Tag Archives: Introspection

The Golden Albatross vs. Kiwi Arbitrage

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Long Time Comin’

For more than nine months I’ve promised several readers an article covering the geoarbitrage potential behind Grumpus Familias’ pending move to New Zealand — which I’m calling “Kiwi Arbitrage” in honor of the beloved flightless bird native to New Zealand. Yet, for one reason or another, I kept putting-off that particular task. In other words, I procrastinated. That’s something of an Olympic sport in certain parts of my life.

That said, I had several good reasons for procrastinating this time around. The most legitimate was the lack of approved entry visas. I didn’t want to waste time writing an article on New Zealand only for some reason to appear that would prevent us from moving. If you don’t think that was a realistic possibility, then you obviously haven’t read about my lifetime of Charlie Brown-like luck.

Alas, I can procrastinate no longer. Grumpus Familias’ visas arrived several weeks ago and no major obstacles sprang out of the military retirement process. As a result, flights and movers are booked and Mrs. Grumpus and I are busy selling off or donating a large fraction of our worldly possessions that we can’t or don’t want to take with us. While we haven’t “burnt the boats” just yet, we are close — which means this move is on like the proverbial simian made famous by ColecoVision! Continue reading →

Cut the Cord, Drop the Albatross 

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Chris is Back with Another Guest Post

Greetings again everyone. I’m in the final throws of editing my book, and as such, I haven’t found time to write any new posts. However, I’m close to what I hope is a final product, which means I’ll return to blogging at regular intervals soon!

In the meantime, Chris Pascale threw me (another) solid and wrote (another) awesome guest post. This one chronicles his and his wife’s efforts to teach their kids useful life and financial lessons. All I managed to do was to add pictures and (somewhat) funny captions. Continue reading →

Choices and Thankfulness

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Choices

I’ll have you know that I do most the cooking on Thanksgiving in our house.

Happy Thanksgiving

“What are you thankful for this year?” is a commonly asked Thanksgiving question. It’s usually asked around dinner tables, which is where we Americans typically celebrate this holiday designed to bring us together and reflect on the bounty in our lives. In fact, Mrs. Grumpus and I asked our children the same question tonight as we ate.

Grumpus Minimus #1 (the older one) dutifully answered that he was thankful for his mom, dad, family, and friends. He then proceeded to list every single one of his friends. Grumpus Minimus #2 (the younger one) said he was thankful for Hickam Air Force Base, where he likes to go and watch Hawaiian airline’s planes land (Hickam AFB shares a flight line with the Honolulu airport). I bet no Air Force Base has ever been loved as much as GM#2 loves Hickam.

Continue reading →

The Opposite of Gutting It Out

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My Gutting It Out post must have struck a chord with many of my readers. It prompted numerous comments, re-posts, and questions on the Book of Face. It continues to be one of my most read articles, and it even prompted a fellow Financial Independence (FI) blogger to write an article about my article. That’s pretty cool if you ask me, and a fairly large ego stroke too!

However, as popular as that article proved to be, I don’t want anyone to think that “gutting it out” is the only path I advocate. It’s not. Nor could it ever be, since the entire premise which surrounds my self-described Golden Albatross inflection point implies a choice that someone makes to stay or leave a pensionable job. Thus, if some people choose to stay and “gut out” a pensionable job, it means others don’t or won’t. It’s for those contemplating that alternative that I dedicate this post. Continue reading →

The Golden Albatross Financial Philosophy

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The Request

Golden Albatross

Professor X enjoying his lunch break.

A few months ago a military member from a mid-career service school approached me through my blog with a request. He’s an instructor, so let’s call him Professor X. One of Professor X’s topics is personal finance as it relates to effective management of one’s career. He’d read my blog and believed several of my articles were appropriate material for his students. As a result, he asked me to speak via video to his class. After we exchanged a few emails on proposed topics, legal conflicts of interest, and technical hurdles; I agreed to appear in uniform as a military member, smart in the ways of finance, but without mention of my blog.

With this scheduled event now only a few days away, I thought it prudent to script my remarks. I also thought it would be worth turning those remarks into a blog post. Since Professor X’s request forced me to distill numerous blog posts into one coherent speech about my financial philosophy, I figured some of my readers might find it useful. As a result, this post doesn’t cover any new territory. It simply synthesizes a lot of what I’ve written previously in one place. Who knows? If I ever write a book, this article might form a good basis for the first chapter.

Continue reading →

Mental Health: Sad Work And Stuff

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I Am Grumpus Max-bob-bomb …

…and I am here to make you think about work and get sad and stuff.

Part of the side effects from my PTS means the wrong damn song, movie, book, or thought can be problematic from time to time. This happened recently. While I was typing an article about pensions and streaming some music, a sad song played over my headphones. That’s not always an issue, except I’d never heard this song before, so I didn’t know to skip it. The song’s subject related to one of the causes of my PTS. As a result, I scrambled for the volume control before tears erupted uncontrollably. Alas, I was too slow. As a result, I spent the next few hours trying to control the flood of emotions that washed over me.

Unlike my previous articles on my mental health and job struggles, this article isn’t about anger. It’s about sadness. In true Grumpus Maximus form though, the article is still relevant to the topics of personal finance, careers, and the Golden Albatross. Yet, much like my Worth vs. “Worth It” article, this story is raw and personal. Even more so than my previous article in fact. If that isn’t your thing, I completely understand and don’t hold it against you. Click away now.

For those who choose to stay, consider yourself warned… Continue reading →

Work and Mental Health: Slaying the Dragon

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Am I only one I know, waging my wars behind my face and above my throat?

— Twenty-One Pilots, Migraine

How Was Your Week?

Last Friday wasn’t the best day for me mentally. I don’t know if the stress of a few hectic work weeks which included a lot of travel finally caught up, or if I missed my meds the night before. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was something else entirely. Either way, I didn’t feel the most stable. I think it was fairly apparent to several of my co-workers as I lost my cool (just a wee bit) during a meeting. For a moment, it felt like the bureaucracy was going to grind my bones to grist before I could escape. As a result, several hours after the meeting the weight of the Golden Albatross still felt insurmountable. Never a good feeling.

Work and Mental Health

It got me this week.

As one of my Facebook readers once wrote, “Some days you slay the dragon, some days the dragon slays you.” Friday the dragon slew me, and it caught me off guard. It’s been a while since I’ve experienced a day like it. In fact, it might be the first day in over a year that I’ve lost my cool in a work environment. Home is a different matter, and the typical battlefield where I struggle to keep these sort of emotions in check (which of course is worse, and a different story altogether). Losing it at work, on the other hand, is an anomaly. As a result, I wasn’t ready to handle it. Continue reading →

Sunk Costs: The Charlie Brown E-Bike Blues

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A True Story

My brothers and sister used to call me Charlie Brown because of my epic bad luck. Well before the horrible accident which I touched upon briefly in Unintentional Meander Up Grumpus Ave Part 1, the family knew the only law which applied to me was Murphy’s. Mostly this played out in harmless ways, such as all my toys breaking. If there was one kid in the family whose Christmas toy broke on Christmas Day, it was me. Birthdays too. The phenomenon didn’t stop at the end of adolescence either. In fact, Mrs. Grumpus often mutters that if she’d only known about this “Charlie Brown thing” prior to our marriage, she would’ve re-examined her options.

sunk costs

What can I say Mrs. Grumpus? When you pay Peanuts, you get Charlie.

All joking aside, the “Charlie Brown thing” really cheeses Mrs. Grumpus off because it makes my purchase decisions more complex than they need to be. It also turned me into a cheapskate. In my mind, what’s the use of buying something nice if it’s just going to break? On the plus side, I’m not materialistic. Since material items break easily in my world, I don’t get attached to stuff.

Continue reading →

Thankfulness and Bounty

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The Meaning of a Grumpus Thanksgiving

I am sitting at home on Thanksgiving 2017 with a turkey breast on the smoker and some time on my hands to reflect. I find the Grumpus Minimi (pronounced min-EE-my) thankfully entranced with Charlie Brown specials, and Mrs. Grumpus busy making the pumpkin pie. Yes, for this five minutes my life feels like a Norman Rockwell painting (ignoring the Hawaii climate). I have much to be thankful for with respect to my life, this year more than any other. I hope as you’re reading this you feel the same way. If so then I believe our thoughts are aligned with the original intent of this holiday.

Thankfulness and bounty

We’ve moved on to Paw Patrol apparently.

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving. A day set aside by one of the richest nations to ever exist in human history in order for its citizens to reflect with friends and family on the bounty that life found fit to bestow upon them, always appealed to me. Declared a national holiday in 1863 at the height of the U.S. Civil War, I would also suggest that part of the original intent included a belief by then President Lincoln that we should be thankful despite the hardships life has set in our path. As any student of U.S. history can tell you, my nation has thankfully never again seen such hardship as the Civil War. Continue reading →

You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks

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Grumpus, the Elderus Caninus?

The other day Mrs. Grumpus tried to kill me … twice.  She sent me an email while I was at work, asking if our budget could support her joining a new community center with gym, childcare, and pool akin to the YMCA.  The price tag attached to her query nearly gave me a heart attack.  Fortunately, my bike commute has paid off, and my heart withstood the initial shock.  To put this in context, since our marriage I’ve adamantly refused to pay for a gym membership since all military bases,  big and small, have gyms — many with the type of classes she likes to take.  It is an expense that does not make sense in the overall context of the benefits that the military affords its members.  With that said, we’ve paid for outdoor exercise classes before, and at the time she asked about the possibility of joining the new community center, she had just stopped going to her latest outdoor class due to the summer break.  In her email, she also listed several other memberships she was willing to let lapse.  When I did the math though, the memberships she proposed to let lapse did not add up to the cost of the new community center.  I sent her an email stating such.  I expected much foot stomping and toy throwing when I got home.

Continue reading →