I’m a big fan of Chris Guillebeau and his Unconventional Guides series. I love his unflagging optimism and his appreciation for the weird and wonderful ways people find meaning in their lives. Recently, he teamed up with J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly (GRS) fame and put out a GRS Guide for purchase on his website. I had been in a funk lately and was sort of aimlessly surfing the internet one day when I found this guide. It was an easy decision to buy it: I wanted to focus on making some positive changes in my life and this seemed like a good place to start. Follow along as I commence Operation: Broke-ass No More.
For the last several months, I’ve only been able to think about my life and money as things that happened to me. Everyone has their ups and downs, of course, but these last couple years have been truly heinous.
Here are my last few years in review:
The definition of a roof: top of a building that keeps shit out. But that was all lies. It rained and water leaked in through the roof.
And then two months later, I was driving home and I had this view of Calgary to the south and our town to the north.
There was a giant mother-clucking hail storm – but only on our side of town. Destroyed our recently repaired roof and our siding. Anywhere else but our side of town? Tropical paradise.
I was also rear-ended by some chick and insurance only covered part of the amount of the car due to hail damage on the car. Hence $5,000 in loans we settled ourselves.
Then there was the Life Changing Event (LCE) that happened June 2013. I mention it here and here and here. I don’t go into specifics of the LCE but suffice to say that it was really really life changing. I’ll just recycle an old stick figure picture here:
Don’t get me wrong, there were good things too: I got married and we bought a house (even if it is cursed) and I started my blog. I also go to spend beautiful bonding time with my family and friends. There were lots of awesome things but the point is that I was feeling like a victim of my own circumstances and there were events that contributed to that.
Making that Positive Change:
When I started thinking about tackling my money in a real way again, I thought I should start somewhere different and that where the Get Rich Slowly Guide came in. J.D. talks about managing money being more about mastering your head than it is mastering numbers. The GRS Guide talks about running my life like a business – complete with goals, benchmarks, and financial projections.
Follow along with my Get Rich Slowly journey as I transform the business of Me, Inc. into a mega-money making machine. 😉
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