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Anyone familiar with this blog knows that prior to my 40th birthday, I was a financial moron. And that’s not me be self-deprecating. It’s just the cold, hard truth. Heck, I didn’t even know what an emergency fund was until I was 42.
The good news for the financially moronic, however, is this: personal finance isn’t hard. You spend less than you earn, invest the difference, and follow this simple recipe for several decades. That’s it. You don’t need a PhD in economics from MIT to become a financial rockstar. Any well-manicured ape can do it.
Ah, but there’s got to be a catch, right? After all, if personal finance were easy, wouldn’t every adult out there be a financial rockstar?
Here’s the rub. Knowledge is the easy part. Spend a week reading David Bach’s Automatic Millionaire and you’ll have all the personal finance knowledge you’ll need. No, the hard part is acting on that knowledge. In other words, the only thing that’s really separating the typical American from financial nirvana isn’t a lack of knowledge; it’s a lack of discipline.
Now before I continue, I need to throw in a disclaimer. I’m not saying all is fine on the knowledge front. I didn’t learn the fundamentals of personal finance until my early 40s. So our schools got to do a better job of transmitting financial knowledge. And so do parents. I’m just saying that making our kids financially savvy won’t amount to squat if they turn into undisciplined adults.
Financial literacy + an unquenchable lust for stuff = financial hardship.
If you’re a financial moron, your biggest problem isn’t knowledge. Like I said, you can learn all the personal finance knowledge you need in a week. Your problem is really discipline. You’re too soft. You need to start honing your discipline muscles.
Here then is my 12-step guide to honing your discipline muscles. Take one step a month. If you can accelerate that pace and do two or three steps a month, by all means do so.
The Groovy 12-Step Guide to Honing Your Discipline Muscle
Step one: Wake up 15 minutes sooner than you normally do and begin your day by making your bed. Then do a basic exercise routine that works your upper body, legs, and core. Start with a workout of 10 push ups, 20 air squats (squats with no weight), and a 20 second plank.
Step two: Remove sugary drinks from your diet. Heavy sugar consumption is the bane of this country’s collective health. It’s making us obese, riddled with type 2 diabetes, and, in the eyes of some, increasingly vulnerable to the ravishes of dementia and Alzheimer’s. So take the first step in the battle for your health by sparing your gullet from gallons of liquid sugar. It won’t be fun. Take it from a former sugarholic. But after a few weeks your cravings for high-fructose corn syrup will wane dramatically. In fact, by the time you start step three of this guide, you’re very likely to find sugary drinks quite repulsive.
Step three: Wake up an additional 15 minutes sooner and use that time to read one of the three featured articles on Rockstar Finance.
Step four: Begin tracking your spending. Save your receipts and make note on a piece of paper or your phone of any spending that doesn’t come with a receipt. Then as soon as you get home from work, log your daily expenses into a tracking spreadsheet.
Your tracking spreadsheet need not be complicated. All you really need are three columns: date, description, dollar amount. If you want a more robust tracking spreadsheet, you can try mine.
Step five: Listen to the Choose FI podcast on your commute to and from work. I have an Android phone and the app I use to download and stream Choose FI is called Podcast Addict. Start with episode one and then continue straight through every other episode in order until you’re caught up. That should keep you busy for a few months.
Step six: Analyze your spending spreadsheet and find a way to reduce your monthly spending by $100. If you have any consumer debt, use that extra $100 a month to pay down your debt faster. If you don’t have consumer debt, throw that extra $100 every month into a savings account.
Everyone’s situation is different, so I can’t tell you specifically how to save $100. But here’s some low hanging fruit that helped me reduce my expenses. It may help you.
- Get rid of cable.
- Bring your lunch to work.
- Have friends over for BYOB night once a month and remove one night of clubbing from your monthly expenses.
- Go cheap on things that don’t matter. You don’t need Air Jordans to walk around. Converse All Stars will do just fine.
- Cancel your gym membership and start doing body-weight exercises at home.
And if your looking for more frugal ideas, here’s a great post from Gary over at Super Saving Tips.
Step seven: Wake up an additional 15 minutes sooner and use that time to clean a different part of your house each day. A messy house leads to guilt and guilt leads to frustration and laziness.
Step eight: Give TV a break for one hour every night. Use that freed up hour to learn a skill that will make you more valuable in the labor market.
Again, everyone’s different. I don’t know what field you’re working in or what interests you. So I can’t tell you what skill you should hone. But with a little thought, you should be able to come up with a skill that will either advance your current career or allow you to pursue a more lucrative career.
Before I retired, for example, I was a data analyst. So many of the skills that piqued my interest had a data/programming angle. But not all. Here are some of the skills I tried to develop in my spare time over the past several years.
- Learning Spanish (still trying)
- Learning how to blog (still trying)
- Honing my SQL skills
- Honing my VBA and C# skills
- Learning about No-SQL databases
Step nine: Find a way to increase your monthly income by $100. This is perhaps the easiest step in my 12-step guide. Heck, all you have to do is deliver pizzas one or two nights out of the month. If you can’t pull this one off, there’s no hope. You might as well pack it in and buy a cheap van so you can live down by the river.
Haha! Only kidding. My point is that with just a little effort, earning an extra $100 month is a breeze. Here are three links with great money-making tips.
80 Great Ways to Make More Money in 2017
99 Side Hustle Business Ideas You Can Start Today
This is What the “Sharing Economy” is—and How to Make Money In It
Step ten: Now that you have a $200 gap every month, continue using $100 to eliminate consumer debt or add to your savings. With the other $100, you need to start investing. One way of doing this is to open a Roth IRA with Charles Schwab. You can do it online in 15 minutes and Schwab has many low-cost fund options. I particularly find its S&P 500 Index Fund (SWPPX) intriguing because Schwab waives the minimum investment amount for this fund ($1,000) if you set up an automatic monthly investment of at least $100.*
I don’t have any affiliation with Charles Schwab. The discount brokers I deal with are Vanguard and Fidelity. I chose Charles Schwab for illustrative purposes, however, because it allows you to begin investing in an S&P 500 index fund immediately. For Vanguard and Fidelity, you need $3,000 and $2,500 respectively before you can begin investing in their S&P 500 index funds.
Step eleven: Wake up an additional 15 minutes sooner and use that time to watch a Brian Johnson YouTube video. Brian is all about the science of becoming a better human. Think Marcus Aurelius meets Richard Thaler. Here are three of my favorite Brian Johnson videos.
Extreme Ownership
Ego Is the Enemy
The Willpower Instinct
Step twelve: Start tracking your net worth. This is the ultimate feedback tool in the world of personal finance. If your net worth is growing every year, you’re doing something right. If it isn’t, it’s time to reassess your spending and investing habits.
Again, you don’t need anything complicated to track your net worth. A spreadsheet with liabilities (what you owe) on one tab and assets (what you own) on another is all you need. If you want something that’s a little more robust, you can try my net worth tracker.
Final Thoughts
Many people equate discipline with discomfort. And in some instances, it is. Working is harder than sleeping. Exercise is harder than quaffing beer. But in many instances, the discipline required to turn financial savvy into financial wealth is trivial. Buying a three-year-old Camry instead of a brand new Lexus isn’t exactly a testament to man’s indomitable spirit. Nor is celebrating Valentine’s Day by going to Sonic rather than a fancy French restaurant.
The simple truth is that most Americans can dramatically improve their financial situations without sacrificing anything of substance. All they need do is live a modest lifestyle by American standards. After all, any American living in a 1,300 sq ft home with all the standard amenities has better housing than 90% of the people on this planet.
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Is discipline the key? Or I am making too little of the dearth of financial savvy in this country? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.
* Disclaimer: Remember, I’m just some dude online. I’m not an investment professional in any sense of the word. Any investing information found on this site is for general informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be construed as advice. If you’re looking for advice, you need discuss your specific needs with a qualified professional. Please see our full Terms and Conditions here.
I love the title! The idea that discipline is the key to ending financial moronity is so spot on! It’s easy to fall into financial habits that aren’t serving us well, but with discipline and a willingness to make changes, it’s possible to break free from those patterns and take control of our finances. It’s not always easy to resist the temptation of instant gratification, but by prioritizing long-term goals and making sacrifices in the short-term, we can achieve financial freedom.
Discipline. It’s the one thing I got, cuz I don’t got much of anything else! My readers remind me I’m an idiot at least once a week for the past 8.5 years since I started FS. But since July 2009, I’ve published 3X a week without fail.
I need to get to 10 years straight at 3X a week on average, b/c that what I promised myself before starting.
The good thing about being undisciplined in one’s finances is that one gets to enjoy all that one’s money has to offer. Whoo hoo!
Sam
Man! Would be that many more Americans were as “idiotic” as you. Three posts a week for eight and a half years is nothing short of spectacular. That’s some mighty fine discipline in my book. Whoo hoo, indeed!
GREAT Insights!
Some of my favorites:
1. You nail it on that personal finance is more behavior than knowledge. I am a big Dave Ramsey fan and he constantly preaches that finance is 20% head knowledge and 80% behavior. It took me reading 1 book on investing to understand that investing in low cost index funds and compound interest over decades would get me to where I wanted to be financially.
2. Waking up earlier. This one is hard for most people, but once you suck it up and get past the first week or 2, it isn’t so bad. I personally get up at 4:30am on the weekdays, and I probably get at least 2 extra hours of personal production done a day than I used to.
3. Always update your skillsets for the labor force. In these current times, I don’t know why anybody isn’t learning how to code on their spare time.
Great post!
Wow, Sean. Three very astute observations. And I particularly like number 3. The best way to stand out in a non-programming job is to learn how to code. I was a construction inspector when I worked for government. But I can’t tell how many times I used Excel, Access, and VBA to solve my problems and the problems of other co-workers. In fact, I got so good a solving problems with those three tools, they took me off the road and made me the de facto IT guy for the highway division. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. I really appreciate what you had to bring to the conversation. Happy New Year.
THIS ARTICLE IS THE BOMB! THANKS
Thank you, Lucy. Made my day.
Such a hardass.
But you’re right.
Haha! That’s what Mrs. G says. Perhaps it’s time to loosen up a bit?
I have a habit of tracking my expenses and it has somewhat gone too far (Like obsession). Maybe that requires a detox too.
Haha! I love it. Every person has his or her vice. And there are certainly worse vices than tracking one’s expenses. Skip the detox on that one.
All good tips! All of these are great discipline and self-control building steps which translate well elsewhere. Setting a goal and achieving it – even just reading a single Rockstar Finance post – is a nice win to start the day. That sounds like a good one that I might try!
“…a nice win to start the day.”
That’s the key. Win the morning, win the day. Thanks for stopping by, Adam. And good luck with the steps. I’m sure you’ll do great.
Have you done a blog post on how you overcame your sugar addiction? I am a soda addict and have been wanting to kick my addiction for a long time. I would love to get your tips!!!!
Hey, Mysticaltyger. No, I haven’t done a post on how I overcame my sugar addiction. But thanks to you, that post is now in the hopper. Why the didn’t I think of this before? Thanks, Myticaltyger. I owe you one.
“Well-manicured ape” You always give me vocabulary to add to my stash.
This principal is the same for losing weight. If you burn more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. There, that’s all you need to know about losing weight, it’s undeniable fact. Yet….
The “unquenchable lust for food”, to use a twist of your phrase above, along with a sedentary lifestyle, prevents folks from being able to use this simple equation to their advantage.
It is about discipline in the end. I don’t want to come off as smug to people who struggle with their weight. I get it. Our modern lifestyles do everything possible to make burning more calories than you take in as hard as possible. But the knowledge of how to fix it couldn’t be simpler, that’s the good part. The discipline to do it, well that’s another matter.
Great post, congrats on the Rockstar highlight!
Thank you, sir. Can’t take credit for “well-manicured ape,” though. I had a professor my freshman year in college who stated in his syllabus for the class, “Any well-manicured ape should get a B in this class.” Needless to say, I didn’t get a B in the class. I got a D. But I never forgot that line. And I hear ya about weight. I wasn’t able to get my weight under control until I developed the discipline to forego bread, sugary drinks, and condiments. Drinking only water and shoving bun-less burgers without ketchup or barbecue sauce down my gullet really sucks. But as time goes by, the suckiness wanes and you actually don’t mind it. Thanks for stopping by, AF. Love the way your mind works.
Good stuff, Mr. Groovy! Admittedly, I don’t always make my bed first thing, but that’s only if there’s a sleeping cat on it 😉 If more people woke up and read the featured articles on Rockstar Finance each morning, there would be a lot less financial moronity in the world.
Haha! I’m very familiar with the sleeping cat loophole. Our last cat had a penchant for jumping up to my bed and crawling under the blanket. I didn’t have the heart to make my bed after that. And I couldn’t agree more with you about Rockstar Finance. Never in the field of personal financial has so much wisdom been so easily accessible for so little cost (free!). Truly remarkable. Thanks for stopping by, Mrs. FF. I really appreciate it.
Hey Mr. Groovy! I agree, discipline is one of those things in life that can make a huge difference in the path one takes. In my experience, the best way to get over a tough life obstacle is to keep at it until you prevail, with discipline and perseverance. Like in “The Shawshank Redemption”, even a spoon can breach a wall, one little speck at a time.
Oh and if you’d like some Spanish practice, it’s my first language so drop me a line!
Es un placer leer tus artículos.
Saludos,
Miguel
“Even a spoon can breach a wall.”
I love it, Miguel. Great freaking wisdom. And as far as Spanish goes, yo se tengo que praticar con una persona real. Duolingo and La Reina del Sur aren’t cutting it. Let’s talk after the new year. If you’re game for a fifteen minute chat in Spanish once a week, I’m certainly game. Thanks for stopping by, Miguel. And thanks for your gracious offer. You’re the best, my friend.
Sure! As my Miami Cuban friends say, “dale, caballo”.
Oh, and a great Spanish-language movie is “El secreto de sus ojos”. Kind of like a Latin “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”.
Hey, Miguel. That’s great. Thank you. Okay, I’m not going to use Google Translate. I’m going to try it on my own. Here we go.
“Dale, caballo.”
This one stumped me. Is it “ride on, horse”? A colloquial saying for “let’s do this”?
“El secreto de sus ojos.”
I think I got this one. “The secret of her eyes.”
Let me know if I’m close, my friend. Cheers.
Yes, correct on both!
Dale = colloquialism for “let’s do this”. Literally, “hit it”, “give it”, or “do it”.
Caballo = horse. It’s really a compliment, kinda like saying “let’s do this, big dog”.
Cheers,
Miguel
You’re the best, Miguel. Thank you. Here’s my lame attempt of wishing you a happy new year.
Felice ano de nuevo!
Absolutely discipline is key. And for some of us it takes longer (and later in life) than others to learn that lesson. Unfortunately, you can’t go back and redo, so better to get on the ball early!
I still haven’t put off the sugary drinks completely — I don’t drink a lot of them but get a fix each day, and it would be better to get to zero.
I also learned Spanish intensively (just for fun) several years ago. I really enjoyed it — but I learned to read more than speak. It’s much more difficult to recall words from scratch than to interpret if you don’t have someone to speak it with regularly.
Hey, Rybo. I couldn’t agree more. I Jocko Willink says, “Discipline equals freedom.” I just wish I would have learned this lessons in my 20s rather than my 40s. Ah, the follies of youth. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. It’s always great hearing from someone who loves Spanish and is trying to subdue his sugar demons.
Spot on Mr G, and made me smile reading it.
What am I going to choose for my first month? Learn French – OK, so that’s going to take way longer than a month, but at least you’ve made me decide to start again. I bet you’re speaking Spanish before I’m speaking French though!
Tracking expenses on a spreadsheet is a great first step for people not already doing it. A sure fire way to cutting costs.
I’m so lame at Spanish. I’m trying, but I’m only making minor headway. I think the only solution is to start spending a month or two every year in Mexico. Thankfully, Mrs. G is on board with that. Thanks for stopping by, David. I really appreciate your kind words. And good luck with the French.
Great guide, and thanks for the mention, Mr. G! I think discipline is a big part of what’s needed to achieve success of any kind and that certainly includes financial success. The knowledge is out there for those who would seek it out, but the discipline is harder to cultivate. Your steps will definitely guide someone along the right path to build it up.
The pleasure’s all mine, Gary. Those were some pretty clever ways to save money. You got a very keen mind, my friend.
I like this idea of building up overall discipline versus forcing financial discipline on yourself all at once. Discipline is truly a muscle that needs to be built up. But that’s the key–it can be built up with enough effort!
This reminds me of the Mischel marshmallow experiment that tested kids’ ability to delay gratification. They all knew they could double their reward if they could just wait it out…but only the disciplined could benefit!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX_oy9614HQ
“Discipline is truly a muscle that needs to be built up. But that’s the key–it can be built up with enough effort!”
Thanks, prosperlyway. I couldn’t have said it better myself. And thanks for the link to the marshmallow experiment. Every Amerian needs to see that.
Discipline and a catalyst to exercise it are all that are necessary. At 22, I was earning a decent buck and spending it all. My Dad sat me down and suggested I write a check to myself at the end of the month like paying a bill and put it aside in a separate account. No knowledge required. I had a separate savings account and knew how to write a check. The rest is history and all your other steps more or less fell into place over time. Tom
Thanks for sharing, Tom. Your dad is very wise. And you were very wise to listen to him.
That’s a pretty phenomenal list!
Glad you incorporated some stuff outside the money realm.
A lot of being fit financially is being fit mentally and physically.
FYI…Converse All-Stars are cooler than Jordan’s anyways 🙂
It’s weird. I never thought there was a connection between financial health and mental, physical, and spiritual health. But as my financial health improved, my tolerance for chaos and squalor in the non-financial parts of my life dropped considerably. For instance, having a messy car or bathroom never bothered me. Now it skeeves me out. Thanks for stopping by, Nick. It’s always great hearing from someone appreciates the refined beauty of the Converse All-Stars.
I think we can all agree Step #3 is the best 🙂
Those beers are quickly adding up!
I loathe being a kiss-ass, but I got to call’em like I see’em. Step #3 is one of the best arrows anyone can have in his or her financial quiver.
Great tips on starting from zero! Proof that baby steps win the race. I totally agree with you that our schools need to step up better, I had basically zero financial education in 20 years of schooling. Thank goodness my mom & dad taught me the basics of checking, savings, and credit cards. Everything else about frugality and investing I had to figure out for myself over the years. And in general, our country has become very bad at discipline, self-control, or patience. Lets bring that back shall we?
“Everything else about frugality and investing I had to figure out for myself over the years.”
So sad. The first purpose of America is freedom. The second purpose is wealth. Americans weren’t meant to muddle through or teeter on the edge of financial ruin. They were meant to thrive. What the hell are our schools doing? They have room for all sorts of studies–black studies, women studies, green studies, etc. And that’s fine. But they don’t have any room for wealth studies? Really? They don’t want young Americans to be inoculated from the ravages of excessive debt and consumerism?
Meh. I get so frustrated. I’m with you, BE. Let’s make discipline, self-control, and patience the default mindset of every American.
Great post! We skipped cable, brought lunch to work and drove used cars (still do actually) to create that margin in our budget. And it absolutely works!
Recently, I’ve started getting up at 6:20am every morning to get the kids to school, then I do a 3 mile walk and listen to my podcasts. ChooseFI is #1 on the list. And I’m not a morning person so this is a huge accomplishment for me.
This money stuff really isn’t complex. But it does take discipline. Luckily my wife is more disciplined than me and she helps us make good decisions!
Hey, LYW. I love it. We cut cable around 3 years ago, and we can’t imagine ever going back. The only time we “watch” cable TV is when we’re visiting family. And I put watch in quotation marks because the stuff on cable TV is so cringe worthy. You may come across a halfway decent show now and then, but the commercials are so insipid. And they’re relentless. No, we don’t miss cable TV at all. The YouTube content put out by rank amateurs is much more compelling. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. It’s always great hearing from another soul who listens to Choose FI during his morning constitutional.
Inspirational and I an glad I am hitting most if these steps. Working out, getting rid of debt and eating right really makes a good equation for longevity.
Thanks, DDD. Eating right for me was the biggest hurdle. I drank the FI Kool-Aid as soon as I discovered it. But it took me over 50 years to right my diet. I would literally drink a gallon of sweet tea and soda a day. If I didn’t stop that nonsense, I would have definitely had Type 2 diabetes in my future. Now I’ve given my body a fighting chance. Thank for stopping by, my friend.
It was the main reason I named my site debt discipline. It was what we lacked that dug a $109K hole for ourselves. Sure the first couple of months were tough breaking old bad habits, but once we got over that hurdle and embraced it, we found our new financial discipline routines trickled down into all areas our lives.
Haha! As soon as I finished typing in the title for this post, I thought of your blog. And you are so right, my friend. For most of my life, I thought finances were about numbers. It’s not. It’s about habits. Embrace good financial habits and good things will result. The key, then, as you so eloquently pointed out, is to get over the hurdle of breaking “old bad habits.” Once you do that, you’re home free. Thanks for stopping by, Brian. It’s always great hearing from someone who has mastered the connection between discipline and finances.
Good stuff. I think loosing the sugar is analogous to building discipline. It’s hard at first but once you’re there you don’t want to go back.
Hey, Maarten. Tell me about it. The first two weeks without sugary drinks was miserable. I remember saying to Mrs. Groovy, “If quitting sugary drinks cold turkey is this painful, I can’t imagine how painful quitting a real addiction like heroin is.” But like you pointed out, my friend, the withdrawal symptoms quickly fade. Now I find diet drinks to be too sweet, and I can’t imagine ever drinking sugary drinks again.
I think those are great steps for for most people where discipline is a problem, even something as simple as waking up 15 minutes earlier is probably going to be a huge challenge. I always liked the approach of the 1 thing challenge. Just do THE most important baby step you can manage that will set in motion other future habits. So, instead of waking up 15 minutes early and doing a workout (even if it’s a pretty simple and easy thing to do for a lot of people), just simple wake up 15 minutes earlier and take that pressure off yourself to do anything more. People get overwhelmed easily and then quit. For me, the ONE thing I can do to better help my body is not eat work snacks. That’s it. Just don’t eat work snacks.
“I always liked the approach of the 1 thing challenge. Just do THE most important baby step you can manage that will set in motion other future habits.”
Wow. Very powerful. In two sentences you distilled the essence of my entire post. I love the way your mind works, Tonya.
Right now I’m working on HTML/CSS and some Java. It’s been fun, since I know C# and SQL already…
I want to develop some apps for my site. I think these would go a long way in providing some great value for readers and viewers 🙂
Definitely, Erik. I’ve built some baby apps for Android and I love the challenge. I haven’t done any app development in a while. Now I’m playing around with video editing. But as long as I’m trying something new and pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone, it’s all good. Love HTML/CSS and Javascript. Haven’t worked with Java at all. But if you master HTML/CSS and Java, you’ll basically have the keys to the internet. Not too shabby. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. Always a pleasure hearing from you.
Did anyone tally up how much earlier we have to get up for this? I feel like eventually you just don’t sleep. Ha.
All good stuff, the sugary drinks and the TV cutting are definitely worth while. Setting up the accounts too.
Was 12 steps a conscious decision?
Hey, Mr. WoW. I just tallied how much earlier this 12-step guide will have you getting up after a year. It’s an hour. Not too bad, especially when you consider it’s built up gradually. But I hear ya, my friend. Not everyone is a morning person, and this part of my guide will be severely off-putting for the non-morning person.
This is such a great guide to not only personal finance but a better life!
If people follow your 12-step guide, they will become more financially alert, healthier, disciplined, and very likely happier.
I totally agree with you that we don’t need a PhD in Economics to know what personal finance is. I learned most of my frugality from my parents, and the education was totally free (kind of)!
Thank you, Ms. FAF. I get so frustrated. It takes 15 minutes online to start investing in an S&P 500 fund. And all you need to have a couple of hundred dollars to invest in that S&P 500 fund is a little discipline. And, yet, far too many American adults have saved nothing for retirement. Meh. Thanks for stopping by and sharing. And thank heaven for parent-led frugality lessons. Would be that more American parents were so inclined to pass on this awesome knowledge to their children.
All amazingly good stuff here, but I”m so glad you brought up the sugary diet. My productivity level skyrockets when my diet is clean and I keep sugar consumption to a minimum. When I eat like crap, my discipline level is non-existent because I feel lethargic and crabby.
Hey, Laurie. Three years ago, I weighed 215 lbs. I always felt lethargic and had many stomach issues. The time to fix my diet was clearly at hand. So I gave up sugary drinks and bread. And then I got into intermittent fasting. On most days, I only eat lunch and dinner. The results? I’m down to 180 lbs and I feel great. It’s amazing how just being mindful of your sugar and carb consumption can turn things around. Have you ever heard of the Fat Head documentary? Check it out when you get a chance.
That’s amazing!!! No, haven’t heard of that but can’t wait to watch it – thanks!!
I think you’ll enjoy Fat Head. It’s pretty funny. I’m also curious to know what you think of its diet advice (fat good, carbs and sugar bad). I’m on board with it. But my knowledge in this field is very thin.
I’m a big fan of low carbs/sugar, high fat. The good fats (i.e. avocados, grass fed red meat, which has “mega” Omega 3’s ) really do a body good. The only fats I tend to avoid are dairy and meat with injected hormones. I can feel a definite difference in my body when I eat hormone-laced foods vs. non-hormone-laced foods.
Great ideas, Mr. G. Glad you stopped at 12 Steps, I was afraid you were going to keep making me get up earlier, and earlier, and earlier!
It looks like I may be teaching a Personal Finance course at my employer! (Big news, I had a mtg w HR yesterday to talk retirement, and offered up the class. They were already heading that direction, so it’s a perfect fit! Professor Fritz!!). I may borrow this post and create a slide. Great content!
I just hate thinking about losing so much sleep….(I’m more like Mrs. G, and not the early bird that you are!)
I’m loving it. Good for you with the teaching gig — but wait! You MUST get this domain RIGHT NOW:
http://professorfritz.com
I just checked and it’s available.
Nope, I don’t get up before 7:15 unless I’m having a crazy dream or I have a flight to catch. I leave the heroics to Mr. G.
OMG, that’s TOO funny! There’s going to be a rush for that domain once the word gets out! Mr. G’s early mornings are about as crazy as my cold water swim….smile.
Hmmm! You propose an interesting dilemma for people. What would they prefer doing? Getting up an hour or so earlier? Or going for a cold-water swim at anytime during the day? I prefer getting up earlier, but many commenters here might prefer the cold-water swim.
Hey, if you’re the Professor in our FI community, who’s Gilligan? And don’t say me! I don’t need fellow bloggers referring to me as “little buddy.”
Haha! All kidding aside, I love the idea of Professor Fritz. It’s a great fit for you and your company. Congratulations, my friend.
OMG, you all keep me laughing!
I can totally see you teaching a class, Fritz. I’m working on something myself too.
Awesome steps Mr. G! Luckily I’ve figured it out without having to get up too early. 😉
Professor Amy? I’m very intrigued. Tell us more. Don’t leave us hanging.