Money Diary #112

Morning: 

• Up around 7:15 and migrate to the sofa. I sleep for 30 minutes and then hear emails on my phone. We are off today. These emails relate to a wellness certification class I signed up for through work. The class itself is later in the month, but there is apparently quite a bit of pre-work before the class, so I sign in and start that pre-work. SO tells me he is not feeling well and that he might spend the day in one of the guest bedrooms. He takes his temperature, and throughout the morning, checks to see how he is feeling. He can smell bananas (yay!) and takes some meds for his headache. 

• For the pre-work, I jot down some notes including reminding myself that when speaking to a new person, it's important to (i) speak to them from the cultural spaces they occupy instead of the cultural spaces that I occupy; (ii) observe indicators of how a person is feeling (that is, what is the person not saying); and (iii) observe what the "baseline" is for this person so later on, I can pay attention to what behaviors are outside of what I would typically expect for that person. I also learn about self-care and how participating in activities that involve the senses (smell, taste, touch, sight, and hearing) can help improve emotional health. 

• Finish the pre-work in a couple of hours, forward a couple of emails to clear out my inbox, and then sign off. Read a WSJ article on frugality where someone observes "inflation doesn't matter as much if you don't spend money." SO makes almond milk coffee for me (yum), and then I watch more Iron Chef. 

Afternoon: Brush my teeth and SO warms up spaghetti for lunch (it literally gets tastier every day, lol). Migrate to the front living room and veg on the couch. Hear my phone buzz, see a few work projects come in, and log on to complete them. Work for 30 minutes and then sign off. Watch the 2nd Hobbit, and read for a while. Here is what I learn:

• On mitigating sequence-of-returns risks: "Buy into a bad market rather than withdraw from it."

• Not an emergency: "If your health or a loved one's health is not compromised, then whatever it is, it is not an emergency."

• On retirement: "We mostly do the same things in retirement as we did before, but we do them more frequently and at a slower pace."

• More retirement ideas: "Using a hammock to sleep in the forest was the key to backpacking in retirement."

• On EQ in Corporate America: "The right therapist listens to you and then gives you the tools to identify & recognize patterns and change your reactions to them."

• On being prepared: "Even a fish can be killed in a flood." 

• On a recession: "The darker the news on the horizon, the bigger your discounts will be for any new stocks you accumulate." 

• On perspective: "I remember my brother and I getting into trouble because we ate a box of cereal in three days that was supposed to last us all week."

• "The real issue with lifestyle inflation is when it truly is like inflating a balloon -- outward in all directions at once": "But well-considered spending to maximize life satisfaction is more like creating a bonsai -- trimming areas that you don't want and encouraging others to grow."

• A reminder to myself: "Middlebury daughter: 'Dad, my roommate has a family house on Martha's Vineyard, and she invited me to spend the summer with her family there. Her father is a partner at Skadden, so he is only there on some weekends, but her mother is there full time. Can I go?"

• The gift that keeps on giving: 

• "I went to an Ivy undergrad and Ivy business school. Still helps my career even though I graduated decades ago. The problem with this stuff is that you can't see the benefits while you are too close to the situation. You can see the costs of attending an Ivy, but the benefits are prospective and intangible/hard to quantify until later in life."

• "I have a couple of Ivy degrees; my brother has 3 degrees from a state school. He once said to me with respect to our degrees: 'When people meet you, they assume you're smart, just based on the schools. I have to prove I'm smart.' Not saying that is right or wrong, but it is, I think, a real thing. Graduating from an elite school makes things a bit easier."

• Truth: "The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be."

• "My daily routine is determined by my cat": "She makes me at 4:30 AM followed promptly by breakfast. She eats the same food for each meal. I vary my diet to try to stay within expiration dates. We eat three meals punctually with snacks between and at bedtime. We nap when needed, play, watch nature, bask in the sun, and empty the mind through meditation, which she excels at. I read a lot, which entices her to sit on my lap."

Evening: Go shower around 6 and use the psoriasis shampoo. SO comments that this was a super chill day, and I agree. Eat spaghetti for dinner, brush teeth & do the activated charcoal mouthwash, and bed around midnight.