“Exactly What Do You Think Is Happening Here Captain?”
“Fists in the air in the land of hypocrisy.”
Raise your hands if it’s hard to determine where I come down on some of the issues I address in this blog. You’re not alone. I do it on purpose. The way I see it, for some topics, all I can do is describe the problem and provide some options to solve it. The choice is yours as to how to use the information I provide. I was reminded of that this past week as I interacted with several of my Golden Albatross Facebook group members about topics I should include in a money manifesto if I chose to write one for the blog.
For some reason, I felt a need to eliminate some of the ambiguity in my previous posts about actions I consider mandatory when using a pension to achieve Financial Independence (FI) versus actions I consider good but optional. The idea spawned from a thread on investing I followed this week in a separate Facebook group. In that thread a congenial, but pointed, disagreement took place between one of the co-hosts and one of the group members about investment strategies to reach FI. When it came to investment strategies the member took exception with the prescriptive language (either intentional or otherwise) used by both hosts, and the one size fits all mentality it fostered within the FB group. It made me realize I might want to draw a clear distinction between items I consider “must do” and “highly encouraged” in order to avoid the potential for misunderstanding in my group.
However, the idea of a manifesto for my blog didn’t survive first contact. I couldn’t agree with myself on some of the topics, let alone agree with my readers. This internal and external tension mostly centered on whether or not investing was something a future pensioner “must do” to reach FI. I said possibly not, others felt differently. It was a good conversation because it made me realize a manifesto’s potential to draw sharp dividing lines, and that is not my intent. It’s always been my belief that everyone’s personal financial situation is unique. Therefore, a list of Golden Albatross community commandments wouldn’t apply to everyone, and could possibly prove counter-productive by making people feel excluded. The last thing I want to do is make someone feel this blog has nothing to offer them because they can’t conform to an arbitrary list I made up.
Self-Evident Truths
Don’t get me wrong, I believe some actions are absolutely mandatory to achieve FI regardless of whether or not you stand to earn a pension. Much like the Declaration of Independence though, with its truths, I believe those actions are self-evident. Top among those would be: track your money, don’t spend more than you earn, save a significant amount of what you earn, eliminate (commercial) debt, purposefully educate yourself on personal finance, and deliberately plan for your financial future. In one way or another, I’ve written about almost every one of those actions. So if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you hopefully understand the importance of each. That said, once you get beyond those self-evident truths, you get into the realm of what makes sense for some, may not necessarily work for others.
Intent for the Golden Albatross Pension and FI Decision Trees
Nice … but wrong type of tree.
If you’re not familiar with a decision tree or flow chart, don’t worry, I’ll show you my drafts shortly. In the meantime understand that I purposely chose this format because it provided more flexibility than a manifesto to address a wide range of scenarios for those at their Golden Albatross moment, and for those who want to use their pension to achieve FI. Thus, there should be multiple methods to achieve the goal of FI using a pension — assuming that is your goal. Feel free to explore the potential usefulness of these decision trees, and let me know what you think. This will be an iterative process, as I do not consider these trees the final draft. Rather, I consider them a conversation starter. I want your feedback on how to improve these over time.
Finally, as I started to build the decision trees, I also realized they conveniently proved an excellent opportunity to map much of the content on my website. Thus, many of the boxes should be hyperlinked. That is assuming I was able to operate my new plug-in for Word Press. That’s a big assumption since I am something of a Luddite. If you believe the images are not as interactive as I described them, please let me know. With all of that said onto the big reveal for my 1st drafts of both Golden Albatross Pension and FI decision trees. Enjoy!
Golden Albatross Pension Decision Tree
[smartdraw embed=”doc=63F10030010EBFEF9F61F500390CA154D0E&unique=76662&mode=0&caption=Smart Draw version with active hyperlinks. “]
Loading...
Reload document 
Open in new tab Golden Albatross Path to FI Decision Tree
[smartdraw embed=”doc=6666C2FE50397726580B76A3C678BD8844F&unique=94205&mode=0&caption=Smart Draw Version with active hyperlinks. “]
Loading...