What Am I Doing?

I have never been a great goal setter, thus I have never been good at achieving my goals. I am more of a learner than a teacher when it comes to living life with purpose and focus. I’ve always drifted kind of like a tumbleweed, taking my time.  It’s easy to blame my parents – I come from a lower-upper/upper-middle class background, my parents were both working professionals and I lived my childhood in comfort and was well-supported as a very young adult.

Then I fell in love and was married at a young age before I had started my career. I didn’t have to strive to define myself and for others to recognize myself like many young people – since it was in the days before social media had swept over our lives, I felt little social pressure to conform and catch up to peers my own age. I was happy being a late bloomer.

Nevertheless, in my experience covering financial planning, I’ve recognized the importance of laying out long-term goals, and in my research into the financial independence movement, I’ve seen firsthand the benefits of setting aspirational five-year goals as well.

I’ve spent too much of my life waiting. As a result, I have several life goals I may not be able to accomplish.

Being a father.

This is, without a doubt, at the top of my list. I want to be a father more than anything else in my life right now. I’m not sure if my wife and I can have children – we’re financially stable, we have a nice environment in which to raise a child, but I’m 37 and she’s 39, we may have waited too long and it breaks my heart. I would trade everything else just to achieve this goal.

Going back to school...

..but maybe not for a degree. I want to earn several professional designations to become a well-rounded financial planner and expert. This will not only become a second line of business for myself, but it will also augment my skills as a financial writer. Journalism is one of my passions, but I see myself becoming more than a journalist moving forward.

Starting a side-gig

Maybe more of a “co-career” than a side-gig, as I would take my financial planning work at least as seriously as my writing.

Retiring all auto debt, most of the student debt

I wrote in my financial blog about my goal to pay down the $8,000 or so I still have left on my car and the nearly $32,000 in outstanding student loan debt my wife and I still carry. I think five years is plenty to come most of the way to achieving both goals – retiring both types of debt would mean paying down an average of $8,000 in principle each year, which may be biting off more than I can chew. I will write more about my escalating debt pay-down method in the future.

Buying a second car.

Cheryl and I have shared a car throughout the 15 years of our relationship, but if we’re going to have kids, we will definitely need a second car. Living in New Jersey with potentially changing commutes, a second car is more likely than not to be a necessity for us anyway. Unless I find a way to pay with cash, this complicated my debt-related goal above.

Traveling outside the U.S.

I’ve already traveled internationally – but Cheryl, my wife, has not. I would love to take her on a journey to Europe, the Caribbean or Asia while we’re relatively young.

I'm Fat (Again)

It’s time to come clean. I’m fat again.

I know self-shaming is a problem, but this is not some sort of body dysmorphia. I know when I’m fat – again – because of the again part. I’ve been fat before.

Back at the end of 2008, I tipped the scales at 279 pounds. I was 27 years old at the time, working full-time evenings in a hospital doing patient registration and financial counseling of emergency room patients. I had just graduated with a not-so-useful political science degree. My wife was waiting tables, having just graduated with not-so-useful-at-the-time graphic and web design degrees. We were renters. We had a lot of debt, and lived in Lexington, Ky., an area which, at the time, offered very few prospects for young professionals.

I was depressed. With a large portion of my days open due to no longer attending classes, I lapsed into a life of binge TV watching and playing video games, drinking and smoking too much, and generally doing nothing.

Eventually, one day at work, I took a moment to stand on a scale, where I was startled to learn I was almost 279 pounds. That was 10 years ago almost to the day. My eyes were open to the fact that I was wasting my life.

But Then I Got Thin. Well, Thinner.

Within 18 months I was down to around 205 pounds. None of my clothes fit. I'd lost more than 1/4 of my body mass.

How did I accomplish my weight loss?

My wife and I already shared a car, so I became a bicycle commuter. Working at a university hospital gave me free access to a gym, so I went to the gym every day. I stopped eating fast food, stopped eating warm-and-serve food from the can, box or freezer, and stopped going out to eat. I started eating healthier snacks and smaller portions. I brought myself back to a moderate level of physical fitness in a small amount of time.

But It Didn't Last.

Today, I’m back to around 260 pounds, and I know why.

In 2011, I took my first journalism job in far northern New York, away from gyms, healthy eating and all of the lifestyle elements that took me out of the house and away from the television and video games.

Cheryl (my wife) and I were isolated. We had a few friends, but not many, and most lived in a college town 30 miles away from us. We literally lived on the Canadian border and took a serious liking to poutine. In the winter, where wind chills frequently fell below zero and remained there for weeks at a time, we wouldn’t go out – the sun set at 4 pm anyway, there wasn’t much to go out to after work. We spent a lot of time sitting and eating, and eating and sitting.

Seeing how unhealthy our lives had become in the subarctic tundra of New York’s North Country, Cheryl and I jumped at the chance to come down to the Jersey Shore and start our lives anew again. Yet we never really shifted from the sedentary lifestyle we had adopted in New York back towards the more active and outgoing lifestyle we had cultivated in Lexington.

I did have a few starts and stops with exercising when I briefly worked at a local college, and I’ve tried to make walking and cycling a more regular part of my life, but I still do not exercise enough and I’m sure as hell not eating well (boardwalk food is definitely not the healthiest food around).

It's Never Too Late For A Change.

Here I am at 37 years old and all of that is going to have to change. I’m buying a gym membership this month. I know many personal finance writers argue that gym memberships are a luxury that we can do without, but having access to a gym provides the infrastructure I need to develop my personal fitness. It helps me, behaviorally, to have a place I can go to to work on my body.

I’m fat, I know it, it needs to change and I’m going to do something about it. I have a plan, and part one of that plan is to go get help. I sometimes feel like the DIY culture around lifestyle, fitness and finance encourages people to skip the “go get help” step too early in their process.

I think most people operate the same way I do with physical fitness, at least with some portion of their lives. There are those of us who cannot really learn outside of a classroom, or who need a tangible, old-fashioned book to read because tablets and e-readers don’t suit them. There are those of us who can’t experience music fully unless it’s on vinyl, or in live performance.

Some of us may be the same way with our personal finances – there are many smart, capable, brave people who cannot put their financial lives together by themselves on paper or on a computer screen. The task is too intimidating or too daunting. These are the types of people who need a trusted financial advisor for help – and I think they’re the kind of people who I would like to help some day, too.