Might need to pull back on the “stay” portion of these vacations

Instead of hitting on those items, I focused on rest and relaxation – almost to an extreme. In fact, early in my vacation there were some days that I didn’t roll out of bed until after 12 o’clock noon. Talk about a waste of a day!

One of the most disappointing parts of my vacation, though, was that I didn’t reach the point of renewal and energy growth that I reached several years ago when I took a similarly long hiatus from the office. During that prior vacation, I distinctly remember some time around the 13th or 14th day that I was out of the office I began to truly feel relaxed. I was on a great sleeping schedule, I was active during the day, I was active during the night, and things were going so well that I actually felt relaxed enough to have my metaphorical batteries feel recharged. When that vacation ended, I remember going back into the office like a ball of fire. Even the commute didn’t bother me after that vacation! Okay, well the commute not bothering me was short-lived for sure, but I was still charged up and ready to go after that staycation.

In addition to using my vacation to take care of many of the long-term items on my To Do List, I believe that one of the reasons why I was not able to achieve that zen-like relaxation was because I – again – opted for a staycation versus a true vacation. So in the future, I’m going to actually consider going on a real vacation when I take time off from the office. In fact, if you don’t count the different places that I travel to for work or the fraternity, then the last time I was truly on vacation was a trip to Orlando with my family when I was in sixth grade. And if I’m not mistaken, that would have been during the 1992 – 1993 academic year.

Scary, right?

For years now, my older brother has been asking me to consider going on a cruise with the entire family. That might be an option to consider in the coming year. Also, I’ve wanted to visit the true northeast of the United States since I was young – to check out Vermont and New Hampshire during the fall months and see the rolling forests change color. That might be fun for a weekend trip. And I have to admit – I did have a good time when I visited both New Orleans and San Antonio for fraternity events. They would both be great places to visit during a regular vacation where I’m just getting away to get away.

Anyway, that’s what I learned after spending 17 days out of the office during the Christmas and New Year’s Eve season.

This weekend’s links are below for your reading pleasure. If you come across any interesting links, then please share them with us in the comments section below. Enjoy!

Get your weekend started right by checking out these links, starting a new Feedly account, and/or adding the blogs above (and JerseySmarts.com, too) to your existing Feedly or other RSS aggregator account. Enjoy!

But aside from all of these books and reports I really like to read blogs written by everyday people who accomplish extraordinary feats. I have a small cadre of such blogs fed into my RSS feeder. Some of these blogs are written by people who have lost tremendous amounts of weight, others are written by people who have gone from a skinny physique or a chubby physique to winning bodybuilding competitions. Some of the blogs are written by guys who were introverted and wound up changing their lives to become social butterflies. Other blogs are written by people who have managed to travel around the world for an incredibly small amount of money before they were a certain age.

I don’t necessarily identify with any of these blogs or their writers because none of them really speak to my direct experience. In other words, at one point I lost 125 pounds so I already know how to accomplish that goal, I’ve never been an introverted person so I don’t need tips or pointers on how to get out there and meet people, and I’m not the biggest traveler so those lessons really don’t apply to my life. What I do enjoy about these blogs is reading the sense of accomplishment that these people achieve when they meet their goals. As someone who has met (and continues to meet) certain goals in my life, I understand how great that sense of accomplishment feels.

It’s awesome.

However, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in many of these blogs. All of these amateur writers are missing commentary that speaks to a growing number of individuals in our country. Let me be more direct: not one of these bloggers, these self-professed self-help gurus, these accomplished weight loss success stories, these people who have overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, etc. have accomplished their major goals and retired a tremendous amount of debt.

While these bloggers build their own ego and create their own hype because they lost [insert large number here] pounds or because they traveled to [insert large number here] countries, you can’t find someone who has managed accomplish a major goal while saddled with a tremendous non-mortgage debt burden. And it’s like this all over the blogosphere. For example, I read a lot of guy blogs (those blogs focused on items of interest to guys in my age group). These blogs range in variety and type from guys who spend a lot of their time working out and talking about the best techniques for working out to guys who claim to have a lot of social success to guys who manage to weave the fundamentals of their faith throughout their daily lives.

All of the writers that I read on guy blogs eventually wind up writing an entry about how their readers can become better at [insert whatever here]. Well, the impetus for writing this entry was a piece of “advice” that I’ve seen pop up over and over again on these guy blogs. And that same piece of advice pops up on all of the blogs that I read – not just guy blogs. That piece of advice is that if you want to be the absolute best at [insert whatever here], then you absolutely cannot have any debt.

That’s right. I’ve read bloggers saying that if you want to lose weight, you can’t have any debt because you need the freedom to be able to spend as much time as possible working out instead of being stuck working one, two, or more jobs. I’ve read bloggers saying that if you want to increase the size of your social circle, you can’t have any debt because if you don’t have excess funds to do new and exciting things, how can you expand the number and type of people that you’ll interact with? I’ve even read bloggers who say that if you want to meet the type of girl that you think you’re most compatible with, then you can’t have debt because that debt weighs on you mentally and restricts your ability to see yourself with a successful girlfriend, fiancée, or wife.

But here’s the question that prompted me to write this entry…

Who doesn’t have some type of debt? I don’t mean that as a matter-of-fact type of question with the expectation that your response would be, “I guess everyone has some type of debt.” That’s not what I’m going for here. Think of the real answer to that question – who doesn’t have some type of debt? Well, you have independently wealthy people or those who come from tremendous wealth and don’t need to pay their own way through life. Okay. You also have those people who have worked their butts off and earned enough money such that they don’t have to carry any debt. Okay. And you know what? You might even find that people who are the exact opposite of these wealthy people also don’t have any debt. That is to say that those people who never took on college debt yet still didn’t graduate with a degree or those people who just graduated from high school (or not) and wound up living in their parents’ basement; the habitual underachievers out there.

Is there any other type of person who doesn’t have some type of debt? I really can’t think of any, but I would suggest that there should be a fourth category – those people who choose to write a blog focusing in depth about their success at achieving a goal other than retiring debt! After spending a few years reading some of these blogs I’ve come to the conclusion that people out there who accomplish what they believe are great things are not saddled with a tremendous amount of non-mortgage debt. They don’t have a significant amount of consumer debt and they don’t have a significant amount of student loan debt. They have that freedom that I referenced above – the freedom to not be tied down to one, two, or more jobs. And with that freedom comes the ability and flexibility to spend more of their time losing weight or working out or hanging out at local clubs or spending their time learning new hobbies or traveling around the world, etc.

They don’t know what it’s like to work an 8am to 6pm job with an hour commute wrapped on either side of that workday plus spending an hour each morning before you leave for the office working on freelance projects and several hours at night when you get home at night working a second or third job. And I specifically wrote that last sentence to begin with “they don’t know what it’s like” because that’s the problem that I’ve been having with a lot of the blogs that I read: the writers just don’t understand how self-righteous and, frankly, alienating they sound when they write their entries.

And here’s the prime example that I know so many of you out there have probably seen before… How many of you have ever read a weight loss blog or a weight training blog that condemns those who say they don’t have the free time to work out? Usually, the writer says that this is just an excuse and that you can make time to lose weight or work out if you really want to…

If you really want to? Really?

Are you fucking kidding me?

The only person who would write such an ignorant comment is someone who don’t wake up at 5am (exhausted) and then fall into bed at midnight after working the entire day to earn money in an effort to retire debt. Who would tell someone who keeps this schedule 5, 6, or 7 days each week that they are lazy or that they are the cause of their own lament because they don’t make time for working out? I know who would tell someone that – a blogger who has never had to try to tackle both [insert a personal goal here] and retire a significant amount of debt at the same time.

The reason why I wrote this entry is because I know I have a lot of random readers on this blog and I can track where some of you come from out there on the internet. Some of you are coming from some of these self-help, conquer the world type of blogs and that’s great. Believe me, I want to conquer the world and improve my health, wealth, and well-being just as much as those other writers. However, I live my life in the real reality – a reality much closer to where you probably exist, too. I understand that it’s hard to train to climb Mount Everest when you have a six-figure student loan debt crushing you and dictating nearly every move you make. I understand that it’s really hard and really difficult to lose weight when you’re working 16 – 18 hour days (or longer). I understand that it’s difficult to put the proper amount of time and effort into increasing your social circle or even finding someone worthwhile to date when you’re so focused and, unfortunately, controlled by crushing levels of consumer or student debt. I understand where you’re coming from – I get it.

And I don’t think that you’re lazy. I don’t think that you’re anti-social. I don’t think that you’re making excuses. Not at all.

What I do think is that you’re stuck in the same rut that the majority of population is stuck in – you’re forced to do things to retire debt (or generally improve your financial position) that prevent you from fully engaging in the other activities that you want to engage in. You’re not going to find this understanding on those self-help blogs or the guys’ blogs or in many other places out there because the truth is that those writers simply don’t understand. In about 6 years I’ve paid off nearly $100,000 in student loan debt and I have another $21,000+ left to repay. I repaid that amount while losing a tremendous amount of weight, gaining most of it back, losing much of it again, and gaining some of it back again. Professionally, I work around the clock; not just a 9-to-5 type of job. Believe me, I understand the burden of debt and how it really does dictate what you can and cannot do with your life.

And, like many of you, I’ve sat there and listened to people in my personal and professional life ask me why I don’t [insert whatever here] while I’m young? These people also have no idea what it’s like to be suffocating under crushing consumer or student loan debt. Folks constantly ask me why I don’t go away on vacation (my last real vacation was back in 6th grade). Well, I don’t go away on vacation because I can’t imagine spending a thousand or two bucks on vacating reality while I still owe money on my student loan. That would be financially foolish. People ask me why I don’t go out and find a “nice” girl to date (usually, their definition of “nice” is different than mine, but that’s another entry). They don’t understand that when you work around the clock, you don’t have much time for socialization outside of your standard circle. And, to mix a little bit of a guys’ blog mindset here, they don’t understand that the girls you meet while you are burdened with immense debt, while you are out of shape, or while you are working around the clock are typically not the girls that you want to marry! I assume it’s the same for the ladies out there looking for a man.

To sum it up, I just warn you all to read these self-help, self-improvement blogs for purposes other than examples to follow. Chances are very strong that the writer you’re reading doesn’t have the same life experiences as you do. And chances are even stronger that they never had to tackle an immense amount of undischargeable consumer or student debt before, during, or after they accomplished whatever it is that made them an amateur expert.

Be rational, believe in yourself, and tackle your debt first. Once you remove that crushing yoke, then focus on your health (losing weight, gaining muscle, etc.), and after that you can focus on your social life. There’s no way around doing what makes sense and this is the path that I really believe makes the most sense for the most people out there.

Now… back to the grind!

Wait until the next time the Powerball lottery gets to one of those outrageous dollar amounts and I guaranty that you’ll hear those conversations going on all around you.

For those of us who graduated college or graduate school with inordinate amounts of student loan debt and have successfully completed or been engaged in a repayment plan, we have a slightly different version of daydreaming. The truth is that this small cohort of student loan borrowers doesn’t sit around and wonder what it would be like to have millions of dollars to play with; instead we sit around and daydream about what it would be like to have all of those student loan payments that we sent off to play with instead.

This isn’t one of those entries where I’m going to bore you with intricate financial statistics or complex equations talking about the amount of money that I lose everyday to interest expenses on my student loans ($3.32). Instead of all of that stuff, I’m going to eyeball a round number to indicate how much I think I’ve spent on student loan principal payments, interest payments, origination fees, transfer fees, and consolidation fees. I’m going to suggest that this estimated round number is between $135,000 and $145,000.

What this range doesn’t calculate is what I might have gained if I would have had the opportunity to invest these funds, but that’s another post for another day.

Those of us who willingly took on exorbitant amounts of student loan debt with the full knowledge that we would be saddled with a repayment obligation that we always intended to meet (lots of qualifiers in the beginning of this sentence…) get a bittersweet feeling when we sit around and think of what we could have done with years and years of student loan payments (which are usually over-payments each month). This past weekend, several of my college buddies stayed over at my place after a group of us went out to the bar. The next day when a few of us were sitting around and talking about different things, the topic of student loan payments came up and it got me back to this familiar form of daydreaming: What would I have done with all of those payments if I didn’t have these student loans?

Immediately, three things come to mind.

First, I would have a substantial savings structure including more equity investments (stocks), fixed investments (government-backed bonds and certificates of deposits), and liquid savings (regular savings account). Granted, I have different levels of these savings structures in place right now, but I’d definitely have more and more varied types of these savings accounts if I had all of that student loan money back.

Second, I would have a more secure housing situation. Now this one is a little bit trickier than just something as simple as, “I would have purchased a house by now.” The area of New Jersey where I live (the northern Jersey Shore area) does not produce reasonable real estate prices right now. Sure, I could have used some of those funds to purchase a home, but the amount, type, and location of the home that I would be able to purchase would not be as much, the type of, or in the area where I’d want to live – so I wouldn’t do it. Plus, the time period when I would have been buying a home would have put me right in the group where the value of the home would be declining quicker than the amount of the outstanding loan principal. So… I wouldn’t have purchased a home.

Instead, I would have set aside a substantial amount of money (around $20,000 to $30,000) to be my “housing reserve fund.” I would still budget my monthly rent from my monthly cash flow, but I would have these funds available in the event that I had to vacate my current place, that I wanted to move, or that I just needed funds for housing-related costs. That housing reserve fund would have provided me with the type of long-term stability that most renters don’t have the benefit of enjoying.

Third and finally, I would have either purchased or been in the final stages of building a vacation home. I know, I know – this one seems crazy. I get it. There are folks at my office who call me Mr. Austerity because of my strong discipline to strict rules and regulations when it comes to the financial aspects of our company. In other words, I hate spending the company’s money even if the company wants their money spent! And I’m a stickler for following a strict set of rules in the office because I think companies need structure and if they have that structure already in place, then they should follow it.

So… the idea of me taking some of this money and purchase a vacation home may seem somewhat insane. I assure you, though, it’s not crazy at all. In fact, there are a lot of reasons why I’d either be savings towards buying a vacation home or I would have already purchased one. Among those reasons are the fact that I would buy a home somewhere in or near the Poconos – where the real estate and property taxes are much, much cheaper than in New Jersey. Plus, there are a lot of beautiful areas in that part of Pennsylvania where you can have a wonderful home with gorgeous, wildlife views. Don’t get me wrong – I love living on the Jersey Shore, but I also really enjoy the peaceful feeling of being surrounded by nature.

I’d also be looking to get that vacation home to host group gatherings. In other words, it would be a nice place where my family could gather for events and holidays, where I could host barbeques and parties for my family and friends, and where I could host other events (planning sessions for my team at my company, annual strategy sessions for some of the nonprofit fundraising work that I do, etc). With respect to regular usage, I’m lucky that my company allows me to work from home on Fridays, so I would probably spend most weekends (weather permitting) up in the vacation home, especially during the summer months when the traffic down the shore is incredibly annoying.

The distance between my office and the general area of the Poconos is about an hour, which is a little bit longer than my daily commute so the distance isn’t a big deal at all. I could easily leave my office on a Thursday afternoon at 4:00pm, head to the vacation home for the weekend, and be there by 5:00pm. Then, I could just as easily leave the Poconos and get back to the office on Monday morning. In the event that I opted to do something like this, then I would probably move out of my current area of the state and, instead, move somewhere a little bit closer to my office. Not too close, though – I’d still like to be within close proximity of the northern Jersey Shore area due to attending Monmouth University basketball games, teaching at the local college, and attending other events in the Long Branch/Asbury Park area. My new apartment wouldn’t have to be too big or costly, either. A standard efficiency arrangement would be fine given that I’d have most of my nice stuff (like high-end electronics) up in the Poconos.

In short, I think I could definitely make that type of living scenario work out. And I’ve given it a lot of thought so I’m sure I’ve thought through most of the difficulties. Oh, and I wouldn’t worry abo-

Hey! Wake-up!

Those are just the daydreams from someone in my situation. You know, someone who has pushed more than $135,000 into student loans over a 6 year period; someone whose 12-month budget shows a whole lot of additional money getting pushed into student loan payments to finish these things off. And here’s the kicker of the whole situation: I might be 12 months away from being free of these students loans, but that doesn’t mean the financial daydreams you read above would be kicked into high gear. Not at all.

Instead, once my student loans are paid off I can then just begin to think about budgeting to start saving to meet just one of those daydreams.

And that is a splash of ice cold reality in the face of some fun daydreaming, don’t you think?

I think that’s part of it, though. Since the weather has been a little bit wacky and there really haven’t been that many prolonged stretches of “summer weather” in New Jersey, it does make the time fly by a little bit faster. Of course that’s just my reaction to the weather – some people may have viewed the cool temperatures as making it feel like summer was slowly rolling past.

Personally, I’m glad that summer is flying by this year. The two big events I had to look forward to this summer are both over (my buddy’s wedding and my trip to Nashville). Plus, the closer we get to September, the closer I get to teaching over at the local college again! Being the huge nerd that I am, I also view August as preparation month for my course. In the next few days and weeks I’ll start reviewing all of the materials that I use for my class and bring them up to date for the coming semester.

Also, I’m planning on going back to school for a class this semester, but more on that in tomorrow’s entry!

Sometimes, though, I have to question the wisdom of the powers that be at Sirius XM of allowing him to take the vacation breaks. The case that I have in my mind is from the winter months (might have been December) when XM subscribers were given a free preview of the Howard Stern channels for a week. I thought that was a great promotion, except that the Stern crew was on vacation that week! Good grief!

Anyway, since I’ve been getting a lot of traffic on the blog in the last few days from people Googling what the deal is, I thought I’d add this entry. Howard Stern is on vacation, again, and I believe that he’ll be back on the radio live next Monday morning.

I might as well get this out of the way – I own stock in Sirius XM, so I’m obviously a shill for the company now. Sure, in the past I would get pissed off at Howard Stern and his ridiculous vacation schedule, but the truth is that I travel so much that listening to old-fashioned terrestrial radio is a bore now that I’ve been exposed to Sirius XM. Sirius XM offers entertaining channels, commercial-free music, the best in sports coverage, and a cable-TV-like line-up if you’re looking for news coverage.

And that’s what makes the Sirius XM service so great for me. I drive about two hours each day in my daily commute. If I was listening to old-fashioned terrestrial radio, then I would spend a good portion of that commute listening to commercials; and not just any commercials – the cheesy ones that they create specifically for radio listeners to grab your attention. Talk about a shitty commute!

So put aside the fact that I own stock in this company and that I am now shamelessly shilling for you guys to sign-up for this service – Sirius XM is really a great product. For those of you who do research into the behind the scenes view of companies like Sirius XM then yes, there are some large talking points regarding the management and the company’s finances. But that has little to do with the service provided by Sirius XM. I’m happy to talk to anyone more about the Sirius XM service and why you might want to get one of your friends or a family member a subscription this Christmas season!

Bear in mind they also took off the first two weeks of July. Ummm…that’s four full weeks off in the summer months. I know that Howard’s brainwashed fans will say that he’s earned the break, but there are many millions more of us who are just fans of the show and feel like they’ve been sold a bill of goods with the Howard Stern gang. We were told about commercial-free radio before he made the jump – we now get frequent 15-minute, non-live content breaks in the middle of his shows.

We were told that the show would be in the studio on the occasional Friday to surprise the audience. Bullshit on that! He spent a few Fridays in the studio when he started Sirius – more than two and a half years ago now.

Then we were told about all of the great content that we’d get after Sirius XM and Stern bought back his tapes from CBS Radio/Viacom. What do they give us? A completely randomized selection of shows from all over Howard’s history with no rhyme or reason as to why they were playing certain shows. This crappy “Master Tape Theater” was so poorly received that the Stern folks were forced to move it into some weird Sunday afternoon time slot when no one is listening anyway.

Before he made the jump, Stern sold us on something like 33 cents per day or 45 cents per day to hear him on Sirius. Okay – then let me pay just the 45 cents on each day that he’s in the building. In August, I would have paid $3.60 to hear Howard and his crew.

I can’t tell you how happy I am that the merger went through. I really do like satellite radio and I really do enjoy listening to the Howard Stern Show. But paying the $14 that I pay each month (tax included) is not worth what I’m getting in terms of service. I hear that with the merger there will be an option to get 50 channels of your choice and pay $6.99 per month. Let’s get that figured out and in motion already!

What the hell is wrong with our government that it takes 18 months to approve the merger of two extremely small companies? Sad, really…

And it’s funny how politics makes strange bedfellows. The biggest personality on satellite radio is Howard Stern – someone who has been critical of the Republican administration for quite some time now. Who cast the deciding vote to allow the merger? A Republican. The Democrats on the FCC were looking to bog down the merger with such a massive amount of needed extras that it would have looked unappealing for any company.

In the end, as a consumer of satellite radio I’m happy. I’ve been thinking of giving up the service since Howard Stern is one of the main reasons that I even have Sirius XM and he’s only on a small fraction of the time due to a ridiculous vacation schedule. But now that the two companies have been allowed to merge – I’ll probably stick around for a little bit longer!