Happiness: The "cruise" part of financial cruise control

Regular visitors to these pages will know that  "financial cruise control" is what I'm after, and its about way more than money.  I find, not surprisingly, that it has three parts:

Financial -  the money part;

Cruise -      the fun and happiness part, and:

Control -    the strategic, conceptual part, the dialectics of life.

And why am I doing this?  I want loads of boodle?  No, actually.  I'm a control freak?  Not at all.

I'm doing this because I want to be happy in this, the springtime of my senescence (Gore Vidal).  So the middle part is, naturally enough, central to the whole project. 

The best way to find out exactly what it is that makes you happy, so you can get more of it?  Journaling, without question, or as we say today, blogging.

(Actually I still like the old kind, the blank book and pencil kind, and you just have to search "journaling" on Amazon to see how popular it is.  And as for googling or twitter-searching "happiness", oh boy!  We are all getting desperate.  And its not surprising when you think how much shopping we are all doing.  But I'm coming to that).

It turns out that journaling can not only help us find out what makes us happy, the very process of journaling itself produces happiness.

Read on:

If there is one thing you should do, its refresh your memory (or in my case, find out for the first time, can you believe?) what  Epicurus had to say about happiness.  He's is my man, and he lived in a commune, dude.  Way back then in 350 BC, or thereabouts.

He was the first (as far as we know), and he said it all, set the framework.  Everything since has just been details.

Photo downloaded from Flickr under Creative Commons License.  Snastopoulos

Epicurus believed we could all be happy, but are looking in the wrong place.  Contrary to popular belief he did not advocate self-indulgence.  He was more interested in frugality and quality: knowing what we really need.  Simple pleasures that really satisfy.  Or, to put it another way, financial cruise control.

That's the whole thing wrapped up, right there.

Epicurus felt that there are three requirements for happiness:-

1.   Friends: good companions, constant communication and interaction among people who like and support each other.  Absolutely.

2.   Freedom.  Don't worry, not the eagle and gun kind: it means not keeping up with the Jones's, which gives you freedom from financial worries.  Doing your own thing.  Modest pleasures.  Simple pleasures, Affordable luxuries.  Self-sufficiency even.  This is actually the hardest one of the three to achieve, thanks to recreational shopping and the advertising that drives it.

And finally, get this ....

3.   An Analysed Life.  In other words, journaling, blogging, the lovely process of stepping back, taking stock, reflecting on what matters, thinking about "your place in the family of things" (Mary Oliver).   What a brilliant guy.

So the first thing you gotta do, as soon as you have about 10 minutes to spare, is click right here and watch this totally brilliant vid. about Epicurus and his ideas about financial cruise control.

And I'm going to keep right on trucking with this little blog of mine, which led me to Epicurus (better late than never), and I have to say is making me very  ..........   happy.

And I'm also working on all that other stuff.  Definitely.

So come back soon to see what I find out, but while your here, why not subscribe or share this blog, or become a follower (right there in the side-bar) ?

And meanwhile, here are some simple epicurean pleasures to enjoy, from Epicurus' birthplace in Samos, Greece:

A simple pleasure  

Downloaded from Flickr under Creative Commons License  Vtveen.

Another simple pleasure   

Downloaded from Flickr under Creative Commons License  Vtveen

And yet another simple pleasure. 

Downloaded from Flickr .  angelsgermain.

You see, its not so difficult.

And you don't have to go to Samos.  Here is simple pleasure right in my own back yard last Spring.

And don't forget this one (See Duality in the Archive)

Income Generation on Cruise Control

Zen Capitalist lives in San Franscisco.  He's an options trader, and he tweets and blogs on all things financial, but in a cosmic way.  He calls options trading "income generation on cruise control".

That's what I want, put my financial life on cruise control.  Should I become an options trader?  I checked it out.

I don't think so.  For starters Zen Capitalist is twenty-something, which is a distant memory to me, and so he has plenty of time to lose it and make it all back again, and he says he has done that three times already. Me, I don't have that option.

Secondly he probably has a huge pot of gold there somewhere, and thirdly it looks like he knows what he's talking about in the financial arena, and I don't think it gives him toe-curl (see below).  He has some pretty cool tips and stuff on his site.

But I do want that financial cruise control, on a shoestring. Any ideas?

I'm looking for a financial advisor

And it's scaring me to death. This is where I have to remember to think positive, which is actually my default mode.

Let's face it, I'm finance phobic.

I should never go near a balance sheet, and as for financial planning, it gives me toe-curl, along with tax preparation.  Here is a picture of my desk.

See how organised I am?  See how much coffee I drink?  See the spreadsheets scattered around?


Here's Sophie helping out.  She's way more excited about this than I am.

But this is serious folks.  It'll take a wizard to squeeze more value out of my tiny little nest-egglet, but there's not much time to make any more mistakes, so a wizard is what I need.

So where to start?  I've never done this.  It feels like I'm staring into an abyss of shame, and the powers that be are sitting in judgement.

Click image for a full sense of the faceless, nameless terror that I feel.

I have a serious case of inferiority.  These guys are real players, man, dealing in millions:  how can I interest them in my little problem?  How can I reveal that I have been so incredibly gauche as to have got this far and have so little boodle?

Well for starters, I think I'll pay by fee, not commission.  Frankly there is not much commission potential in my little pot, and there's something about a fee that get's attention, that levels out the playing field a bit.  A bit more expensive?  Yes, but if it helps to get me that wizard I am looking for, its an affordable luxury.

Second, maybe there is someone out there who actually likes dealing with small amounts, working real magic, I mean like pulling money out of thin air.

I got a personal recommendation to the Co-op Financial Services, which was really good, very reasonable and certainly not snooty or intimidating, and I set up a new pension plan, which was what I needed at the time.  Actually I love the Co-op, and it really is getting its act together in a 21st century kind of way, so I'll probably do a post on it later (really, check this out, and if you have time, this too).

But right now I need someone to hold my hand in an on-going way, to look into my eyes and and help me through this, fairly comprehensively.

I tried the yellow-pages and the web-listings, such as unbiased.com, which was on the Beeb, so it must be OK.  But even though I love the web, I'm not fully with it yet:  it just doesn't seem the right way to get going on the most important relationship of my life.  After all, this is the first time.

Anyway, I got the most useful and comprehensive UK information from the Financial Services Authority, which I suppose is as it should be, while there are tons of financial blogs out there, such as The Digerati Life and  Zen Capitalist.  These have loads to say and good places to start.  Not so well developed in the UK, but the media company Cision put together a list of the top 10.  Perhaps I should just go back to the Co-op and see if they will hold my hand.

But in the end I'll probably do my usual thing, which is to walk into a few offices around here, and see if I like the receptionist.

The graphic is by Winsor McCay, 1930, uploaded to Flickr under Creative Commons by Alan Light 

Kiss goodbye to Sky TV

This is mainly for the limeys, although others may appreciate the sentiment.

Don't give any more of your precious money to that jackanape Rupert Murdoch, who has plenty to be getting on with, and gives such shocking service for the monthly payments he takes off us (so easy to open an account, so hard to close it).

Plus, in my humble opinion, Sky News, along with bed-mate Fox TV, is exceptionally economical with the truth.

Now, I know I'm showing my age here (see "how not to act old" in my blog list), but I only watch the terrestrial channels, and these are not only better, they are free.  All the other channels are pretty much full of trivia, sit-coms and general mental rubbish and pollution, in my jaded view (except for the Simpsons, and the Dog Whisperer), so why pay for them?  You may well ask.

What would I miss?   The news channels of course, especially Al Jazeera, which is truly fabulous.  But there is plenty of news on the terrestrial channels, and on the internet now, so that's sorted.

The only thing I really will miss is recording, and speeding through the ads.  It feels like the dark ages now not to be able to record, and giving that up goes right up against my principle of forging ahead on all fronts technologically.  But I think its a reasonable compromise if it gets me out of the clutches of Skye TV.

Especially as I can check out freecycle to see if I can pick up a digital recorder.

Earlier today I googled  "television" with "I feel Lucky", and what did I get?   You guessed it, Sky TV home page.  Don't waste your time.  Its freaking everywhere.

s