Vacation Home to Speed up FI/RE?

Before the days of the Fat FI/RE movement that headline would have seemed like blasphemy. I say the notion of a second home in the context of the Financial Independence movement is a rare fringe, but I am here to make the case that, for a % of us in this movement, purchasing a vacation home is the best use of our resources and could even accelerate your FI/RE date. It’s going to take some work, research, energy and effort but it can be done and it can be done A LOT cheaper than you think.

Our FI/RE journey was built on investing capital aggressively in businesses and opportunities regardless of geography with very few limitations. This has led us to our current position of owning 3 businesses that operate in 17 states and internationally, 4 rental properties in 3 states and family far away from our primary residence. We have kids, dogs, equipment to work remotely, etc. We travel heavy and FI/RE dad has enough committments that I need to be able to connect on a regular basis. Those are the logical reasons to consider a second home somewhere near some of the items listed. It so happens that the most time consuming business and lots of family are all within a 150 mile radius.

The icing on the 2nd home cake is that I built an Event’s Consulting business on the back of travel. Lots and lots of travel that took me to multiple countries and 30+ states every calendar year. It will take decades before I willingly want to spend a vacation in a hotel. Air Travel and hotels are not things I associate with fun and that is just a product of being a million mile traveler before the pandemic of 2020. It’s been 15 months since I’ve been on a plane and if I never had to fly again I’d be happy.

Everything seems logical, but from the lens of FI/RE it seems illogical to buy a second home just so you can keep working. Looking at current real estate prices the most modest home in the cheapest places in the US are at least $100,000. The time it takes to earn that extra capital plus maintenance should outweigh any potential savings so much that there is no way it could actually speed up FI/RE?
This is fundamentally a math equation where the purchase needs to directly contribute to an increase in earnings or reduce future expenses enough to offset the initial outlay of capital. Turns out, that math isn’t as difficult as it sounds if you’re willing to spend the time and energy. Let’s look at our costs:

$55,000 – Cost of 2br/1b cabin on 1 acre
$5,500 – Initial repairs
$1,250 – furnishings

$61,750 – One time investment

Annual costs

$1,200 – Utilities
$2,100 – Tax and federal land lease
$1,500 – repairs fund

$4,800 – Annual expenses

The vacation home we purchased is a cabin with central air, heat, plumbing on a national wildlife preserve. it is 25 miles away from my retail business and 30 miles away from 3 of our rental properties with a ton of family in easy driving distance.

Given the opportunity we would spend 6-8 weeks each year in this general area either working on our investments, visiting family and now, vacationing. The cost of lodging for us on the vacation home market would be enormous (we were estimating $7-8,000/yr) and would easily exceed the annual expenses of the cabin each year which helps pay off the principal investment from year 1.

Did you know that the federal government owns tons and tons of land? Did you also know that this land has been leased out to citizens for over 100 years? These programs are extremely cost effective ways to enjoy some of the most beautiful parts of America, having access to a second home and helping to protect and preserve public land.

Going through the 10 month process of applying for a lease I learned that these applications are dropping by my generation and younger. The programs are hard to learn about, there is little information online and most of the process is paper and phone calls.

The goal of this post is not to try to convince everyone they need to lease public land. Rather to give another concrete example of what my blog is all about. The tagline of this blog is “A Frugal Life of Luxury” and I can’t think of a better example than buying and maintaining a vacation home for less money than hotel stays.

Here are some photos from the first 36 hours we had the cabin.

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Setting yourself up for post FI/RE success – Setting Goals

If you are a consumer of Financial Independence content on a regular basis then you can’t ignore that there has been a MASSIVE uptick in the people who have really struggled 2-5 years into their retirement. 

It makes sense though, depending on how you measure the growth of this movement, there is no denying that it has grown to a scale no one imagined. It’s also been around long enough that there is a sizable population that has been early retired for some large chunks of their lives. Nearly all of the earliest FI bloggers have been retired for years and many of them decades. Some of them are starting to admit online that they got slapped in the face that “money doesn’t buy happiness” still applies if you live frugally. People need a purpose.

I follow plenty of the bloggers who have been varying levels of happy and content with their choices, but the takeaway that I heard “was that burning your life energy away to reach that FIRE finish line at all costs is a miserable decision and might even be worse than the “normal” folk who work until 63”. I also took away that nearly everyone who seemed happiest among the FIRE Giants out there is that they all had some form of meaningful pastime that they pursued very purposefully. 

The fear of the post FI regret was all too real for me and in searching for guidance on that issue I found the Die With Zero book I wrote about. Elements of that book are exactly what I needed to guide my decisions with less than 5 years to go until our FIRE date. 

Invest in hobbies and interests I’ve always been interested in. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what would produce the most happiness in our family compared to actual dollar costs. Here is the current list to achieve:

1. Spend as many clear nights as possible looking at the stars, when covid ends, reach out to astronomy groups, clubs and observatory in walking distance, consider volunteering there. I’ve spent too many years wanting to study astronomy and it’s so silly I never have. That stops; it’s time to live more intentionally.
2. Invest in my health to ensure I never am the slow leg when taking our family on adventures.
3. Show our children as much of the US as possible, every national park at the very least, and hopefully for months or years at a time. Anything is on the table to achieve this. 
4. Increase our knowledge of homesteading, including doubling our growing capacity in the next two seasons.

11pm

Some of these are personal and others are shared goals of our entire family. I expect that when we reach FI/RE and are truly comfortable while being able to achieve these goals that we will be giving our children a better childhood than anyone I’ve ever met experienced. 

In the end, all of these goals point back to the only goal that really matters. To make sure we give our children the best life we possibly can.

Budgets are stupid, exhausting and need to die

Budgets are the worst lie being told by the personal finance industry. People like Dave Ramsey are happy to sell you a shitload of useless products to budget more effectively. All you have to do is pay him some money for those products and he promises he will save you even MORE money back!

If you’re brand new to the concept of how money works then sure, budgeting is a great form of training wheels. Once you have a basic understanding of saving, investing and Money 101 then budgeting is a colossal waste of time and resources. How is budgeting still a thing that is being sold to people in the FI/RE community? 

Over the years I have tried every budgeting approach you can think of. I kept trying different approaches and then always giving up or failing. The reason I kept going back was I would fail then end up reading some blogger or article about how budgeting is the number one key to financial success! Turns out, that’s all bullshit.

When you look at ways to simplify your life you’ll want to look put the magnifying glass on every way you spend time each day. After multiple failed attempts at budgeting I was trying again. Putting each item I had bought in a spreadsheet to figure out how much I spent, trying to figure out how to categorize some random purchase and I realized this is a colossal waste of time. Don’t believe me? These are Dave Ramsey’s top 10 signs you need to spend MORE TIME on your budget.

1. You’re constantly worrying about money emergencies.
2. You use the same exact budget each month. 
3. You aren’t tracking purchases.
4. You don’t have a budget line for giving. 
5. You overspend in one category. A lot.
6. You forget annual expenses. 
7. You need space for a new budget line item. 
8. You aren’t budgeting to zero. 
9. You just hit a Baby Step milestone. 
10. Your budget doesn’t line up with your money goals. 
11? You Need to Refresh Your Budget by Season 

How many hours a month am I supposed to dedicate to this bullshit? I have to spend every single dollar before the month begins……why?

Here is what I do now and I have done for the last several years. It takes almost no tracking, no line items, no seasonal budget adjustments and it maximizes our savings.

FireDad’s budget approach:

1. Automate all your savings and investments
2. Spend less that what’s left in your account
3. Don’t waste money on stupid shit

There you go! If you follow the patented FireDad budget not only will you not stress about your zero balanced budget, you won’t think about budgeting at all! Even better there are no envelope systems to buy, no software, no step by step books, this budget can fit on a sticky note you attach to your credit card and can sit in your wallet unaltered for years like that expired condom.

Stop wasting time on worthless tasks that over complicate life.

Cheap TVs are amazing

If there is one thing a dad is good at it’s spotting a deal and Firedad is no exception. Gather round kids, it’s story time.

I graduated high school around the same time as the television revolution. The time when flat screen and plasma TVs were just starting to become good enough, light enough and affordable enough that the average family could afford the technology. My roommate a few years later actually purchased a 50” plasma when she got a really good paying job and we all thought it was the tops. From then until about two years ago the technology kept getting better and cheaper with us reaching the point now where shit is insanely cheap and the tech has pretty well flattened. Sure the newest and best is slightly better, but entry level is worlds better than what we had in the 2000s.

Go on Amazon right now and you’ll find a fully functioning smart TV with Roku 50” for $225. Once you start getting huge the prices go back up (cheapest 75” I found is $750).
The highlight here is a 50” fully functioning smart TV with incredible picture quality for $225! This is the point where a salesman would tell you that those are “old” technology and you really want the QLED or curved or ultrathin or whatever new thing is out. The truth is that society has reached the point where “old” TV technology is awesome. 

They are so cheap!

At this price we added one to our guest room and bedroom. I’ve been thinking about adding one  to the patio as well. The convenience to watch YouTube videos anywhere or stream Netflix in the background for so cheap is unlike any other point in history. 

The next TV related thing to do is to drop your shitty and overpriced cable package. Cable television is a cancer on society and the sooner you can get  away the better. Our televisions show shockingly little TV. We sometimes stream old shows at night, but mostly it’s wonderful background videos, movies or YouTube tutorials. It’s very convenient to have a large screen streaming a cooking step-by-step as you’re working in the kitchen.

One last thing. It’s not a deal if you don’t need it or want it. Just because I’m saying these things are a great value does not mean you should get one unless you have a use for it. Nothing you pay money for is a good deal if you didn’t need it.

Now hand me the clicker.

A showroom quality car wash for less than $1.00

I still remember being a little kid and my grandpa driving through a full service car wash. We got to walk through and watch the car get blasted with these funny colored foams and then blasted with fans loud enough that conversation was impossible. I could just stare in awe as the army of guys armed with towels coming out of every pocket descended on the car and began wiping every surface. It was then and still is an impressive display of luxury in our world. For around $25 today you can experience this at your closest full service car wash. The one near me ranges from $25 – $45 for a much more clean and luxurious experience. These places do a great job, but what if you could get an even better looking car at the end and spend next to nothing? You might even get a little tan or some stronger muscles out of the deal.

Here is how my grandpa used to wash his cars before a parade. He built the cars himself from junk yard parts. When he washed the cars for parade day he was gonna make sure they were as close to perfect as they could, but also making sure he didn’t have to spend any more money than was necessary.

1930 Ford my grandpa built from a junk yard – also some very cool 90s teenagers

Here is your arsenal of consumables:

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Consumables

• Wheel & Tire cleaner – anything that says degreases will do, get whatever is cheapest and on sale from your local auto parts store or online. I have a 64oz bottle I refill a spray bottle with. It has lasted more than a year at a price of $14.00
• Wash fluid – Get the best price per ounce on a foaming concentrate wash fluid mine was another 64oz that typically lasts about one year washing three cars regularly. $6.49
• Tire Shine foam – I always buy the No Touch brand just because my dad always did. This stuff is not necessary but does a great job on the final finish; it makes such a difference that it’s clearly one of the secrets to making cars look new. One can lasts 8 months on three vehicles – $6.99

One time purchases/acquisitions:

• Microfiber towels – Get a bunch, 20 or so that are bought in bulk packages. I’ve found Costco and Autozone to make the best 3-10 packs. Also get 3-5 larger and much more high quality versions. When you are shopping for these you are looking for fluffy feeling and the packaging to say “finish”.
• 5 gallon buckets – I use 4 buckets, but that’s just because I have 2 that are permanently stuck together and one is my chair for when I’m doing wheels. You’ll be fine with 2 that are new or at least very clean inside.
• Wheel brush kit – Just get a generic one, make sure the brush fits between your wheels and has bristles on all sides.

Here is the process – Let’s call it the clean bucket system.
The idea of this system is to never let a dirty towel touch the clean water or clean towels.

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  Wash bucket

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  Dry bucket

• Fill your wash bucket with whatever the recommended amount on the container says and add water until ½ full (2.5 gallons)
• Add your ¾ of your bulk microfiber towels and mix very well
• Give your vehicle a gentle rinse to get any easy dust off (optional if you are in extremely limited space, you’ll just use more towels is all)
• The towels should be pretty saturated at this point. Take 1 towel and begin scrubbing your car down. When it starts to feel like the towel has run out of soap and water mix then throw that towel in the dry bucket. Repeat this step until you have scrubbed all surfaces of the car, including the door jams
• Rinse as needed, I live in a very dry place so typically I break this up into 4 equal parts during the whole process.
• Scrub any foreign particles aggressively with the soapy towel until they come off. 
• After you have washed and rinsed you’ll need to start drying. Use the remaining bulk microfiber towels for this job and add them to the dry bucket.
• Grab your clean, higher quality microfibers and wipe down all surfaces after the car is fully dry. (This is a crucial step if you want showroom quality)

If you lived in a place without access to a hose that can reach your vehicle this process still works with an additional bucket that is just full of water and a few extra towels. Your rinse process is using a clean and wet towel to rinse the soap off.

Alright so now the body of the car looks like brand new and you’ve spent nothing other than a small amount of water and a small amount of consumables. At this point most wash cycles you are done. However, when you are really going for that parade look you can’t leave those wheels with all that road and brake dust can you?

Here is how you get your wheels to be admired:

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• Wet the wheels, I will usually use the remaining wash bucket and equally dump it on all the wheels, careful to splash too much on the body or you’ll need to wipe that down.
• Hit the wheels with the Wheel & Tire cleaner – do a good coat including inside of the wheel.
• Go clean up – The cleaner needs to do its job and now is a perfect time to put your wash stuff away. (keep 2 towels very wet with the wash solution)
• After 3 minutes or more your wheels will be ready for your 2 Tire Towels. Get in there and make sure you touch every surface you can with mild to medium force. Each wheel should take you at least 2 minutes. If it’s been awhile you may need more towels and a little more time.
• Spray the wheel down with water to remove all the excess grime
• Wipe any areas you missed now that the water did its job
• When the tires dry spray on a thin layer of the Tire Shine Foam. Let dry
• Once everything is totally dry go back and wipe the wheels (not tires) down with a dry microfiber

This is everything you need to make your car look like you spent $25+ on a car wash when in reality you spent around $1, got a decent workout and have a pride of ownership that you did it yourself.

The final product

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Building Raised Garden Beds – Efficiently

It’s no secret that our family dreams of a homestead where we grow our own food, raise our own animals and live a life more connected to our planet. These goals are very real for us and we plan to pull the trigger at full FI/RE in the next 3-5 years. In the meantime while we cannot have that full dream today we can take steps to learn in the kiddy pool before jumping in the ocean.

One of the big projects I wanted to do was figure out an affordable way to build raised garden beds. I’ve seen tons of people spend a lot of time on craigslist and get free materials. That is absolutely wonderful that you can do that. I, however, do not have the time and energy to track all that down. I also live about an hour away from most of civilization so it’s gonna be a big journey and then dealing with the craigslist curse that 50% of the time the deal dies or is gone when you get there when it involves free. Free is best, but my time has value and I wanted the project to be efficient and affordable. 

Instead of sourcing the materials on craigslist or facebook market I went to our local lumber yard. I made sure to not go to a chain, but the one that is locally owned and asked if they had any 1 bys that were warped or damaged that the contractors didn’t want. Sure enough I got a sizable discount on some slightly warped or damaged wood.

The next step in the process is to get some food safe stain since this lumber is not treated there needs to be some layer of protection from the elements and the soil it’s going to hold back. I know the research says that all wood stain is food safe when it’s fully cured but it’s only about $2 more for my entire project to get the food safe stain. Even if it’s an unnecessary precaution it’s just so cheap that you might as well. 

The other benefit of buying from a lumber yard is that they cut everything exactly to my drawings. I wanted my beds to be 3’x6’, two boards tall with cedar fence posts at 18” at 6 points. I was able to have a professional with a bad ass saw make all my cuts for this project in all of three minutes. Here is the picture of the finished product. I added shelves from some scraps to mount the greenhouse (we are already close to our first frost). 

Total cost of the project, including the 3.5″ deck screws that will last me a year
$109

Not bad considering that built three 3’x6’ garden beds and I have deck screws to last many other projects. On Homedepot.com you can purchase a 3’x6’ raised garden bed kit for $93.46 plus shipping and tax. That one appears to have no additional reinforcements whereas mine has the cedar fence posts which was a large % of the total budget. 

Do it yourself to save a bunch of money, have some pride and satisfaction that you designed  and built something for yourself then go use your savings to buy you and your sweetie an ice cream cone.

Here are the instructions if you wanted to copy what I did.

To make 1 bed
6 – posts – Cedar fence posts cut to 18″ each
4 – plywood, pine, cedar, whatever, just thin and 3′ long
4 -plywood, pine, cedar, whatever, just thin and 6′ long

Position the cedar posts flush with the 3′ boards and begin drilling decking screws from the outside into the cedar posts. 6 screws in a rectangle on each board will be more than sturdy.

In the middle of the 6′ boards screw the cedar posts to both the sidewall boards. Continue fastening the cedar posts to all sides and you’re ready to fill with soil!

We have a long way to go until we are growing 80% of our food, but these first steps of sustainability will provide for us on a small scale until we are ready to fully commit and will also teach us valuable skills and lessons that are much less costly on a small scale then when you are planting on a 50x scale.

The Seltzer Experiment

I like to think I buck the norms and pave my own path. At the end of the day my wife and I are millennials and with that I suppose some stereotypes are true. We are addicted to seltzer. Like most of you that share this affliction you likely tried a Sodastream at some point. After all the machine seems much cheaper than just buying seltzer in cans from the supermarket. After the Sodastream started to seem a little too expensive and annoying to change out the tiny canisters I figured that if this company is packaging such an easy concept that there must be a more  direct way.

From my research the cheapest way to get seltzer is to make it yourself,  but you have to get your gas supply at  your local gas supplier, a company like Airgas. 

There are quite a few levels you can take from here depending on how much work you want to put in up front. Our setup is pretty basic. It’s a 20lb CO2 tank attached to a regulator with removable caps that attach to 2L Pepsi or Coke bottles. Take a 2L of cold water, attach to tank, turn on, put in fridge. 

I’m interested to try the same concept with 5 gallon kegs that you then dispense from refrigerators modified with a beer tap. While a lot more up front work and cost this seems like a fun project that will still save money in the long run. Plus, how many people can say they have seltzer water on tap. 

If we are going strictly for cost savings then the 2L option we are currently using is going to be hard to beat. The upfront costs of the regulator and caps was right at $140. A tank exchange is $44 in my area and makes about 90 gallons of seltzer at our favorite carbonation rate. That’s the equivalent of 960 cans. 

Some quick math:
First tank –  $188 for 960 ‘cans’ or 20 cents a can
960 cans bought in bulk in actual cans (Walmart store brand)- $3.22/12 or 26 cents a can 

The insane thing is that there is no payback period on your investment. It starts paying off on the first tank! This math gets even better as our above example just amortized the entire cost of the operation in the first tank. This means that your second tank and onward will cost 4.5 cents a can equivalent.  Each additional cap for a 2L bottle is about $8.90 on Amazon (get the stainless steel ones, they’ll last years) so you can even add a 2L to your stockpile every 10 bottles and you’ll still come out way ahead. 

We have found that keeping two 2L’s loaded with CO2 and capped with one full 2L that hasn’t been gassed yet is the right amount in the fridge for two regular users. It’s so simple to gas one, but you need the water cold first so that’s why we refill one after use and just get it cold. We also recycle the bottles every 3-6 months and replace them with a fresh Coke (which should be included in the cost, you could ask friends or co-workers for their empty 2L’s and you’ll get more than you could ever want). Remember the expiration date on the bottle is as much for the Coke as it is for the bottle. I am currently researching some more permanent bottles but have yet to find anything I’m willing to try. 

From here I’ll be doing the experiment in my free time of locating a suitable size and cheap fridge along with the necessary parts to do the beer tap build. We are redoing our kitchen so this project is on hold until that’s done. Until then I strongly recommend getting yourself a tank, regulator and some caps. If you happen to find a good bottle that can be reused under 45lb of pressure then link it below.

Baby clothes – on the cheap

This week my lovely wife is 22 weeks pregnant. There have been a lot of projects and things going on in the house and we are slowly converting rooms into baby appropriate spaces. Along with this has been a list of items we need to get before FIREbaby pops out. These are purchases that the baby industrial complex will hound you and prey on the unsuspecting adult in unforeseen ways.

The bombardment of things you “need” to buy to keep your baby safe is overwhelming and can be about 5 posts. Today we are just going to talk about the approach we are taking to getting clothing from 0-12 months old.

We live pretty remote from normal civilization. It’s about an hour drive from a city that has places to shop. With that in mind I had some items we needed to take to the thrift store and I also knew I could combine those trips into a baby clothes trip.

I ended up going to three different thrift stores and buying pieces that looked in like new or new condition (some still had the tags). We ended up spending $86.50 across two different stores (one store didn’t have anything worthwhile) We are not finding out the gender of our baby so I was somewhat limited. While I strongly hold the belief that a baby doesn’t care what it wears I still wouldn’t want to put my potential son in a Broncos cheerleader outfit or my potential daughter in a “I’m daddy’s little man” shirt. I stuck to the tried and true, cute animal prints.

For my $86.50 I got:

NB pants – 1
NB onesie – 9
0-3mo onesie – 10
baby sock – 1
3mo onesie – 6
3-6mo onesie – 12
3-6mo pants – 4
3-6mo top – 2
6-12mo onesie – 3
12mo onesie – 1
12mo top – 1
A total of 50 new or like new items of baby clothing for an average cost of $1.73.

50 baby clothing items – $1.73 average cost

Nothing was damaged, nothing was worse than a onesie you see at Target, GAP or any other store. I used those two specifically because in that pile there are items from GAP and Target that had the original tags on them.

In everything in life I’m finding that the sustainable method is usually the most affordable in the long term as well as the best for our planet. Babies don’t care what they wear and these clothes are pretty cute. It’s not like your baby is going to be upset it’s not wearing designer clothing so why are you buying it?

The best part is that when we are done we can either donate these items back to the thrift store or we can sell them in a yard sale for at least what we paid. My goal is for the cost of our babies first year of clothing to be as close to $0 as possible. I think with garage sales (once this COVID shit is over) and thrift stores are going to allow me to do it. Everyone has told us that kids are super expensive and if everyone says something there is a good chance it’s wrong.

Optimization

If there was a single word to describe my entire philosophy in life it would be Optimization. I’m at the point where I work a full-time job as a CFO, in my events company I am the lead consultant and run the org as President, I own and manage a retail speciality running store, I own and rent out ½ of the duplex we live in, I own another rental property and at this time have built an indoor grow room to learn hydroponics to start a produce business. There is really only one way I got to this point where I can keep track of everything on this list and that’s optimization.

Even our FIRE dream of homesteading is built on a foundation of optimization and the most affordable way to live a sustainable life.

My work life is really where this started as I just found myself bored quickly in my first office jobs. Those early jobs in accounting had such old school approaches that when I took over from Joe Boomer who was retiring who took 45 hours a week to do a job that only takes 20 with a computer and the ability to type with more than two fingers. Still, I was stuck there in this office with 20 hours a week to do nothing. At first I browsed the internet and read articles, because I was so committed to being available I didn’t want anything I couldn’t instantly shift focus from. As time went on I learned the value of turn based card games like Hearthstone. If this sounds like the perfect job to you then I promise you it’s not what it seems. At a certain point, no matter what freedom you have, being forced to sit at a desk for 20 hours a week with absolutely nothing to do or accomplish is soul sucking.

After 6 months I took the approach to do my job the best I could and that meant to come up with the most efficient and accurate way for everything. Over the next few months I tediously and relentlessly went about automating every task I had. I was the only accountant for a K-8 private school. Here is an example of what I would do:

There was this super complicated report that I prepared for my Board of Directors monthly. I learned how to make a plug in that allowed me to export from my accounting system into a series of excel spreadsheets that all compiled everything into a pretty template. Took me about 2 weeks to learn how to do all the steps I needed to get what I wanted. My predecessor would spend almost 2 days making these reports, I had it down to about 2 hours a month, then I built a program that made it 2 minutes.

I applied this approach to nearly every single task I could. By the time I left this job I had my core duties down to 8-15 hours a week. The other advantage was the quality of my work was better. I got really good at solving problems because building the structure of how to make my job efficient gave me really good problem solving skills.

Once the free time really started piling up but still having to sit in my office I had to get creative. This led to me starting companies while I worked a “full-time” job. From there it’s a series of different full time jobs with me starting and running more and more businesses “on the side.”

Over the last 15 years my approach has evolved and I expect it will continue to evolve. After I recently hit LeanFIRE my priorities shifted away from ruthlessly pursuing money towards more fun ideas and tasks.

Here are a few of the things I do:

_{Payments, utilities, communications, filings, investments, and even shopping should be automated at the maximum level you can. Use a bag of dog food every 4 weeks? Sign up for an auto-delivery and you will never spend a thought on it again.}

_{Everything in your life that happens regularly that you need to be involved in gets a calendar reminder – always. For an accountant this is tax filings, budget work, planning, payroll, check runs, etc. Anything that you actually have to be actively involved in at any regular interval gets one.}

_{Your calendar reminders should be set for a realistic time on a day that you have time. When they pop up you should always complete the task or the moment you hit a wall you then stop and make another calendar reminder.} 

_{When you are working on a joint task that has a lot of back and forth you want to always 100% finish what you can and then pass it back. I typically check my email 4-6 times a day, with notifications turned off because they are distractions from whatever I’m currently working on. During those email times I delete all the junk, then work my way from the oldest email through to my newest and do one of three things:}

• _{Fully complete whatever task the email is asking of me}
• _{Set a reminder to complete the task at a later, but specific date}
• _{Delegate the email to a subordinate}

When email time is over because something else comes up or my inbox is 100% empty I then can move on.  

When I’m working on a task I’m hyper focused and don’t let much distract me. What I’ve found, in the white collar world at least, is that most people tend to do the opposite. They let little distractions pepper their day and let the work pile up. They float in and out of tasks over a 10  hour work day, but never seem to accomplish much. Now I’ve read books that would call those people lazy. The truth is that I’m the lazy one. I value my free time so much that whenever works needs to be done I want it done and over with so I can focus on either my own businesses more, my leisure time or my family. Procrastinating is the enemy of the lazy person.

Optimization is the lazy man’s best friend as it’s the best way to maximize the amount of time you get to do whatever you want.

So go on, be lazy like me and optimize every single thing you can.