#i hope brian kelly never experiences real happiness in his life

[racingtoaredlight]

College Football 2020 Season Championship Week: or whatever this is!

There are some non-championship games being played, some cancellations, some murdery coaches and probably more cancellations to come. There are even some bowl games coming up this week - I won’t be watching them and I won’t be writing about them, so that’s something to look forward to. Welcome to the end of college football in the year of our dark lord 2020.

I’ll be so glad to be done with this trash season. Here’s the big picture for the week!

Saturday, December 19

MatchupTime (ET)TV/Mobile

14 Northwestern vs. 4 Ohio State (in Indianapolis, IN)    12:00pm   FOX

Buckeyes by 40.

10 Oklahoma vs. 6 Iowa State (in Arlington, TX)         12:00pm       ABC

Oklahoma by 10 and then Iowa State’s coach will go somewhere else.

5 Texas A&M at Tennessee                                    12:00pm           ESPN

I’m not trying to figure out the playoffs too much. If aTm and Notre Dame both make it in then it must be cancelled.

Washington State at Utah                                     1:30pm                FS1

This is happening for some reason.

Air Force at Army                                                   3:00pm            CBSSN

This troop on troop rivalry isn’t celebrated at all but it also doesn’t produce many memorable moments.

Missouri at Mississippi State                               3:30pm           SECN Alt.

Every couple of days I come to like the state of Mizzerree a little bit less.

Mississippi at LSU                                                 3:30pm        SECN

Cancel this, for the love of god. This doesn’t need to exist this year.

Minnesota at Wisconsin                                       4:00pm          BTN

What is the point of this one? Delete.

3 Clemson vs. 2 Notre Dame (in Charlotte, NC)   4:00pm         ABC

Brian Kelly is back offering up blood sacrifice for the good of his career. There’s a lot riding on Sunshine in this one but if you’re going to count on one college football player to deliver in a tough situation he’s... one of them. Maybe the best? Fuck if I know. He’s insanely good. Please butcher the Irish, young fellow.

Boise State vs. 24 San Jose State (in Las Vegas, NV)  4:30pm    FOX

San Jose State has been the off-the-radar success of the year on the West Coast. That’s always fun. I don’t have a rooting interest here because there are a thousand ways this game could end up that would almost all make me giggle heartily.

Illinois at Penn State                                             5:30pm        FS1

Once Penn State won a game I knew there was no hope left.

Stanford at UCLA                                                  7:00pm       ESPN

Man, when I say unnecessary...

23 Tulsa at 9 Cincinnati                                        8:00pm         ABC

Tulsa’s gonna win. The refs are gonna help them. 

1 Alabama vs. 7 Florida (in Atlanta, GA)               8:00pm        CBS

Bama by 30, wooooooooo!!!!!!!! Every take on this game involves millions of points being scored because the defenses have some glaring weaknesses in the face of each other but that could be the recipe for a 14-3 kind of night. This marks, by my count, the 64th time these two teams have played for the SEC championship in Atlanta. Florida is always teetering on the edge of absolute disaster and they can’t run the ball but have you checked out their passing efficiency as a team? It’s probably quite a bit better than you realize. Dan Mullen may be excrement made human flesh but he’s a pretty good offensive gameplanner. not so good that he’ll pull the upset here but 59-45 or thereabouts is a possibility. As long as Devonta Smith can rack up yards and TDs and become another weird Bama Heisman winner, that’s what really counts.

PUSH EM BACK PUSH EM BACK WAAAAY BACK - GO COVID!

Arizona State at Oregon State10:30pmESPN

Vanderbilt at 8 Georgia  Canceled

19 Louisiana at 12 Coastal Carolina  Canceled

Florida State at Wake Forest  Canceled

Michigan State at Maryland  Canceled

Michigan at 16 Iowa  Canceled

Arizona at California  Canceled

Georgia Tech at 18 Miami (FL)  Canceled

[mgkconfessions]

Fan pages needs to stop posting those pics as couple goals and omg look they are so cute and only posting the pics from the side or the back. Colson straight up looks miserable, there is literally no denying that, I love him but he looks horrible. People are saying that’s what we are jelouse of?? I mean if he looked like that from far away image how bad he looked from up close. Someone said what if he’s looking miserable on purpose? Then that would make absolute no sense. Articles saying they want to blend families and are they the happiest people ever, public pda, constant date pap walks, then even marriage talk and then the only time they do a family pap walk Colson looks absolutely miserable. And notice Megan made a big deal on the kelly clarkson show about wanting to go back to the universal and how good of a mom she is and then boom that weekend she does a pap walk with her kids and Colson at universal? It’s not a coincidence. Every little thing in this relationship is so staged it can’t even go to the next level the right way. For example the article about Colson wanting to marry Megan as soon as possible, what if Colson and Megan never actually had that talk and their teams just said that to get attention and now it adds unnecessary pressure especially on Colson about marriage, Colson being the happiest he has ever been when in fact he has said several times he isint happy at all and now it’s unnecessary pressure to act like the happy couple for everyone like this whole thing neither of them could actually move to the next stage in the relationship bc the only next stage now is actual marriage and their teams made sure that was the only move they could do. I mean several articles saying how good Colson is with Megan’s kids but we are just now starting to see him around her kids and notice casie is never with them? Casie has been papped with her dad several times just out getting food so why hasint she been papped out getting food with Colson and Megan at least doesint even have to be with her kids just with Megan too? The only time we see her with Megan is when several people are with them and they arint ever interacting

When Megan announced on the Kelly Clarkson show how she couldn’t wait to go to Universal studios with her kids (to present herself as a caring mum) and followed that up by actually going there with them and Kells a couple of days later, I already took it as a pre-planned afternoon for publicity. But I wasn’t expecting her to seriously also hire a paparazzi to really make sure that the public knew where she was and with who lmao! But thanks for the confirmation that this was just another publicity day! This isn’t convincing anyone of being a caring and loving mum tho, because if she had cared about her children and put their well being and privacy first, above her ego and need for attention, she wouldn’t have invited a paparazzi to their family day and made her kids go through that experience in the first place. Although she has already done that multiple times in the past when she ran some errands with them and therefore they might already be used to it, it doesn’t make it any less wrong. Her priority and main focus wasn’t on spending a nice afternoon with her kids and Kells, it was on proving to the public what an amazing blended family they are and how she’s definitely involved as a mum despite people saying something differently. It was literally a business day for her in the name of damage control. At least the kids looked like they had fun tho and since they’re still little I doubt they understand what’s going on and what mommy is using them for. Maybe if she hadn’t talked about it on the Kelly Clarkson show it would have been less obvious, but now she only exposed her own intentions even more. She definitely isn’t winning any plus points by acting like that and how stupid of her to previously complain about Brian using the kids and their photos to appear like a dotting dad, to only do the exact same thing by hiring a paparazzi to a “private” family day with her kids and allowing the tabloids to release pictures of them to appear like a dotting mum so she can get her headline. She isn’t an ounce better than Brian. I guess desperate times call for desperate actions! Megan probably thought that this was the best way to prove people wrong and show them how amazing they all get along, but all she did was prove them what a clout chaser she is and how even Kells seems to be done with playing happy patchwork family with her. He looked so pissed in some pictures and annoyed, I fully believe that he didn’t want to be there at all. He looked like someone gave him a job, he showed up, followed the stage directions (holding kids hands, holding Megan’s hand, let yourself be photographed) to sell the public the narrative that Megan wanted, but that was all that he was willing to do. He literally looked like he couldn’t believe that he had to do this again with Megan and that she again called the paparazzi and he as her official boyfriend had to play happy family again with her. He would never be mean to her kids or ignore them, but he still seemed mentally and emotional checked out that day and like he couldn’t have cared less about trying to appear involved and interested in any of it (see even picture below). He looks more tired and drained than ever and I can’t imagine that with every staged paparazzi moment Megan organizes he isn’t losing a bit of respecting for her too. While Megan seems to love all of this and she’s only starting, Kells seems like he’s ready to end it all, because he can’t do it anymore. I’m telling you this relationship is dead and over and the only reason why they’re still “together” is because of publicity that both of them can use and because they’re dragging out the inevitable break up that is coming. I haven’t posted about it yet, but some of you might have seen that psychic tarot reading from antphrodite about them and he’s one of the few who I actually consider to be pretty accurate and in his reading he said that Megan is acting like she doesn’t want to settle down like Kells, who still wants to have his fun, although that isn’t true and she does want to settle down. Now look at the pictures from

yesterday and doesn’t that give you the same impression? Megan trying hard to turn Kells into a stepdad of three and almost forcing that family thing on him (like all the sources talking about how Kells couldn’t wait to marry her and for Megan to have his babies every single month which I still believe came from Megan’s team to push that narrative to the public and ease Kells into the idea of proposing to her) while Kells looks like reality hit him now and he absolutely isn’t ready to becoming one big family with Megan and her three little children and the more this is pushed onto him, the more he just wants to get away from it. He did look horrible and miserable and almost every comment under the DailyMail article had the same thought that he’s only interested in fucking dating Megan, but he isn’t ready to sign up for her children and that family life too. Speaking of DailyMail, did anyone else notice that although this was clearly Megan’s publicity move for damage control, the headline focused for once on Kells and mentioned him first and made it seem like he was the main person when usually it’s always Megan who is mentioned first? :D I take that as a failed attempt to make it less obvious that this was Megan’s publicity plan by taking away the attention from her being the driving force behind this. Like the first anon above wrote everything they do is so pre-planned, staged and orchestrated, their relationship looks more like a business following a check list with things couples do than a real relationship that focuses on real experiences and emotions. For the anon who is confused, yes even PR couples would include children, get married and introduce the rest of the family. I know it’s mind blowing because of how fake it is but that’s also why Hollywood is super fake and there aren’t a lot of real and authentic people anymore. I’m going back and forth between fully PR and real, but immediately used and sold for publicity and exposure to benefit their careers a week before the BV music video came out and that was like a month or two after they had met each other, so not a lot of time to build anything real between them without the aspect of publicity, especially since during half of that time Sommer was still in the picture. So almost since the very beginning their whole relationship was sold out and they orchestrated the shit out of them. All their love declarations, their lovey-dovey behaviour, what they do, how they present themselves, what they’re involved in, all that stuff was always done with the main intention to sell the public a fantasy love story that they would get invested in with agents, management and pr teams behind them and their relationship enabling and planing with them together. I don’t believe that everything only comes from their teams and is forced onto them, they surely also make their own decisions when they want to use their relationship for promotion and publicity, but like the anon above said when others or yourself immediately force happiness and a big love story on you although you haven’t even reached that stage in your life or relationship yet (that includes Megan calling him her twin flame right from the start too and Kells emotions being forced to reach that level of intensity then as well instead of allowing them to grow there), then it only adds pressure to make up for what doesn’t exist and suddenly you’re faking your own relationship although you actually are in a relationship and everything you do becomes more about how that appears in the public and what they think about you as a couple. You will be more busy with pretending to be an amazing couple than spending time on being one. I hope you understand what I mean, because that’s how I see them. But in reality their relationship seems to be shattered, lots of insecurities, jealousy, arguments and simply over although they’re still together and put on an act with their on stage kisses, matching nails and Megan following him everywhere he goes. In the context of it all, it doesn’t have a lot of meaning anymore.

P.S.: their trip was on Saturday, Mother’s Day was on Sunday for anyone who is still confused about that.

[samuelfields]

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels

Have you ever met someone who’s told you, “Traveling to experience different foods, sights, cultures, and people? Ew, no.” Me neither.

The point is, the majority of us looooooove to travel, but we all have different styles of how we plan for it and actually prefer to travel, based in large part on our inner math of whether certain experiences are “worth it.”

For example, I’m kind of a rugged traveler. The idea of swank five- or even four-star hotels never appealed to me. A bag of M&M peanuts for $5? No thanks, I brought my own. An $8 bottle of Fiji water? Just tap water for me.

My travel preferences are the complete opposite of IWT CEO Ramit Sethi’s (aka my boss), who recently returned from his six-week (!) honeymoon. The trip spanned across countries: Italy, Kenya, India, and Thailand. You can read all about his trip starting here.

Real picture of a real lion that Ramit took.

For me, luxury and travel are like oil and water — like, why bother mixing them? If I traveled, I’d usually rough it out — in the occasional hostel, and for longer term stays, in affordable Airbnbs, just as I did back in my nomadic days; whereas Ramit deliberately immersed himself in absolute luxury, juxtaposed against local life, like touring the street vendors or cooking at a local woman’s house.

Maybe it was Ramit’s excitement about his experiences as he was telling it, but the idea of traveling in luxury became a contagion that latched on and proliferated in my thoughts, shifting my perspective from wanting to ask not “why?” but “why not…?”

Why not try splurging on lavish experiences when I’m traveling (I am older now, after all)?

Why not have both worlds of “ultra lux” and the humility of local living?

Why not be open-minded and dream BIG?

Maybe it’s meta to be cross-examining my boss’s style of vacationing with my own travels on the very blog that he founded, but it’s important to also acknowledge that just because I’m part of the team here doesn’t mean we’re a hivemind. It doesn’t mean I just “get it.” Like you, I must undergo a process of exposing myself to different and interesting ideas and letting them percolate until I choose to make them a part of my decision-making, as long as they make sense to me.

And ultimately, what I took away from his retelling of his experiences isn’t that I necessarily need to also travel lavishly or that I should go to Thailand or India or Kenya. It’s that…

1. My own dream vacation is within my reach … I just have to plan it

While I don’t care to go on my own safari adventure, I’ve been inspired to figure out how to make my own dream vacation — a multi-month stay in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics — a reality.

My goal for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thought I came up with just now while thinking about eating sushi for dinner (¬_¬). It’s actually been on my mind since

I got to stay in Tokyo for four months back in 2016. At the time, it was a feel-good fleeting thought — something that I’d pushed off until now obviously to start thinking about manifesting.

Stephanie’s thought process then: “Future Stephanie will figure it out somehow!”

Stephanie’s thought process now: “OK, well, I am Future Stephanie now, so the first thing to do is start automatically transferring savings into an account that’s dedicated for this trip (done); find someone who can help me maximize my credit card points between now and then (in progress); then use my hella points to book first-class tickets to Tokyo.”

The main difference between thinking about Tokyo 2020 then and now is, as you can plainly see, I am aligning my actions with this goal. As of this writing, I have more than a year to go, and automatically saving for this specific goal has already liberated me from the mental strain of thinking about putting funds aside every month (we call this automating our finances).

2. I could share my travel experiences with loved ones

It’s no secret that Ramit took his parents and in-laws with him on the first leg of his honeymoon. But what really fascinated me was what Ramit said to Brian Kelly, aka “The Points Guy,” on Brian’s Talking Points podcast:

“My parents had four kids, not a lot of money. And I was just thinking that if they were to come to Rome, they would’ve come during the hot summer. They would have planned out everywhere they went based on how much it cost. And so for us to even be like ‘Don’t even think about it, just show up.’…

We took private tours of the Vatican. We took them to a cooking class. Both of the moms have never taken a cooking class in their lives. They’ve been cooking for 30-plus years! We all just hung out. And the dads bonded. It was just one of the best memories of our lives.”

I bolded the above because I understand that exact sentiment. My Asian parents would rarely go traveling, much less even *think* about spending more money than necessary on a luxury vacation. The idea simply doesn’t exist in the realm of possibilities for them.

One year I took both my parents with me to Toronto. And I remember my dad telling me how grateful he was to have been able to reconnect with his cousins after 30 years, which wouldn’t have been at all possible had I not booked his ticket and stay.

Having the perspective and ability to share these travel experiences with loved ones to me is truly the idea of abundance and generosity, as well as a powerful motivator for why I work so hard to earn money.

3. I don’t have to fall for the mindtrap of “finding a better deal”

It used to make financial sense to forego luxury hotels and experiences and restrict myself to the idea of budget travel when I was but a broke college kid. And so I��d try to calculate cost and my expected value and level of happiness or satisfaction.

More often than not, this math was way off. One year I recall passing on the opportunity to swim with dolphins in the Bahamas. Although I was interested, it was quite a bit out of my budget but still something I could afford. But I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t worth it or that I could find a better deal elsewhere.

In the end, I missed out completely, and for months that was all my friends who did partake talked about. #FOMO

Old money decisions die hard. But as I’ve learned through adopting new money habits, cost and expected outcome aren’t something I could predict or are necessarily even meant to be predetermined. It’s not always about the deal, but about the convenience and immediate opportunity of being able to indulge in something fun and unique that I otherwise would never get to experience.

4. It’s okay to spend on things I love or just want

How many of us feel a nagging guilt that we “shouldn’t” spend money on that $65 shirt when we already have 12 other shirts, even though we WANT it? It’s hard to justify, and we all feel this, even people like Brian, who travels in style for a living. Here’s a transcription of the Talking Points podcast mentioned above that I thought was particularly profound:

Brian: “I always struggle, especially in a country like Thailand, Amans are expensive wherever you go. And people will grouse, I know, whenever I say the nice hotel in Thailand, but, yeah. I mean, it’s all about the experience.”

Ramit: “I agree. I don’t think it’s for every day. I’m perfectly happy staying at a very budget airport hotel when I need to. I don’t mind it. But I do think that there are moments in life where you say, ‘I truly want to go as far as I can on this.’ And I have this concept on my site where I talk about Money Dials. Think about a dial on your car radio.

And most people have one or two Money Dials that they just love spending on. For you, it’s travel. And so you can turn that Money Dial all the way up and you can stay at Aman’s, Ritz Carlton, wherever it is that you love. Some people just couldn’t care less. But they love clothes. A lot of people love convenience. I love convenience, that’s mine. So if you know what your Money Dial is, then you can go all in and you can spend extravagantly on the things you love.”

We each have an area in our lives where we just naturally spend more money on. These Money Dials explain why we spend money the way we do. In other words, Money Dials is a way for you to figure out what’s important to you and what’s not. For example, I value relationships, so I’ve spent more money to live in a centrally located apartment, furnished from zero, to be more welcoming and host my new and old friends much more easily.

For me, the idea of Money Dials has provided me that healthy balance of knowing that I could spend money on something — guilt-free — because it’s important to me, instead of feeling like I should only be squirreling away money for an indeterminate future.

I could have both — and spend wisely and extravagantly as long as I can afford it and it makes me happy.

5. My dream vacation shouldn’t just be a dream

We often hammer home the message of “you define what a Rich Life means to you,” but I must admit that I have to constantly think about what this means for myself.  

Through writing this article, I realized that part of my Rich Life is being able to figure out that I CAN make my “dream vacation” possible for myself.

Maybe not tomorrow. Not next week or in the next six months.

But definitely in a reasonable and achievable timeline that wouldn’t get drowned out by vague “someday” hopes. I’ve already set up my savings, and it’s only a matter of time before I start looking at flights and places to stay.

The overall message here is simple: it’s important for all of us to think about why we strive to live a Rich Life. For me, it’s about being in control and deciding what my money can do and is for.

And at least for the foreseeable future, it’s living in my posh apartment to spend more time with people I care about and then taking off to Tokyo in summer 2020 to mash myself against hundreds of people from around the world to celebrate amid the biggest stage in sports ever.

See you there?

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/my-boss-went-on-a-dream-six-week-vacation-and-these-are-5-things-i-now-consider-for-my-future-travels/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[kennethherrerablog]

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels

Have you ever met someone who’s told you, “Traveling to experience different foods, sights, cultures, and people? Ew, no.” Me neither.

The point is, the majority of us looooooove to travel, but we all have different styles of how we plan for it and actually prefer to travel, based in large part on our inner math of whether certain experiences are “worth it.”

For example, I’m kind of a rugged traveler. The idea of swank five- or even four-star hotels never appealed to me. A bag of M&M peanuts for $5? No thanks, I brought my own. An $8 bottle of Fiji water? Just tap water for me.

My travel preferences are the complete opposite of IWT CEO Ramit Sethi’s (aka my boss), who recently returned from his six-week (!) honeymoon. The trip spanned across countries: Italy, Kenya, India, and Thailand. You can read all about his trip starting here.

Real picture of a real lion that Ramit took.

For me, luxury and travel are like oil and water — like, why bother mixing them? If I traveled, I’d usually rough it out — in the occasional hostel, and for longer term stays, in affordable Airbnbs, just as I did back in my nomadic days; whereas Ramit deliberately immersed himself in absolute luxury, juxtaposed against local life, like touring the street vendors or cooking at a local woman’s house.

Maybe it was Ramit’s excitement about his experiences as he was telling it, but the idea of traveling in luxury became a contagion that latched on and proliferated in my thoughts, shifting my perspective from wanting to ask not “why?” but “why not…?”

Why not try splurging on lavish experiences when I’m traveling (I am older now, after all)?

Why not have both worlds of “ultra lux” and the humility of local living?

Why not be open-minded and dream BIG?

Maybe it’s meta to be cross-examining my boss’s style of vacationing with my own travels on the very blog that he founded, but it’s important to also acknowledge that just because I’m part of the team here doesn’t mean we’re a hivemind. It doesn’t mean I just “get it.” Like you, I must undergo a process of exposing myself to different and interesting ideas and letting them percolate until I choose to make them a part of my decision-making, as long as they make sense to me.

And ultimately, what I took away from his retelling of his experiences isn’t that I necessarily need to also travel lavishly or that I should go to Thailand or India or Kenya. It’s that…

1. My own dream vacation is within my reach … I just have to plan it

While I don’t care to go on my own safari adventure, I’ve been inspired to figure out how to make my own dream vacation — a multi-month stay in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics — a reality.

My goal for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thought I came up with just now while thinking about eating sushi for dinner (¬_¬). It’s actually been on my mind since

I got to stay in Tokyo for four months back in 2016. At the time, it was a feel-good fleeting thought — something that I’d pushed off until now obviously to start thinking about manifesting.

Stephanie’s thought process then: “Future Stephanie will figure it out somehow!”

Stephanie’s thought process now: “OK, well, I am Future Stephanie now, so the first thing to do is start automatically transferring savings into an account that’s dedicated for this trip (done); find someone who can help me maximize my credit card points between now and then (in progress); then use my hella points to book first-class tickets to Tokyo.”

The main difference between thinking about Tokyo 2020 then and now is, as you can plainly see, I am aligning my actions with this goal. As of this writing, I have more than a year to go, and automatically saving for this specific goal has already liberated me from the mental strain of thinking about putting funds aside every month (we call this automating our finances).

2. I could share my travel experiences with loved ones

It’s no secret that Ramit took his parents and in-laws with him on the first leg of his honeymoon. But what really fascinated me was what Ramit said to Brian Kelly, aka “The Points Guy,” on Brian’s Talking Points podcast:

“My parents had four kids, not a lot of money. And I was just thinking that if they were to come to Rome, they would’ve come during the hot summer. They would have planned out everywhere they went based on how much it cost. And so for us to even be like ‘Don’t even think about it, just show up.’…

We took private tours of the Vatican. We took them to a cooking class. Both of the moms have never taken a cooking class in their lives. They’ve been cooking for 30-plus years! We all just hung out. And the dads bonded. It was just one of the best memories of our lives.”

I bolded the above because I understand that exact sentiment. My Asian parents would rarely go traveling, much less even *think* about spending more money than necessary on a luxury vacation. The idea simply doesn’t exist in the realm of possibilities for them.

One year I took both my parents with me to Toronto. And I remember my dad telling me how grateful he was to have been able to reconnect with his cousins after 30 years, which wouldn’t have been at all possible had I not booked his ticket and stay.

Having the perspective and ability to share these travel experiences with loved ones to me is truly the idea of abundance and generosity, as well as a powerful motivator for why I work so hard to earn money.

3. I don’t have to fall for the mindtrap of “finding a better deal”

It used to make financial sense to forego luxury hotels and experiences and restrict myself to the idea of budget travel when I was but a broke college kid. And so I’d try to calculate cost and my expected value and level of happiness or satisfaction.

More often than not, this math was way off. One year I recall passing on the opportunity to swim with dolphins in the Bahamas. Although I was interested, it was quite a bit out of my budget but still something I could afford. But I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t worth it or that I could find a better deal elsewhere.

In the end, I missed out completely, and for months that was all my friends who did partake talked about. #FOMO

Old money decisions die hard. But as I’ve learned through adopting new money habits, cost and expected outcome aren’t something I could predict or are necessarily even meant to be predetermined. It’s not always about the deal, but about the convenience and immediate opportunity of being able to indulge in something fun and unique that I otherwise would never get to experience.

4. It’s okay to spend on things I love or just want

How many of us feel a nagging guilt that we “shouldn’t” spend money on that $65 shirt when we already have 12 other shirts, even though we WANT it? It’s hard to justify, and we all feel this, even people like Brian, who travels in style for a living. Here’s a transcription of the Talking Points podcast mentioned above that I thought was particularly profound:

Brian: “I always struggle, especially in a country like Thailand, Amans are expensive wherever you go. And people will grouse, I know, whenever I say the nice hotel in Thailand, but, yeah. I mean, it’s all about the experience.”

Ramit: “I agree. I don’t think it’s for every day. I’m perfectly happy staying at a very budget airport hotel when I need to. I don’t mind it. But I do think that there are moments in life where you say, ‘I truly want to go as far as I can on this.’ And I have this concept on my site where I talk about Money Dials. Think about a dial on your car radio.

And most people have one or two Money Dials that they just love spending on. For you, it’s travel. And so you can turn that Money Dial all the way up and you can stay at Aman’s, Ritz Carlton, wherever it is that you love. Some people just couldn’t care less. But they love clothes. A lot of people love convenience. I love convenience, that’s mine. So if you know what your Money Dial is, then you can go all in and you can spend extravagantly on the things you love.”

We each have an area in our lives where we just naturally spend more money on. These Money Dials explain why we spend money the way we do. In other words, Money Dials is a way for you to figure out what’s important to you and what’s not. For example, I value relationships, so I’ve spent more money to live in a centrally located apartment, furnished from zero, to be more welcoming and host my new and old friends much more easily.

For me, the idea of Money Dials has provided me that healthy balance of knowing that I could spend money on something — guilt-free — because it’s important to me, instead of feeling like I should only be squirreling away money for an indeterminate future.

I could have both — and spend wisely and extravagantly as long as I can afford it and it makes me happy.

5. My dream vacation shouldn’t just be a dream

We often hammer home the message of “you define what a Rich Life means to you,” but I must admit that I have to constantly think about what this means for myself.  

Through writing this article, I realized that part of my Rich Life is being able to figure out that I CAN make my “dream vacation” possible for myself.

Maybe not tomorrow. Not next week or in the next six months.

But definitely in a reasonable and achievable timeline that wouldn’t get drowned out by vague “someday” hopes. I’ve already set up my savings, and it’s only a matter of time before I start looking at flights and places to stay.

The overall message here is simple: it’s important for all of us to think about why we strive to live a Rich Life. For me, it’s about being in control and deciding what my money can do and is for.

And at least for the foreseeable future, it’s living in my posh apartment to spend more time with people I care about and then taking off to Tokyo in summer 2020 to mash myself against hundreds of people from around the world to celebrate amid the biggest stage in sports ever.

See you there?

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

[paulckrueger]

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels

Have you ever met someone who’s told you, “Traveling to experience different foods, sights, cultures, and people? Ew, no.” Me neither.

The point is, the majority of us looooooove to travel, but we all have different styles of how we plan for it and actually prefer to travel, based in large part on our inner math of whether certain experiences are “worth it.”

For example, I’m kind of a rugged traveler. The idea of swank five- or even four-star hotels never appealed to me. A bag of M&M peanuts for $5? No thanks, I brought my own. An $8 bottle of Fiji water? Just tap water for me.

My travel preferences are the complete opposite of IWT CEO Ramit Sethi’s (aka my boss), who recently returned from his six-week (!) honeymoon. The trip spanned across countries: Italy, Kenya, India, and Thailand. You can read all about his trip starting here.

Real picture of a real lion that Ramit took.

For me, luxury and travel are like oil and water — like, why bother mixing them? If I traveled, I’d usually rough it out — in the occasional hostel, and for longer term stays, in affordable Airbnbs, just as I did back in my nomadic days; whereas Ramit deliberately immersed himself in absolute luxury, juxtaposed against local life, like touring the street vendors or cooking at a local woman’s house.

Maybe it was Ramit’s excitement about his experiences as he was telling it, but the idea of traveling in luxury became a contagion that latched on and proliferated in my thoughts, shifting my perspective from wanting to ask not “why?” but “why not…?”

Why not try splurging on lavish experiences when I’m traveling (I am older now, after all)?

Why not have both worlds of “ultra lux” and the humility of local living?

Why not be open-minded and dream BIG?

Maybe it’s meta to be cross-examining my boss’s style of vacationing with my own travels on the very blog that he founded, but it’s important to also acknowledge that just because I’m part of the team here doesn’t mean we’re a hivemind. It doesn’t mean I just “get it.” Like you, I must undergo a process of exposing myself to different and interesting ideas and letting them percolate until I choose to make them a part of my decision-making, as long as they make sense to me.

And ultimately, what I took away from his retelling of his experiences isn’t that I necessarily need to also travel lavishly or that I should go to Thailand or India or Kenya. It’s that…

1. My own dream vacation is within my reach … I just have to plan it

While I don’t care to go on my own safari adventure, I’ve been inspired to figure out how to make my own dream vacation — a multi-month stay in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics — a reality.

My goal for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thought I came up with just now while thinking about eating sushi for dinner (¬_¬). It’s actually been on my mind since

I got to stay in Tokyo for four months back in 2016. At the time, it was a feel-good fleeting thought — something that I’d pushed off until now obviously to start thinking about manifesting.

Stephanie’s thought process then: “Future Stephanie will figure it out somehow!”

Stephanie’s thought process now: “OK, well, I am Future Stephanie now, so the first thing to do is start automatically transferring savings into an account that’s dedicated for this trip (done); find someone who can help me maximize my credit card points between now and then (in progress); then use my hella points to book first-class tickets to Tokyo.”

The main difference between thinking about Tokyo 2020 then and now is, as you can plainly see, I am aligning my actions with this goal. As of this writing, I have more than a year to go, and automatically saving for this specific goal has already liberated me from the mental strain of thinking about putting funds aside every month (we call this automating our finances).

2. I could share my travel experiences with loved ones

It’s no secret that Ramit took his parents and in-laws with him on the first leg of his honeymoon. But what really fascinated me was what Ramit said to Brian Kelly, aka “The Points Guy,” on Brian’s Talking Points podcast:

“My parents had four kids, not a lot of money. And I was just thinking that if they were to come to Rome, they would’ve come during the hot summer. They would have planned out everywhere they went based on how much it cost. And so for us to even be like ‘Don’t even think about it, just show up.’…

We took private tours of the Vatican. We took them to a cooking class. Both of the moms have never taken a cooking class in their lives. They’ve been cooking for 30-plus years! We all just hung out. And the dads bonded. It was just one of the best memories of our lives.”

I bolded the above because I understand that exact sentiment. My Asian parents would rarely go traveling, much less even *think* about spending more money than necessary on a luxury vacation. The idea simply doesn’t exist in the realm of possibilities for them.

One year I took both my parents with me to Toronto. And I remember my dad telling me how grateful he was to have been able to reconnect with his cousins after 30 years, which wouldn’t have been at all possible had I not booked his ticket and stay.

Having the perspective and ability to share these travel experiences with loved ones to me is truly the idea of abundance and generosity, as well as a powerful motivator for why I work so hard to earn money.

3. I don’t have to fall for the mindtrap of “finding a better deal”

It used to make financial sense to forego luxury hotels and experiences and restrict myself to the idea of budget travel when I was but a broke college kid. And so I’d try to calculate cost and my expected value and level of happiness or satisfaction.

More often than not, this math was way off. One year I recall passing on the opportunity to swim with dolphins in the Bahamas. Although I was interested, it was quite a bit out of my budget but still something I could afford. But I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t worth it or that I could find a better deal elsewhere.

In the end, I missed out completely, and for months that was all my friends who did partake talked about. #FOMO

Old money decisions die hard. But as I’ve learned through adopting new money habits, cost and expected outcome aren’t something I could predict or are necessarily even meant to be predetermined. It’s not always about the deal, but about the convenience and immediate opportunity of being able to indulge in something fun and unique that I otherwise would never get to experience.

4. It’s okay to spend on things I love or just want

How many of us feel a nagging guilt that we “shouldn’t” spend money on that $65 shirt when we already have 12 other shirts, even though we WANT it? It’s hard to justify, and we all feel this, even people like Brian, who travels in style for a living. Here’s a transcription of the Talking Points podcast mentioned above that I thought was particularly profound:

Brian: “I always struggle, especially in a country like Thailand, Amans are expensive wherever you go. And people will grouse, I know, whenever I say the nice hotel in Thailand, but, yeah. I mean, it’s all about the experience.”

Ramit: “I agree. I don’t think it’s for every day. I’m perfectly happy staying at a very budget airport hotel when I need to. I don’t mind it. But I do think that there are moments in life where you say, ‘I truly want to go as far as I can on this.’ And I have this concept on my site where I talk about Money Dials. Think about a dial on your car radio.

And most people have one or two Money Dials that they just love spending on. For you, it’s travel. And so you can turn that Money Dial all the way up and you can stay at Aman’s, Ritz Carlton, wherever it is that you love. Some people just couldn’t care less. But they love clothes. A lot of people love convenience. I love convenience, that’s mine. So if you know what your Money Dial is, then you can go all in and you can spend extravagantly on the things you love.”

We each have an area in our lives where we just naturally spend more money on. These Money Dials explain why we spend money the way we do. In other words, Money Dials is a way for you to figure out what’s important to you and what’s not. For example, I value relationships, so I’ve spent more money to live in a centrally located apartment, furnished from zero, to be more welcoming and host my new and old friends much more easily.

For me, the idea of Money Dials has provided me that healthy balance of knowing that I could spend money on something — guilt-free — because it’s important to me, instead of feeling like I should only be squirreling away money for an indeterminate future.

I could have both — and spend wisely and extravagantly as long as I can afford it and it makes me happy.

5. My dream vacation shouldn’t just be a dream

We often hammer home the message of “you define what a Rich Life means to you,” but I must admit that I have to constantly think about what this means for myself.  

Through writing this article, I realized that part of my Rich Life is being able to figure out that I CAN make my “dream vacation” possible for myself.

Maybe not tomorrow. Not next week or in the next six months.

But definitely in a reasonable and achievable timeline that wouldn’t get drowned out by vague “someday” hopes. I’ve already set up my savings, and it’s only a matter of time before I start looking at flights and places to stay.

The overall message here is simple: it’s important for all of us to think about why we strive to live a Rich Life. For me, it’s about being in control and deciding what my money can do and is for.

And at least for the foreseeable future, it’s living in my posh apartment to spend more time with people I care about and then taking off to Tokyo in summer 2020 to mash myself against hundreds of people from around the world to celebrate amid the biggest stage in sports ever.

See you there?

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Surety Bond Brokers? Business https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/my-boss-went-on-a-dream-six-week-vacation-and-these-are-5-things-i-now-consider-for-my-future-travels/

[andrewdburton]

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels

Have you ever met someone who’s told you, “Traveling to experience different foods, sights, cultures, and people? Ew, no.” Me neither.

The point is, the majority of us looooooove to travel, but we all have different styles of how we plan for it and actually prefer to travel, based in large part on our inner math of whether certain experiences are “worth it.”

For example, I’m kind of a rugged traveler. The idea of swank five- or even four-star hotels never appealed to me. A bag of M&M peanuts for $5? No thanks, I brought my own. An $8 bottle of Fiji water? Just tap water for me.

My travel preferences are the complete opposite of IWT CEO Ramit Sethi’s (aka my boss), who recently returned from his six-week (!) honeymoon. The trip spanned across countries: Italy, Kenya, India, and Thailand. You can read all about his trip starting here.

Real picture of a real lion that Ramit took.

For me, luxury and travel are like oil and water — like, why bother mixing them? If I traveled, I’d usually rough it out — in the occasional hostel, and for longer term stays, in affordable Airbnbs, just as I did back in my nomadic days; whereas Ramit deliberately immersed himself in absolute luxury, juxtaposed against local life, like touring the street vendors or cooking at a local woman’s house.

Maybe it was Ramit’s excitement about his experiences as he was telling it, but the idea of traveling in luxury became a contagion that latched on and proliferated in my thoughts, shifting my perspective from wanting to ask not “why?” but “why not…?”

Why not try splurging on lavish experiences when I’m traveling (I am older now, after all)?

Why not have both worlds of “ultra lux” and the humility of local living?

Why not be open-minded and dream BIG?

Maybe it’s meta to be cross-examining my boss’s style of vacationing with my own travels on the very blog that he founded, but it’s important to also acknowledge that just because I’m part of the team here doesn’t mean we’re a hivemind. It doesn’t mean I just “get it.” Like you, I must undergo a process of exposing myself to different and interesting ideas and letting them percolate until I choose to make them a part of my decision-making, as long as they make sense to me.

And ultimately, what I took away from his retelling of his experiences isn’t that I necessarily need to also travel lavishly or that I should go to Thailand or India or Kenya. It’s that…

1. My own dream vacation is within my reach … I just have to plan it

While I don’t care to go on my own safari adventure, I’ve been inspired to figure out how to make my own dream vacation — a multi-month stay in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics — a reality.

My goal for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thought I came up with just now while thinking about eating sushi for dinner (¬_¬). It’s actually been on my mind since

I got to stay in Tokyo for four months back in 2016. At the time, it was a feel-good fleeting thought — something that I’d pushed off until now obviously to start thinking about manifesting.

Stephanie’s thought process then: “Future Stephanie will figure it out somehow!”

Stephanie’s thought process now: “OK, well, I am Future Stephanie now, so the first thing to do is start automatically transferring savings into an account that’s dedicated for this trip (done); find someone who can help me maximize my credit card points between now and then (in progress); then use my hella points to book first-class tickets to Tokyo.”

The main difference between thinking about Tokyo 2020 then and now is, as you can plainly see, I am aligning my actions with this goal. As of this writing, I have more than a year to go, and automatically saving for this specific goal has already liberated me from the mental strain of thinking about putting funds aside every month (we call this automating our finances).

2. I could share my travel experiences with loved ones

It’s no secret that Ramit took his parents and in-laws with him on the first leg of his honeymoon. But what really fascinated me was what Ramit said to Brian Kelly, aka “The Points Guy,” on Brian’s Talking Points podcast:

“My parents had four kids, not a lot of money. And I was just thinking that if they were to come to Rome, they would’ve come during the hot summer. They would have planned out everywhere they went based on how much it cost. And so for us to even be like ‘Don’t even think about it, just show up.’…

We took private tours of the Vatican. We took them to a cooking class. Both of the moms have never taken a cooking class in their lives. They’ve been cooking for 30-plus years! We all just hung out. And the dads bonded. It was just one of the best memories of our lives.”

I bolded the above because I understand that exact sentiment. My Asian parents would rarely go traveling, much less even *think* about spending more money than necessary on a luxury vacation. The idea simply doesn’t exist in the realm of possibilities for them.

One year I took both my parents with me to Toronto. And I remember my dad telling me how grateful he was to have been able to reconnect with his cousins after 30 years, which wouldn’t have been at all possible had I not booked his ticket and stay.

Having the perspective and ability to share these travel experiences with loved ones to me is truly the idea of abundance and generosity, as well as a powerful motivator for why I work so hard to earn money.

3. I don’t have to fall for the mindtrap of “finding a better deal”

It used to make financial sense to forego luxury hotels and experiences and restrict myself to the idea of budget travel when I was but a broke college kid. And so I’d try to calculate cost and my expected value and level of happiness or satisfaction.

More often than not, this math was way off. One year I recall passing on the opportunity to swim with dolphins in the Bahamas. Although I was interested, it was quite a bit out of my budget but still something I could afford. But I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t worth it or that I could find a better deal elsewhere.

In the end, I missed out completely, and for months that was all my friends who did partake talked about. #FOMO

Old money decisions die hard. But as I’ve learned through adopting new money habits, cost and expected outcome aren’t something I could predict or are necessarily even meant to be predetermined. It’s not always about the deal, but about the convenience and immediate opportunity of being able to indulge in something fun and unique that I otherwise would never get to experience.

4. It’s okay to spend on things I love or just want

How many of us feel a nagging guilt that we “shouldn’t” spend money on that $65 shirt when we already have 12 other shirts, even though we WANT it? It’s hard to justify, and we all feel this, even people like Brian, who travels in style for a living. Here’s a transcription of the Talking Points podcast mentioned above that I thought was particularly profound:

Brian: “I always struggle, especially in a country like Thailand, Amans are expensive wherever you go. And people will grouse, I know, whenever I say the nice hotel in Thailand, but, yeah. I mean, it’s all about the experience.”

Ramit: “I agree. I don’t think it’s for every day. I’m perfectly happy staying at a very budget airport hotel when I need to. I don’t mind it. But I do think that there are moments in life where you say, ‘I truly want to go as far as I can on this.’ And I have this concept on my site where I talk about Money Dials. Think about a dial on your car radio.

And most people have one or two Money Dials that they just love spending on. For you, it’s travel. And so you can turn that Money Dial all the way up and you can stay at Aman’s, Ritz Carlton, wherever it is that you love. Some people just couldn’t care less. But they love clothes. A lot of people love convenience. I love convenience, that’s mine. So if you know what your Money Dial is, then you can go all in and you can spend extravagantly on the things you love.”

We each have an area in our lives where we just naturally spend more money on. These Money Dials explain why we spend money the way we do. In other words, Money Dials is a way for you to figure out what’s important to you and what’s not. For example, I value relationships, so I’ve spent more money to live in a centrally located apartment, furnished from zero, to be more welcoming and host my new and old friends much more easily.

For me, the idea of Money Dials has provided me that healthy balance of knowing that I could spend money on something — guilt-free — because it’s important to me, instead of feeling like I should only be squirreling away money for an indeterminate future.

I could have both — and spend wisely and extravagantly as long as I can afford it and it makes me happy.

5. My dream vacation shouldn’t just be a dream

We often hammer home the message of “you define what a Rich Life means to you,” but I must admit that I have to constantly think about what this means for myself.  

Through writing this article, I realized that part of my Rich Life is being able to figure out that I CAN make my “dream vacation” possible for myself.

Maybe not tomorrow. Not next week or in the next six months.

But definitely in a reasonable and achievable timeline that wouldn’t get drowned out by vague “someday” hopes. I’ve already set up my savings, and it’s only a matter of time before I start looking at flights and places to stay.

The overall message here is simple: it’s important for all of us to think about why we strive to live a Rich Life. For me, it’s about being in control and deciding what my money can do and is for.

And at least for the foreseeable future, it’s living in my posh apartment to spend more time with people I care about and then taking off to Tokyo in summer 2020 to mash myself against hundreds of people from around the world to celebrate amid the biggest stage in sports ever.

See you there?

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/my-boss-went-on-a-dream-six-week-vacation-and-these-are-5-things-i-now-consider-for-my-future-travels/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[mcjoelcain]

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels

Have you ever met someone who’s told you, “Traveling to experience different foods, sights, cultures, and people? Ew, no.” Me neither.

The point is, the majority of us looooooove to travel, but we all have different styles of how we plan for it and actually prefer to travel, based in large part on our inner math of whether certain experiences are “worth it.”

For example, I’m kind of a rugged traveler. The idea of swank five- or even four-star hotels never appealed to me. A bag of M&M peanuts for $5? No thanks, I brought my own. An $8 bottle of Fiji water? Just tap water for me.

My travel preferences are the complete opposite of IWT CEO Ramit Sethi’s (aka my boss), who recently returned from his six-week (!) honeymoon. The trip spanned across countries: Italy, Kenya, India, and Thailand. You can read all about his trip starting here.

Real picture of a real lion that Ramit took.

For me, luxury and travel are like oil and water — like, why bother mixing them? If I traveled, I’d usually rough it out — in the occasional hostel, and for longer term stays, in affordable Airbnbs, just as I did back in my nomadic days; whereas Ramit deliberately immersed himself in absolute luxury, juxtaposed against local life, like touring the street vendors or cooking at a local woman’s house.

Maybe it was Ramit’s excitement about his experiences as he was telling it, but the idea of traveling in luxury became a contagion that latched on and proliferated in my thoughts, shifting my perspective from wanting to ask not “why?” but “why not…?”

Why not try splurging on lavish experiences when I’m traveling (I am older now, after all)?

Why not have both worlds of “ultra lux” and the humility of local living?

Why not be open-minded and dream BIG?

Maybe it’s meta to be cross-examining my boss’s style of vacationing with my own travels on the very blog that he founded, but it’s important to also acknowledge that just because I’m part of the team here doesn’t mean we’re a hivemind. It doesn’t mean I just “get it.” Like you, I must undergo a process of exposing myself to different and interesting ideas and letting them percolate until I choose to make them a part of my decision-making, as long as they make sense to me.

And ultimately, what I took away from his retelling of his experiences isn’t that I necessarily need to also travel lavishly or that I should go to Thailand or India or Kenya. It’s that…

1. My own dream vacation is within my reach … I just have to plan it

While I don’t care to go on my own safari adventure, I’ve been inspired to figure out how to make my own dream vacation — a multi-month stay in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics — a reality.

My goal for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thought I came up with just now while thinking about eating sushi for dinner (¬_¬). It’s actually been on my mind since

I got to stay in Tokyo for four months back in 2016. At the time, it was a feel-good fleeting thought — something that I’d pushed off until now obviously to start thinking about manifesting.

Stephanie’s thought process then: “Future Stephanie will figure it out somehow!”

Stephanie’s thought process now: “OK, well, I am Future Stephanie now, so the first thing to do is start automatically transferring savings into an account that’s dedicated for this trip (done); find someone who can help me maximize my credit card points between now and then (in progress); then use my hella points to book first-class tickets to Tokyo.”

The main difference between thinking about Tokyo 2020 then and now is, as you can plainly see, I am aligning my actions with this goal. As of this writing, I have more than a year to go, and automatically saving for this specific goal has already liberated me from the mental strain of thinking about putting funds aside every month (we call this automating our finances).

2. I could share my travel experiences with loved ones

It’s no secret that Ramit took his parents and in-laws with him on the first leg of his honeymoon. But what really fascinated me was what Ramit said to Brian Kelly, aka “The Points Guy,” on Brian’s Talking Points podcast:

“My parents had four kids, not a lot of money. And I was just thinking that if they were to come to Rome, they would’ve come during the hot summer. They would have planned out everywhere they went based on how much it cost. And so for us to even be like ‘Don’t even think about it, just show up.’…

We took private tours of the Vatican. We took them to a cooking class. Both of the moms have never taken a cooking class in their lives. They’ve been cooking for 30-plus years! We all just hung out. And the dads bonded. It was just one of the best memories of our lives.”

I bolded the above because I understand that exact sentiment. My Asian parents would rarely go traveling, much less even *think* about spending more money than necessary on a luxury vacation. The idea simply doesn’t exist in the realm of possibilities for them.

One year I took both my parents with me to Toronto. And I remember my dad telling me how grateful he was to have been able to reconnect with his cousins after 30 years, which wouldn’t have been at all possible had I not booked his ticket and stay.

Having the perspective and ability to share these travel experiences with loved ones to me is truly the idea of abundance and generosity, as well as a powerful motivator for why I work so hard to earn money.

3. I don’t have to fall for the mindtrap of “finding a better deal”

It used to make financial sense to forego luxury hotels and experiences and restrict myself to the idea of budget travel when I was but a broke college kid. And so I’d try to calculate cost and my expected value and level of happiness or satisfaction.

More often than not, this math was way off. One year I recall passing on the opportunity to swim with dolphins in the Bahamas. Although I was interested, it was quite a bit out of my budget but still something I could afford. But I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t worth it or that I could find a better deal elsewhere.

In the end, I missed out completely, and for months that was all my friends who did partake talked about. #FOMO

Old money decisions die hard. But as I’ve learned through adopting new money habits, cost and expected outcome aren’t something I could predict or are necessarily even meant to be predetermined. It’s not always about the deal, but about the convenience and immediate opportunity of being able to indulge in something fun and unique that I otherwise would never get to experience.

4. It’s okay to spend on things I love or just want

How many of us feel a nagging guilt that we “shouldn’t” spend money on that $65 shirt when we already have 12 other shirts, even though we WANT it? It’s hard to justify, and we all feel this, even people like Brian, who travels in style for a living. Here’s a transcription of the Talking Points podcast mentioned above that I thought was particularly profound:

Brian: “I always struggle, especially in a country like Thailand, Amans are expensive wherever you go. And people will grouse, I know, whenever I say the nice hotel in Thailand, but, yeah. I mean, it’s all about the experience.”

Ramit: “I agree. I don’t think it’s for every day. I’m perfectly happy staying at a very budget airport hotel when I need to. I don’t mind it. But I do think that there are moments in life where you say, ‘I truly want to go as far as I can on this.’ And I have this concept on my site where I talk about Money Dials. Think about a dial on your car radio.

And most people have one or two Money Dials that they just love spending on. For you, it’s travel. And so you can turn that Money Dial all the way up and you can stay at Aman’s, Ritz Carlton, wherever it is that you love. Some people just couldn’t care less. But they love clothes. A lot of people love convenience. I love convenience, that’s mine. So if you know what your Money Dial is, then you can go all in and you can spend extravagantly on the things you love.”

We each have an area in our lives where we just naturally spend more money on. These Money Dials explain why we spend money the way we do. In other words, Money Dials is a way for you to figure out what’s important to you and what’s not. For example, I value relationships, so I’ve spent more money to live in a centrally located apartment, furnished from zero, to be more welcoming and host my new and old friends much more easily.

For me, the idea of Money Dials has provided me that healthy balance of knowing that I could spend money on something — guilt-free — because it’s important to me, instead of feeling like I should only be squirreling away money for an indeterminate future.

I could have both — and spend wisely and extravagantly as long as I can afford it and it makes me happy.

5. My dream vacation shouldn’t just be a dream

We often hammer home the message of “you define what a Rich Life means to you,” but I must admit that I have to constantly think about what this means for myself.  

Through writing this article, I realized that part of my Rich Life is being able to figure out that I CAN make my “dream vacation” possible for myself.

Maybe not tomorrow. Not next week or in the next six months.

But definitely in a reasonable and achievable timeline that wouldn’t get drowned out by vague “someday” hopes. I’ve already set up my savings, and it’s only a matter of time before I start looking at flights and places to stay.

The overall message here is simple: it’s important for all of us to think about why we strive to live a Rich Life. For me, it’s about being in control and deciding what my money can do and is for.

And at least for the foreseeable future, it’s living in my posh apartment to spend more time with people I care about and then taking off to Tokyo in summer 2020 to mash myself against hundreds of people from around the world to celebrate amid the biggest stage in sports ever.

See you there?

My boss went on a dream six-week vacation, and these are 5 things I now consider for my future travels is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Money https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/my-boss-went-on-a-dream-six-week-vacation-and-these-are-5-things-i-now-consider-for-my-future-travels/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[itsworn]

Two Deaths Darken Nostalgia Drag Racing And Cackling Events In California

Scene: 26th NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion

Those fans and cackle-car teams who showed up for NHRA’s 26th “Bakersfield reunion” seemed glad to be there. Spectators found closer parking than usual, for starters, and could select a seat or fence spot anywhere, even at peak Saturday attendance. They had to be happy about the return of extracurricular activities that made this event so unique and irresistible since 1992, pulling people back year after year from all over the world. Some say they come just to hang over the fence while period-correct, 1950s and ’60s American push cars with big V8s accelerate nitro-burning race cars to life close enough to feel heat from fiery zoomies and weedburners. Folks were denied that luxury last time, among other things. (Read all about it in the Mar. ’17 HRD.) The resultant outcry must’ve gotten awfully loud before the museum board voted to spend 30 grand for a full-length Armco barrier that evidently satisfied the Mother Ship’s nannies.

The racers themselves just want to race, of course, immune from trash talk about boycotts and loyalties. As always, CHRR’s contestants came through with either the best or second-best nostalgia show on the planet (rivaled only by the independent March Meet here). Final determination of season champions in NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series categories is a built-in bonus. Fans were further treated to Firebird Raceway’s rain-postponed pro finals, wherein Jim Murphy defeated Adam Sorokin in AA/FD, and Jason Rupert dropped Ryan Hodgson in AA/FC. Those outcomes helped secure points titles for both winners. Their fellow season champions are Kin Bates, A/Fuel; Don Enriquez, Jr. Fuel; Bobby Cottrell, 7.0 Pro; Dustin Lee, Nostalgia I; Dave Lawson, N-II; Ed DeStaute, N-III; Brendon Frye, A/Gas; Rich Harrison, B/G; Brian Smith, C/G; Mike Raberner, D/G; and Dale Hicks, Hot Rod.

CHRR’s jam-packed pits dictate fewer categories for this grand finale. Event winners were Jim Young, T/F (in the absence of runner-up Murphy, who’d brushed the wall past the finish line in the semis); Bobby Cottrell, F/C; darkhorse Englishman Nick Davis, AA/FA; Bates again, A/F; Gary Reinero, AA/G; John Marottek, J/F; Pete Peterson, 7.0; Lloyd Harden, Nostalgia; Terry Newton, A/G; Jeremy Hanger, Pro Mod; Bob Moreland, A/FX; and Bob Tingler, S/S.

The unavoidable elephant in the joint this year was last year. Despite ideal weather all but Friday morning and NHRA’s mighty promotional machine, revenue required to fund year-round museum operations suffered obvious hits in cackle-car entries (fewer than half of last year’s record 100-plus), attendance, souvenirs, even auction items. Nothing gets the attention of upper management like sudden revenue reduction. By reinstating the old attractions, NHRA’s directors gave hope that they’ve learned not to fix what ain’t broke. Only time—and their customers—will tell.

Fire Dancer: Amazingly, a dozen traditional AA/Fuel Altereds showed up (two more than AA/FDs) and stole the show during qualifying. The Bradford family’s Fiat got straightened out past the finish line, but Randy’s pedaling fractured four connecting rods. Veteran photographer Paul Sadler got the shot.

Iceman Returns: Leading Friday night’s honoree ceremony was grand marshal Rick Stewart (right, with emcee Bob Frey), whose 25 years working NHRA starting lines followed success in fuel and gas dragsters. “The Iceman” also starred—and crashed—in famed director Robert Abel’s first project, 1965’s Seven-Second Love Affair. Gene Adams’ slingshot was destroyed, but student photographer Les Blank’s onboard camera and microphone kept rolling along with the cockpit. Stewart went to the hospital, where he awoke to a bright-orange sky that he figured was hell, but proved to be the first night of the Watts riots. Cameraman Blank went on to become an award-winning documentarian. His color film may have been the earliest audio-visual footage ever shot from a crashing drag racer’s perspective.

High-Riser 302: Sean and Anna Clason’s freshly finished Model A is no stranger to the streets of Bakersfield, but it’d been a while; so long that nobody under 50 was alive the last time this car disturbed the peace. Sean’s late uncle, John DeWitt, drove it everywhere in the late 1950s (flathead-powered) and early ’60s (Chevy V8) before starting a restoration around 1965. Progress would be slowed by family obligations and health issues, then stopped by his 1998 passing. The chopped ’31 body, complete with original glass in all but one window opening, sat another eight years before the young couple scored a used rolling chassis. The rest has been accumulated or fabricated over the last decade. They rebuilt the 302 Ford—the first engine for both—in their kitchen. The biggest challenge turned out to be adapting not two, not three, but four reproduction Strombergs—inline, yet—to an early, carbureted engine plucked from a generous pal’s parts car (along with the C4 tranny that’s still behind it). The only affordable solution that occurred to Sean, Anna, and buddy Sean McDougall (whose Nov. ’16 HRD cover coupe is in the background) was mating a fuel-injected 5.0L Mustang’s manifold with a Speedway adapter plate designed to put four 97s atop a 6-71 blower. Anna made wood patterns for a sheet-metal power tower that merges induction technologies, topped off with irresistible stacks appeal. Flawless welding throughout illustrates years of oil-pipeline experience by both Seans. The cowl lights are now turn signals.

Muffler Magic: This 1959-vintage local fueler inspired applause just rolling through the pits. Oldtimers hadn’t seen the Scotty’s Muffler Service Special since Charles Scott replaced it with a super-light slingshot a half-century ago. The proud caretaker just happens to be named Scott and run a family muffler shop. HRD followed Scott and Kelly Cochran home to Washington and shot a full feature, coming soon.

Out To Pasture: It was hardly the brightest car driven into Famoso’s Grove, but the subtly shaved trim and expanded quarters sucked us in. Two tiny tow hooks, barely visible below the bumper, completed the impression of an old warrior. Rex Clifford lusted for it since the day that a straight-axled, tunnel-rammed ’55 first rumbled into his hometown of Mesa, Arizona. That guy sold it to one of Rex’s buddies, who eventually made a teenage dream come true. Forty years later, the old warhorse still runs a 327, tamed by a freeway-friendly combination of single quad, Turbo 400, and 2.73:1 teeth in its nine-inch rear.

Family Legacy: Thirty years since its last, disastrous local appearance in competition, one of Canada’s greatest AA/Gas Dragsters came to cackle with late builder-driver Jack Williams’ daughter under its signature canopy. Wendy Williams rescued Dad’s original trailer from nearly six decades of British Columbia winters. It easily won HRD’s unofficial Best Transporter award.

Flaky Character: A long-roofed shoebox might’ve been the brightest thing on either side of the pitside bleachers. Owner Rodney Lovato was quick to credit Sacramento’s Precision Frame for the stunning finish. A warmed-over 350 pulled his flaky 150 up and over the Grapevine from the San Fernando Valley.

Transport Service: Yes, you saw both local Fords in the last issue (Jan. ’18 HRD), but here’s a brighter view of Rick Davis’ rare AA roadster pickup and Tyler Weeks’ T retro racer. The Bakersfield buddies are members of what claims to be the founding chapter of the Model A Ford Club of America.

Farewell: Brett Henry, who traveled 1,200 miles from Wichita, Kansas, twice each year to challenge the world’s best traditional AA/Fuel Altereds, was seriously injured Saturday and died the next day. Top-end witnesses told us that the 50-year-old veteran completed the run normally and appeared to shut off, momentarily. The nitro-burning Chevy then accelerated through the shutdown area and into the wall before striking a berm along the property’s border. Photographer Kleet Norris captured the popular racer’s final burnout.

Cackling Comes Into Its Own

For his first 47 years of NHRA affiliation, respected racemaster Steve Gibbs never envisioned promoting events of his own. That all changed at the start of the 2016 California Hot Rod Reunion, shortly after Steve’s 48th NHRA anniversary, when the cofounder (with colleague Greg Sharp) of the original, since-trademarked Cacklefest® dramatically stepped down from his official’s role. At issue were unpopular new restrictions from NHRA headquarters on push starts, pit fire-ups, even the traditional Friday-night hotel cackle that gives the public free samples of nitromethane. Soon after, Gibbs resigned from the museum’s board and refused to sign a consultant’s contract that he considered “an insult.” Thus ended 48 years of faithful service, and started—originated, actually—a career. At age 77, together with cackle-car-owner Ron Johnson, Gibbs invented the Nitro Revival, the first commercial drag-racing event for real drag cars, held at a real drag strip, with no drag racing. Perhaps unavoidably, the rookie promoters scheduled it three weekends ahead of NHRA’s reunion. Perhaps coincidentally, NHRA ordered a big signboard for Barona Drag Strip’s starting line promoting the upcoming Bakersfield bash. (“I heard it cost them five grand,” said Gibbs, “and they’ve never bought a sign anywhere. A terrible sign; too much jammed in. You couldn’t read it from the stands.”)

As if the divided nostalgia community needed any additional drama, cosponsor Johnson, a two-time cancer victim, checked himself out of home hospice long enough to enjoy his back-to-back promotions in downtown Escondido (annual Nitro Night) and Barona, then died nine days later. Had he lived a little longer, Ron would’ve enjoyed the irony of accepting the Special Appreciation award that the NHRA Museum presented to his daughter and son at Bakersfield.

War Reenactors: With Ron Johnson watching, two of his tribute fuelers reenacted a routine that Tommy Ivo (seen in foreground) and Chris Karamesines experienced countless times in the mid-’60s’ match-race wars, before burnouts and electric starters eliminated push-down drama. Drivers Kol Johnson, Ron’s son, and Mark McCormick then staged and launched the cloned Chizler and Barnstormer, respectively, before idling downtrack. It was a fitting finale for both the event and cosponsor Johnson, a major player in the cackle movement.

Split Level: Soon to be southern California’s last surviving purpose-built facility, Barona reminds local oldtimers of long-gone San Diego County strips at Paradise Mesa and Ramona. The eighth-mile facility sits on Indian land near Lakeside. Clever carving of the surrounding hills created sufficient flat spaces for pitting and watching.

Royal Friendship: Rookie promoter Steve Gibbs and rookie booksigner Linda Vaughn took a break between autographs to visit with Linda’s sister, Sheila Ann Franklin, and Canadian speed merchant Brant “The Kid” Inglis, who was wrenching on the same 392 Chrysler that Jack Williams last ran in the Syndicate Scuderia. Looking on is Amber Greth, the gearhead granddaughter of Speed Sport legend Red Greth.

Pyromaniac: Retired firefighter Bill Pitts continues to put out flames. Nobody shoots them higher than the godfather of cackling, whose restored MagiCar inadvertently invented an entire exhibition category by lighting off in the Famoso Grove in 1993, during the second NHRA reunion. Golden Age star Jeep Hampshire is back behind the butterfly. Photographer Bob McClurg snapped the shot.

Thunder Lungs: Another reason for trekking to the southernmost part of the West Coast was a last chance—two chances, actually—to enjoy the Voice of Drag Racing. Jon Lundberg called the street action in downtown Escondido the night before Barona’s Nitro Revival. His sidekick here was NHRA Division Seven announcer Mike English.

Colorful Crowd: Barona’s crowd was small but colorful, consisting mostly of cackle-car teams and friends showing support for Steve Gibbs. The fan in the middle was fortunate to score an official shirt before souvenir items completely sold out. Enough money was made, according to Gibbs, to ensure another Nitro Revival on Sept. 29, 2018.

The post Two Deaths Darken Nostalgia Drag Racing And Cackling Events In California appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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