We live here now.

Tim Ferriss' "Four-Hour Work Week"

I have started reading The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. When I’d read descriptions and reviews of the book, I formed the opinion that I already intuitively understood many of the principles at work, particularly as regards his steps of elimination and automation. Reading it confirmed what I’d suspected: I had already used these techniques and even counseled others to use them in my work as a classroom trainer and consultant. It sprang to mind a particular success story from my early software career.

I worked as a student-on-call at IBM in Toronto in 1997. I started on the Visual Age for RPG project, which entailed my comparing error messages between the older RPG compiler and the newer Visual Age RPG compiler. While they had automated the test that produced all the error messages they wanted to check, they hadn’t automated checking the messages from the two compilers to each other. Instead, I started doing that. I began with 50-page printouts: a master copy and printouts from each test run. I compared the two copies, then reported a defect when I found an unacceptable difference between the two. It took a few days to learn which differences they could tolerate and which ones they decided warranted a fix. It took me several hours to compare the printouts, and I resented the tedium. After a week, I had the thought that all successful people have: there has to be a better way.

First, I asked whether I could use e-copies of both the master copy and the test runs. They arranged for that with little effort. As I waited for that, I looked for patterns in the text I compared by hand, learning how to extract the messages from the surrounding text and how to describe meaningful and meaningless differences. Once I received e-copies of the master copy and a single test run, I started writing a computer program to load the two files, compare them, then summarize the differences, highlighting the meaningful ones as “almost certainly defects” and the meaningless ones as “probably not defects”. This gave me an opportunity to write my first truly useful programs in C, a language I hadn’t much used before, but one that I imagined would benefit me as a professional programmer. I don’t recall how long it took me, but I don’t remember anyone becoming impatient with me, so the time I spent must not have made me a bottleneck.

The first day, I used my new program to on the next test run, but verified the results by hand. I noticed that my program took about 30 minutes to run: I had an old computer, I didn’t know how to write particularly quick programs, and don’t forget the test runs amounted to 50 printed pages. At first, I looked around the office while my program ran for something to do, as I didn’t have access to the internet on my computer. I flipped through a few manuals, including a C manual that I thought might help me. That day I processed two test runs, the same as any other day, but noticed that my manual checking went quicker, because I could check the meaningful differences first, then the meaningless ones, then double-check the rest of the document to ensure that program didn’t miss any defects. To my delight, it performed more than well enough for me to start trusting it within a week.

Now the time had come to harvest my productivity crop. I collected that day’s test run and a new master copy, loaded them into my program, ran it, then wandered around the building, knowing I had about 30 minutes. I hadn’t realized the size and complexity of the old IBM building in Toronto. I began to understand the need for its intricate room addressing system, right down to numbering hallways, odd numbers running north-south and even numbers running east-west. I walked back to my office after about an hour of wandering to look at my program’s result. I reported two defects, then wondered what to do next. I had to wait for the next test run, and they wouldn’t run one for another couple of hours. I wandered the building some more and stumbled upon something of interest: a dart board in the cafeteria.

I started playing darts.

In less than two weeks, I’d gone from a terrifically tedious job checking two 50-page documents to one another by hand to IBM paying me roughly $150/hour (as a starving undergraduate student!) for about one hour per day, with seven hours of playing darts, reading, or generally relaxing. All this by finding an ineffective work process and streamlining it with a little elimination and a little automation. I had gained some relative mobility, as I only needed to spend about an hour a day in my office, reporting defects or fixing my test program.

Now I need to confess something: my program did not operate perfectly. Every two weeks or so, I’d notice something my program missed: a difference that my program interpreted as meaningless that I needed to report as a defect. This meant that, every so often, I reported a defect later than I could have. I was performing at far less than 100% efficiency. Funnily enough, it did not matter at all! I didn’t understand the theory at the time, but I experienced it then: the project had a bottleneck somewhere else in the system that moved more slowly than I reported defects, so I could generate no extra value by reporting those defects more efficiently!

Imagine that: producing better results wouldn’t have mattered at all, so it didn’t matter that I produced my results less than perfectly efficiently.

Since I didn’t understand bottlenecks at the time, I felt bad about “cheating” and added more rules to my program to handle these increasingly subtle distinctions between meaningful and meaningless differences. The resulting program did work better and did automate my work even more, allowing me to go from one hour of work per day to closer to 45 minutes; but if I hadn’t been refining a skill I would use later to make a lot of money, then I would have looked back on that as a waste of time. Had I known any better, I might not have bothered at all, and simply played more darts!

Long before I started reading The Four-Hour Work Week, I managed to use some of the principles he describes to turn an $18/hour job into a $150/hour, one-hour-per-day job where I got to play darts, read, and otherwise relax most of the day. I didn’t wait to perfect my time-saving system; I just started using it as soon as I reasonably could, even though it cost me extra time for the first week! Since then, I’ve managed to combine the goal of mobility with the principles of elimination to retire at 34 on passive income streams worth 1.5 times my family’s essential living expenses. You can do it, too, and I recommend The Four-Hour Work Week for beginners to read to help form their vision of a new life, and then to re-read a year or two later to refine your approach to freedom from the tyranny of tedium.

I had started to write this post as “Saving money at the Farmer’s Market*.”  But then I realized that I don’t actually believe in saving money at the farmer’s market: if something looks good or we know we need it, we buy it.

We came back from our very first market trip saying, “Well, I didn’t think we were going to need a cheese budget to live here!”  We probably spend between $15 – $25 on cheese alone each week.  If you think this is just another latte factor, then you’ve likely never had applewood smoked cheddar, Le Sieur de Duplessis, organic PEI Gouda from the Cheese Lady or truffle-infused brie.  These aren’t luxuries in our household; they’re essential staples.

Even produce can be more expensive at the farmer’s market: cucumbers are $1.50 and a bag of salad greens is between $2.00 and $3.00.  But, we’ve had greens last over two weeks in the fridge (undertaking no special freshness-extending methods) so not buying food to feed the compost bin is a definite financial win.  Not to mention that the delicious salad greens we’ve been able to get have caused us to swear off iceberg lettuce forever!

Every Saturday, during our walk back from the market, we tally up what we’ve spent.  This week, it was about $120.  (We have a house guest coming this week, so we were buying for an extra person, too.) $46 of that went to fish truck guy for salmon, smoked salmon, haddock (Heavenly Halibut was sold out by 9:20 a.m.!) and scallops.  About $35 went to cheese, shitake mushrooms ($11) and a package of German sausage.  $21 was spent on produce (greens of all kinds, onions, herbs, peas, cucumbers).  And rounding out the spoils, $5 for chorizo (our first purchase so far from Pleasant Pork, since we don’t eat a lot of pig) , $5 for eggs and beef from “eggs and beef guy” and $4 for PEI strawberries.

So far it doesn’t sound like we’re much of a financial role model, especially given that we still need to use ValueFoods to supplement with things like milk, cream, butter, flour, rice, snacking fruit (apples, oranges, pears, bananas), lemon and limes, tea and cat treats.  But in many ways, our farmer’s market shopping is completely in tune with our financial philosophy: spend your money on what you value.

Even when we don’t necessarily spend less in absolute dollars, shopping at the farmer’s market significantly ups our value per dollar spent.  Here are just a few of those values we get for our money at the farmer’s market:

1. Quality: How many times have you bought a cucumber or an onion from a store and, totally seduced by the aroma, had to try it right away and then make everyone around you try it.  An onion for crying out loud!  And how many times does the captive audience think, “Oh, I’ll try it to be polite and shut this guy up,” but then exclaim, “Hey, that is pretty awesome!”  When every meal or quick snack of apple and cheese turns out to be a local food love-fest, I’d say you’re doing pretty well.  We value knowing where our food comes from, who produces it and knowing that we never have to eat crap again. (Can you believe we’re worried about the quality of food we’re going to find in Toronto because we’ve been spoiled by PEI?)
2. Quantity, or lack thereof (ie. “enough”): Good food comes in smaller packages, or at least has a higher unit cost.  We naturally, therefore, think more carefully about exactly how much to purchase.  Will we eat this all before it goes bad?  Do I really need this much? Compare that to how many $0.59 heads of cabbage we’ve never fully used.  Waste is waste, and if we’re willing to waste pennies, we’re willing to waste dollars.  Cutting waste by buying products that are too dear to waste has made us carefully and consciously consider how much is enough.
3. Intention: Yes, there are jewelery and craft vendors at the farmer’s market, but honestly, the chances of us walking out with a wooden lighthouse as an impulse purchase are slim.  When we go to the market, we’re there to buy food (specifically the basics) and there are no new shiny kitchen gadgets or snack food sales to steer us off course.  Although $120 for our weekly basics may seem high (and this week we’re expecting company this week so we erred on the side of being over stocked), if we’ve ever walked out of the Superstore paying less than that, and with only food items in our cart, I’d be shocked.  Shopping at the farmer’s market is our equivalent of the “make a list and stick to it” tip.  If we are tempted by something we hadn’t intended to purchase, at least we know it will be quality local food and our money will go to someone in our . . .
4. Community: OK, I know some people are still “eggs and beef” guy or “fish truck guy” in my mind, but at least we recognize each other and enjoy our transactions.  I’ve always said that one of my reasons for eating local was to have a network so that if ever the *&?!%# hit the fan, we’d have a food source.  And in a strange turn of events, while buying the Succulent Shitake this week, Tina confided that she’d never tried them herself and she asked me how we prepared them.  I never thought we’d have the chance to give back to the community anything other than our cash.  But, since I take pictures of everything we make/eat anyway, it might be nice to give the vendors something (a scrapbook page, a recipe?  Sadly I’m not the crafty/creative type) showing how we used and enjoyed their food.  Since we travel too often (as it stands now, anyway) to actually grow anything ourselves, this interaction and participation with our food supply gives us a connection to our food that we enjoy.

So, just like we make a distinction between “retired” and “rich”, we also differentiate between “spending less” and “spending well.”  Our goal isn’t to reduce our spending to the bare minimum.  Reducing our spending at all costs would at times be at odds with our values of purchasing high quality, healthy local products and supporting our community. Our goal is to reduce our wasteful spending to the bare minimum, spending that doesn’t give good value in return.

We’re saving money by not wasting money, and thereby able to feel like we’re living rich even though we’re clearly not. When you can get so much value from purchasing the basic necessities, things you have to buy anyway**, then maybe you’ll be less likely to make impulse or excess purchases that don’t really make you happy.

Do you think it’s crazy to get excited over your particular choice of laundry detergent?  TP? Olive oil?  Toothpaste? Maybe if you allowed yourself to buy the stuff you really liked (or to spend the time on making your own) rather than picking up the cheapest no-name brand or whatever’s on sale this week, then you’d feel more satisfied and less deprived as you navigate the superstores.  Maybe you’d feel a greater connection to a community (”Hey, you use the soap in the bottle covered with crazy, religious rants, too!”) or maybe you’d just feel good every single time you washed the dishes that the suds going down the drain aren’t causing shrinking testicles in frogs.  Maybe you’d be more likely to tell yourself, “I can’t afford this Meatball Grill Basket (thanks, Unclutterer.com!) because I know I spend a little more than the average person on good cheese every week.”

Spending well can lead to spending less.  Take the time to think about what you truly value — and more importantly, what you spend money on that you don’t actually value.  Then, even if your absolute dollars spent figure doesn’t change significantly (though there’s a good chance it will), at least you’ll gradually reallocate your resources to align with your values.  That’s true “retail therapy.”

* It seems like it really should be farmers’ market or maybe even farmers market.  My last choice would be farmer’s market (there’s definitely more than one farmer), but that’s what’s on the sign outside the building, so that’s the phrase I’m using.

** Not everyone needs to buy food, but most of us aren’t farmers.  For us, food shopping is a necessity.  But, everyone has their own list of essential purchases; even our local farmers need to buy TP, I’m guessing!

We’ve been watching the series 100 Mile Challenge on the Food Network and of course, we’ve always tried to eat as much local food as we can.  Remember how we decided to take on a raw food diet a couple of years ago?  (Of course, we were assisted by the fact that our oven was essentially a carpenter’s bench in the middle of the floor at the time)

Well, we’ve been contemplating an all-PEI diet this time as the island is small enough to basically consider that our 100 mile radius.  (Technically, we could even include some areas of other provinces, but the PEI border is much simpler to use.)

So far, we’ve simply started making a list of what we think we’ll have to do without to see whether there are any real snags or non-starters, and of course debating whether PEI roasted coffee counts.  (What do you think?)

Our concerns right now:

• yeast – we make our own bread and can buy local flour at the Spring Street Farmer’s Market, but I don’t know whether we can get local yeast
• rice – we do eat a lot of rice because it’s convenient, but we can always cut it out
• bananas – I’ve heard the kind of bananas we have access to are little more than nature’s junk food anyway, but we do like them for a quick hit of something
• tea (for me, green tea) – I don’t like herbal teas at all, so unfortunately I don’t think any of the crazy alternative melanges will cut it for me.  It will probably have to be just hot water and lemon for me.  “Lemon?” you ask?
• lemon – apparently it’s super easy to grow lemon trees indoors in Canada.  This will happen.  (I’ll just buy the tree before we start any challenge!)
• sugar – I don’t like honey, so this will be interesting
• salt – I’m not a big salt person anyway, and I’m not sure whether Summerside harbour is the best source water for home desalinization.

So, this is very preliminarily stage 1 of the pre-PEI diet challenge.  I spent some time this afternoon reading about the nutritional benefits of potatos, and that will become its own post later.

Right now, though, Joe wants to play pool, where locally-brewed beer is served, so we’re already in compliance!  Well, technically, we’d need to find out whether all their ingredients, especially yeast, are from the island.

This leads us to one of the discussions we’re having – is it good enough to include local products like the coffee and the beer because at least we’re supporting local enterprise?  Or, is that hypocritical because we won’t be supporting the local Chinese restaurants and coffee shops, for example?

We have some details to hash out, and probably will try to read the 100-Mile Diet book for some suggestions.

We’ll be disconnecting the internet in a few minutes (the furniture is long gone, so I’m sitting on the floor while Joe naps with cats on a towel) so this will be the last post from Dauphin!

In 90 minutes, we’ll catch the little commuter plane to Winnipeg and spend a couple of nights there before we fly to Boston Thursday morning.

Just thought I’d say goodbye!  (I’ll post pictures of the empty house and our last few hours when we’re settled in Winnipeg.)

The Summerside PEI home (more about the house itself later) will be house #10 for us.  Even though we’ll go back down to only owning 9 when we sell the one we currently live in, 10 is a nice little milestone for us.

When we envisioned the Dauphin experiment 5 years ago, we didn’t expect our money would come from real estate.  We just thought that the best way to reduce our living expenses was to own the cheapest house we could find.  Of course, that didn’t mean buy the $24,000 house with the sagging foundation – that ain’t cheap!  It turned out to be a $35,000 structurally sound 625 square foot house being sold by the bank as a foreclosure property.

We purchased that home a good 3 years before we were able to disentangle ourselves from Toronto. (Sidebar: last time it took 3 years to free ourselves up from our lifestyle, finances, commitments etc.  This time, it took about 6 weeks.  Life simplification, FTW!)  For the last 2 of those years, we rented out the house.  It didn’t always go super smoothly, but there was never a shortage of tennants.  So, about a year before moving, we purchased a second home that we believe was quite undervalued.  It, too, was instantly rented and has never been vacant a full month since we’ve owned it.

This demand for rental property combined with sub-$40K houses = great big win.  It was the rental income from these properties that allowed us to retire, even though we’re not rich.  We have no mortgages and a lifestyle that is completely subsidized.  We watch the news about the tanking economy, and know that it doesn’t affect us (until we can’t get the products or services we need).  We have it pretty darn good.  Garth Turner would be proud. So, why move, and especially, why now?

Sometimes I worry we’re being irresponsible, or that this move somehow goes counter to the philosophy that got us where we are today.  The new house costs *over $100,000* not to mention the work we’ll need to do with it and the costs of moving.  (People still laugh, but it’s over 3 times what we paid for the current house, and still causes a few heart palpitations!) When you pride yourself on your achievements in downsizing and minimizing, there’s a certain guilt that comes with moving back up the property ladder.

I think we were proud that we got by with the minimum requirements, moved to the middle of nowhere, lived in essentially a 3 room house (Joe’s office, bathroom, rest of house) and sacrificed the ability to “go out” anywhere, really.  (There was no where to go out.) It was sufficient, and it allowed us both to retire well before our 35th birthdays. We also created this blog about the process, so pushing the envelope with respect to our home life has become a part of our identity.

But, just like the $24K house with the unstable foundation isn’t really cheaper than the structurally-sound $35K house, the house in Dauphin costs us a LOT in travel time, money and energy that should be greatly reduced after the move.  The tiny commuter airline to and from Winnipeg only runs twice a day on weekdays (makes it difficult to arrive at a client site on Sunday or return home from a work week on Friday) and the train only runs 2 – 3 times per week.  Consequently, we end up spending more weekends in Winnipeg than anyone should have to, and we also end up bundling our travel together so that we minimize the Dauphin-Winnipeg legs taken.  This means leaving the cats alone for long stretches of time (don’t worry, friends check in daily on them!) and most recently left us the victims of a home robbery.  (We narrowed down the time frame, and the burglars came during the weekend we were stuck in Winnipeg waiting for us to get home, not while we were away on the trip itself!)

Without meaning to slag Dauphin, there’s another hidden cost we’ve incurred – people just didn’t want to come visit us.  All of the sudden, we tell people we’re moving to PEI and now *everyone* wants to come!  And, we’ve allowed ourselves to purchase a home with room for them to do so.  What’s the point of moving somewhere “different” (I wanted to say “exotic” but somehow it didn’t seem quite appropriate for Dauphin) if you can’t share it with people and use it to inspire them?  For the first year or so, I was really excited about Dauphin because of what it offered us.  But, we were always met with, “I could never move there,” or “You’re so brave/disciplined/resolved,” which I know was meant to be a compliment but just further emphasized that our choice wasn’t somehow “desirable” and that we needed to be commended for surviving/sticking it out.  And especially since finding willing house sitters is integral to our travel strategy, living in a desirable location goes a long way to allowing us to travel for extended periods of time.

So, we’ve decided that this move doesn’t run counter to our initial ideals.  Rather, we’re simply opting for the next version of the $35K house strategy.  The potential closure of the bowling alley in the next few years, the increased time and expense traveling, the unwillingness of friends and family to come visit (and no where for them to stay in the house, even if they did) is simply too shaky of a foundation on which to continue.  It’s a completely responsible choice to purchase the more expensive house (that is well within our cash budget to avoid a mortgage) in order to avoid dealing with these “structural” issues.

I’ll sure miss my cork floors, though!

Not to say that we didn’t research the move to Summerside fully before taking the plunge, but now that we’ve decided to go for it, here’s just some of what else we’ve learned about our new town that makes us super excited to move:

• Island Fair Trade Coffee Co. – On the off chance we can’t find our Kicking Horse “Grizzly Claw” or “Pacific Pipeline” locally, at least there’s gourmet fair trade coffee roasted right on PEI!
• Bunny Trails Pet Ranch – An exotic pet farm, ranch, breeder, store… I guess we’ll just have to see it to know what it is.  Maybe they can help us fulfill our dream of a backyard of bunnies safe from predators and the winters.  Check out the Rabbit Page to see some of the breeds with upcoming litters.  Never seen a Lionhead Rabbit?  They’re adorable!  Grrr… so tough…. not!

• 102.1 SpudFM – “Everything Classic” (with Saturday a.m. 80s) and online streaming!  We’ve already been listening for a couple of weeks, and dreaming of that -5C weather!
• Spring Street Times Farmer’s Market – They don’t have their own website, but Amber Phillips of Rayner Creek Photography publishes their newsletter.  This market looks absolutely awesome and we can’t wait to walk down there every Saturday morning.  (Amber tells me there’s already a line by 9am for the fresh veggies.  We’ll sharpen our elbows!)
• Dooly’s - OK, I think the decision was solidified for Joe when we learned there’s a billiard hall within stumbling distance of the house.  After 500 hours of pool, you earn a “500 Club” jacket.  So, shall we start the pool going as to how long it takes Joe to get one?

• Credit Union Place (click on “Things To Do”) – Of course, the all-important bowling alley.  But it’s also a full sports and entertainment complex with a swimming pool, hockey rink and concert venue.  Also walking distance from the house.
• Cows Ice Cream – A former student exclaimed, “Oh, I’m so jealous you’re going to be near cows!”  Now, given that this is actually a vet student (and she didn’t capitalize! ) I actually thought she meant moo moo cows.  Apparently, though, Cows is a PEI company making natural ice cream.  Who can argue with that?

So, the obvious question is, when are you coming to visit?!

 . . . Harder still to make noise.” ~ Page/Robertson

My new favourite lyrics.  Forgive me for saying too much or too little as I challenge myself to live up to them.  It’s a delicate balance.

There was a great post on Treehugger recently that I’ve bookmarked for more serious contemplation.

Although they may be neither popular, nor well known, there are alternatives to the two major housing options of “buy” vs. “rent.”  It seems like every day I personally vacillate between wanting to live in a Parisian apartment overlooking local markets and wanting to live on a lakefront, almost cottage-y property.  In the first case, we’d walk everywhere we needed to go and in the second case we’d generate our own electricity and grow some of our own food.  I just can’t decide whether I want to live with people or get the heck away from them.

We’ll likely be where we are for some time to come, but Dauphin was always a calculated, strategic move.  So far it has pretty much worked according to plan.  We’re closing on houses #8 and #9 on August 1, and our rental income will provide more than we need to live comfortably there.  And for the total cost of all 9 houses we’ve purchased, we still would have been only able to buy the most entry-level of entry-level homes in Toronto. (And, that would be with us paying for the privilege of ownership, not being paid enough that we don’t have to work!)

As I said to Joe last night, although yes, we can consider ourselves “retired” from traditional careers, our “job” right now is to figure out where we really want to live next and how we will be able to afford it.  It’s not as easy as you might think, and you really do need to be semi-retired before you can tackle that task; you can’t know what you really want out of living when don’t yet have the freedom to just “live.”

If I were still tutoring, I would be too busy and preoccupied to really think about what I wanted out of a house, community or local environment.  How was I to know, for example, that I really don’t mind “cooking*” when my previous life was arranged in such a way that preparing food was nothing but a huge inconvenience?  When I had taken probably less than a dozen baths in my whole adult life (and had never seen Joe take a single one!), how was I to know that we would treasure our jacuzzi tub?  There is a lot you discover about yourself when you stop “working” and start doing what might be work for some, but is really just an activity for you.

That’s why I don’t think of it as a “failure” that Dauphin won’t be the place we live for the next 30 years.  Rather, moving somewhere that is decidedly not our retirement paradise was the smartest thing we ever did:

• We had no illusions or unrealistic expectations of the perfect life.  (It was a stop along the way – another phase of the plan.)
• We chose to move solely based on finances (including of course our required amenities and necessities) so there is less of an emotional attachment to where we live.  (Leaving Toronto was emotionally so much tougher than leaving Dauphin will ever be.)
• We put ourselves in the best position to figure out what we really wanted, and didn’t assume we already knew what that was. (How could “Rat Race Rainsbergers” even pretend to know what “Retired Rainsbergers” want or need out of life?)
• Although it wasn’t part of the original plan, travel is such a huge part of our lives that we can somewhat experience and compare locations.  Two weeks ago we were in Ireland and I’m writing this now from Malvern, PA. In August and September alone we’re projected to be in Dauphin, Winnipeg, Toronto, Oshawa, “the cottage,” Brampton, Niagara Falls (ON and NY), Chicago, Turkey, the Netherlands and Costa Rica. If we can’t find something we like, it sure isn’t from a lack of trying!

And, if home ownership in Dauphin means we get to travel like this, then maybe there’s even something to be said for not doing too much of your “living” where you live!

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* – I still hate “cooking” and will refuse to prepare anything that involves the actual cooking of meat. And, much fewer of our meals are actually “cooked” now since we’ve been eating a lot raw. So, I use the word cooking to mean “making meals.” But, what I have discovered is that I like the act of chopping vegetables, I don’t mind boiling things into a soup and as long as Joe’s not sick of honey-mustard, I’m quite happy to make our own salad dressing.

Free Money Finance posted the 10 most hated money-saving tips according to the comments he’s received over the years, writing over 700 tips.

These aren’t necessarily earth-shatteringly new strategies, but that’s not the point of this list. The point is, these are the common-sense tips to which people claim to be decidedly immune. Do check out the list for yourself, but noteworthy for us is that sitting in the number one hated money-saving tip:

1. Move to a lower cost-of-living city

You can’t say we didn’t invite y’all. That you refuse to take us up on it only leaves more houses for us. (Closing on #6 and #7 currently, by the way.)

Most people know that I’m very proud to be an INTJ, so much so that perhaps sometimes it’s tempting to live up to the stereotype than to just be myself. But, what’s not to love about this personality type when you can find cool stuff like this written about you?

They are the supreme pragmatists, who see reality as something which is quite arbitrary and made up. Thus, it can be used as a tool — or ignored. Reality is quite malleable and can be changed, conquered, or brought to heel. An INTJ sees reality as the pawn of ideas: no idea is too far-fetched to be entertained. INTJs are natural brain-stormers, always open to new concepts and, in fact, aggressively seeking them.

That’s probably why I was drawn to a particular blog title today called Are You Willing to be Free? It was one of those “you create your own reality” posts, but what I liked was that rather than being peppy and overly motivational, it expressed an idea that I believe is true but most people don’t want to face. Richard Cockrum writes:

Your life is an expression of who you are. It is a stage you have set with those around you.

I love this description. He writes that when we think of defining our life, we do so through what we see (or tell ourselves) in the mirror, or through the dreams and goals we write in our journals. But really, each one of us has created a certain life and it’s evidenced by looking around you every bit as much as looking inside you. So, personal change doesn’t come from changing your internal dialogue alone; you must change what’s around you. I’m not saying this is easy, but it’s not as hard as you think.

I first encountered this idea at a Fast Track to Cash Flow seminar. Many of you know that Joe and I read a lot of personal finance books, especially those that advocate concepts such as “time is the currency of life” and “passive income.” I think we’ve gotten pretty much all we can out of the FTCF organization, but when we did attend a two-day seminar a couple of years ago, one of the speakers conducted an exercise to make you more aware of the external forces at play in your (financial) life. So, try this simple activity: make a list of the 10 people you spend the most time with. This can be face-to-face time, phone time . . . the point is really to figure out who most of your time is spent with. The second part of the exercise can actually be amended for a variety of purposes. Because we were in a financial seminar, we were looking at the financial aspect of our influences. So, for each of those people, estimate their annual salaries and write them down beside their names. Ballpark figures are fine. Bottom line is, the numbers that you see there give you the very likely range to which you’re restricting yourself.

Is there anything wrong with people who don’t make much money? Maybe they’ve chosen a simpler lifestyle or are really good at doing more with less. Maybe they have other priorities that do align nicely with your own values, and that’s why they’re in your life. But, it’s undeniable that these are the people who influence you on a daily basis. If you have a question, you’re going to ask someone in your circle for their advice. If you have a discussion, you’re going to hear their opinions. You’re going to see them live out their particular lifestyle, which is to a large extent a byproduct of their choices. If you’re looking to change your own financial situation, you have to change the larger influences in your life in order to reap the benefits of role models and seeing how the other half lives.

I’ve also seen this exercise used to measure plain old happiness in life. So, beside each person on your list, give them a score (out of 5 or 10 or 18 if you like; doesn’t matter) as to how “happy” you perceive them to be. Whether or not you’re actually correct doesn’t matter so much, because remember, it’s about the influence they are on you. So, if you perceive them to be happy, as far as you’re concerned, you’re seeing a model of happiness. Look at your list of scores. If you’re surrounding yourself with a bunch of 2’s and 3’s, how could you not be depressed yourself!

It seems cruel to think of people as liabilities. We have no problem saying, “If you want to lose weight, don’t keep crappy food in the house.” But, at some point, we also have to loose the human baggage that weighs us down, too. This can be the friend who lives well beyond his means (subtly sending you the message that you can do it too, or at least causing you to spend way too much when you go out with him) or the person who turns every little thing into a drama and sucks you into a vortex of stress and anxiety.

Now, before all our friends and family start to think that this move was just to get away from them and their toxic influences, let me point out that changing the stage on which your life is played out is also about changing the scenery. For example, we wanted to become more environmentally-conscious and active, but it was damn hard to do that living like mole people in a basement without windows! Yesterday it rained here. . . about 4 times, often for no more than 5 minutes at a time. In Toronto, we had very little concept of weather. Weather was reduced to a number or two (the high and the low, when we were really in tune with nature) and it was something that someone else told us. (And, since the basement was always cold, the temperature outside was often meaningless anyway.) We’ve been pretty freaked out by how quickly and frequently the weather can change here! We’re so much more aware of our environment here, whereas in Toronto we could easily miss entire thunderstorms if we were in the basement.

We also changed the inside environment of our home. Instead of cold tile throughout (that’s supposed to be bad for you in bare feet, but I can’t remember why) we have the lovely cork floor. There’s still a lot of construction dust and debris so I only feel comfortable walking bare foot on certain parts of the floor, but I have to say, this floor just feels so good on your feet. Joe dropped a dish and instead of a harsh, shrill clang, there was a gentle thud against the cork — wonderful for my high strung nerves! We even painted the bedroom, the first time we have ever painted a place we’ve lived in, and the escape from greyish-white feels amazing.

Sure we could have painted in Toronto. If we’d really cared, we could have changed the floor. But, we didn’t own the place. We could have bought a place in Toronto or a little outside the GTA instead of Dauphin, but then we’d be slaves to a mortgage and I wouldn’t be sitting in my pyjamas at noon writing about my floors; I’d have to be working to pay for them. Not the reality I wanted for myself.

The bottom line is, we do create our own reality. So, if you’re unhappy with your life, you can change it. But, for serious results, you need to think about all the things around you that you have the power to change and the things that you might need to change in order to see a real difference. As Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We may not have created the perfect reality for us yet, but no one can say we’re not trying!