January 28, 2009

I got to the gym this morning and got a pretty good weight work out in. It wasn't as draining as cycling class, but I can't handle doing that every day, I would be exhausted. I figure I'll try to lift 3 days a week and go to cycling class 3 times a week. We'll see how it works.

I realized this week that I'd been doing something that I've read you should never do. I've been waiting for my financial situation to change before I get to that next stage in my life. I'm just waiting to pay off these loans before I can "be happy" with where I'm at. Over the last few days I've begun to realize this is happening and I've just stopped worrying about it. From now on I'm just going to watch my money a bit better and just letting things come as they are going to. Although it would be nice to have a bit more money to do a few of the things on Megan and my wish list. But pretty soon I will have my car and the rings paid off, that'll give me another $500 per month to do whatever with. Also, I'll be starting my part time job soon. So I'm thinking I'll invest the extra $500 and get ready to invest more money into the real estate business, and with my part time job, that'll be for the fun stuff Megan and I want to do and also for our wish list.

Yesterday I got put in my place at work because I had been slacking on one of my projects. At first I was mad that the guy had called me out, but today, it was all worth it, it gave me the motivation to buckle down and get a bunch of stuff done. Now, I'm out not only to just do my job, but to impress people about how quickly I can work and get stuff done. With my work ethic and focus, I want to set myself apart from everyone else.

Last night I got about half way through Rich Dad Poor Dad's "Increase Your Financial IQ". I love the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. If you ever want to be financially free and never worry about money, these books are a must read. I've only gotten half way through but I've got a few good tips. One is that you learn the most when you take on the risk of failure. Also, there are 4 sections of your financial situation, there are: Income, Expenses, Assets, and Liabilities. You want high income and assets, and low expenses and liabilities. If you focus on this, whether this country is in a recession or not, you'll be fine. And if you can get the income from your assets to exceed your expenses, that means you're financially free!

Megan has done a great job with the house, everything is put away and we don't spend hardly any time cleaning up our piles anymore! And because of that we have more time to each other!

January 25, 2009

It's been a week since I've blogged, I'll need to try to do better!

This morning I went to the cycling class again and really pushed myself farther than usual. It's been four hours since I got out of the class and I can tell my body is still exhausted! I was weighed the other day, and I'm still at 196, so I haven't budged past my starting point. I know that I work out enough, the thing I'm having a very hard time controlling is what I eat. That'll be my focus for this week. More white meats, vegetables, and water, and less bread, sugars, and carbs.

The good news is that Megan and I have done a really good job at keeping our costs down this month, so I should be able to completely pay off the credit card! Also, I'm finally getting in a lot of my end of the year tax information so I'll be able to file my personal taxes and get my refund back in February. And with that refund I should be able to get my monthly expenses cut dramatically. My entire refund is going to be put towards paying off loans and getting rid of those nasty monthly payments! Today I'm also going to put together my 401(k) investments and stock investments and see where they're going to be in 10/20/30 years so that I'll be able to adjust them now, instead of waiting until I'm 50 and figuring out that I'm screwed!

My focus was better this week, I got quite a bit done. On one of my projects I'm getting into the last little bits, so it's getting pretty painful and people are wanting to change things and it's costing my project money! So this week I'll need to talk to people and let them know exactly what I need them to do in order to finish up the project. I also need to get into the details of some of my other projects but I just don't have time! So I'll need to block off time this week to dive into that.

This week I read "Rich Dad Poor Dad Cashflow Quadrant". If you ever want to be financially free, you HAVE to read the Rich Dad Poor Dad books. They'll motivate you to take more control of your life and get things set straight. This isn't the first time I've read this book, but it always makes me think of things I can do in my life. One of the things that I thought about while reading this book is that yes, you need to take control of your money and do your research, but on that same thought you need to control your time. I'm not saying you need to plan all 24 hours of your day, but if you really want to focus on investing, you need to set time aside to do your research and planning. I have to spend time at my full time job, but I'd like to spend more time learning and researching the real estate market in the twin cities and watching how it's changing, so that when we do get enough cash to invest in another property, I'll have built up a wealth of knowledge. I'd also like to spend an hour a week on each of my investments that I have in stock and my 401(k) to make sure that I completely understand them.

Then today I'm going to spend about 30 minutes organizing the house and putting everything away, then that'll be all good!

January 18th

The last couple days have been pretty slow. I haven't gotten out much, although Megan and I did some window shopping yesterday, which was fun. We got to check out some of the things on our wish list and figure out how much they'll really cost us.

I got to the gym today, and got a pretty good work out in. Some of the people at the gym drive me crazy, they just have no respect for everyone else who's there. These are the types of people who scare off the new people at the gym, because they're grunting and hogging up all the equipment. But I just put in my headphones and ignore them. Last time I weighed myself I was down to 190. But that was a while ago, so I need to step on the scale again. But I can definitely tell that I feel a lot better and I don't get winded running up some stairs!

Megan and I have done really good about not spending too much money this month. I did get one surprise though, my energy bill was $212! That's more than double what it usually is! So that wasn't much fun. We will also be holding off on reimbursing the milage from my business because we ran into a few hick ups. If you want to check those out go to http://strongpointe.tumblr.com/ and you'll learn all about it. So hopefully we'll be able to get the credit card paid off at the end of this month and start with a clean slate.

This week I'm going to try to focus on work again and stop slacking like I have been the last few days. I'm going to stay in the office until at least 4, 5 if I can. But I will be starting up my part time job this week too, so I'll have to juggle them. But it'll be nice to have something else to do, and it'll also be nice to have a bit more income!

This week I read through Suze Orman's new book, "2009 Action Plan". I thought it had a lot of good points. But she kept saying the same things over and over again because the book was written in a way that you only needed to read the chapters that you wanted to, so I suppose it makes sense. Here's a few of the points she made that stuck out to me: put together an 8 month emergency fund (no longer a 6 month fund!), now to get decent loans you need a credit score of over 720, cut any spending that isn't necessary and make sure you consider EVERYTHING that you spend money on, 2009 is the year to get your finances back in order and do a real gut check.

Today I'm going to do a quick clean of the house, and I'll hopefully be done with that by the time Megan gets home!

These next few days should be good, I'm got a couple more projects to work on at work, and I'll keep myself busy with some of my other projects.

January 14th

I’m finally flying home today, I can’t wait to see Megan and TC (our cat)! And even though it’s going to be the coldest day of the winter tomorrow, it’ll still feel good to be home.

I calculated the percentage of my before tax income that I was saving for retirement. Right now I’m at about 15%, which, from what I’ve read, is actually very good for someone my age. Actually, that was good for someone of any age! So that made me feel a little better. Although I’d still like to kick that up a bit, because I’m trying to save for 2 people, not just myself. But I also need to have more fun with my money. So I think I’ll keep my retirement saving between 15 and 20 percent. Probably closer to 20%. But after I pay off the car and ring, I’ll still have more money to ‘play’ with. I think I’ll help Megan attack her car payment, so we can get that off her back. Then we’ll save for the wedding and honeymoon, while crossing things off our wish list!

When I went to the gym this morning my legs were on fire and I didn’t have my normal energy. I am guessing the number one reason for this was my 2 mile run yesterday, and then eating a pretty lean, protein filled, meal. I should have added in some carbs. But at least I got the work out in, and I did some squats, which further impeded my ability to walk normally.

My focus still sucks. I’m hoping when I get back in the office tomorrow it’ll pick up and I can catch up on some things.

On the flight home I was able to get through an entire Men’s Health (my bible!) and a bunch of blogs. I also finished Mike Robbins’ book on tape today. It continued to be filled with fluff, so I don’t have much to add on my book review from yesterday.

I just flew over the Rocky Mountains, and they are spectacular from the air, especially when there’s a gorgeous sunset as a backdrop. I’ve resolved that when Megan and I have a bit more disposable income we’ll take a long weekend and just drive somewhere. I don’t care where, but we just need to go somewhere and see something. Maybe that could happen in February….

Books on Tape are one of the top 10 Inventions

I love books on tape/CD. When you spend a lot of time on the road, it's the easiest way to get through books. You can pop the CD in and sit in traffic and actually learn something. I've been listening to a book my Mike Robbins called "Focus on the Good Stuff". It's kind of a fluffy book but it does have some good points.

One of his suggestions is to list, and constantly remind yourself of all the things that you have grateful for. Here's a few of mine: my beautiful fiancee, having a great job, making enough money to support a pretty good lifestyle, and being able to live and travel to some beautiful places.

Another one of Mike's suggestions is to write down how you envision your perfect life, then go for it! I've never written this down, but I think that it's in my sub-consciousness. I think when I get back home I'll work with Megan and we can write down how we'd like our life to end up and how we envision it.

The last good tip I've got from his book so far is not a new one, it's how to think positive, and the good that comes when you do think like that. When you believe in what you're doing, and what you can actually do, good things usually come to you. Point taken.

Here's some quick updates on my resolutions...

Since I'm in California I went for a run today and it felt great! I've also watched what I've been eating, and I've been skipping my late night deserts that I usually have when I'm traveling! I thought that this trip would be difficult, and I would really stray from my diet and goals, but that hasn't been completely the case! So I'm pretty proud of myself....so far!

Since I'm traveling on the company's dime, I've been saving money! Hopefully this will enable me to pay off that entire credit card at the end of this month. And I should be getting my milage reimbursement from the business, and that would really help out, and give me a little cushion. But we'll see when we decide to do that.

My focus at work has been terrible. Since I'm out of the office it's hard for me to put my tunnel vision on and really focus on the work at hand. But I'm hoping to get done what I need to and maybe go home a day early! But we'll see how that works out... That reminds me, I need to call the travel agency tonight...

I've done alright with the reading resolution, as long as you count books on tape as reading... But I do feel like I'm growing (personally) and that's the whole goal of this resolution.

And I have no idea how the house is doing, hopefully Megan is keeping it clean enough for her to be comfortable!

Tomorrow I think I'll really focus on what I need to get done while I'm on site, but then I'll try to get out of there as soon as possible. So that will be a significant source of motivation!

Don't Drink Water on a Plane

Right now I’m sitting on a plane on my way to Los Angeles. I’ve gotten a lot of reading done, so I think for the first couple weeks of the New Year I’ve kept up on my reading resolution. Although while I was reading through the pages of Fortune magazine I had an entire glass of water spill right on my crotch. This was slightly embarrassing, but was relatively easy to deal with. Thank God I wore dark jeans! Within an hour or two they were all dry and no one could tell the difference.

I did read a blog about figuring out what is really important to you. This really hit a nerve with me because one of my life goals is to be worth a million dollars by the time I’m 30 years old. I started thinking about why I wanted to be worth a million dollars, and the only thing that really hit me is that if I’m work a million, I’d be able to say “I’m a millionaire”. And to me, that’s a pretty crappy reason. So I decided to work on a list of reasons why I want to be worth a million dollars:

-I’d be able to financially provide for my wife, and probably kids (by that time)

-I’d be able to give back more to the community, and set up scholarships at my old high school

-I’d have the ability to make investments that I might not otherwise be able to make.

-If I lost my job, I’d be able to live for a while without really having to worry about money.

These are the only reasons I could come up with. But when I really look at these reasons, there are other ways that I could accomplish these. To provide for my family I could focus on decreasing the monthly expenses that I incur. This could include searching for a lower cost cell plan, and paying off my loans. Another way I could do this is to make sure that whenever I get a raise or a bonus I put that away, instead of increasing my lifestyle. The point is, that I shouldn’t be focused so much on the amount of money I want to be worth, but rather, the amount of money that I’m spending. If I spend less on the “necessities”, then I’ll be able to afford more of the “luxuries”. This is a pretty big attitude change for me, so it was a big accomplishment! And I’m sure Megan will appreciate my change of mind, even though if I wanted to be a millionaire, she’d support me in that too.

This morning I woke up and went to the gym and had an amazing work out! It ended up being about 2 hours long, but I felt great afterwards. I got in most of my weight lifts that I wanted to do, then joined in on the spinning class. I love having a group of people to work out with, and a leader pushing you to push yourself past the limits you thought you had. It turns out that most of the limits you think you have, are artificial limits that you impose on yourself. I think one of the reasons that I’ve been so successful in life is that I think I can do anything. I don’t mean to seem cocky, although Megan says I am sometimes, but if I want something, I go out and get it. I don’t wait around. So far, my timing has worked out alright!

On the financial resolution, not much has been done, I’ve really watched my spending and tried to keep it minimal. But the other night we went to the Swarm game and I spent about $20 on beer. But sometimes you just have to have fun, life can’t be serious all the time!

Now to my focus resolution. The last few days I have sort of relaxed, and it’s been really rejuvenating. I’ve come to realize that my current job is not going to take over my life. I work with some people that are so frazzled with their jobs that I’m sure the rest of their lives are in absolute chaos. I won’t allow that to happen to me. I love my job, but it isn’t my life. But lately, I’ve been focusing on having my job mean more than just a paycheck. I have the abilities and means to make a real difference in this world and the way things are normally done. I can’t write much of what I do in a public arena, but the work I’m doing now is becoming very meaningful to me because I can personally relate to it. Sometimes it really ticks me off when I’m in meetings and all they’re talking about is the unit cost and how much we can sell the product for etc… I just want to stand up and yell at them and remind them that not only can our product make the company money, but it could change lives and the paradigms that exist in the world today. (I do realize that for a business to exist it needs to make money, but sometimes I think that it is too much of a focus). So back to focus, I’m going to try to really focus on this new product and make sure that it does end up in the marketplace and that it does make a difference in people’s lives.

I’ve read quite a few magazines over the last couple days, in fact I’m almost all caught up with the magazines that I get mailed! So that’s been good and relaxing, and sometimes, very enlightening!

The house has been incredible. No longer do I need to come home and look at the piles on the dining room table and mumble to myself that I need to take care of them. Everything has been taken care of! It’s really relaxing to me to know that things are in their places and that I can find anything if I need it. I think my next project will be to put all of the important articles that I have ripped out of magazines on this blog. That’ll be quite the job….!

I get back on Thursday and I can’t wait to sleep next to my fiancée and feel her calming touch again. Whenever I go without her for long stretches of time I feel like I’m off kilter, and I need her back!

Focusing is EXHAUSTING!

The last two days have made me realize that when you really spend a lot of time focusing, it's absolutely draining! The last two days, I've been so spent that I couldn't stay awake long enough to blog or read! I've figured out that you only have so much energy for each day, and you need to figure out how to use it. After waking up at 4:45am, working out, going to work for 8 hours, then coming home and working on the "to do" list, there's not much left for anything else. Wednesday when I got home, I was a bum and did absolutely nothing. And last night when I got home last night I was all excited to watch the college football championship, then I sat down on the couch and closed my eyes, next thing I new, they were handing the trophy to the Gators. I had slept through the entire game!

This helps show me that I need to keep some sort of balance in my life, I can only do it all for so many days in a row before my body shuts down!

But this morning I went to gym, and on a whim ended up going into one of those spinning/cycling classes. It was a BLAST! I haven't had such a punishing work out in a very long time! At the end of the hour I was drenched in sweat but I felt great. I know I'll go back to that cycling class, and I might even try some of the other classes that they have at my gym. This should help keep my workouts new and exciting! And if I think I have any chance of keeping my new year's resolution and getting down to 175 lbs, I'll need to keep myself motivated to go to the gym.

On the financial front, I've tried to spend as little money as possible this month. Last month I wasn't able to pay off my entire credit card bill, and had to carry about $500 over to this month. That leaves me enough money to....buy food and pay the bills. So this month I need to cut back as much as possible so that at the end of this month I'll be able to pay off the credit card and start with a clean plate. I'm hoping to do my tax returns in February and get my tax rebate back. That should help a lot! I'll also be getting my profit sharing check at the end of February or beginning of March, and that should help a bit too. After I get some of my stuff sorted out I'm going to start helping Megan and we'll get her loans paid down and get those out of the way. I realize that her loans are her loans, but since we're getting married, we'll be putting everything together and we'll have to deal with it together. Her school loans aren't too big of a deal to me, but it'd be nice to get her car paid off and start paying her insurance and phone bills. Then her parents can start saving for the wedding! Lots of goals......we'll just need to prioritize.

My focus has been a bit off the last couple days at work, but I've been able to get done what I need to get done. So it's been good enough, but not where I'd like it. I need to get back to the intense focus I had earlier this week.

Reading, let's not talk about that. I haven't touched a book in the last 3 days.

The house is in good shape. It's been nice to have stuff organized. Once you get it organized, it's pretty easy to keep it organized.

This weekend should be relaxing, even though I'll miss Megs, I'll get a lot of stuff done.

The day that wasn't supposed to be, but was

Yesterday I said that today would be a great day because I didn't have any meetings scheduled, and I'd be able to get a LOT done, but that's not exactly how it played out.

I started off the day with another punishing work out. It's 12 hours later, and I still feel it! But I weighed myself this morning so that I have a good baseline to go from. Weighing myself gave me good news and bad news. The bad news was that I weigh 194 lbs. The good news is that I only have 19 lbs to lose! I think this is as big as I have ever been. But I just need to make sure that I have a good balance of working out and resting my body. So I think tomorrow I'll sleep in, or go to work early. My body is telling me that I need a day off! Then tomorrow night I'll be able to go on a walk with Megan, so that'll count as my exercise.

Last night Megan and I read another chapter in our "Smart Couples Finish Rich". Reading a book like this as a couple is VERY beneficial, and I would highly recommend it! We've learned that 50% of marriages end in divorce because of financial problems. That's an astounding number, and given that right now there's a 50% divorce rate among marriages, that means that a quarter of all marriages end in divorce over money. That's something I never want to happen. I realize that we're making a pretty decent amount of money for a couple, and as long as we budget and stick to it, we'll be very happy and be able to do anything we want to do in this world. In the next couple of days we'll need to sit down and lay out our monthly budget and stick to it. We have our wish list of things that we want all laid out, and we just need to figure out how we going to get all of those done TOGETHER! The key is to make and agree on all of these financial decisions together, if you don't do them together, then you don't have "buy-in" from both parties and it'll never work. Maybe tomorrow night after our walk we'll sit down and lay out our goals and dreams for this year and start working towards them. (Note: after I showed Megan the amazing power of compound interest she got really excited about saving!)

Today at work I adjusted my computer settings so that I didn't get a notification every time I got an email. This helped a LOT! I was much less inclined to stop what I was doing and check my emails every time someone sent me something. I was able to focus much better on the task at hand and get some things done. I had no meetings planned today....but that got completely flipped upside down! Starting at 9am I was in meetings until about 3:30. I kept getting pulled into this manager's office, then that manager's office, it was very draining! I barely had time to eat any of my lunch. So needless to say I didn't get everything done that I wanted to. But I have my short list of things to do on an electronic Post-It on my desktop, so I'll continue to whittle that list down to nothing. But that just goes to show that when you have some slow days at work, you still need to work your ass off to get everything done, then you'll be ready for days like these that are absolute torture! So tomorrow morning when I don't go lift, maybe I'll get up a bit earlier and spend another hour at work catching up on what I wanted to get done today.

My reading has been sub-par. A chapter a night is not going to allow me to read a book a week. I need to increase the amount of time I spend with a book!

The house is getting more organized day by day. I think the only pile we have now is the small pile on the kitchen counter. And today Megan went through a lot of her clothes and got them ready to go to the Goodwill, so that helps. Tonight I'm going to try to take care of the pile on the kitchen counter and also try to clean up the fridge door, we have too much stuff stuck on it with magnets! After I get everything picked up, I'll have to figure out another way to make our house more efficient... If you have any ideas let me know!

So today wasn't as fruitful as I was hoping, but I did get a lot accomplished. But now I'm beat, hopefully I can stay awake long enough to read!

January 5th

So today was really the first day of focusing on my New Year's resolution. It actually went pretty well.

I got up at 5am and worked out at the Gym. This isn't much out of the ordinary, but what was different was that I pushed myself a lot more. Over the last few weeks I've really focused on doing some of the lifts that I don't usually like. For example, over the last 2 years I could count the number of times I did the dead lift and squat on one hand. Now I do one of those lifts every time I go work out. Men's Health was right, those lifts really do work your ENTIRE body! Also, if you like to feel immediate results, these are the lifts for that.

Today I also made the decision not to get an iPhone. In May my Verizon contract will be up, and I'll be able to switch providers without paying a penalty. Right now I pay about $80 per month for 900 minutes on my plan with unlimited texting. Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to get the iPhone. I spend so much time in airports and in the middle of nowhere, it'd be really nice to always have access to the internet. But it'd cost me a couple hundred bucks up front just to get the phone, then every month it'd cost me about $30 in addition to the minutes I'd have to pay for. So in the first year, it'd probably cost me about $560 just to have the iPhone, and I'd rather do something different with that money. There's so many things in the Twin Cities I want to do! I also learned today that I won't get my W-2 until the end of January, which means I won't be able to file my taxes until then. So in January my SPM partners and I will have to try to get the business taxes done and filed so that we'll be able to do our personal taxes as soon as we get all of our paperwork mailed to us.

I think I only did incrementaly better on focusing at work. I got caught up on a lot of the emails and phone calls that I had, but I still spent a lot of time multi-tasking and getting distracted. I need to turn off my email alerts and leave my gmail closed. I get distracted by personal work too easily. By the end of this week I'd like to get to a point where I'm pro-active instead of being reactive to things that I need to get done in my projects. This will be especially important for next week because I'll be traveling out to Los Angeles to our plant and it's hard for me to do anything but watch over my projects when I'm out there. I also have some really important funding requests coming up that I need to be able to spend time on because as soon as the funding gets approved they'll want to move really fast!

I didn't do any reading today yet. I plan on reading a chapter in "Smart Couples Finish Rich" with my fiance Megan. Last night we read the intro and I thought it was a lot of fun to go through it together and be able to discuss the points together and agree on things that we may need to change in our lives.

As for my last resolution, the house is a mess. Maybe after we read our chapter I'll spend 10 minutes cleaning everything up and putting things in their places.

I feel like tomorrow will be a very productive day. I don't have any meetins planned for work, so I'll be able to spend some time in the gym in the morning and really focus on catching up on all the things at work that I need to do, especially all those tasks I am REALLY not looking forward to doing!

Goals for 2009

My blog is going to focus on what my New Year's Resolutions are. (Side note, I'm a Generation Y kid but I don't feel that the world needs to hand me everything on a silver platter, I want to work for it all so I know what it's worth!)

Here are my top 5 resolutions:

1. Get to 175 lbs.
2. Be financially disciplined with my investments
3. Focus on the work that needs to get done
4. Read a book a week
5. Keep the house organized, get rid of piles

Let me elaborate a little bit on each of these.

1. The last time I weighed myself I was at 195 lbs. For my frame, that's not bad, but I'm not in the best of shape either. And over the last year or so I've put on about 15 lbs, and that's just something I don't need to carry around. To do this I plan on spending more time in the gym, eating less, and doing more cross training. I'd also like to run the Twin Cities Marathon.

2. This year I have a tremendous opportunity to get my financial life really squared away. If my tax return comes back the way I think it will I'll be able to pay off Megan's engagement ring, my car, and still have a bit to put away for my emergency account. But I don't want to be completely serious with my money, I live in one of the greatest cities in the nation, and I need to get out and do more of the activities that there are to do in the Cities. 2009 should be a great year for setting up my next few years!

3. I've noticed lately that it's really hard for me to really focus on work. I get sidelined doing the easy tasks that I want to do, answering emails, phone calls, and talking to people as they pass by my cube. ENOUGH! I love what I do, and I want to be the best at it. I want to prove to all my coworkers that Generation Y isn't full of a bunch of coddled privileged kids who don't know how to work. Every morning I want to sit down, lay out exactly what I need to get done that day, and do it. Not only do I want to do this at my full time job, but for SPM (the property management company me and two friends started). Right now is prime time to buy real estate if you know where to look. If I really focus on where I want this company to go, we'll get it there and by the time we're 30, we'll be using our full time jobs for the benefits instead of for a paycheck.

4. One of the best ways to stay educated is to read. I want to read one book a week, which should be relatively easy. If I'm not challenged enough with one book a week, I may bump it up to two. I usually read books about leadership, finances, or entrepreneurship. I want to expand a little bit and read some fiction books.

5. Previously my best way to keep the house organized is to put all my junk in a pile, then at least I FEEL like I have everything organized! But in reality, I'm just putting it off until the pile gets high enough then I usually end up throwing away a lot of it. I'll use our file cabinet more, and as soon as something comes in the door, it's put in it's correct place. Maybe I'll even use some of my Lean 6 Sigma to keep the house in shape!

So I'll be blogging about how I do with all of these goals, and I'm sure I'll also be writing blogs about interesting books, or articles that I find. I've got a ton of magazine pages ripped out from magazines that I need to combine and share with anyone like me, who has big goals for themselves!

I hope you enjoy this year's postings and I'll do my best to blog a few times a week and achieve the goals I've laid out for myself this year.

Thanks for reading!

Catch up Post

Wow, it's been a very long time since I last blogged. So much has happened since the summer of 2007, here's a quick summary:

-Bought a townhouse
-Girlfriend moved into the townhouse
-Bought an engagement ring
-Traveled to Los Angeles, Montreal, and Tampa for work
-Got promoted at work, bought an investment duplex, and got engaged all in about 2 weeks.

That's the short version! From now on, we'll talk about the present.