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The GRS Holiday Gift Guide
Every year at about this time, I start getting questions by email and social media — and even in Real Life: “Do you have any personal-finance or money-related gift ideas?”
I know how tempting it can be to choose gifts that encourage smart financial choices. You look at the poor decisions your brother or sister have made, and you feel like you could help. If only they would read this one book that helped you so much!
I get it. I've felt the same way. After all, my financial turnaround is a direct result of reading two books that were gifted to me by friends: Your Money or Your Life and Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover.
A vision for the future of Get Rich Slowly
Well, it only took me three years, but I finally have a vision for what I want to do with Get Rich Slowly.
When I re-purchased this site in 2017, I did so without any real idea of what I'd do with it. I wanted it back for sentimental reasons. (And so that nobody else had control of this monster I created.) I didn't really know what to do with the 5000+ articles in the archives.
You see, when I started Get Rich Slowly, it was clearly a forum for me to share my experiences as I dug myself out of debt. After I succeeded, I sort of lost my way. (Well, and a bunch of Real Life stuff made me lose my focus.) So, I sold it.
When I started writing at Money Boss in 2015, I had a clear vision for what I wanted to do with that site. I had a mission. That made it easy to decide what to write there and what not to write.
A list of personal-finance events, conferences, and retreats
Last week, my colleague Patrick from Cash Money Life pinged me on Facebook. “Hey, J.D. What are some of the other personal-finance conferences out there?” he asked. Patrick and I brainstormed a list of money events, and I realized that this might be useful for GRS readers.
(Well, this list might be useful eventually. Right now, during COVID, this list isn't useful to anyone haha.)
Here's a quick list of the various personal-finance events, conferences, and retreats that I'm aware of. If you know of others that should be on this list, please drop me a line. I'm happy to add them.
General Personal-Finance Events
At the moment, I'm aware of three general personal-finance events. The first (Fincon) is heavily skewed toward content creators and influencers, but there's usually plenty of material for the average person.
Essentialism: The mindful pursuit of quality
It's been quiet around here for the past few months. Generally when things go dormant at Get Rich Slowly, that's not a good sign. It usually means that I've sunk into the depths of depression, the pit of despair.
I'm pleased to report that in this case, that's not the issue. In this case, the opposite has happened. Lately, life is grand. During the past three months, I've been diligently working to eliminate the net negatives from my life while also emphasizing those things that are essential. To that end, I've:
Finding a millionaire money mentor
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
You've probably heard that saying before. It's from motivational speaker Jim Rohn. He used it as a way to encourage people to learn and grow from others' experiences, habits, attitudes, and so forth. He wanted folks to seek out and spend time with people of high quality.
Unfortunately for most people, this advice can be difficult (if not impossible) to implement.
That's because we tend to group with like-minded people, which includes hanging out with friends with similar levels of success. Those who are unmotivated often spend time with others who are unmotivated. And those who are motivated by achievement tend to associate with others at a similar level.
How to prepare for a natural disaster
My world is on fire.
As you may have heard, much of Oregon is burning right now. Thanks to a “once in a lifetime” combination of weather and climate variables — a long, dry summer leading to high temps and low humidity, then a freak windstorm from the east — much of the state turned to tinder earlier this week. And then the tinder ignited.
At this very moment, our neighborhood is cloaked in smoke.
I am sitting in my writing shed looking out at a beige veil clinging to the trees and nearby homes. The scent of the smoke is intense. My eyes are burning. After everything else that's happened this year, this feels like yet one more step toward apocalypse. So crazy!
Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative
When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.
We didn’t start the FIRE: The true history of financial independence
I used to be a collector. I collected trading cards. I collected comic books. I collected pins and stickers and mementos of all sorts. I had boxes of things I'd collected but which essentially served no purpose.
I can't say I've shaken the urge to collect entirely, but I have a much better handle on it than I used to. A few years ago, I sold my comic collection and stopped obsessing over them. Today, I collect three things: patches from the countries I visit, pins from national parks, and — especially — old books about money.
Collecting old money books is fun. For one, it ties to my work. Plus, there's not a huge demand for money manuals, so there's not a lot of competition to buy them. (Exception: As much as I'd love a copy of Ben Franklin's The Way to Wealth, so would a lot of other people. That one is out of my reach.)
Introducing “Morning Musings”
Update! I've had a couple of people email to ask if I plan to host these videos here on the blog. The short answer is “no”. The long answer is “maybe eventually”. But I realized that I could make it easy on folks by embedding the Morning Musings playlist at the top of this article. So, here it is. In theory, this should get updated whenever I post a new video. This is an embedded playlist, and the most recent video should appear at the top. (In theory.)
For years now, I've wanted to start a Get Rich Slowly channel on YouTube.
Well, I guess that's only partially correct. I have a GRS channel on YouTube; it's just not very active. So, I guess what I mean to say is that I want to have an active GRS channel on YouTube.
Action creates motivation
Human beings are interesting creatures. I'm fascinated by them. That's probably the reason I was a psychology major in college. It's certainly the reason that I believe (strongly) that everybody is talented, original, and has something important to say. (That bit of philosophy is something I picked up from Brenda Ueland's marvelous book, If You Want to Write.)
People are awesome — even if we're each flawed in our own way.
One thing I've noticed over the past few years is the dichotomy between knowing something and doing something. It's one thing to understand a concept or fact intellectually; it's a completely different thing to experience a fact or concept, or to put it into practice.
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