The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

This is something I’ve posted elsewhere as comments, but thought I would aggregate the ideas here as a good reference document. And of course my disclosure: I’m married and we have combined funds.

There are pages upon pages information on the net about how interwoven couples’ finances should be. And with all of that information comes even more emotion.

The biggest reason I see on keeping things separate is spending on indulgences, either a person’s own or their Significant Others. I’d like to ask about the psychology behind that. Given the word choice and descriptions, it often seems these purchases would be outside what is considered normal living expenses: books, trips, movies, whatever. … I guess my confusion is why would you have to justify the purchases? Now before people say “that’s why we have separate accounts, so we don’t justify” I’m not asking that. My curiosity focuses on why one would expect that question to be asked in the first place. Do you think that you should be putting more money into the common pot? Or maybe your SO should be helping more?

At the same time there is a form of … separation. But that’s not the right word. Maybe deniability is better? Effectively it’s a way to distance yourself from what you think is wrong?

I’m just looking for insight tis why I ask. I know the limitations of my own experiences and always enjoying learning from others. In my wife and I’s case, we both have the mindset of being cheap for item’s for ourself while enjoying to treat the other. This occurred not only during dating but here and now in our first few years of marriage. So if one of us buys something there is definite cause of need. And we communicate for practically everything. If its over $100, just check base with the other. We have yet had any potential purchase where someone vetoed, its a good safety to check. Somewhat of 2nd party 5 second rule.

Another thought that I’ve had about the subject is a different take on paying bills separately. When you pay for a service yourself from personal money, it’s easy to create the thought it’s a subset of yours. If you work in a cube farm think about your computer. It’s not really yours. It’s owned by something larger. But you’ve probably generated a feeling of ownership since you use it regularly and without sharing.

Similarly running a household, or even raising a child, is something that is bigger than either person. If all of the child’s medical bills get paid from one account instead of another does that mean they have more claim on the kid? How about paying the mortgage? Is the house yours as singular or plural?

Given the fact that I won’t, and can’t, say what is right or wrong this is all my IMHO. To those that want their own mad money, I think there is one method I have seen that allows it within the this structure. Provide each an “allowance” out of the a main fund. That way it still provides the central account and goal you (plural) are working towards. At the same time the symbolism is important: You are both getting your “income” from the communal pool.

And I do want to say that what happened to some sucks. You trust your partner and what do they do? They wipe out the accounts and run with the money. Hopefully courts are able to ‘repair’ that, in a relatively short time. And I have no answer on how to either prevent that. I think it’s … the inherent weakness of being trusting of another person, be it a husband, wife, parent, heck even accountant.

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I hate the first of the year.

Okay, that’s a bit harsh.

What I hate is how many people set themselves up for failure. Sometime after the holiday ham and before the midnight bubbly, the average American takes this long look inward. Maybe it’s that change in the last digit of your checkbook. Or the lengthening days that hint at the coming promise of spring. And just as the moon pulls at the sea, we make those same resolutions as last year only to be foiled a few months down the road. And we are used to the cycle. We see those same articles dusted off : Most common resolution, First to go, How long can you last? ….. Sorry, that last sounds abit like spam.

And in droves We the People stimulate the economy: our gym memberships, exercise equipment, fad diets, IRA contributions, increased savings at the Banks. Companies love that financial shot in the arm. They know that very few people keep their resolutions because…

Exercise:
Off to the gym we go, shiny new gear in the trunk. Wait, everyone else seems to have gotten the same deal! Packed parking lots, queues for machines, and not enough clean towels just made my 30 minutes at lunch become 2 hours! After work is even worse. Can’t go outdoors because I’m above the 39th parallel. Anyways, I don’t remember being this sore last year when I started up.

Savings:
It’s time to improve my retirement savings plan. 10% into the 401k, plus 100 a month into an IRA. Hmmmm….. The bills from Christmas just came in. I know, I’ll start next month. But then that’s Valentine’s Day. Oh and taxes, can’t forget Uncle Sam. I’ll try to remember to start this up again in May.

Diet:
Oy, after all that holiday food I need to lose some weight. Time to diet, I’ll try those pills I saw on TV. Shoot, George brought in left over Christmas cookies. Maybe after the Superbowl because Sam always makes the best wings. One or two chocolate hearts aren’t going to hurt. What the hell?! Why aren’t I losing weight!?

So your motivation drops, and with it the focus of your resolutions. With no visible forward progress, you got frustrated and decided to try again in another year. So I say to you, be contrarian in the timing of your resolution. Pick a time that is away from birthdays and holidays. It could lead to a greater chance of keeping it.

So you have taken those first steps: Catching your habits, Drinking water instead of soda, Exercising 30 minutes everyday, Saving 50 dollars every paycheck into your 401k. And you are seeing progress! Slimming of the waist or interest earned, it inspires you to do more. Each time you have a decision you spend more and more time trying to figure out what to do. And you look for more and more aspects of your life to improve.

First let me offer you a whole hearted congratulations. It’s definitely motivating to see progress made. In the second part of this series I’d like to offer a few warnings. It may seem odd to read, but let me explain.

To start with, its easy to have conflicting goals. Wondering how this would happen? A common example is saving of money while eating healthier. Simple economics dictate that fresh fruit and vegetables often costs more as well as being much better for you. So instead of trying to min-max where you search the Best solution, aim for a solid 90% towards your goal. In fact my personal belief is that perfection is an impossible thing to grasp. Also these conflicts can also arise from poorly defined goals and steps.

At the same time, there is also the problem of to many paths and cascading results. Like a grand master chess player or Deep Blue you look ahead to see how your current decision influences what you can decide later. But unlike chess, Life doesn’t have a clear winner. There is no checkmate in which to defeat Mother Nature. The more you try out think, the less actual action you take. Because if you spent 5 more minutes to figure out how to raise the end potential 1 more percent, you can loose it all. Cause see, all those possibilities are just that. Potential, until you finally act.

Lastly, making changes in one’s life can make you tired. At least for me it does. Trying to be aware of every little thing. Watching for those things you can improve. Remembering those new habits you are trying to create. The body, mentally and physically, is used to the old rhythms in life. When you deviate, you add stress until the newness wears off. A great example are all those that flock to the gym with “life changing resolutions”. You know, when parking during January and February is impossible to find. But how many keep at it? By changing too many things at once you can stress your body too much. What happens usually is you get “sick”. Could be a cold, sinus inflection, or more. By keeping those Conscious Acts slow and steady you prevent to much of a shock to your system.

So to wrap this up, I would say I’m a big fan of moderation. It was living in one extreme lifestyle that caused problems in the first place. It would do yourself no good to swing so far the other way that you cause problems yet again.

Or even worse, revert to your old ways.

Continuation from yesterday

Hey, name’s Dave. I’m a guest columnist here on “The life ledger”. In reading Cris’s article about Point of Awareness and how it’s an important part of fitness, I recalled similar thoughts I had when loosing all my weight.

Becoming aware of what drives you allows someone to be able to change their life for the better. This is especially critical in telling the difference between wants and needs. And strange thing is Cris isn’t limiting this to just health. People can usually tell you what they have in their wallet. Or what they had for breakfast. But if you ask them how much they have had to eat all day or where they are in making progress towards retirement and you get a confused look.

So I’m going to talk about the other side of the equation - Conscious Acts. Can you recognize that moment at which you can resist an impulse. Stop yourself from buying that snack or DVD. Glad to hear you’ve learned that. But now what? Well that depends upon your goals. You have those defined right? Written down somewhere? While having that goal is good, you need to make active progress toward achieving it. It’s not going to happen on its own. So your course of action is…

Well, sometimes there’s an easy answer. That single clear choice that brings you closer to your goals. But sometimes the PoA and resulting Conscious Act can be subtler.

You’re out to lunch with old friends at the nearest Greasy Spoon. After placing your order, Gertrude asks from behind the counter “Whatcha want to drink hon?”. Without breaking your conversation you say “Mr Pibb.”

Habit just bit you in the ass.

Eating is not an activity that Americans typically do by itself. We eat while running errands. We eat going from here to there. Because of this, ordering of lunch is typically regulated to impulse (bad) or habit (worse). It’s that impulse that (future link)Fast Food Frankie(/future link) takes advantage of when they ask : “Wanna supersize that?”. And if a goal is to loose weight you have to fight your habits. Mentally and physically you know what eating that meal entails. How long it takes to eat. How full you feel afterwards. In changing your (future link)diet(/future link) you may feel off balance, craving more food. That’s where the PoA catches the habit/impulse and Conscious Acts, what you do, work in tandem. Given a goal of Losing weight your Conscious Act could be to drink more water or reduce later caloric consumption. A goal of eating better could be to buy some roughage like lettuce, or even filling up on water, when you are still hungry.

These ideas are not just limited to health. Say something appealing shows up on a deal news-feed, say from Hot-deals.org , which happens to be one of my weakness. Or maybe a bad day at work and causes you go to either the mall or one of the Big Box Stores looking for stress relief. Both rely on impulse for that sale. By being Aware you can using that shopping venture to find out what specs exist instead of purchasing on impulse. Or if you have a particular item in mind, set aside money specifically for it.

The purpose of Conscious Acts is to take that awareness and move towards your definitive goals.

I want a new scale.

My wife and I went to Bed Bath & Beyond and looked at scales.  Of course, the one I want is $100 and appeals to my geekier side - it gives % body fat via induction, % muscle mass and body water, stores daily information in memory - the computer in this scale could probably have launched a shuttle in the 60’s.  Immediately, I snatched up the box and clutched it to my chest, headed for the checkout counter and planned my evening programming the scale and setti…

Wait a minute.  Isn’t this how I used to eat?

What a shocking realization that was.  I used to make impulse food choices based on cravings, then spend my meal planning out the next two days’ lunches and dinners based on cravings I wasn’t able to satisfy that day.  Now I realize I’m doing the same thing with purchases.  My scale’s not broken - it may not launch the shuttle, but it gives a digital readout every time I stand on it.  (I have a psychological, albeit cynical, problem with a scale made by a company called Thinner, but that’s another story altogether.)  I can certainly afford to spend $100 on a nice scale, but that’s not the point - just like I used to be emotionally eating, at that moment I was emotionally buying.

I put the scale back.  I put my financial fork down.

I started reading The Simple Dollar and I Will Teach You To Be Rich, two fantastic personal finance blogs, after completing the Optifast program.  They became part of my daily exercise routine - get up at 5:30am, grab my water bottle, ride my stationary bike for half an hour and read my RSS feeds.  I started realizing the same behaviors that led to unhealthy eating - emotional eating, impulse eating, eating based on cravings, not setting goals and limits - also translated to unhealthy spending.  I started paying attention to my spending habits and was stunned at how often I would make an impulse or emotional purchase, confusing “I want” or “I crave” for “I need.”  Just like I had established long-term goals and short-term limits in order to shape new eating behaviors and habits, I found I needed to do the same for my spending habits.

Thus, the new paradigm was born - my body is a bank.  This new paradigm has already been beneficial to me in at least two ways:

1. I no longer have an emotional attachment to weight loss.
   Before, when I would look at myself in the mirror and the numbers on the scale, I would become overwhelmed with the need to lose weight… and promptly eat a 12″ Subway sub.  I thought of myself as a loser, stupid, incapable of making lifestyle changes, which made me even more depressed and overwhelmed, and even more unlikely to change.  If I’m a loser anyway, what’s the point?    

   Now, I look at my physical health in an objective manner - I make deposits (eat healthy foods, drink water, exercise) and withdrawals (eat comfort food, drink coffee); I earn interest on the deposits I make (lose weight, get more sleep, feel better).  Just like my bank account, my body is an investment which has clear cause and affect relationships with choices I make.  No longer am I a loser - now I am a choice maker with the power to affect my fitness.

2. I can use financial goal-setting strategies to control my fitness.
   There doesn’t seem to be any cohesion to weight-loss strategies - no over-arching, consistent, step-by-step advice for losing weight and leading a more fit lifestyle.  All I read is this person’s top 15 tips for weight loss, that person’s top 5 tips for exercising more, a third person’s list of foods to eat, another doctor’s list of foods not to eat that directly convtroverts other lists - there’s no consistency, no clear way to proceed.  

   Look at the finance advice out there, though, and it’s a different story.  Instead of this person’s top 25 different purchases to make on your credit card and that person’s top 10 bills to pay first, you see consistent advice and strategies.  A short synopsis of some strategies that I have already adopted include (I will write more on these later):

1. Calculate your net worth.
   Fitness is about more than physical health, and physical health is about more than weight.  Your bodybank net worth should include information like your moods, your stress level, your % body fat, your waist size, and more.  It is imperative that your bodybank net worth evaluation include something positive.
2. Set a budget.
   In general, building an investment account requires spending less than you earn.  Similarly, building your bodybank account will require consuming less calories than you burn.  Set a concrete budget of daily calorie allowance, and split that budget equally between at least 4-5 meals per day.
3. Set goals according to achievements.
   It’s easy to set a goal like “lose 20lbs” or “exercise 30 minutes a day” - it requires no effort and no investment to make nebulous statements, and likewise requires no effort and no investment to fail at achieving them.  Instead, set your goals to practical, every-day achievements you would like to accomplish.  If you fly frequently, set a goal to fitting in the coach-class seat more comfortably.  If you have a small child or dog, set a goal to keep up when they run and play hide & seek or “keep the ball away from the human.”  Whatever your goal is, it should be attached to an achievement you are emotionally invested in - when you reach this goal, you should feel a major sense of accomplishment.
4. Track spending and investments.
   In order to reach your goal, you need to track your daily activity to ensure you are on track.  Every calorie, every glass of water, every minute of exercise, every step on the pedometer, every hour of sleep - any data that are important to your new fit lifestyle should be recorded.  Doing so is a daily reminder of your budget and goal.
5. Control impulses with the 10-second rule.
   Take some time to evaluate food cravings - are you actually hungry, or are you emotionally hungry?  Are you craving broccoli because you lack vitamin C, or are you craving a hamburger because you need emotional comfort?  I find if I drink some water and involve myself in busywork, 9 times out of 10 I’m not craving that hamburger ten minutes later.

Which brings me back to the scale.  It seems like a trivial thing to draw a line in the sand over, but I have to start somewhere.  Over the next few days, I will be applying the lifestyle lessons I learned from my weight loss experience to my finances.  It may take me several months of saving a nest-egg in a high-APY savings account before I buy that scale, but it will represent my last impulse buy and my first purchase based on choice and reason.