A blink of an eye! Or, where has the time gone?
Shortly after starting this blog, I received an email from someone I had corresponded with previously, and he asked me how it was going. I replied something to the effect of: “All I have to do is put into words what I was thinking.”
Now, assuredly I must mention that it is not as simple as I portrayed. I felt I could say what I did because that correspondent has a blog himself, although his has a different focus and involves much more hard research than mine.
Writing Helps
While sticking to a plan to produce writing is sometimes not as easy as it seems, at other times it is pure agony. However it (the persistence at writing) does help clarify my own thinking. I refer to the article “Reasons to start writing.” (The link to this article has occasionally changed. Recenly I needed to use the following search:
site:koreatimes.co.kr “Reasons to start writing”
There are times when I feel I have no words. At other times, my mind won’t shut up. I live in the merry-go-round, the hamster wheel of my thinking. I think I, and most of the world, is/are a slave to our mental processes. Be that as it is, where am I in all of this?
Freedom, at at least a semblance of some
Freedom from financial worry is a great freedom. There are plenty of problems in the world, and financial freedom is not the most significant. I would say health is more important, as perhaps is emotional and political freedom. But for me, financial freedom is a strong one.
Not that I would say I am totally free, but at present, even being retired for slightly longer than the existence of this blog, I do not worry financially. I wish I could say that I planned it that way, to be financially free, but the truth be told, I did not. It just happened to end up this way. I did do the right things: saved, invested, did not spend frivolously. But, all in all, I did not have specific plan. The steps I did take however, were providential in setting me and keeping me on the right path.
When I say I did plan specifically for financial freedom, what I mean is I did the right things, and was expecting all along the way it would end up well. Of course I would have ended in a better situation has I started (saving and investing) earlier, but if I had started later than I did, I would have ended in a worse situation. What do I learn from this? We all end up where we end up, and we adjust our lives accordingly. There are no “do overs.” We have this life and we can make the best of it as we can.
In reflecting how this financial condition happened to me, even inadvertently, i found areas I could write about, and distill my experience into concrete words and actions. At present, even in retirement, I am meeting my expenses with my current income, and with no debt. That is one way to define freedom.
I certainly do not know the future. I suspect things will not go to hell all at once. If things continue more or less as they have, even with full catastrophe living, then it behooves us all to prepare for the future. That, to me, involves avoiding the paycheck-to-paycheck existence.
The simple steps previously outlined:
1. Live below one’s means.
2. Save an emergency find.
3. Save and invest.
As Time Goes By
Smile If You Dare is five years old. That’s not nothing.
Comments? Here.
The map is of the town of La Gloria in Cuba, circa 1900. Some Americans settled there based on the mistaken belief Cuba would be annexed by the U.S. A BBC article about its history is here.
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