Whenever I see a press release, demo or review for a new fun technology my heart starts racing. Something ignites within me and in that moment I believe I need that new shiny toy. My brain tries to provide seemingly good reasons why I ‘need’ it.
I still haven’t mastered this feeling – not at all. I actually made the large mistake of buying the new iPhone 6 a few months ago after playing with a few of them and comparing my iPhone 5 which could barely keep a charge for a few hours with what I originally thought was a ridiculously large phone. This impulsive decision created a ripple of financial consequences that finally shook me out of this cycle. Continue reading “My Vice: Gadgets”
I had three main aspects of my New York life that I let eat away at my hard earned cash:
I had a thought during a rare visit to the gym. The idea was solidified by reading a blog post by my new blog obsession, Brave New Life. It’s the fact that everyone with a job spends most of their days and most of their life with people they did not choose, doing activities they did not choose. Further, when someone introduces themselves at a party and says they’re an insurance claims adjuster I may have a vague idea of what that means, but I have no idea what their day to day life is like. His or her family has no idea. Most of what they experience in a day is shared with strangers who are competing for money. It’s just such a strange thought in my mind.
Now to address another major money draining problem of mine: fancy foreign beaches. I remember almost all of my family vacations. And the overwhelming thing I remember is how unhappy I was compared to my normal life: despite being ‘on break’ from school, work or any other responsibilities. Despite being with various family. I have always been significantly more unhappy with life while vacationing. At first I just thought it was the company: people I avoid on a regular basis so a week in an isolated location (no matter how beautiful) became hell on earth. But now I’ve realized it’s more than that. 
I was recently sent a self help presentation that basically asked that we all learn to separate what they called Means Goals and End Goals. A Means Goal is basically a means to an end and the End Goal is that end result. My Means Goal is to reach financial independence through working and saving while still living life to the fullest. 
New York City is the self proclaimed best city in the world. As a kid I loved watching movies and at the epicenter of most of these movies was New York City. It seemed that 90% of urban movies took place there and the remaining 10% was in a nondescript ‘American city.’ So from the beginning New York City seemed important and I was dying to go there and live like everyone in the movies.