I have to say that I think I was blessed with some of the most amazing friends in the world. A lot of people will tell you that they have friends that will take a bullet for them. While some may be telling the truth I would say about 80% of those people are either lying through their teeth or just oblivious. I, on the other hand, can honestly say that I have 8 to 10 guys and ladies in my life that truly would.
I happened to go to The University Of Texas... tomorrow is a BIG deal! For those of you who don't know tomorrow is the BCS National Championship game is being held in Pasadena. My best friend in the world arrived tonight at 6:15. He hasn't been to LA in 18 years. We just got back from a little restaurant called Father's Office. If you are in the Santa Monica area go there!
I'm excited for tonight, I'm excited for this weekend, and I'm excited for you if you are lucy enough to have people in your life that are as special to you as my friends are to me!
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Day 5: Finance
I have to admit that the fantastical day dreams I had as a wide eyed college graduate do not quite match up to my current financial state. I had pictured myself at this point being a high powered movie producer with a big house and a BMW M3 in the driveway. Truth be told, I have an apartment and a 2004 Nissan Xterra. The Xterra (or Xterror as I like to call it) serves as a mode of transportation to my day job as a Peterbilt truck salesman, but it also happens to hold the record as the most expensive Xterra ever sold!
Don't be misled here, there is absolutely nothing special about this truck! I paid $21K for it off the showroom floor in 2004. However, due to lack of experience, a bit of stupidity, and two ill thought out refinances I still owe $15,256 on the thing with a monthly payment of $486. When it is all said and done I will have paid around $54,000 for the damn thing. This is particularly vexing because a 2010 BMW M3 is $53,000! I will delve more into this topic later when I discuss why you should never refinance your vehicle and how Wells Fargo is the devil!
I digress from the point of my dreams and my reality not matching up. This is important because they definitely do NOT! Anyone who reads this that is in sales knows what the last two years have been like... shitty, What compounds this situation is that I had zero savings when I switched careers and moved into sales. For the greater part of the past two years I have been juggling credit cards and loans in order to get me over the proverbial "hump" to lay some solid groundwork with my finances. This elusive "hump" has yet to show up. In fact the only hump of any sort I have managed to locate is a seemingly insurmountable mountain of debt that has been topped off by a flag that some crooked banker erected with a smile to read "Average APR 18.9%." Needless to say that this has done wonders for my credit score. The damage has been done though. I had spent the previous four years making up for horrible college credit card mistakes, and now I will be spending the next few on these.
In my darkest hour, when I was at least a month behind on just about every bill I have, I decided to take a stand. I took some very good advice and got some help straightening out my debt. I have been holding steady and have started to chip away a little bit at a time. In the coming months I am going to share with you what I have done to get my head back above water. I no longer feel lost and anxious when it comes to my debt. I am not where I envisioned myself 8 years ago, but that is okay for today. I still have some time to get that M3!
So here I am, a 29 year old impromptu mountain climber ready to scale that mountain of debt. The one thing I know for certain is that when I reach the top I too will erect a flag (after burning the current one) that will read "DEBT FREE."
Then... I will smile!
Don't be misled here, there is absolutely nothing special about this truck! I paid $21K for it off the showroom floor in 2004. However, due to lack of experience, a bit of stupidity, and two ill thought out refinances I still owe $15,256 on the thing with a monthly payment of $486. When it is all said and done I will have paid around $54,000 for the damn thing. This is particularly vexing because a 2010 BMW M3 is $53,000! I will delve more into this topic later when I discuss why you should never refinance your vehicle and how Wells Fargo is the devil!
I digress from the point of my dreams and my reality not matching up. This is important because they definitely do NOT! Anyone who reads this that is in sales knows what the last two years have been like... shitty, What compounds this situation is that I had zero savings when I switched careers and moved into sales. For the greater part of the past two years I have been juggling credit cards and loans in order to get me over the proverbial "hump" to lay some solid groundwork with my finances. This elusive "hump" has yet to show up. In fact the only hump of any sort I have managed to locate is a seemingly insurmountable mountain of debt that has been topped off by a flag that some crooked banker erected with a smile to read "Average APR 18.9%." Needless to say that this has done wonders for my credit score. The damage has been done though. I had spent the previous four years making up for horrible college credit card mistakes, and now I will be spending the next few on these.
In my darkest hour, when I was at least a month behind on just about every bill I have, I decided to take a stand. I took some very good advice and got some help straightening out my debt. I have been holding steady and have started to chip away a little bit at a time. In the coming months I am going to share with you what I have done to get my head back above water. I no longer feel lost and anxious when it comes to my debt. I am not where I envisioned myself 8 years ago, but that is okay for today. I still have some time to get that M3!
So here I am, a 29 year old impromptu mountain climber ready to scale that mountain of debt. The one thing I know for certain is that when I reach the top I too will erect a flag (after burning the current one) that will read "DEBT FREE."
Then... I will smile!
Monday, January 4, 2010
Day 4: The Weigh In
First day back to work and the start of a brand new year! Although normally my office is full of the hustle and bustle of numerous people running around with heavy tools working on very expensive machinery that was not the scene today! Today as I walked into the office the setting was more like a glamorous press conference the week before a long awaited prize fight. The scale was ready and our makeshift scoreboard was created.
All in there are 7 contenders vying for the "Great 2010 Slimdown" crown. Various weights were measured and recorded until finally my turn arose. As I strode up to the scale I grabbed as many various office supplies of considerable weight as I could. Once I had stuffed a stapler, a tape dispenser, a box of binder clips, paperclips, a maglite, and a monkey wrench into my hands and pockets I took my place on the scale. Unfortunately my plan was thwarted due to the fact that I took all of these items in front of everyone else and they didn't seem to think that it was the most, shall I say, "accurate" measure. So after unloading enough stock off my personage to keep a small Office Max running for a week I stepped back up on the scale...
265 pounds!
HOLY HELL! That scale had to be wrong (I hope)! Either way it was wrong across the board and now I have a starting point to get things going. Which I have done. I came home and headed directly to my room to change and get my ass onto pavement jogging. I knocked out about three miles and felt pretty good.
I know this isn't going to be easy, but I am doing it for a good reason...
All in there are 7 contenders vying for the "Great 2010 Slimdown" crown. Various weights were measured and recorded until finally my turn arose. As I strode up to the scale I grabbed as many various office supplies of considerable weight as I could. Once I had stuffed a stapler, a tape dispenser, a box of binder clips, paperclips, a maglite, and a monkey wrench into my hands and pockets I took my place on the scale. Unfortunately my plan was thwarted due to the fact that I took all of these items in front of everyone else and they didn't seem to think that it was the most, shall I say, "accurate" measure. So after unloading enough stock off my personage to keep a small Office Max running for a week I stepped back up on the scale...
265 pounds!
HOLY HELL! That scale had to be wrong (I hope)! Either way it was wrong across the board and now I have a starting point to get things going. Which I have done. I came home and headed directly to my room to change and get my ass onto pavement jogging. I knocked out about three miles and felt pretty good.
I know this isn't going to be easy, but I am doing it for a good reason...
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Day 3: Health
I wasn't always fat. Not too long ago I was actually in pretty decent shape, and I know exactly when things started to change. Two years and one month ago I completely changed my career. I went from following my dreams to working for the man in around two weeks. Mind you, this was the wise decision at the time. Sometimes though, the wise decision isn't always the best one for us. By "us" I mean our souls... who we are on the most primal front. Change is always difficult for humans and this situation was no different.
I slowly watched as I gained five pounds. Those five pounds turned into ten. The next thing I knew that ten had turned into a gain of forty five pounds in eight months. FORTY FIVE pounds in less than a year folks...
...
I actually just sat and stared at the last line for about two minutes still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. It is still hard for me to believe. I think it is safe to say that what caused the weight gain and how it occurred can be fodder for a lot of posts in the future, but for now what we need to focus on is what is currently being done about the situation.
Tomorrow morning starts "the great office slim down of 2010." This is one of a few things that I am doing right now to actively lose weight. I will get into the other things soon, I promise, just bear with this one for now. About half of my office is entering into a contest tomorrow morning to see who can lose the highest percentage of their body weight in 90 days. It fits pretty amazingly with what I am trying to do right now so naturally I am all about it. We are all going to weigh-in and keep track of where we are at every Friday for the next three months. I am actually really excited about the whole thing. That being said, I totally pigged out today in anticipation. Domino's chicken bacon ranch pizzas should be illegal! Seriously!
I think it is very easy for all of us to agree that the way we perceive ourselves in the mirror really plays into how the rest of the world sees us. Their perception is based on how we present ourselves to them. If we are not happy with what we see in the mirror then how can we expect to present ourselves to others in a manner for them to feel any different? By changing our outer appearance to something that we are proud of we automatically change our inner selves. We automatically will feel better! Gradually, as we feel better, the way we project ourselves changes too. This ultimately leads us to being all around happier people!
This is one of the easiest concepts for people to grasp and one of the hardest to actually act upon. I just hope that this contest gives me a little motivation to get going.
Wish me luck on the weigh-in!
I slowly watched as I gained five pounds. Those five pounds turned into ten. The next thing I knew that ten had turned into a gain of forty five pounds in eight months. FORTY FIVE pounds in less than a year folks...
...
I actually just sat and stared at the last line for about two minutes still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. It is still hard for me to believe. I think it is safe to say that what caused the weight gain and how it occurred can be fodder for a lot of posts in the future, but for now what we need to focus on is what is currently being done about the situation.
Tomorrow morning starts "the great office slim down of 2010." This is one of a few things that I am doing right now to actively lose weight. I will get into the other things soon, I promise, just bear with this one for now. About half of my office is entering into a contest tomorrow morning to see who can lose the highest percentage of their body weight in 90 days. It fits pretty amazingly with what I am trying to do right now so naturally I am all about it. We are all going to weigh-in and keep track of where we are at every Friday for the next three months. I am actually really excited about the whole thing. That being said, I totally pigged out today in anticipation. Domino's chicken bacon ranch pizzas should be illegal! Seriously!
I think it is very easy for all of us to agree that the way we perceive ourselves in the mirror really plays into how the rest of the world sees us. Their perception is based on how we present ourselves to them. If we are not happy with what we see in the mirror then how can we expect to present ourselves to others in a manner for them to feel any different? By changing our outer appearance to something that we are proud of we automatically change our inner selves. We automatically will feel better! Gradually, as we feel better, the way we project ourselves changes too. This ultimately leads us to being all around happier people!
This is one of the easiest concepts for people to grasp and one of the hardest to actually act upon. I just hope that this contest gives me a little motivation to get going.
Wish me luck on the weigh-in!
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Day 2: The Plan
What an amazing day! I took a long bike ride up to Malibu today and the scenery did its best to remind me that where I live does NOT suck! The time spent on those two wheels quickly reminded me that...
A) I haven't ridden a bike in close to ten years.
B) my butt is really REALLY going to hurt tomorrow.
C) If I am really going to make these 365 days work for me I need a plan.
The plan I have laid out to this point is to set small goals and work on a lot of different fronts. The three major areas I want to work on are health, financial, and career. While the second and third areas are somewhat connected they are very separate when it comes to making me happy. Money will help to make my debt disappear, but it wont take my soul to a place that I can find true happiness.
Throughout the next 365 days I will layout individual goals and plans to achieve them. By fixing the parts, theoretically, the sum of the whole will ultimately be fixed as well.
And that... will lead to a better me!
A) I haven't ridden a bike in close to ten years.
B) my butt is really REALLY going to hurt tomorrow.
C) If I am really going to make these 365 days work for me I need a plan.
The plan I have laid out to this point is to set small goals and work on a lot of different fronts. The three major areas I want to work on are health, financial, and career. While the second and third areas are somewhat connected they are very separate when it comes to making me happy. Money will help to make my debt disappear, but it wont take my soul to a place that I can find true happiness.
Throughout the next 365 days I will layout individual goals and plans to achieve them. By fixing the parts, theoretically, the sum of the whole will ultimately be fixed as well.
And that... will lead to a better me!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Day 1: A New Beginning
Let's start with this, I am 29 years old, overweight, in debt, and unmarried. I don't own a house. I don't have a dog. My car loan is so upside down that I am seriously contemplating driving it off a cliff to claim the insurance money. And to top it all off I am ostracized by the majority of the denizens of my native Santa Monica, CA because I tend to occasionally smoke 20 cigarettes a day. All that being said I do have one important thing... hope! I have hope for change. I have the desire to make the necessary changes needed in my life to turn all the aforementioned ailments around and I believe it is going to take me roughly 365 days! One year. An important and pivotal year in my life journey. I mean, I Am turning freaking 30 this year and that alone is stress enough. On top of that... I want to overhaul my life!
It's a new year and a new decade. Our economy seems to be trudging out of the murky depths and many Americans are hoping to put a very rough couple of years behind them. The thought of a new and prosperous future looms just inside our reach and I, like many others, am choosing to grasp at it.
I have a decent job, a college education, and a nice apartment close to the beach. I am blessed with wonderful friends, a caring family, and an amazing girlfriend that treats me exceptionally well. I would say that I have a pretty great base to initialize the transcendence out of my own mire and into the person I want to be.
Each day I am going to move a bit closer to where I want to be and each day I am going to put it all on the table for you to see. I am not planning on coming out the other side of the 365 married, in a four bedroom house with a white picket fence, raising 2.5 kids, and driving an Aston Martin with my golden retriever Jake's tongue flailing in the breeze. I do however plan on being debt free, 60 pounds lighter, and a non-smoker! I want to be ready to take the next step in my life. Okay, I guess I can throw the dog and a new car in too.
To quote the great Bill Murray in WHAT ABOUT BOB? -
"Baby steps to the elevator. Baby steps into the elevator. Im in the elevator. IM IN THE ELEVATOR!"
I'm in the elevator...
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