One week you’re living your normal life—grinding away in a Monday thru Friday, then weekend—repeated routine, then BAM, the new temporary normal begins.

I’ve frequently shared the thought of “enjoy each day” with an attempt to bring a little centering to our lives.  The—stop and take a minute to exist in the now— that was my thinking.

Well, this today, the today we all live in, is radically different from the weekly grind of the past— it changed, in a flash.

There’s a silent sickness—a silent killer—out there and the world needs to be protective of lives.  That’s the program we’re all trying to follow.

I sure hope everyone’s normal employment activities fall back into place as the threat passes.  I hope that people who need a constant income are able to generate that income.  I hope—oh, how I hope—that households learned from the Great Recession (and other personal challenges) that employment can change over time and the only best plan for maintaining your lifestyle is to have financial assets set aside for your upcoming expenses.

• Side note: I also hope that people previously put a health plan into place for both physical and mental health.  Often, in the daily/weekly grind of life, we put ourselves on the back burner and focus (solely) on the fires in front of us.  Now is a time when you want your physical health (immune system) to be primed to fight back against the nasty virus, as well as your mental health strong enough to survive a long period of safety isolation and serious existential stress.

At this point, it’s been over three weeks of isolation for my family (extended family as well) and we’re holding up pretty good.  Many of us are managing cash flow and have a good plan to manage incoming bills/expenses.  That’s a rarity.

My family is also doing well with our nicer spring weather, allowing us to be outside, feeling the sun, getting vitamin D, even doing some movement while maintaining social distancing.  Social distancing has been hard for some, while others find no issue with being in their own thoughts and activities.  This is where personalities show great difference.

Personally, we are FIREd, we spend the base of our time at home.  We used to go out to activities often enough and therefore we’ve have had to adjust our life a little, but not drastically.  I’ve noticed from many FI/FIREd peers that life isn’t that different.  I’ve noticed many have said they shifted early and purchased food and verified family members were set for the upcoming unknown.  The perspective I’ve seen is that they are not behind in preparation because they had some time (not at work) to prepare. FIrus activities.

No matter what your working schedule is, it’s important to think ahead.  Think ahead related to saving.  Think ahead related to health.  Realize you have extra hours each day to think of how to help others around you.

Please use any part of your FInancial Smartness to prepare and help, no matter what lies ahead.  Encourage those who need help to share their concerns.  We’re all in this together—we really are.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice.

I had to post this update related to the COVID-19 virus as it seems to be required of everyone this week.

My inbox is bursting with notices from more email addresses than I could have imagined.  Here goes:

I implore you to take all sane precautions to protect yourself, your family, and those around you.  A list of precautions can be found everywhere online, but we are told to use the CDC homepage.

It’s been a while since my last post because we’ve been locked down in the bunker…no, actually because we’ve been scavenging for home goods and haven’t had time for unimportant typing/ramblings,… no, actually because we’ve been living a great life, trying to enjoy each day and be smart about our spacing and interactions with other human beings. 

(Note: speaking of home goods, my wife has been to HomeGoods and it was just normal decorating-people busy, no panic shopping there)

Lessons in Shopping:

I didn’t plan on writing this next section, but for my actual thoughts:  We went to Costco on Thu March 5^th as part of our normal “Costco run” and figured we’d grab a few household supplies.  I was shocked there were only about 10 cases (out of the normal 500?) on the floor.  WHOA, I thought.  I then pushed my large cart to the toilet paper and paper towel section only to find the shelves (and floor) totally empty.  There weren’t even any news stories or pictures of empty shelves yet.  People must listen to Radical Personal Finance. 

Continuing on, I thought I’d grab an “extra” bag of brown rice.  Turns out, there was no brown rice, no white rice, and no jasmine rice at all.  I did get my boxes of Quaker oats…hmm, people must not be thrilled by bland breakfast foods.

Here’s why I walked around with an “oh $h!t” feeling; I’ve never lived in a hurricane or tornado zone where the store can frequently go bare.  It was an unnerving feeling.  Much different than my past when shelves are kind of low in Alaska because the seasonal shipments have been sold out.  That’s more of an “oops, I should have grabbed that item at the time…oh well, next time.”

Of course, there were other plenty of other items available at Costco so we just topped off our existing home supply of those goods.  We had no major bulk purchases at the store.

I thought I would check out Amazon, and sure enough they had TP for sale, not priced too high, no worries, right?  The next day when I went back to my PC and the page had updated, most of the TP items stated “no longer in stock, or said “available on April ##date.”  This was VERY unnerving to say the least.  [Note: I’m writing this 10 days later and stores have been ravaged by our afraid peers]

I should be clear; I’m mostly surprised that toilet paper is such a panic/critical item.  I’m actually far more concerned at having input than worrying about the output factor.

Optimization = Preparation:

It turns out that the cost-saving practices I learned growing up of buying extra amounts when items go on sale, as well as always replenishing an item before I run low has helped me leading up to this craziness.

Give Around:

In the past few days we’ve started to be more considerate of those around us who may need assistance during these times.  Those who cannot work from home and lose pay, those who cannot leave home due to high risk factors and those who are just stressed out.

Improvement Time:

My wife mentioned that since we’re social distancing (introvert normal-ness) ourselves at home more, that we should plan to do more home projects.  I think that’s a great idea (except dealing with me more  hours sounds stressful for her) to  use some of this home-time to work on projects/tasks, learning new things, getting a little more zen and good “recovery” time.  Example: a little less body exhausting exercise for a few weeks, etc.

So, I plan to work on strengthening our home-life foundation to come out of this stronger (and zen-ner) than ever.

This too shall pass, and we’ll be wiser and stronger on the other side.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice.

As my blog post count nears the 100 post milestone, I am surprised that I hit another HUGE milestone last week. 

If you read me, or know me, it’s no surprise that I keep track of things.  I plan, I track, (I sometimes do nothing with the previous information), I fine-tune, I like to know how things have been going.

I tracked my weight loss when I was 29-30.  I’ve tracked my weight over the years—for a decade I tracked my calories throughout the day.  After I hit my goal weight, then after hitting my dream weight, I joined the neighborhood Gold’s Gym.  Did you catch that, “after” I hit my goal weight, I joined the gym.

Running Challenge

I don’t seem to do anything like other people.  I somehow, almost magically, hit my dream weight—actually beyond my craziest dreams.  I decided then to set a new goal, to run a 10k race.  I knew nothing about this but that seemed like a common distance people raced, according to all the flyers and advertisements.

So to learn how to run 10k—I figured out that was 6.2 miles—I made a plan to train for that distance.  The best way I could learn to run an actual mile was to use a treadmill to measure the distance.  Strangely, it never occurred to me to run around my neighborhood.  In retrospect, it seems like I needed the calculation function of the treadmill to make sure I was on track.  I’d never run a mile before so this was all new.  Yes, I played sports, but never ran anywhere…what for?

So the first day at the gym I did the run-a-minute, walk-a-minute until I hit 1 mile.  Then a couple of days later I did the run-two-minutes, walk-a-minute.  On the third day I was running my third minute and just decided not to stop until I hit 1 mile about 7 minutes later.  10 minutes wasn’t too crazy hard.  A couple of weeks later I ran two miles straight and was amazed.  Actually, I was beyond amazed.

One hour of running:  So here’s the most interesting part—I was able to work my way up to running 6.2 miles on the treadmill in about an hour.  Let’s be clear, running on a treadmill (in Arizona in Oct) for an hour makes almost no sense to me now.  Get outside and explore. 

So about a month after joining the gym—in Oct 2000, to learn how to run—I ran my 10k with maybe 10,000 people and met my goal of finishing in less than 1 hour.

The Start of the Series

Very early on with my gym membership (in the first couple of weeks) I started weight training at the gym.  I decided to do full-body “activation” workout two times per week.  My logic is simple, I want to engage all my muscles and let them know they need to move, strain, and be prepared for action.  Since I like keeping my heart rate up, I do supersets (push/pull, or legs/arms) and keep moving from exercise to exercise.

After a few months, I went back to the beginning of my membership and started tracking how many weeks I’d been going to the gym.  At the end of 52 weeks in a row, I was amazed.  At the end of 104 weeks in a row, I started thinking that I was on a good track. 

I’ve ALWAYS found a gym, or workout room, or exercise stations (South Beach Miami) no matter where I was in the world.  I recall so vividly the gyms in far-flung parts of the world (Chennai India strange, Luxembourg bathhouse/pool loft, Frankfurt Germany old school German hanger-warehouse type place, Cleveland basement, etc —have been very interesting).  There is not a single trip I’ve been on that I haven’t search out my workout options.  It’s usually right after I buy my plane tickets, and part of my hotel/location considerations. 

Surprising Enhanced Awareness

In addition to recalling strange gyms, I also recall my runs through different towns/cities in great detail.  It’s like my mind process the surroundings differently when I run than when I’m walking around with my wife.  Runs must allow some kind of heightened awareness or something.

Lessons Learned

The point of this post is twofold: one I accomplished an amazing amount of consistent fitness/health activity.  Two being a detailed tracking person sometimes provides you with unplanned validation rewards.  So back to the title of this post—I’ve completed 1000 weeks at the gym, twice a week, without missing a single week in 19+ years.  When I was logging weeks 984, 986, it didn’t occur to me that I was almost at 1000.  I think because I was looking back at my success (consistency) and not looking forward to having to go to the gym X more weeks to hit a goal.  The goal/success was in the past, not in the future.  The rewards should come in the future.

Don’t always look ahead at the goal/finish line, turn around and look at the path of success behind you and savor everything you’ve done to get to this exact moment.  This moment is temporary and only happens once…then it’s gone.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice.