It’s interesting to watch people react when I tell them I’m learning to play the guitar at age 44. Some folks are excited, but most people say something like: “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I have no talent for music.” I usually just nod my head and move the conversation along, but what I’m really …
Our lives are filled with fear. Some of our fears are physical. We’re afraid of spiders, snakes, and dogs. We’re afraid of heights, crowds, and enclosed spaces. We’re scared to jump out of airplanes (or even to fly in them), to go swimming, or to touch a drop of blood. We’re afraid we might be …
On Wednesday, I listed the eleven common irrational beliefs enumerated by Albert Ellis and Robert Harper in their book, A Guide to Rational Living. This book served as the launching point for a recent discussion at Ask Metafilter. RapcityinBlue asked, “What have you been wrong about, realized it, and it changed your life?” This question …
In college, I was a psychology major. I didn’t do anything directly with this education, although it provided a strong foundation for my financial philosophy while I was writing about personal finance. Over the past two years, however, I’ve begun to read (and re-read) certain popular psychological manuals from the past fifty years. Though pop …
As we begin our year-long exploration of personal and financial independence, I want to explain how I’ll approach the project. Every Monday, I’ll post a chapter from my unfinished ebook. I’ll publish these chapters in order so that, if read consecutively, they form a coherent whole, an overall narrative. Yesterday’s article about the regrets of …
For the next year at More Than Money, we’re going to have a conversation about how to obtain personal and financial independence. To begin, I want to talk about death. Australian singer-songwriter Bronnie Ware worked in palliative care for many years, spending time with men and women who were about to die. As she nursed …
As promised on Friday, More Than Money is about to become a real blog with useful information and instructive stories. After fifteen months as a sandbox, I have a plan for 2014. I’ve spent much of the past three months writing an ebook about personal finance. As part of that, I generated nearly 50,000 words …
The older I get, the less value I see in pursuing goals. Sure, it’s great to have something to work toward, and there are a variety of instances in which goals can be useful. But generally speaking, I’ve come to believe that setting goals is simply an attempt to create extrinsic motivation to accomplish something …