A Little Progress To Report

I'm about to be officially out of the office and off the web for the holidays, but I thought I would post some good news here.

I'm down to 259 lbs.

I've done it mainly by working out at least every other day, scheduling 45 minutes or more to exercise. I've been doing this since early November with few tangible results - until now.

I'm finally losing weight again.

Not only that, but I'm starting to look a little better, too - more muscle definition, less flab. And I feel pretty damn good.

That's not the only good news, though - I've been making the rounds to doctors and specialists lately to cover a few outstanding health issues - mainly concerns about fertility, blood sugar, circulation/blood pressure and breathing. So far, all seems to be well.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL!

Mrs. Robbins got a promotion and raise! Team Robbins has been killing it in 2018.

Hopefully, 2019 will be the year the two of us make some of our long-standing dreams come true.

I hope anyone who reads this has a very happy holiday season and New Year. I probably won't post anything more until January.

Yes, I'm Still A Fat Fuck - But I'm Doing Better

It’s been more than 7 weeks since I acknowledged that I had devolved into a fat, lazy shambles of a human being again. I figured it was time for an accountability check.

I did break down and buy that gym membership – and one for my wife – on November 6^th, and have diligently exercised at least every other day, not counting the week of Thanksgiving.

Thus far, after two actual weeks of exercise, I weigh the same 265 pounds I did when I decided I was disgusted with my health and fitness and needed to make a change.

But I do feel a lot better. I have more energy now, after just two weeks of working out. I look forward to going to the gym to get my fix of endorphins each day. I think my wife is enjoying an energy boost of her own, as well.

The last time I undertook to lose a ton of weight, in my 20s, I had the benefit of a higher metabolism and a bicycle commute that ensured that I was burning a few calories, even on days I missed out on visiting the gym. This time things will be more difficult.

In fact, I doubt exercise will be enough this time. Thankfully, my primary care doctor has referred me to a nutritionist who can hopefully help me adjust my diet to help lose weight and improve overall health.

On A More Important Note

While we’re on the subject of primary care doctors, let me tell you a dirty little secret: I’ve gone for approximately 10 years of my life without any health care provider whatsoever.

Some of that was due to a lapse in insurance coverage – after I left a job in a large university health system, I entered into the journalism profession at such a low salary that I couldn’t afford insurance premiums. Any healthcare services were provided by community health clinics and urgent treatment centers. During this time, my wife also went without health insurance, a primary care doctor, and any women’s health services.

I would venture to say that our chinchillas received better healthcare than we did. At least they had a set veterinarian and some established continuity of care – Cheryl and I had nothing.

Keep in mind here that I have some chronic issues that should be monitored by physicians – I have asthma that can be exacerbated by issues with my cleft lip and palate (I become congested very easily and have issues clearing out congestion once it reaches my lungs – an allergy exacerbation almost always eventually becomes full-blown bronchitis if the symptoms are left untreated). I have cerebral palsy and a sensory processing disorder.

In recent years, thanks to a hospital visit resulting from a car crash, I also discovered that I have an autoimmune condition called sarcoidosis that causes benign masses to sprout up in various places throughout my body. I believe that condition to be in remission now, but when it flares up I can suffer from masses in my lungs, eyes, lymph nodes – even my brain. This is a condition that definitely needs to be monitored by a doctor.

Thankfully, I’ve been a relatively healthy person despite these chronic health issues.

I'm A Dumbass

When I started blogging about financial independence, I realized that health is probably the one topic more central to everyone’s lives than finances.  If we’re not healthy enough to enjoy our wealth, what’s the point of working towards financial independence? Does anyone really want to spend their retirement in poor health?

Ignoring preventative healthcare is one of the worst financial decisions a person can make. Failing to regularly go to a doctor and monitor one’s health can lead to expensive hospital visits, surgeries, prescriptions and other interventions down the line. It can also shorten your lifespan and greatly increase the cost of living during retirement.

If one of the central rules of personal finance is to invest in yourself first, then one of your first investments in yourself should be in maintaining or improving your health.

I couldn’t really advocate for others taking control of their financial situations while I ignored my own health. I had insurance, but I had never really exercised it the way I should have.

In short, I was being a hypocrite.

Here was a problem that I had the resources to confront, but my own inertia – out of fear, shame and regret – was preventing me from doing so.

Confront The Shame

I was ashamed that I was fat and living a sedentary lifestyle. I was ashamed that I hadn’t kept up with my health over the years (I even lied to family and friends about going to the doctor). I was ashamed that I had spent so much time losing momentum rather than building it.

I let all that shame hold me back when I could have just picked up the phone (or opened an internet browser) and made myself a damn appointment – and I’m lucky that all my shame didn’t lead me to have a major health crisis like a heart attack during that time.

This is the same kind of shame that keeps people from addressing their personal financial situation, changing their lifestyle or improving their relationships. It’s not unique to me, you, or anyone else. I think it’s secretly universal – even the most intelligent and seemingly proactive people we encounter are bound to some extent by their own personal shames and fears.

What’s important is that we find within ourselves – and each other – the courage to address the root problems in spite of the shame we feel. I encourage anyone reading this to consider when and where shame has held them back from making an important improvement in their lives, acknowledge the shame as an obstacle, confront the actual problem at hand and then tell their story to hopefully inspire someone else.

It’s okay to be afraid. It’s not okay to let fear dominate your decision making.

I’m happy to say I had my first primary care appointment in four years on Nov. 16. While I’m not exactly falling apart, there are a few health issues other than my weight that I must confront, including, for the first time, higher than normal blood pressure.

I have a slate of appointments with specialists coming up over the next couple of months, and I will try to document my progress on becoming a physically healthier person as I write about my financial progress on Robbins’ Nestegg.

It's Okay To Let The Days Go By

It shouldn’t be any secret that I’m a music buff. I learned to play my first musical instrument when I was 5 years old, and I’ve been collecting music since I was able to buy my first cassette tape. I guess you all now know for sure that I’m a child of the pre-CD era.

Well, as I was recovering from bronchial and throat infections last weekend, Cheryl and I decided to attend a concert (the tickets had been bought before the illnesses struck) by Pink Talking Fish.

Pink Talking Fish is a cover/tribute band of sorts, in that they play setlists constructed entirely of other musicians’ material, as their name suggests, for the most part songs by Pink Floyd, The Talking Heads and Phish. I can’t recommend their music enough.

On Saturday, they played a Halloween-themed concert event in Asbury Park by covering Pink Floyd’s seminal “Dark Side of the Moon” album, interspersing songs by The Talking Heads and Phish between classics like “Breathe,” “Brain Damage,” and “Money.”

Let me be clear – I love “Dark Side of the Moon” – the production work on the album remains immaculate to this day, I can sing almost every guitar solo by heart (but I’m rubbish for lyrics) and overall the suite deserves its standing as one of the greatest rock albums every recorded, if not the best.

But let’s face it. “Dark Side of the Moon,” like much of Pink Floyd’s catalogue, is depressing. Particularly in its focus on death and fear of mortality. To me, the centerpiece of the album is “Time.”

The song is full of brilliant David Gilmour lyrics suggestive of mortal anxiety:

“And then one day you find ten years have got behind you./No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.”

“The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older/Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.”

“Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time/Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.”

Every time I hear it, I re-examine all of the “frittering” and “wasting” I’ve done with the time that was given to me. I didn’t really leave home until 22. I didn’t really have much of a long-term relationship until the same age. I didn’t get a bachelor’s degree until I was 28. I didn’t start my career until I was 30. I’ve done a hell of a lot of frittering.

Every time I hear “Time,” I think about the finite bounds on my life, and how they always feel like they’re holding me down. At the recent Schwab IMPACT conference in Washington, D.C., a presenter mentioned that advisors’ could think of their clients lives in three 8,888-day segments (approximately 25 years): Birth to gradualtion from college, graduation from college to mid-life crises, and mid-life crises to death. I’m well into my second 8,888 days – nearing the top of the hill, if you will – on the old conception of longevity and life.

And I never do find the time to do all the things I want to. I want to go back to school and learn a new trade. I want to have kids. I want to develop side gigs and hustles to feel more productive and generate additional income. I want to travel. I want to start playing music again. I want to be financially independent – and I want to do it myself without thinking about or using my family’s wealth. I want, I want, I want. All of the time-anxiety makes me feel regret that I wasn’t doing any of this stuff before – and any failure to make progress leads to more fear, anxiety and regret.

But before Pink Talking Fish finished their set on Saturday, somewhere between “Any Colour You Like” and “Brain Damage,” they dove into a very different classic song: “Once in a Lifetime” by The Talking Heads.

David Byrne has a way of writing lyrics that make you think, but I’ve never considered “Once in a Lifetime” to be one of those songs. Most of the song consists of his manic ranting of rhetorical questions:

“And you may find yourself in a beautiful house/With a beautiful wife/And you may ask yourself, well/How did I get here?”

But it also includes a refrain that responds directly to David Gilmour’s time-anxiety.

“Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down/Letting the days go by, water flowing underground.”

David Byrne would have us “surrender to the flow” (to borrow a Phish lyric) – time passes no matter what you do. Things are going to happen to you no matter what you do. You inevitably will change, and more often than not, evolve for the better and make progress no matter what you do.

And because it can happen without much intention or effort, one can feel like an imposter.

“This is not my beautiful wife… This is not my beautiful house.”

And then, buried near the back of the song amidst a repeated refrain of “Same as it ever was,” a point where radio stations may already be fading out the volume, Byrne delivers the master stroke against Gilmour’s time anxiety:

“Time isn't holding us up/Time isn't after us.”

To me, Byrne is telling us not to worry about “Letting the days go by,” because time as we know it is just an arbitrary measure, and it flows and feels differently for all of us. There is always time to make things better. There is always time to evolve. There is always time enough for accomplishments and achievements. We can’t let ourselves be dragged down by time anxiety. We shouldn’t measure out the remainder of our lives with coffee spoons like some sort of modern J. Alfred Prufock.

David Byrne has it right!

I’ll close with what has become a cliché motivational quote, but nevertheless one of my favorites as I proceedethrough middle age:

“It's Never Too Late To Be What You Might Have Been.” – George Eliot

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.