Your community: your strongest resource

The Amish Way

When I was growing up I was always surrounded by my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.  My grandparents had been raised Amish, but had become Mennonite.  My mom and her eight brothers and sisters were raised Mennonite.  None of them remained with the Mennonite church into adulthood, but our family retained many of the values of these close-knit communities.

We were always helping each other with something.  My uncles came and helped my dad put a new roof on our house one year.  Another year we helped my aunt and uncle paint their house.  My grandpa, a mechanic, changed the oil in our cars.  My cousin, a beautician, gave us hair cuts and perms at a reduced cost.  My aunts would come over and help my mom paint and hang wallpaper.  We also helped each other with canning and preserving the produce of our large gardens.

Take the Time to Cultivate your Community

When I was growing up I thought everyone had this supportive community that helped each other and shared their talents.  It was a shock to me when I met people who would never ask for help.  It was also a shock when I learned that so many people don't even know their neighbors.  I have found that my neighbors and the members of my community are a resource in so many ways.

I moved away from my home town almost 20 years ago, so I'm no longer able to give and receive help from my family, but in every neighborhood where I've lived since, my spouse and I have enjoyed a close relationship with our neighbors that transcends age, background, race, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation.  By cultivating these connections and interdependence, you can have a richer life in every sense of the word.

Be Willing to Give

First and foremost, if you want to create a community of interdependence, you have to be willing to give with no expectation of receiving anything.  For example, our next door neighbors have a daughter who is the same age as ours, and the girls go to school together.  Before we moved into the neighborhood, our neighbors would have to pay a babysitter or "aftercare" at school to take care of their daughter from 3:30 to 6 p.m. on school days.  After we moved in, I offered to take care of their daughter along with my own, as I was home from work in time to get the girls off of the bus.  My neighbors generously offered to pay me for taking care of their daughter, but I would not accept payment.  It was a pleasure and a privilege to care for their daughter.  My daughter, an only child, enjoyed her company, as did I.  In addition, my daughter was happily occupied after they had done their homework, and I was able to use that time to make dinner or just to relax after a long day at work.  When my neighbors would thank me, I would thank them earnestly in return because I really felt they were doing ME a favor!

Be Willing to Take

Over time circumstances have changed, and our neighbors no longer need us to watch their daughter in the afternoons because one of them is usually home when she gets off the bus.  But we have developed an interdependence that makes all of our lives easier.  We take turns taking the girls to school in the morning.  If either my neighbor or I is not going to be home in time to meet the bus in the afternoon, we can text each other and ask if our daughter can stay with her friend until we get home.  When our daughters are involved in the same activity, we can share rides.  Now we not only have a satisfying relationship with our neighbors, but all of us have benefited financially as well, as none of us have to pay for aftercare or the extra gas for duplicate trips.

Don't Worry about Coming out Even

My best friend when I was growing up was an only child, and she was so concerned about making everything "fair" that when she poured us drinks she would carefully pour the drinks from glass to glass until they were exactly even.  I don't know if it was because I had two younger sisters, or because I had come from this family where we shared and didn't care about "fairness", but I always thought this leveling was unnecessary.

A member of a different part of my family reminds me of this childhood friend.  She never wants to owe anyone anything, even the return of a favor from her own daughter.  To me this is tragic in so many ways.  By doing things for each other we recognize our interdependence, we build strong bonds, and we are not alone in our time of need.

Besides the obvious financial benefits these strong community bonds also keep us healthier.*  Specifically, doing good for others makes us happier.**  So, as long as you don't feel that someone is taking advantage of your good will, the more you can give of yourself, the more benefit you receive.

*http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2006938,00.html
**http://www.actionforhappiness.org/10-keys-to-happier-living/do-things-for-others/details

Reinvent Yourself! Part I

Stuck in a Rut

When you were a kid did you think, "When I'm a grown-up I'm going to waste every Sunday evening feeling depressed about spending another week in an airless cubicle staring at a computer screen all day!  Woohoo!"  I'm guessing you didn't.  My 9-year-old daughter thinks she might want to be an artist or a veterinarian or a comedian.  My neighbor's daughter wants to be a diplomat.   If you were like me you might have fantasized about being a writer, teacher, or scientist.  My best friends wanted to be spies, marine biologists, and actors.

You might even have practiced your chosen field.  I got a tiny microscope from the Sears catalog for Christmas one year and spent all summer examining the local plant life up close.  My friend David made spy badges for us so we could practice spying on the other kids at recess.  I wrote constantly.  I still remember my first book, written when I was five years old, about a lazy polliwog.  It was called "Log the Polliwog."  So why did we stop dreaming about what we really wanted and settle for a dreary 9-to-5 existence?

Letting the Days Go By

Sometimes we don't know what we want.  Sometimes we do, but it seems too impractical, or it doesn't measure up to others' expectations.  Or maybe you tried out your dream job and it wasn't all you thought it would be.

That's what happened to me.  Twice.

First, I had always wanted to be a college professor.  It combined my loves of teaching, reading, and writing, and I was in love with the romantic vision of academia I had gained from my undergraduate experience at a small, private, liberal arts school.  I started out by getting my master's degree in English from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.  I loved the school, the students, and the professors.  I loved teaching there and felt truly nurtured and encouraged as an academic and could picture myself in a rosy future as an intellectual.

Then I began work on my PhD in English at another, more elite institution, and the magic seemed to wear off.  I wasn't enjoying the teaching there, and my classes were uninspiring.   I also realized that my chances of getting a tenure-track job were poor, and, if I did get such a job, I would have little choice about where in the country I lived; I would have to go wherever I could get a job.  In the end, I felt like my education was killing my will to live.  After three semesters in my PhD program I took a leave of absence and never returned.  A few months after I left my PhD program sent me a master's in the mail for "time served."

My second career 

My second career has lasted 16 years.  I took what many considered a 180 from my career as an English PhD student and entered the field of Information Technology.  I got another master's degree in Information Systems and have held positions variously as a web developer, systems analyst, project manager, department manager, and business intelligence analyst.  As long as I was learning and being challenged I was happy.

My next career?

After 16 years in IT I find myself burnt out, fed up with corporate culture, and ready for a new challenge.  What will it be?

Discover how you can find your next career in part 2 of this post, coming soon!

Nice house ... too bad it's costing you your health, sanity, and happiness

The Perfect Life

In 2010 we seemed to have it all.  We had a healthy, bright 5-year-old daughter who was the light of our lives.  My spouse was working at a non-profit that she loved, and had steadily worked up the ladder to become a manager.  I had just landed a six-figure IT job the summer before, and was working in a beautiful new office.  Five years before we had purchased our dream home:  a 1920s craftsman style 3,600 square foot beauty in a leafy suburb.  Everything was going according to plan.  I was miserable.

The six-figure dream job was a living hell.  The stress was horrible, my boss was erratic and a terrible manager, and the company culture was so dysfunctional that I often went an entire day without anyone so much as saying "hello" to me.  But I was trapped.  We had two car loans, two student loans, expensive daycare,a huge house, and we had financed furniture to fill that huge home.

Trapped

At $1,500 a month the mortgage on the house was not that bad, since Pittsburgh is such an affordable area.  However, the maintenance on the house was killing us.  Since we both worked so much and had a young daughter, we were paying $200 a month for someone else to clean the house.  We were also paying someone $100 a month to take care of the yard.  Our heating and cooling costs were high because it was such a large house, and the gorgeous old windows were not energy efficient.  And the house had constant plumbing and electrical problems.  One spring we had to replace the entire sewer pipe to the tune of $9,000.  Since our whole back yard had been dug up to replace the pipe we had to hire landscapers to re-shape and reseed the yard for thousands more dollars.

On top of the housing expenses our lifestyle was costing us an arm and a leg because we were too stressed and tired to do simple things like cooking our own meals.  We turned to our old standbys to relieve us of the stress and unhappiness of our lives:  eating out, shopping, and cable TV.  Our house became cluttered with the results of our unnecessary shopping, and our bodies bore the brunt of too much take-out and television, and not enough exercise.

Something had to give

No matter how many times I ran the numbers I could not figure out how to quit my job and maintain this lifestyle.  Something had to give.  One Friday I left my job and never went back.  Two weeks later I started working as a consultant at a company where my new coworkers welcomed me with open arms and my manager treated me like a human being.  I was blissfully happy even though I had taken a huge pay cut.

Still, I never wanted to feel that horrible trapped feeling again.  We had to cut our expenses so that we would have choices.  We sold the beautiful house and moved into a small 1960s ranch.

Mortgage free at 43

The new house is 1/3 the size of the old.  It does not make people gasp when they enter the front door.  It is not beautiful.  But, as of September of this year it will be paid off.  And it's small enough that we can clean the whole thing ourselves in about an hour, our utility bills are 1/3 of what they were in the bigger house, and we have the freedom to make choices.  I never have to be trapped in a high-paying nightmare again.

Lose Your Cable and Gain Your Financial Freedom

You did what??

Seven months ago we did the unthinkable:  we cancelled our cable.  Our cable plus phone plus internet had grown to over $200 per month, and I realized that we were spending $2,400 per year for TV!  Even worse, that $200 per month compounded at 7% over 10 years is $34,600!  

$34,600 for TV?

If we take that $200 per month and invest it at an average rate of return of 7%, at the end of 10 years that luxury will have become worth $34,600.  If your salary is $34,600 (after taxes, of course), you would be working for one full year out of every ten, just to pay for cable TV!!

But what could we do?  We are an average, TV-loving family.  We have friends who do not even own TVs, but we are not that family.  We are the flat-screen owning, DVR-ing, OnDemand watching family.

Streaming Services to the Rescue

Since we didn't want to give up TV completely we investigated the possibilities of streaming services.  I had thought you could only stream them to your computer, and I had visions of us huddled around a laptop trying to watch Dirty Dancing.  It wasn't a pretty picture.  But what I found was that there are a number of subscription services available, and you can stream them from any Blu-ray DVD player or internet streaming device such as a Roku and watch them on your TV.  To watch on your Blu-ray player, just hook up the DVD player as you normally would, and look for the streaming options on the on-screen DVD player menu.  To watch on a Roku or other streaming device, just follow the simple instructions included with the device to connect it to your TV and select the "channels" you subscribe to on the Roku on-screen menu.

There are many streaming services out there, but here are the ones that we tried and enjoyed.

Netflix

For $7.99 a month you get commercial-free TV shows and movies.  There is a huge catalog of movies and plenty of television shows to watch.  Netflix does not include the current seasons of shows on cable right now, but it does include past seasons of thousands of shows.  Netflix has also started producing its own series, and they are fantastic.  They produced another season of Arrested Development after the networks cancelled it, and they produced the original drama series Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards.  In addition, I have discovered many great British series on Netflix, such as Doc Martin.

Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime includes both a streaming commercial-free service and free two-day shipping from Amazon.  At $99 per year, it's a steal.  Not only do you get a huge library of television shows and movies that you get for free through Amazon Prime, you also get access to other shows and movies you can rent or buy.  As soon as movies come out on video you can rent them from Amazon Prime, usually for a price comparable to OnDemand cable services.

Hulu Plus

For $7.99 per month you can watch new episodes of current series the day after they air on television.  Hulu Plus does show commercials during the shows, but there are fewer than what you have to watch during a broadcast of the show.  I have found that I rarely watch Hulu Plus, but my spouse likes it.

An Old-Fashioned Antenna

Remember these?  So many of us have gotten used to paying for TV we've forgotten that it's still being broadcast over the airwaves for free, and in HD no less!  The picture quality of broadcast HD television is excellent -- much better than cable.  Why?  Because to deliver thousands of channels to your home the cable company has to compress the signal, which degrades the quality.  Not so for broadcast television.  The first time we hooked up an antenna to our HD TV and watched a football game we were blown away by the picture quality.  Depending on where you live you may need to put the antenna on your roof.  This reminds me of the old days when my Uncle Frankie used to climb onto the roof to turn the antenna in his underwear.  Luckily they lived out in the boonies so no one could see him, but my Aunt Geve was always worried that if he fell off the roof the EMTs would see him lying outside in his underwear.  I do not recommend this, by the way.

The Drawbacks

The biggest drawback we have found is for sports fans.  As long as your local broadcast stations are airing your game, it's no problem.  Just hook up your antenna and you're good to go.  But what about when the game is being carried by Root Sports, ESPN, the NFL Channel, or some other cable channel?  Well, especially during the hockey playoffs you'll want to make sure you've been nice to your neighbors, friends, and relations for the rest of the year.  ;-)

The Savings

Between Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon Prime we are spending roughly $24.25 per month on television, a difference of $175.75 per month from the $200 we used to spend.  Not bad!  Compounded at 7% for 10 years, that's a savings of $30,404.75!  In other words, we are saving enough just from cutting cable to fund one full year of retirement.  Over the next 20 years we will have funded two full years of retirement.  And we not only get to watch TV, we have a HUGE catalog of shows to watch!

What other small changes add up to BIG retirement savings?  Stay tuned!