The lesson

The lesson

I just spent an entire week teaching/facilitating a group of top professionals in some professional development for their field. Some would consider me an expert. I probably am. I have a number of decades in my experience of doing this very successfully. It was well received. I received compliments and encouragement from 90% of the audience over the week.

But I did not enjoy it very much. This is not where I want to shine nor what I want to be known for. Individual one on one or very small group interaction is far superior. It is also far more demanding and far more rewarding. There are many people who would kill for my public and large audience opportunities, but I am not among them. My friend Bernie, calls it "leading from the back of the room." I like that mental picture and what it says about me. Not only that, but it is a much richer experience and much more gratifying at a personal level.

This too fits my personality much better. As I get older, my introvert is seems to grow stronger. I desire public acclaim and the public spotlight less and less. I desire a crucial personal interaction far more. This about being quiet and enjoyed for the value provided, much more than for the charisma and energy expressed in a far too public venue.

The lesson is that I need to say "no" more to the big gigs, and "yes" far more to the small personal gigs. While it may not make sense to the "more and bigger" crowd, I am walking to the drumbeat of a different group. What about you? Do you have the calm confidence to make this call?

The moment

The moment

The absolute most difficult time for me to live in. The now. The moment. This minute. I live mentally and profoundly in the future. What's coming next. The NEXT thing. The tomorrow. It's been this way since I was a kid. Always thinking about, planning for, anticipating, the future. But I discovered along the way that I wasn't getting much out of the present. 

This is a powerfully negative attribute, because the Now, this moment is all I (or you) actually have. There are no tomorrows, there is no future, except in a possible theoretical way. Yes it probably will get here, but it may not. So Now is all I truly have and can count upon. It is imperative that I enjoy, experience, and live this moment.

So my mental energy is often employed to pull me back from this future abyss and remind myself sternly that the psychic prison of the future is robbing my present of . . . well everything. Don't lose 40 years of your life like someone I know well. 

Live this moment well. It's all any of us have truly.

The Plan

"The Plan"

The Plan came about because of how little retirement resources we have secured away. There are many reasons for how little we have set aside, but most of them come down to two primary factors, first that we worked for very little money to ourselves in the non-profit sector and second, the intense needs of the people we live and work among while we live outside of the USA. Most of our working adult lives have been well spent, from a position of helping some of the neediest people on the planet. But the net result for us personally is that we have not used many of these resources toward our own benefit. That net result means that we have a deep shortfall of the resources theoretically necessary to carry us along in our non-income producing years - which are in our near future. (theoretical in the sense that we easily could die before any of those resources are needed)

While it is mildly comforting to read that most Americans also do not have much money saved (misery loves company?), and few resources set aside for their golden years, that nevertheless does not change the fact that we too are facing that near future dilemma. So after several especially painful experiences this past year, which clearly revealed that we are indeed getting much older, more fragile, and plus a horribly enlightening letter from the Social Security Administration detailing how little we could expect in retirement - out of all of that, came "The Plan".

The plan is to BRRRR real estate (BRRRR - Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat) enough real estate that we can perhaps feed ourselves and house ourselves and continue our life-long pattern of helping others in greater need. The Plan came about far far too late to be highly effective (works best if started in your 20's), or to have much margin for error, but we are boldly going where few in our line of work have ever gone before. We are especially poor candidates for the The Plan, because we live 5000+ miles from where The Plan is taking place and that takes more money (leaving less to save) and holds higher risks (because we are so far away).  Plus the disaster known as the American banking situation (see previous post) makes this very difficult to accomplish.

Yet any forward progress is indeed progress and we will make the best of whatever we can accomplish before our non-producing income years arrive. A poor plan of action taken, is far superior to no action and no plan at all. Cheers to The Plan

Banks and horrors

Banks and horror

The American banking system is broken beyond imagination. It is intrusive and invasive under the guise of protecting us all from some remote money laundering actions or some other imagined threat. They blame the Federal government and that may or may not be accurate and true. But this I know for certain after the last 11 weeks of wrestling with the American banking nightmare - they have no interest at heart but their own.

I am a model client for a bank. No debt and a credit rating over 800 and assets - but I can't borrow any money. That's right, a person who is a premiere candidate for repaying the money I borrow (if for no other reason than I always have), a person who has shown and proven that they handle money in a wise and appropriate manner, can't get anything out of a bank. I tried. I tried with a great deal of effort. I tried with tenacity. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. No progress. In fact, my responsible behavior with fiscal resources for all my life make me a prime risk according to the banks of America.

Now the private sector is an entirely different story. They are falling all over themselves to give me more money than I can reasonably return. This too is a travesty. For it is the inversion of the American banking system. Too much money with too little collateral too easily given. And no I am not complaining, but simply explaining, that both of these positions are dire situations. Money is too tight in the banking sector and too loose in the private sector.

The horror of it all is how many banks just turned away my business so frivolously. I am trying to do business. I am trying to make a profit. A profit which would profit them as well. I honestly cannot imagine how they are making any money. Most branch managers seemed genuinely irritated that I interrupted their solitaire games which they were playing on their bank computers, when I come calling for money. (There were two exceptions along the way, but they too produced far too little in the end of a great deal of effort on their parts and my part).

So in the end I am using my own money and owner financing for my business ventures. They (the owners) are making a tidy profit, and I am laboring to move forward with building a reservoir with which my wife and I can bless others. But if you have a line on how you can get banks to part with their resources, I welcome an email from you spelling out how this might could happen.