Disarmed

So, today I arrived at a base where weapons are not authorized. After carrying in condition two (or sometimes three) every minute of every day (except in the shower, of course) for months it was odd to clear out the pistol, lock it up, and hand it over to the armorer.

For the first few weeks when I started carrying, I would just tell myself, "Baah, nothing bad will happen today" whenever I thought about walking out without my sidearm (and usually found myself doubling back and taking the 30 seconds to strap it on). You get used to carrying, like wearing a belt or carrying a wallet or putting on your glasses. So now its kind of jarring to step out -- I know that very likely nothing bad will happen today and that I'm in a guarded facility, but its just habit. So the change in routine is notable.

It also made me think about the difference between modern military service and historical norms. I'm pretty sure that a British naval officer in the age of sail wouldn't be caught without their saber, nor would a cavalry officer in the Napoleonic era part with their sidearm. However, on the flip side, governments have often been careful to swiftly disarm their returning veterans (look to ancient Roman history for this tradition -- and what happened when it was not adhered to!). Still, the sidearm is both a practical tool and a sign of authority and trust or a status symbol. It makes you think a bit about what a remarkable statement it was in the 18th century for the founding fathers to declare that every citizen was worthy to bear personal arms, not just a hereditary aristocracy, the elite military class, etc.

Saving Money

I think a big part of being a responsible person is being fiscally sound. If you are not financially solvent it leads to a whole bunch of problems. Its harder to keep your agreements (c.f. all the people walking away from mortages). It has career implications, especially for military and public servants -- bouncing checks is a serious issue. Money problems cause a lot of relationship issues. A lack of money also creates motivations to behave less than ethically and reduces your options to walk away from bad situations.

This is my big picture plan for saving money.

1) Set aside a 3 month emergency fund. Ensure you have adequete insurance.
2) Pay off all debts, highest interest rates first. Exception -- mortgages and maybe student loans can be retained.
3) Increase emergency fund as needed for your life circumstances, up to 6 months if appropriate. Consider increasing cash reserves on hand.
4) Invest surplus in appropriate vehicles.
-- Max out ROTH IRAs for retirement first (unless your employer matches contributions to something else).
-- Use risky, volatile investments for long term, safer and less risky vehicles for shorter time horizons.

Its pretty simple. The first step is setting aside money, though. We do this with a few techniques.

• Allotment to savings. A certain amount of money from our primary salary goes right into savings without us ever touching it. Its automatic, thus no risk of forgetting to ¨"pay ourselves" or of cheating. If your job won´t do this with your paycheck, your bank can probably set up a recurring transfer.
  
• Live off of one income. The second income goes direct to savings too, without us ever touching it. This is good because if one spouse is ever unemployed or underemployed it is not crippling.
  
• Pay down debt. Make at least 2x the minimum payment on the debt with the highest interest rate. Once that´s paid off, roll all the money that you were spending on that into the next highest debt. Eventually you have a whole lot of monthly cash flow that you can use to bolster the allotment to savings.
• Split raises. Whenever you get a raise, split the raise with yourself. Increase your allotment to savings by at least 50% of the amount of the raise.

If you can´t afford to even put aside somethign in an allotment, then you need to reexamine your lifestyle (reduce expenses) or improve your human capital, for example, by going to school so that your earning potential improves (increase income). I´m willing to bet that almost everyone can free up somethign for saving and paying down debt though with relatively little sacrifice. Look at recurring monthly expenses first (cable TV, extravagent cell phone plans, magazine subscriptions, etc), then at daily nickle and dime items (like that daily starbucks coffee). We actually give ourselves an allowance of cash every week to keep the nickle and diming under control.

I think its important to build up the emergency fund before paying down debt, because if you don´t, then you will just run up more debt the first time Murphy visits. Also, having three months of savings in the bank is a huge relief compared to living paycheck to paycheck which is good for reducing stress. Insurance goes in this category too -- the idea is to protect your fledgling nest egg from disaster, and renter´s insurance is cheap.

More later, but some other blogs I read were discussing these issues so I figured I´d chime in with my $0.02.

Hobbies

I've been thinking about hobbies lately. In my current location I have not had many distractions. No TV, no video games, etc. Yet, I have kept myself busy and entertained. I go running (which kills an hour, easy, once you throw in time to take a shower and such) almost every day. I play chess. I practice a foreign language. I read. I clean my weapons. I find all of these things enjoyable and relaxing.

It has made me think about hobbies and time. I feel like I have a lot of time out here because I am not wasting any commuting, having my soul sucked out by the TV, or playing video games. Even just coming home from work (20 mins), playing some video games to unwind (1 hour), and then watching TV after dinner (1.5 hours) is a huge time sink. That's 2.5 hours a day, or about a quarter of my non-work waking hours.

This isn't to say that I'll throw my big screen out when I return home (ESPN... college... gameday... can't... resist!). But I think I will tone down the time wasters significantly. If I have a choice between two activities, both of which are entertaining, but one of which is also productive, I should choose the latter. I used to do this all the time in the Sims video game when I made my Sims do fun tasks that they also learn from (like astronomy or playing chess to learn "science" skills). So why don't I apply this idea better in real life?

I think that we should try to cultivate hobbies that help us get to where we want to be in life. If a hobby doesn't contribute to a useful skill set (especially one you can use in work or for a side job) then you should reconsider the time and money investment. For example, you could collect beanie babies, but the same money and energy spent on photography or cooking or astronomy or gun collecting would be much more useful. Unless you want to be a professional beanie baby collector, the former hobby is not useful at all.

Now, if you are someone who only enjoys useless shit, then it sucks to be you. However, I think most of us can find useful or potentially useful hobbies.

An elaboration on usefulness of hobbies would be the inclusion of enlightening hobbies. I've focused a lot on the mechanical arts (cooking, weaving, building, etc), but the liberal arts are important too. Reading literature or playing music or studying history helps make us better citizens and well rounded human beings.

I think it'd be interesting to keep track of daily activities in a time diary for a week or two. See where all the time goes. I bet most people have at least two hours a day that just disappears, not to mention money. With a bit of effort and will, that time and energy could be refocused into something that either teaches a useful skill or helps you be a better person, AND is fun/relaxing. Research (Putnam) has shown that the biggest predictor of someone's social capital is time spent in front of the TV; I bet the same is true for skills and enlightenment as well.

I just don't have enough hours in the day to waste time constantly. Grossman writes in "On Combat" that warriors need to have warrior hobbies that they both enjoy and use to sharpen the sword. That is because warriors have jobs that are literally life or death. However, everyone who takes their work and goals seriously could live by this perspective too. Or, if you don't like your current work, get a hobby that develops skills that could lead to a new field.