The Frug: Live Lean. Work Lean. Travel Lean.

Are We Happier When We’re Uncomfortable?

By Brad Beckstrom

I walked down a dark alley in a foreign city I’d never been to, walked up to a stranger and took this picture. Why in the world would I be wandering around a foreign city taking pictures of strangers. I do it because it’s uncomfortable. It’s a way to get out of my shell, meet people, and try to see new things.

Anything new, a major break from your normal routine, can be uncomfortable. It’s exactly this kind of discomfort that can make us happy, help us grow.

The Perfect Life?

[Read more…]

The Frugal Reader

10/19 by The Frug 1 Comment

Finding the best free books in any format, audio, digital, paper.

By Brad Beckstrom

I read a lot. Maybe not compared to some folks, but more than I ever thought I would. Not sure how I got hooked on it. It might’ve been in the early days of Borders Books or stumbling upon some great books on Amazon back in the late 90s when that’s all they sold.

I remember a quote from Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of
Wired Magazine:

Read one book a month and it will change your life.

He’s right.

It took me a little longer to figure out that libraries and independent bookstores were a better place find good books. Sadly independent bookstores, or even bookstores in general, are getting harder to find. I live just outside of Washington, DC and they’re even getting harder to find here. The closest bookstore to me when I ride my bike into Georgetown is owned by, wait for it….Amazon.

Luckily technology is making it easier to find a good book and the key to enjoying reading is finding good books. You’ll often go through a lot of duds or books that start out like gangbusters than just drag on.

So here, in no particular order, are my secrets to finding good books, often for free. If you’re not sure what you even want to read, see below for some tips on getting book ideas.

[Read more…]

What Are the Odds of You Existing?

09/19 by The Frug 1 Comment

Before you achieve anything today, you are already a very successful 850 Centillion to one shot. Vikings, Pilgrims, Veterans and Vagabonds. Your odds of even existing are oh-so-slim.

That’s right, the odds of you existing right now are about 1 in 10^2685000. That’s a 10 with a couple of million zeros after it.

If we go back just 10 generations, the number is still far north of 1 in 100 Centillion. That’s 100 with 303 zeros after it.

Once you get past 100 Centrillion, there’s no need to keep counting the zeros unless you’re in a lab somewhere at MIT. Other folks were smart enough to crank these numbers for us. See infographic below.

Why did I bother to look this up? Over the years, various relatives have collected some interesting family tree information. A few years back, I took some time and put all of this info into ancestry.com. Ancestry.com is a great way to research and link your family history. Once you put in the basic data, grandparents great-grandparents etc. your family info is cross-referenced with millions of genealogy records worldwide.

Sometimes you get lucky. A distant cousin, or someone with similar records, put in additional information dating back many generations. Some family histories are already very well documented. You can now even submit your DNA to the database and match the location and ethnicity results against a global database. Talk about putting it all out there!

For example, my grandmother on my father’s side was a Horton. This side of the family is so well documented there are actually books written about them! I found well researched records allowing me to match siblings up with parents and birth records through the generations to provide matches on one side all the way back to a 9th Great Grandfather — William Million born in Middlesex, England in 1600.

Wars, famines, plagues

I started thinking about all the things, wars, famines, plagues, and even low sperm counts over 10 generations since 1600 that could have precluded my existence. This is only one quarter of the picture, what about the Irish on the other side of the family or my grandfather’s family origins in Finland and Sweden, no doubt descendants of Vikings. The odds of me or my family being here just keep getting smaller and smaller.

The Freedom of Limited Options

08/19 by The Frug 2 Comments

By Brad Beckstrom

I’ve been busy lately, limiting my options. Nope, not talking about stock options. I’m pursuing a simpler lifestyle built around fewer possessions and more time to enjoy what I already have.

The idea is simple, stop spending time and money accumulating, storing, and caring for stuff. Give it away, starting with the small stuff, knickknacks, unused toys and clothing. Later move on to larger items, eventually cars and houses. With each box of things we get rid of, each closet we empty out, there’s a sense of lightness. With each thing we wear out, then don’t replace, there is a feeling of freedom.

The closer you move to this limited lifestyle, the more things improve. If you limit your wardrobe, you’ll spend less time picking out what to wear every day, less time in the store replacing cheap sweaters and shoes. If you limit your diet to exclude crap foods and monster menu items, the payoffs include your finances and your health. Those “vintage” clothes will fit better.

Even the best restaurants serve crap food. If they don’t get you with the heavy-handed ingredients, they will get you with the portions. I do miss my weekly visits to the local BBQ joint with 100 different sauces. Now, when I stop in, maybe every few months, it’s more of an event, something I look forward to. My gut has not missed the weekly three meat platter at all.

Limiting options does not just apply to clothing, diet, or the number of cars you own. It’s something you can apply to any part of your life with benefits. I’ve learned to master investing by knowing less about stocks, bonds, and mutual funds and more about simplified lean index investing.

I’ve gone on a high quality, low information diet by using tools like Feedly and Flipboard to follow the best and most trusted writers I can find. Anytime I add a new source I see if there is one I can prune.

Time

The New Frugality

08/19 by The Frug 1 Comment

Does frugality still work? If so has it changed?

By Brad Beckstrom

I learned a lot from my grandmothers. One ran a business with my grandfather and the other invested in dividend stocks. They were both ahead of their time in the 60s and 70s. I remember my grandmother showing me her stock certificates and explaining how dividends worked. She explained how she used dividends to support herself after my grandfather Tom passed away at the age of 58. I remember the railroad and utility stock certificates with their elaborate etchings and visiting her stockbroker to execute a trade well before computers arrived.

I didn’t get to really meet either of my grandfathers since they both died young. I did spend quite a bit of time with both grandmothers, either staying overnight or while visiting cousins nearby. By the time I was a young man, they both had lived through two world wars, the depression, Vietnam, the Womens and Civil Rights movements, the Kennedy assassination, 1973 and 1974 energy crisis, inflation, cold wars, and multiple recessions. As savers and investors they had seen some setbacks.

The Old Frugality

[Read more…]

Building a Financial Bridge Over Stormy Seas

07/19 by The Frug Leave a Comment

As I’m writing this the S&P 500 just passed the 3000 mark. It only took five years for the index to reach this new high from the 2000 point milestone in 2014. In contrast, the rise from 1000 to 2000 required more than 16 years.

I like to think of myself as an optimist. So, I’m always confident that the market will go up over time. I just get a bit concerned when I see politicians taking credit for market gains and large companies using federal tax giveaways to buy back shares, propping up share prices.

All this while the US deficit is moving up in hockey stick fashion. Trade wars also pushed market volatility to new highs in 2018. It’s always easy to find bad news from good sources if you’re looking for it.

The case for optimism

On the other hand, experts have been predicting the next market crash since about 2012. Currently, we are 10 years into a record long bull run in the US stock markets. The point here is that no one can predict the direction of the markets. As much as governments may try, they even have trouble disrupting forward progress. Time marches on, things do eventually get better over time. Stay optimistic. When the next bear market or correction comes along, hang on tight and tell yourself this too shall pass.

Expect the best, plan for the worst

Optimism definitely has its place. For those of us that retired early, are financially independent, nearing retirement, or just hanging out on a beach somewhere, now is the perfect time to be a bit of a pessimist. Over the past two years, as this bull current bull market has gotten a bit long in the tooth, I’ve found myself looking at how specific investments performed during the 2001 and 2008 bear markets and recessions.

If we were to have another major bear market, how would my portfolio perform and what should my asset allocation be before it comes? I look at this as sort of conducting your own financial stress test, similar to what the Fed asks banks to do.

If you’re retired or financially independent and source part of your income from dividends and capital gains, ask this question: What could you do now that would enable you to get through the next recession and bull market without having to sell dividend producing stocks or stock market index funds while prices are dropping?

[Read more…]