OK, I'm about done with blogging, at least with Radio. Most recently it got into a state where my News Aggregator page rendered OK, but there was no action associated with the form, so clicking "Delete" to delete the checked items did nothing. I was totally unable to resolve the issue. Upon previous occasions of difficulty with Radio I've blown up, recanted, then packed up my databases and sent them to Userland... and heard nothing. This time I just trashed my Radio Userland folder, downloaded a fresh copy, fed it my usernum and password, reset my prefs, and just subscribed to a minimal set of channels. Oh, and switched themes. This will be my last attempt; one more misstep and Déjà Vu goes dark for good. I haven't got time for the pain.
Speaking of pain, the only reason I'm posting at all is because of David McCusker's plaintive notes about money:
I've been rotten company because I've been miserable about money. If I don't watch for it, someone spends it for me, and I have to worry. It can get to the point where it ruins your life if you just let it happen. But if you spend a lot of time tracking it closely, it eats your life again. I make enough that I shouldn't have to pay attention. So this sucks.
There's only one way out of this trap: get to the point where you no longer have to work for money; instead, money is working for you. It's going to take commitment and resolve. My wife and I are at the very beginning of this path ourselves, dusting ourselves off from too many short-lived dot-com gigs that left us living off of our savings and starting over... and over... and over again. We finally feel like we have some stability, have paid down almost all of our outstanding debt, and are thinking about what kind of financial future we want.
To that end, I've started studying money a bit. I'm far from an expert, and I'm only beginning to put any of this into practice, but with that caveat, here are some titles that are looking most useful to me:
I'd say these are in roughly descending order of priority to read. Gillette Edmunds' "Retire Early," in particular, is very methodical, step-by-step, treating the whole issue as a particular type of math problem, albeit one fraught with emotional and psychological issues. But he cuts through what I think is the biggest problem for most people, namely their doubts about their own capability to understand the process, and makes it easy to feel that, hey, anyone can execute on this stuff.
It's unlikely that Robert Kiyosaki's work needs introduction. Suffice it to say that he also takes a very direct approach to the subject. He's a somewhat more plain writer than Edmunds, somehow more homespun. This probably reflects the fact that Edmunds was a professional financial reporter and Kiyosaki was not. Differing styles aside, it's nice to see the extent to which the two authors' advice parallels the other. That builds confidence in the validity of the advice.
Finally, "Die Broke" is a gem, particularly if, like me, you inherited a lot of somewhat outmoded notions about finances from your Depression-era parents, bless their hearts, who grew up and dealt with finances under considerably different circumstances than we have.
I have at least a dozen more books on money, but I'm starting with these, and so far, I recommend them, not just to David, but to everyone. I'm most interested in any comments anyone else might have on the subject of fulfilling the goal of becoming financially independent, too. Let's learn together, shall we?
10:07:02 PM 
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