A New Attitude for a New Year

Have you done it, yet? Have you? Have you broken your first New Year's resolution, yet? Be honest. It's a time-honored tradition. Every year we resolve to exercise more, eat better, be nicer to friends and strangers, make more money, save more money, learn a new language and onward and outward and ad infinitum.

Since we make these resolutions year after year, it's safe to assume that we break these resolutions year after year. I know I do. That's why I've resolved this year to make no New Year's resolutions. I know. I know. That's a resolution. Sort of.

That's my only resolution this year and it's not really a resolution. It's an acknowledgement that resolutions just don't work for me. So, I've decided instead to focus on my life as a whole with the goal of being in a better place next New Year's Eve. You see, I didn't resolve to get married this past year, but I did. That alone makes this year a better year in the broadest terms.

And that will be my focus for the coming year. I will improve the themes in my life. The details will take care of themselves. Well, with a little help from me, the details will take care of themselves. No resolutions this year. Just best efforts at improvement.

Where to start, where to start? Money. That's always a good place to start. I've had a dysfunctional relationship with money for my entire adult life. I've gone from boom to bust to boom to bust again. I've been broke, dead broke three times in my life. When I save, I save to the extreme. As a single man, I saved nearly forty percent of my income whenever I worked. I denied myself simple pleasures. The result was that I would go overboard. I would take breaks from work just like the "bits of retirement" that John D. MacDonald's character Travis McGee used to take. And I would spend all of the money that I had so carefully saved and invested.

Well, no more. I've got my own business now, so there is no reason for me to take little "bits of retirement" any more. I don't work for any one else. I work for myself. And my wife. We work for each other. I'll still need to save money, but I don't need to deny us the little pleasures in life. As long as we stay out of debt and put aside money for a rainy day and a retirement that may never come, I'll be a happy man.

Oh, and when I said I invested, I didn't say that I invested carefully. I didn't. Yeah, I did an okay job, but I really had too many mutual funds and too much duplication and not enough diversification. I had a slapped-together portfolio. I had no plan from the beginning. This time will be different. Just as I will be concentrating on the broad themes in my life, I will be concentrating on the broad themes of investing, I will not end up with a mish mash of mutual funds outside of retirement accounts. I will have a road map.

I will have a road map for my life, too. I will become a homeowner, if not this year, then next. I've been a renter my entire adult life. Heck, until I got married, I never even owned any furniture. Well, I've got furniture now and I'm looking for my own home to put it in. I'm a married man. Married men should have a little piece of the world that belongs to them. I want a little piece of the world that belongs to my wife and me. And spare me the nonsense that I would be crazy to get into real estate right now. Now is the only time in the last three years that it has made any sense to invest in real estate. But, I'm not going to invest in real estate; at least, not within the broad themes of my new life. I'm going to buy a home. There's a difference. And if you don't realize that there is a difference, then you may be one of those real estate investors who is underwater on a mortgage or two and may be the reason I will be able to buy a home at a seriously discounted price in the next year or so. Thank you.

See? It's a good thing I didn't resolve to be nicer to friends and strangers this year.

I'm going to enjoy life more. I really am. Instead of looking at all of the things that can go wrong, I'm going to take care of what I can control and do everything I can to look at all of the things that can go right. For one thing, I'm going to be younger this year. No, I'm not going to start digesting some miracle food or buy some miracle youth program off of the internet. Yes, I'm going to eat better and yes, I'm going to exercise more and yes, I'm going to take better care of myself. But that's not going to make me any younger. What will? It's so simple.

I'm going to stop being old. I'm smack-dab in the middle of the Boomer generation. Older than Sarah Palin. Younger than John McCain. Yet, nobody asked me to run for President, or Vice President, did they? Nooooooo. Well, no matter. See, I've been thinking old. I've been focusing on the myriad aches and pains that come with attaining the age of fifty and thereabouts. I've been focusing on what I can't do anymore physically. I've focused so much on what I can't do, that I've managed to convince myself that I can't do a whole bunch of other things that I know, or should know, that I can do.

So, I am not going to focus on what I can't do now that I am in my fifties. I'm going to focus on all of the things that I can do and all of the things that I want to do, now that I am in my fifties.

And that, my friend, means I'm going to have a great year with no regrets over broken resolutions.