Other World

So I went to Barnes & Noble to look at some books on personal finance and buying a home. I learned several good things from a glance through some of the home books, including that I was glad I went to the book store before I went to the bank. This week I’ll submit a request for my credit score and look it over, make sure everything is kosher before approaching a bank about financing.

In addition I (as usual) broke down and purchased two books. The first is Women & Money by Suze Orman. The second is Crash Profits. I’ve started reading Orman’s book and one of the initial exercises is to write your own definition of a rich life.

I approached it by thinking about what I wanted to have accomplished by the end of my life. By the time I’ve died I hope I’ve read most of the classics and a great many modern books. I hope to have covered subjects on philosophy, politics, history, mathematics and sciences, and a good chunk of fiction, science fiction, and fantasy.

I hope to have built a family with someone. I hope to have been a parent to my children before a friend. And I hope to have put my spouse first and foremost in my life. I hope to raise my family in a nice home. Not necessarily nice because it was a big house in a superb neighbourhood, but because I was able to fix up a nice place and work hard in the community to create a good environment.

I hope to have taken plenty of time to play, both outdoors, and indoors. I hope I was creative and learned about how the world works. I hope to have built things, not necessarily world-changing things. Just little things that help me understand how things work.

I hope I never stopped learning. I don’t necessarily want to retire early, but I hope I found a job that was enjoyable enough that I’d want to keep doing it. And if not, I hope I had the luxury of trying something new and enjoying that for many years.

As far as finances go, I don’t manage them very well now because I’m afraid of them. I don’t manage them very well because finances are boring. If I were interested in finances I’d have become an accountant. I don’t want to spend my life worrying about finances. I hope I can learn enough in my studies now so that I can set up my finances to largely take care of themselves, with a little nurturing on occasion, like my scorpions. I check in on them, and make sure they have food and water. I give then good hiding places and try and make sure they are kept somewhere that’s warm but not too hot.

I don’t want to spend my life worrying about little things that can become big things. I’ve had the luxury at this point of keeping things fairly under control. I’m not in debt, I have a stable job, I save a good amount of my paycheck, though not as much as I’d like to be saving. But I also sort of skid by. I haven’t taken the steps that would make things even easier. I don’t have any investments and my savings account gives me pennies each month.

Next chapter.