small step in a well mapped out path to success.  This is the time to begin making the sacrifices that you identified in your plan in order to meet your goal.  A lot of reaching financial or fitness goals revolve around using the word no.  A lot of the time you will be saying no to friends and socializing, but most of it has to do with telling yourself no.  This is called discipline and is the root of successful change.  The most important parts of this phase of change is to stay focused on your goal, and disciplined with your plan.  Your plan should have fun or splurge days built into it so as to not cause a huge setback to your normal plan.  If you can stay disciplined, you can have the change you want.
Step 5: Analyze/Revise
This part of the process is where you will begin to see your results.  It is wise to periodically take a step back to step 1 and analyze where you are.  Measure your current situation to both your beginning as well as to your goal.  Make it a regular progress review maybe monthly or quarterly.  This will then give you the chance to make small tweaks or revisions to your plan.  I think that once you begin to take the small steps of progress you will see there are opportunities to become more aggressive with the goal.

In Summary, I just want people to realize that there is no reason to fear change.  Change is a certainty in life, but whether or not you have control over it is up to you.  A few small steps can help you down the path to all you desire if you have the discipline to stick to the plan.

Good Luck.

About Me

Just a quick bit about myself.  Some of this may be carryover from the original post, but will still be helpful.

I am 31 year old married man with a 3 month old daughter.  My family lives in the suburbs just outside the city of Detroit.  While I personally wish we lived in a different suburb about 20 minutes away from here, this is where my wife grew up and we are very happy overall.  We are very fortunate for such a great life.  We both work full time and live very comfortably.  That can be attributed to the strong work ethic we both learned from our parents.

As for education, I have both a BBA and MS degrees from U of M.  In addition I have recently earned a certification as a Project Management Professional.  For the past 10 years I have worked for several automotive suppliers in the area.  

A big reason that I became interested in writing about my life and various topics would be goals that my wife and I have.  The reasons I say that are 1. I try to read and gain knowledge in the areas related to our goals, and 2. writing about goals and sharing those thoughts are a way to hold myself accountable.  The simple fact is that I can write about all kinds of topics and goals, but most of them are difficult to implement and maintain.  Despite that, all we can do is our best.

That's all for today.

The Beginning

Welcome to The Path to Better.  A place to bring together ideas for personal progress toward a better you.  

You will find a plethora of topics and areas for self improvement.  Topics may range from finance, fitness, education or any other topic that I feel I have some knowledge on or feel I want to improve upon.  

The reason I wanted to begin this blog was to write down some of my thoughts and ideas on things that I can improve, or have gained knowledge about in the past to get me to where I am.  Somewhat for the purpose of self reflection, but also hoping to provide others with some inspiration or direction to take a step down the path to their own self improvement.

For my posts I will draw from my own experiences and other topics I encounter on the Web or news.  I have tried to gain a lot of knowledge by reading about personal finance, work place optimization, leadership, real estate investing, and economics.  In addition I have both Bachelors and Masters degrees, as well as a PMP certification.  

I like to think of myself of a Jack of all trades, but a master of none.

I hope you enjoy some of my posts and I appreciate any constructive criticism.