Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.

From the movie The Color of Money

I was talking to a friend, Frank, earlier today and told him that he could begin planning on how he would be spending his $11…

It was sometime in late 2007 or early 2008 when I told him I would be gone by Summer ‘08. He scoffed and said I wasn’t going anywhere. I just shrugged and told him “You’ll see.” I don’t remember whose idea it was but the “You’ll see” turned into a “You wanna bet?” A brief handshake later and there was a ten dollar bill saying I was going to be gone by August 8th, 2008 (8/8/8).

Now this Frank thinks he’s pretty cute and would enjoy teasing me by telling me his grand plans for the $10. My normal reaction was to just smile my knowing smile because that poor man would soon be 1,000 cents poorer. However one day things got a little heated, if he wanted to be Mr. Confident then let’s see him put his money where mouth is! I suggested a ten percent increase in the bet!! That’s right friends: $11. With reckless disregard for his retirement my poor sap of a friend shook on this increased bet.

Fast forward to today and guess who ends up being the poor sap? I’ll give you a hint: he spends too little time working on the house and too much time blogging about what he could be doing if he ever worked on the house. =) So as I admitted the upcoming I explained that although I will most likely miss the 8/8/8 deadline there is no way I’ll be living in San Antonio when 2009 rolls around.

“Pssh, yeah right.” was Frank’s reply.

“No, this is a guarantee.” I stated firmly.

At this point Frank encouraged me to put my “money where [my] mouth is.”

“Fifty bucks!” I offered with my hand stretch out to shake on our new bet.

“How about five hundred dollars?” Frank asked.

So this is how he wanted to play it. He was calling me out. Frank thinks I’m bluffing, huh? Well time will tell whether or not I’m bluffing. But one thing we all know right now is that I am, without question, stupid. After making sure he was serious we shook on it. $500 to be gone by year’s end.

So there it is. Either my leaving has just gotten $489 sweeter ($500 minus the $11 I’ll lose on 8/8/8), or I’ve been called out for being all show and no go. So I guess after spending eight days without working on a single thing in my house, it’s now time to get back to it.

In my continued effort to declutter my life I’ve decided to join paperbackswap. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s worth checking out if you’re an avid book reader. Put simply, it allows you to list all of the books you’re willing to part with. If someone wants one of your books you send it to them (you pay shipping). In exchange you get a “credit” which entitles you to request a book from someone else. It’s a neat concept, I’ll find out how well it’s executed in the coming days / weeks.

To start with I’ve posted 25 books. I think that I immediately received 4 requests (I’m still figuring this out).

Since this involves actually mailing books to other members people will see your name & address. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this. However since I’ll be selling my house soon enough I figure I’ll at least give it a try.

I’ll let you know how it goes. =)

As I’ve been moving along trying to plan out what I’ll need to do post house-sale I’ve started looking at renting a truck. I figured I would pack my junk up, throw my car on a tow dolly, and head up to Portland, OR. Once there I would put all of the aforementioned junk into storage and then figure things out from there. I started by looking at the Uhaul trucks, and the more I looked the more I started thinking that maybe this isn’t my best option.

Let’s look at some of the math behind this:

Addition

I started with the assumption that I would use a 14′ truck. Uhaul’s website allows you to get an instant quote (Kudos to Uhaul! Penske, are you listening???) so within moments I had the numbers. The rental of the truck would be $718. Add the car dolly ($96) and San Antonio sales tax ($71.23) and I’m at $885.23. Now here’s the kicker: I still have to fill up the tank.

Uhaul claims that their 14′ truck gets 10 mpg. I asked google what sort of real-world fuel econonmy I could expect but I couldn’t find any answers. So I’ve made some assumptions. I assume that 10 mpg is the best fuel economy possible. In other words, I assume the 14′ truck will get 10 mpg when it’s empty, with the wind at it’s back, going 55mph downhill, being driven by a midget who weights 85 pounds. Fill up the truck and put a tow dolly on the back and drive 65-70 mph and I’m assuming that I can expect the fuel economy to be cut in half.

So $4 per gallon going 2300 miles at 5 mpg gives us $1,840. Add that to the above rental costs and it will cost me $2,725.23 just to get up there. Driving my Civic will cost me $287.50 in gas. Therefore not renting a truck will save me $2,437.73.

But wait! There’s more savings yet! I’m still not sure if I’ll be going straight to Portland or what. But the assumed plan involves dumping all my stuff in storage for some amount of time. Let’s assume that I’ll store for 2 months. Renting a large storage unit two months will run me about $150 / month (I’m guessing). Then when I move into an apartment I’ll need to rent a truck again: rental + mileage + gas will cost me an estimated $50. So savings is now up to $2,800-ish.

Subtraction

At this point I began to wonder. How much is my stuff even worth? I figured I for sure own over $3,000 worth of junk, but how much over? Then I took it a step further. Let’s forget what the value of my stuff is, but what exactly would “replacement value” be?

If I’m going to try to be more a minimalist in Life 2.0, then that means I’m going to get rid of a portion of my belongings. So when I look at replacement value (RV), anything I wouldn’t replace would have have an RV of $0. My treadmill cost me about $700 when I bought it, but if I don’t plan to replace it the RV is nill.

Another way to lower the RV of my goods is by replacing them with cheaper crap. =) If my intention is to survive 4 years on a budget and at the same time trying a more minimalistic lifestyle then there’s no reason I need to replace my stuff with equivalent-level stuff. Of my 4-piece bedroom set I only really need 1 piece. My fancy real-wood bookcase in my office can get functionally replaced by a $40 bookcase at Target. My weight bench (which I love) can be replaced with a set of dumbbells and some creative exercises.

Imaginary numbers

But in the end, even after adjust the value of belongs for using RV instead of worth I’m still over $3,000. But not everything has a monetary value. If I were to actually get rid of almost everything I have I will gain several things:

• I will be much more free to move around and dilly-dally my way up to Portland. I could make the trip it’s own vacation. This may be enough of a vacation and I won’t feel the need to take some trip somewhere else in the world to unwind before officially beginning 2.0.
• This would be the ultimate fresh start. I couldn’t make my life any more of a blank page aside from moving to a new country and using a fake name.
• If I did decide to jump around for a while it would continue to save me money (no storage) the longer it took me to settle back down.
• If I’m going to try minimalism, isn’t that easier to do if you start with almost nothing?
• This would add to the adventure (and possibly stupidity) of what I’m doing.

And this equals?

At the start of this, I really hoped that somehow this would be economically advantageous. That’s not the case. But as I pointed out above, there are other advantages that come with going in this direction. I’m not yet sure what I’ll decide, but I’m finding myself leaning towards this direction more & more. As I’m cleaning my house and organizing / boxing things up I sometimes feel like I’m drowning in all that I’ve accumulated.

At this point in my life I’m more interested in asking questions and imagining possibilities than making firm decisions. Sometime in the near future though, I’ll have to decide on which approach I should take. In the end, I’ll go with whatever my gut-feeling tells me is best.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

-John F. Kennedy

You know I don’t pretend to be overly patriotic. I don’t say the pledge of allegiance. My knowledge of American history is probably on par with an average 3rd grader. But I have to admit, there was something about getting the passport and reading it that made me feel a little more American.

My passport is 28 pages long and each set of two pages has a quote on it that somehow relates to the U.S.. It’s pretty inspiring. I mean, look at that quote up there by JFK! That’s some sweetness with just the right amount of kick-your-ass.

Another of the quotes was the start of the Declaration of Independence. The one that says every human being has certain unalienable rights. Yeah, unalienable. These include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Anyone raised in this country has heard this one about a billion times. But have you ever taken a moment to really think about them? I mean take a moment to truly let it sink in. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. Unalienable.

Unalienable: Not to be separated, given away, or taken away. How many of us have given up on one or more these rights? I know that I’ve lost sight of all three.

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.

-Voltaire

These last few months have been pretty interesting. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but at some point the way I viewed my life shifted. For over a year now I’ve been a guy living this life in San Antonio looking forward to some unknown future life. But at some point in recent history I’ve become (in my head) that future guy merely living out the final days of his past life. That may not make sense, but it’s the best explanation I’ve got.

Now I don’t know if it’s coincidence, a bi-product of this subconscious change in attitude, or merely an omen from the Gods of Olympus but these last few months have been excellent. One of my complaints of “Life 1.0″ is that my social life has dried up. Recently people are coming out of the woodwork and I’ve had, at times, too many social events to attend them all. Suddenly people are wanting to hang out again; and that’s pretty awesome.

Add to this that in the last 3 months I’ve gone on dates with just as many girls. Three girls in three months isn’t breaking any records but again, things have been pretty dry in this area for too long.

To top it off I’ve been spending more time with my neighbors (Beasy & company) and feel more & more attached to them.

Now I’ll be honest with you. There are things about the upcoming “Life 2.0″ jump that scare me. I fear things like running out of money, being miserable in my new place, or traveling abroad only to find it a complete waste of time. Yeah there are things I fear, but that fear hasn’t brought about doubt. I guess this is due to my refusal to allow fear to influence my life.

However where fear has failed to bring about doubt, friendship has succeeded. I know so many good people. There are more people in San Antonio that I care about than any place or any time in my life. You want doubt? Here it is: I don’t know that I’ll ever find so many wonderful people again in one place. People who are caring, or fun, or crazy, or maybe some of all of the above.

I don’t think I’ll ever grieve too deeply about walking away from my job, or selling my house, or spending my life savings on some crazy trips. But there is a sincere possibility that I’ll look back one day and wonder how I said goodbye to these people.

Big decisions generate big doubt and life will continue to litter our paths with what-ifs. All we can do is try to make the right choices along the way. Time will tell if my choice was well made…