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How To Get Your Significant Other To Embrace a Brave New Life

27
5 days ago
by Brave New Life in

I’ve been getting an increase in emails lately that are asking a common question, so I thought I’d take a short break from the Core Principles series to address it. The question that has been asked many times can be summarized like this:

“Hey, Brave. I’m totally on board with everything you’re saying and want a similar lifestyle for myself. The problem is, my husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend just isn’t on board. Did you have any problems like this?”

The short answer is “Yes!”

My wife has always had major reservations with my financial strategy. In fact, despite the fact that we started dating when we were 16 and married at 25, we’re only now becoming aligned in our financial decisions at the age of 33. I always wanted to save and invest, More >

Core Principle #3: Frugality, Self-Sufficiency, and Sustainability

22
2 weeks ago
by Brave New Life in

There is a deep and important correlation between frugality, self-sufficiency, and sustainability.  Recognizing this relationship is critical to the brave new life philosophy. There are hundreds of books and blogs on each, but rarely do you see the three tied together.  The inter-relation between them is why I chose to make them a single core principle.

It’s very important to tie them together.  Bind them in unison, let one support the other and become a philosophy.  Some life decisions are hard when you only consider one, but become very easy and obvious when all 3 support the same decision.  And it’s quite often that all 3 do support a single decision.

Part 1 – Frugality

Frugality, for most people, is a means to an end.  For some (those More >

Why?

13
1 month ago
by Brave New Life in

“Why?” - Stella, my daughter

 

My daughter is about to turn two, and she recently started asking “Why?” Every time she does, my eyes light up in excitement!

You see, “Why?” is a game kids play starting around age two, and they’ll continue to play until their parents, teachers, TV shows, and government convince them to stop.

Here’s an example conversation:

Me: Let’s go outside Stella: Why? Me: Because it’s a beautiful day Stella: Why? Me: Because it’s 70 degrees outside and the sun is shining Stella: Why? Me: Because there are no clouds in the sky Stella: Why? Me: Because I love you. Now let’s go!

Side note: I usually end the why conversations with “I love you.” rather than going into the basics of physics or meteorology with my 2 year More >

2011 – The Year In Review

18
1 month ago
by Brave New Life in

I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and I think I’m willing to say that this has been the best year of my life. If not the best, certainly the most significant. I can say without a doubt that I’m not the same person that I was on January 1st. And I don’t mean this as hyperbole, I really feel that my outlook on almost all aspects of life is completely different.

In January, I made the decision to change jobs and move to Colorado. At this time, I was still the old me. I was doing it because I was tired of my company, and tired of central Texas summers. I had a dream of early retirement, but no supporting plan.  I had no idea that over the next year I would make such significant changes to my life.

In March, just a day aften I completed my More >

The Possibilities Are Endless

14
1 month ago
by Brave New Life in

“The thing I admire about you is that you can do anything you set your mind to.”

This was something my sister told me about 5 years ago, when I had just completed my first 100-mile ultramarathon. She thinks it’s a combination of luck and determination, but she was unaware of the most important part to my success…

I had slowly built up my training miles from a strong marathon foundation, slowly increasing to longer 40-50 mile training runs. I studied nutrition and blister repair. I practiced running while cold, wet, and sleep deprived. I monitored my body and learned everything about each muscle and joint.  I even learned techniques for recovering from temporary low morale.  But all of this hard work and dedication wasn’t enough. All of More >

ERE Book Giveaway – Winner Announcement

7
3 months ago
by Brave New Life in

The ERE book giveaway has been a huge success.  The original intent was to give back to this great community and to further share what I’ve learned in reading books like ERE and YMOYL.

I was bombarded with far more comments than I expected, but it turned out to be a helluva brainstorming session.  I encourage you all to go back and read all the actions people have taken to decouple their needs from money.  I’ve compiled a personal list of ideas that I’m going to adopt – which does not include living with in-laws like Tabatha – that’s just crazy.  ;)

Here are the winners:

Blog Post Winner

This was an easy one.  Only one person entered the competition (that I know of) by writing their own blog post on what they’ve done.  She didn’t actually More >

Yes. I’m Doing A Giveaway.

65
4 months ago
by Brave New Life in

Look to the right of your screen and you’ll see that I just surpassed 100 subscribers (hopefully that will still be true when this gets published!).  I realize that 100 subscribers isn’t a lot compared to many blogs and I’m OK with that because I know that my 100 subscribers are a whole lot smarter than tens of thousands of people getting their advice from Money magazine (seriously?).

So in honor of surpassing 100 subscribers, I’m doing a book give-away.

As many of you know, over the past few months I’ve pulled in my retirement date by over 20 years by making some significant (and fun) life changes.  I changed jobs, I moved cities, I downsized my house, I sold my car, I cut my grocery budget in half – and now I’m on a path to More >

Self Sufficiency And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

5
4 months ago
by Brave New Life in

Over the past 2 months or so I noticed my motorcycle wasn’t accelerating well, although the symptom was subtle since the performance seemed to have degraded slowly over time.  Then last week I got home and my wife said I smelled like gasoline. Strange, I thought, I didn’t fill my tank today so there’s no reason I would have gotten any gas on me.

Then 2 days ago I noticed my tank was almost empty after just 2 weeks, where as I generally get well over a month on a single 4-gallon tank.

(Those of you that know motorcycles have certainly already diagnosed the problem…)

I did some research and confirmed my initial theory, the spark plugs were probably bad.  This was causing misfires, resulting in gasoline going uncombusted (I made that word More >

Do You Know How You’re Wired?

16
4 months ago
by Brave New Life in

There are a thousands of articles and books about the types of employees they desire: they want people who will listen, who will do what they’re told, who won’t ask questions, and who are willing to work longer hours every year. (and schools were set up to teach kids to learn basic skills, to not think too creatively, and to do as they’re told because this is what corporations want.)

But there’s something else corporations also want. They want experts. Heck, even individual teams want experts. An engineering team that develops a computer wants an expert on memory technology, and an expert in CPU technology. Then they need some experts in writing BIOS, some mechanical experts, and experts for integrating the operating system. Like the More >

A Tribute

5
4 months ago
by Brave New Life in

While I know I’m the only person in the world that doesn’t own an Apple product, I’ve been a big Steve Jobs fan for years.  It started about 4 years ago when I listened to this commencement speech for the first time.  I still listen to it regularly to keep my head on straight.

If you’ve never watched this video, please do. It’s 15 minutes you won’t regret.

A quote that changes me, and probably subconsciously helped me decide that I need to leave engineering:

I’ve looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change

More >

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