1500 Days to Freedom

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10 Questions with Mortimer’s Money Machines

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Today is the 43rd edition of our periodic guest post series called 10 Questions. We have a list of 17 questions we pose to fellow financial bloggers, and they are free to pick and choose 10 or answer all of them. Let us know if you would like to be featured in a future edition of 10 Questions.

Today we feature Mortimer from Mortimer’s Money Machines. Mortimer graduated from law school with almost $200,000 in debt. My college debt was $60,000 and I though that was bad. However, Mortimer has the right idea, so he isn’t going to struggle for long.

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1. Why Will Financial Superheroes Read and Recommend Your Blog?

Because they enjoy a good comedy show as much as the next person! Seriously though, Mortimer’s Money Machines arose out of twin concerns: first, there appear to be relatively few frugality blogs based on the parents’ perspective pre-financial independence, or debt freedom, and I wanted to contribute my experience and voice to the community about being a frugalparent.

Second, a ton of great advice exists in the blogosphere about eliminating debt and reaching financial independence, but I wanted to provide some concrete tools that users of the blog could use to help improve their own situation.  To that end, I created my own Debt Freedom Calculator which allows readers to take their debts and see strategies for paying them off more quickly using the “roll over” or “snowball” method.

Another of the Money Machines is a True Wage Calculator that allows readers to account for all the expenses that go along with working their current employment including travel, indulgent “I’ve earned it” luxuries, decompression time, extravagant vacations, wardrobe, etc. It will then show the reader’s hourly wage on paper and their true wage after accounting for all these hidden expenses. The tool allows readers to modify behavior to essentially give themselves a pay raise, or ditch their current job in favor of one that won’t require so many hidden expenses to maintain.

2. Short and Long Term Goals for the Blog

In the short term, I’d like to develop readership and site visits based on my commentary on raising kids frugally and on the usefulness of the Money Machines.  In the long term, I’d love to make a real impact on people’s lives by helping them get out of debt. I’m still working my way out of (a soul-crushing amount of) debt due to student loans.  The more people I can help get out from under this burden, or any other debt burden, the better! I feel a civic duty to do this, because The Government Is Lying to You About Student Loan Forgiveness.

I’m a visual person so being able to see and quantify my own situation was and is extremely helpful in boosting my motivation to crush my over $248,000 in debt. I’m hoping the tools I create and eventually beating my own debt will inspire others to achieve their own financial goals.

3. Plans for Making Every Day Saturday

Although I still have a ton of debt, early retirement is already on my radar.  I also want to help my children attend and graduate from college debt-free. (These goals do not seem inconsistent to me anymore!)  Right now I’m hoping to retire before I turn 50, which is just under 20 years from now.  If I can do it sooner, I will. Unlike many people in my workaholic industry, I see no problems with having many interesting things to do in early retirement.  One big element of that will be finally having time to commit to a yoga practice. Another will be giving away legal services for free. And I would love to hike the Pacific Crest Trail with my family, and visit wineries in Burgundy. But mostly I plan to keep getting richer by doing nothing.

4. Your Favorite Style of <del>Beer</del> Wine / Greatest Spiritual Experience

I’ve never been much of a beer drinker. But after working in a five diamond restaurant for a couple years after college I learned to love wine.  One of the perks of that job was getting to taste some of the world’s best wine for free. (They wanted us to know how it tasted so we could enthusiastically sell it.) To give you a sense of perspective, we had a champagne cart which we used to sell champagne by the glass. Dom Perignon was a lower tier champagne on the cart at $30/glass. At the end of the week we got to “taste” whatever was left (read: drink with wild abandon), which included Dom and other fantastic wines like Krug and Pierre Peters. We got so spoiled we started making mimosas with Dom.

Anyway, after tasting those and other phenomenal wines like Unico and Petrus, one day we tasted what I now consider to be the nectar of the gods on Earth: a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti known as La Tâche. It was like drinking a painting by Leonardo da Vinci. You’ve never had a more perfectly balanced drink with constellations of flavor that dance ever so delicately across your palate.  Of course, at thousands of dollars a bottle I will be unlikely to drink it again any time soon, if ever. So instead I now drink wine made by the same varietal, Pinot Noir, and dream of that subtle, earthy yet ethereal experience.

5. How I Subtly Share My Frugal World View With Others
 
So far the best technique I’ve found for dealing with super spendy people is to either (a) avoid places where they hang out, or if they are already my friends, proceed to (b) offer to help them with something and show them how to do it themselves for free. That might include making my favorite spaghetti sauce over a shared glass of wine at my house, or showing them how to change a bike tire and then going on a bike ride. I think a lot of people don’t realize how un-empowered they are by constantly relying on other people to perform services for them. It’s also draining. Taking a few minutes to help them claim back some of their own power is fun and rewarding. The time we spend together is free and at the end we have a shared experience. That’s the foundation of a healthy relationship and personal happiness. While we’re spending time together, I might also mention the latest book I’ve been reading from my $7.82, Million Volume Collection of Books (aka the public library) and remind them of this awesome and completely underused free resource. It’s also effective to brag about how my ridiculously cool new smartphone only costs me $20/month, or usually about a fifth of what they pay. I find even spendy people are usually interested in reducing the costs of various recurring purchases (albeit usually so they can fund other spending).
6. The Best Money Management Tool
 
So far I’m a big fan of custom spreadsheets and of Personal Capital.  We do all our family budgeting using a simple spreadsheet, which is easy to cut and paste and modify slightly for each month. It also helps us see all our upcoming expenses and set that money aside so we don’t fall into the trap of feeling like we have more money than we actually do. But when it comes to seeing a lot of data about how our spending/saving habits stack up against the budget we’ve created, nothing beats Personal Capital for quickly showing income and expenses from month to month in beautiful, colorful graphs. It’s amazing that this tool is completely free.  Twenty years ago this kind of presentation and data analysis was available only to millionaires.
7. What I Didn’t Learn About Money As a Kid
 
Financial literacy and education were never really discussed when I was a kid, either in school or in my family. We were a middle class family that was doing pretty well most of the time I was a kid. But in retrospect, I can see how every pay raise or promotion just went toward fueling a more expensive lifestyle, either through purchasing a new home, buying a new car, or other kinds of leveraged choices. It wasn’t until I started working as a professional and thinking of my time horizon as longer than when I was next moving out of a rental that I began thinking more seriously about money and money management. (Unfortunately this was after incurring an ungodly sum of student loans.) But after educating myself for free through my public library, I realized that I needed to start Talking to My Kids About Saving Money for Freedom.  The last thing I want is for them to make the same dumb mistakes I did. And if I can help them learn that money they earn is a proxy for their life energy, I hope they won’t fritter it away as carelessly as I did for so long.
8. Board Games You Should Play With Your Family
 
Board games are a ton of fun, and there have even been some articles about how we are living in a golden age of board games. One of our current favorites right now is Machi Koro, which is like a distant cousin of Monopoly that is better looking and sparks happy conversation instead of driving people to tears and simian displays of rage. The games last about 20-30 minutes and are a delicate balance between building assets that generate income and earning achievements that ultimately let you win. It’s really pretty clever. Another really fun one is the cooperative game Pandemic which is insanely difficult but a ton of fun as you work together to avoid total annihilation to disease.  And I’m always ready for a game of chess, though I’ve never been a serious competitor.
9. Picky Pants Pasta Sauce for Picky Children
Mrs. Mortimer is a phenomenal, classically trained chef. She no longer works as a chef though and is undertaking an apprenticeship which will be the subject of a guest post soon, so I won’t steal her thunder here. But when she’s not serving up helpings of ridiculously good food for the rest of us, I have to have some stable backups that the kids will eat. So, here’s my homemade spaghetti sauce that is easy to make, that kids love, and that gives me an excuse to drink a glass of wine.
Ingredients
  • ~35oz. tomato sauce
  • 1 pound ground beef (or tofu, or turkey, if you swing that way)
  • 3/4 sweet onion, chopped
  • 2.5 tablespoons garlic, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
  • 1 tablespoon thyme
  • 1 tablespoon oregano
  • 3 tablespoons brown sugar
Directions
  1. put tomato sauce in a pot on low heat
  2. brown ground beef in a skillet with onion and garlic
  3. put contents of skillet in pot with tomato sauce; mix.
  4. add Italian seasoning, thyme, oregano, and brown sugar; mix.
  5. let simmer for ~30 mins, stirring occasionally
  6. sip on cup of red wine, enjoying the delicious smells of your sauce.

The kids eat this stuff like it’s candy, which seems to work out better than actually feeding them candy.  Here’s the proof:

 

(this photo was difficult to capture due to the speed of the eating involved)

 

10. The Most Frugal Exercise

I took yoga classes for a long time. I love yoga. Not only is it scientifically proven to extend your lifespan, it helps work damn near every muscle in your body, makes you stronger, and has very similar benefits to meditation. The only thing it’s not great for is cardio. But that’s easy to solve when you bike to work every day.  Plus, you can start doing really cool shit with your body that makes you feel like you’re flying. Ever have dreams that you’re flying? Me too. But doing yoga is the only time I get that same feeling while I’m awake, any time I want it.


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One of the best parts about yoga is that all you need is your body and a few feet of empty space. The sequences are all based off a common set of poses, so once you understand the sequence, you can free yourself from your mat and take your practice anywhere in the world—including on a sand bar in the middle of the Colorado River, on a kayaking trip with your best friend. And kids love it too.

Thanks for spending some time with me! Please stop by the blog any time.

Thanks Mortimer for your answers today! Regarding that last picture, did you land on your face 2 seconds after it was taken? Be honest. Just kidding. Maybe…

Be sure to show Mortimer some love over at Mortimer’s Money Machines, on Twitter and Facebook.

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Comments

    • Talking to kids about money is a lot of fun. It’s really interesting trying to get them to understand the purpose of saving. Summer vacation forever seems to be a big hit in our house! I’ll be checking out your blog to see what’s working for you. A pleasure to meet you!
      Mortimer recently posted…The Frugal Magic of Mother’s MilkMy Profile

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    • Thanks so much! Yoga is definitely way harder than it appears at first, but I love how it scales with your experience.

      The debt is starting to feel more manageable. Having a plan helps, and paying at least $1000 extra every month is dropping the principal really fast! Thanks for your support!
      Mortimer recently posted…The Frugal Magic of Mother’s MilkMy Profile

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  4. Great to start reading your site.

    Love the philosophy on (a) knowing your “enough” and (b) kids conversations on money. It amazes me why Financial Savviness, Basic Investment Strategies etc are not taught in US schools. I know I am not the only one!!

    With kids of our own, we love to read blogs where family challenges, hopes and plans are laid out.
    Mr. PIE recently posted…Ten ThingsMy Profile

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  5. I really enjoyed your post on teaching kids the importance of money. I 100% agree with you that I do not remember 99% of the toys I had when I was younger. I think financial literacy starts at home with parents and should expand to schools. Hopefully schools will acknowledge the importance of teaching kids financial literacy soon. Please to meet you and looking forward to reading your blog!
    Stefan @Mllnnlbudget recently posted…Millennial’s Guide to ETFsMy Profile

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  6. really like your vision with the diary and it’s wonderful the motivation you’ve got for monetary freedom with all that debt. Congrats on operating your thanks to crush the debt!

    You know i attempted yoga some times and it kicked my butt! Its lots more durable then it looks!

    Reply

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