Author: SmileIfYouDare

Does your money care if you save it? Or spend it? Or invest it? Let’s find out. Continue reading “Does Money Care What You Do With It?”

This has been a weird year. I think most would agree. Most of the past year, most of the world has been under the thumb of the Covid-19 virus.

It is as if we have been invaded and occupied by a foreign power. Our freedom of movement has been curtailed by the pandemic. Our abilities to act freely have been restricted by the virus.

For the most of us, the ability to survive depends on our keeping healthy. We may not like how the virus has reduced our freedoms. But to suvive we must avoid getting infected, and await a vaccine.

Attitude
Much of what I write about is attitudinal. Namely, one of the major keys to financial independence is using one’s own attitude properly. All too often, some see financial freedom as unattainable. Mired in debt, and never expecting to see the end of it, means one will never get free of debt. If one expects to be in debt forever, so it will be. However, if one can expect that one can get out of debt, and live free, then it can be done.

Getting out of debt is the financial equivalent of getting out of jail. Once out of financial jail, there are two things to focus on: staying out, and improving one’s situation.

During this year, we have reviewed several times how to improve one’s financial life:

1. Build an Emergency Fund
2. Spend Less Than You Earn
3. Save and Invest The Difference

And Some Other Things
While financial freedom is the main thrust of this blog, there are other things that are written about.

The corrosive aspects of politic’s purpose and why people are attracted to it, and how sometimes we must participate in it.

Some things are self-evident. Here are four of them.

A reminder that this blog is not an early retirement blog.

That corporate insiders exploit company share buybacks was confirmed by SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson Jr. in a speech given in June 2018.

Blog Anniversaries
The first year of the blog here was reviewed here and the second year was reviewed here.

Smile If You Dare is Three Years Old, and that’s not nothing.

Which post in this last year did you like best? Let me know here.

The illustration is from Der naturen bloeme (The Flower of Nature) by Jacob van Maerlant, published in Dutch in 1350. It contains illustrations of ‘homines monstruosi’, strange races that were said to live in distant lands. Among them are cannibals and cyclopses, and people with only one leg and feet so large that they could be used as a parasol. Courtesy National Library of the Netherlands.

The post Three Years. Smile If You Dare is Three Years Old. appeared first in Smile If You Dare.

With all the political mayhem we have witnessed for the past few years, voting is the only way to right the wrongs to which we have become accustomed.

It may seem simple to ignore every injustice and then later complain about everything, but that is the coward’s way.

Don’t Be A Coward
A person of character does what needs to be done.

What Needs To Be Done
Voting is what needs to be done.

Recent reports indicate that early voting is breaking records. There has never been so much early voting. This is good sign. Voter participation in recent decades has usually been lackluster, so a recent increase is heartening.

Get out there. Vote.

Did you or will you vote? Let me know here.

 

The post If You Don’t Vote, You Are The Problem appeared first in Smile If You Dare.

Q. Your recent posts about politics seem make things seem so hopeless. What to do?

A. You have a choice Continue reading “Is Politics Hopeless?”

The state of America has deteriorated in the past four years. A major change is needed. Please vote, It is important.

Let’s take a look at only some of the things that have happened:

– Sabotaging the post office so mail-in voting is crippled. In addition, Americans will not get their timely mail for other purposes, such as medicines, bills, notices, checks.

– Administrative changes to divert monies from Social Security and Medicare. If this continues, it will result in tens of millions of people descending into poverty.

– Administrative rule changes to allow corporations to release more pollution into the air and water. Get ready for more illnesses and deaths.

– Ignoring a national pandemic after realizing bluster doesn’t tame it. More than 200,000 dead and a president who says Covid “affects virtually no one” until he gets infected. Then he says to not worry about it and spouts more idiotic theories about the virus.

– Encouraging violence by supporting right-wing fascists.

– Attempting to extort a foreign country to investigate a political rival.

– And so on.

Everyone is counting on you to vote for change. It is really important.

Are you going to vote? Tell me here.

The Ptolemy World Map is a map of the world known to Hellenistic society in the 2nd century. It is based on the description contained in Ptolemy’s book Geography, written c. 150. Based on an inscription in several of the earliest surviving manuscripts, it is traditionally credited to Agathodaemon of Alexandria. Courtesy The British Library.

The post We Deserve Better. Please Vote. It is Really Important. appeared first in Smile If You Dare.