Get Rich Slowly

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Kris and I love our neighborhood. People are friendly and helpful, yet mostly mind their own business. It’s a perfect combination. One of our favorite neighbors is the old guy next door. Let’s call him John.

John is a 71-year-old retired shop teacher who lives in a modest ranch house on half an acre, the same house he’s had for over forty years. He has an old barn filled with salvaged lumber, outdated appliances, and who knows what else. When he’s around, he drives a junkie 25-year-old station wagon. But most of the time, he’s not around.

He spends his winters in New Zealand helping friends on a dairy farm. His summers are spent fishing in Alaska. For a couple of months each year, he’s home, puttering in the yard. Year-round, he rents his house to boarders. He leads a very active retirement.

John is full of advice, all of it laden with colorful euphemisms. When I erected my berry patch, he was the one who told me how to build the trellises and gave me the material to do so. He’s eager to help us prune our shrubberies. “I can get my chainsaw and cut the damn things out,” he says with a big grin.

A few months ago, John asked if I had a roll of plastic. “Actually, I do,” I said. “It’s greenhouse plastic. Will that work?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’m just going to use it to make storm windows. I build a wooden frame and then stretch the plastic around it, and that lets me save money on my heating bill.”

John was working in the yard recently when I returned from a trip to the book store. “What do you have there?” he asked by way of conversation.

“Nothing much,” I said. “Just a few books on personal finance.” I showed him the titles. His face broke out in a grin, and a twinkle appeared in his eye.

“That’s great,” he said. “That’s really great. I’m glad to see somebody as young as you are interested in investing.”

“I’m not that young,” I muttered.

“Sure you are,” he said. “You have a long time ahead of you. And if you get started now, you can save a hell of a lot of money.” We’d never talked about money before (and he had no idea I keep a web site about personal finance).

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “I was a school teacher. I didn’t have a big salary. But I saved what I could, and I invested it. I got a little lucky, but mostly I just kept putting the money away. Do you know much I have now?” I shook my head. “Over a million dollars,” he said. “And all because I kept at it. And because I did stuff like this.” He waved his hand to indicate his yard.

I looked at his apple tree and his grape vines and his raspberry canes. I looked at the house with the make-shift storm windows. I looked at his 25-year-old station wagon. I looked at his beat-up charcoal grill. I looked at his shabby clothes.

“I don’t buy anything unless I need it,” he said. “And even then I try to find something used. Let other people buy the new stuff. I try to scrounge for everything I need. It may not seem like much, but it makes a real difference. By pinching my pennies right along, I’ve been able to set aside money to invest. And now I can do whatever the hell I want.”

This exchange made me smile, of course. Here’s a man who has lived the philosophy I’ve adopted for myself, who has lived the philosophy I espouse on this web site. He has lived this life and has been successful. Here’s a man who is happy and fulfilled. Here’s a man who is a real-life millionaire next door.

Best of all, here’s a man who brings me fresh-caught Alaskan salmon every fall.

Sometimes people write to tell me that nobody can get rich slowly. “That’s no way to live,” they say. I don’t believe them. I’ve seen enough examples of people in my own life who have become rich the slow and steady way. John is one of them. It’s true I’ve known a couple of people who inherited wealth, and a couple more who achieved wealth via small business. But I’ve never known anyone personally who got rich quickly.

Sometimes the articles I post generate a flood of comments. Sometimes they only generate a trickle. And sometimes it just takes a while for the conversation to get started. The latter seems to be the case with yesterday’s guest post about scams and pyramid schemes. Things started slowly, but today the comments have been interesting. For example:

• Veteran Military Wife buys MLM products on eBay for a fraction of their price. (Love it!)
• M! says that the best way to make money off MLM is to be the bartender at one of their conferences. (Ha!)
• Eight describes a typical recruitment scenario (which matches my own experiences).
• JenK tells a couple stories about MLM.
• And finally, Missy says that her parents have wasted their lives on MLM.

It’s because of stories like these that I’ve said time and again: Get Rich Slowly readers are the best on the web. It’s you folks who give this site value. I’m just the bus driver. Speaking of “best on the web”, here are a few personal finance articles I’ve enjoyed recently at other sites:

For the past few months, I’ve been contributing material (in the form of old posts) to MSN’s Smart Spending blog. I love my editors. I’m learning a lot from them. One of them, Donna, just had a daughter get married without breaking the bank. In fact, Donna says it was a “frugal hack wedding”. Sounds like my kind of affair! Congrats to Donna and her family.

Meanwhile, at Consumerism Commentary Sasha recently offered an introduction to ethical consumerism. She discusses moral boycotts and voting with your dollars. Does your spending reflect your beliefs?

Finally, Penelope Trunk at Brazen Careerist posted some great advice today. “You already know what you should be doing next,” she writes. “You can figure out who you are and what you should be doing by telling yourself the stories of your childhood.” What you did and valued when you were a child has real value, and if you take some time to just ignore the baggage of adult life, you may find that you can learn from your younger self. Great stuff.

The American housing crisis isn’t over yet. The fallout from the subprime mortgage mess will continue to settle for months (or years). Though the various statistical models disagree on just how much further prices will drop before they hit bottom, most seem to indicate there’s another 10% to 20% left to go.

What exactly is the subprime mortgage crisis and how did we get here? That’s the question tackled this week by Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life.

This American Life generally focuses on quirky tales from the lives of average Americans. It doesn’t usually delve into investigative journalism or explore the nuances of modern economics. This week, however, in a show co-produced by the National Public Radio news division, TAL took a step-by-step look at what caused the subprime lending crisis. It’s complicated.

A special program about the housing crisis. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.

This program explores the various players, the causes, and the consequences of the subprime mortgage crisis. And it all starts with the “global pool of money”. In the early 2000s, there were $70,000,000,000,000 ($70 trillion) of global capital looking for low-risk, high-return investments. This giant pool of money discovered the U.S. mortgage market, which drove demand, which led to relaxed rules, which led to a boom in subprime lending. And here we are today. From the show:

Picture the whole chain. You have Clarence. He gets a mortgage from a broker. The broker sells the mortgage to a small bank. The small bank sells the mortgage to a guy like Mike at a big investment firm on Wall Street. Then Mike takes a few thousand mortgages he’s bought this way, he puts them in one big pile. Now he’s got thousands of mortgage checks coming to him every month. It’s a huge monthly stream of money, which is expected to come in for the next thirty years, the life of a mortgage. And he then sells shares of this monthly income to investors. Those shares are called mortgage-backed securities. And the $70 trillion global pool of money loved them.

Why did the crisis occur? Because all along the financial chain — from bankers to brokers to borrowers to investors — people deluded themselves. They thought they could throw out the old rules of money. They thought they could cut corners to make a quick buck. In short: they were trying to get rich quickly instead of to get rich slowly.

Though I wish this episode spent a little more time on the role of the homebuyer in the subprime mortgage crisis, overall I think it does a great job at making a complicated subject accessible. If you’re at all interested in the topic and you have an hour to kill, it’s well-worth listening to. Here’s the 30-second promo for this show:

The entire episode is available from the This American Life web site as a free downloadable mp3 podcast until Sunday, May 18th.

For more on this subject, check out:

• Calculated Risk, a housing bubble blog.
• “Map of misery”, a recent article from The Economist.
• This fantastic interactive map/timeline from The Wall Street Journal.

Also, regular GRS reader The Tim has a blog devoted to the Seattle-area housing bubble.

[This American Life: The giant pool of money]

My wife has always maintained a sizable savings account, but having extra cash is new to me. Until recently, I had always lived paycheck-to-paycheck, often treading close to a zero dollar balance in my checkbook for months at a time. Now, though, I’ve not only established an emergency account, but set up a couple of targeted accounts as well. (One is for vacations, and the other is for a new car.)

My method works for me, but others have different approaches. In her book Debt-Proof Living, author Mary Hunt suggests a sort of “emergency fund plus“. Often when people struggle with money, she says, it’s not the predictable monthly bills that are the problem. People cannot cope with the unexpected things — not just emergencies (like a severe illness), but irregular expenses like auto maintenance, wedding and birthday gifts, or a new pair of shoes.

To deal with all of life’s surprises, Hunt recommends a Freedom Account. Here’s how it works:

1. Determine your irregular, unexpected, and intermittent expenses. Because the past provides a good indication of the future, look at your records for the past year or two. Make a list of your expenses that don’t occur on a monthly basis. Divide them into broad categories and calculate our approximate monthly spending on each.
2. Open a second checking account. Most of the tactics we discuss at Get Rich Slowly involve multiple savings accounts. Hunt advocates opening a second checking account to act as a Freedom Account. She further warns that “under no circumstances should you accept overdraft protection, ATM privileges, or a debit card for your Freedom Account”. This account is not for daily use.
3. Authorize an automatic deposit. When you open your Freedom Account, instruct the bank to schedule an automatic deposit from an existing account based on the average monthly total of your irregular expenses. Pick a day of the month that works based on your cash flow. For me it’s best to have automatic transactions occur soon after I get paid.
4. Start a logbook. “As far as the bank is concerned, you have a second checking account,” Hunt writes. “But you are going to treat your new Freedom Account as a collection of sub-accounts.” To do this, take the list of irregular expenses you created earlier and start a page for each category. For example, you might have pages for clothing, vacation, property taxes, and auto maintenance. Each month when the automatic deposit is made into your Freedom Account, you will divide that among the sub-accounts in your logbook. For example, if you transfer $200/month to your Freedom Account, you might manually add $25 to vacation, $25 to clothing, $100 to property taxes, and $50 to auto maintenance.
5. Make a deposit every month. “This is going to feel weird in the beginning,” Hunt says. She’s right. It felt strange to me when I began to keep sub-accounts at my credit union, but now it’s second nature. I like having my money divided based on its intended use. With your Freedom Account, you’ll be transferring from your primary checking account to a secondary checking account on a specific date each month. Then you’ll further divide your money by hand in your logbook. It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s really not.

Hunt notes that Freedom Accounts can be a great marital aid. By giving each partner a Freedom Account, both spouses can have their own pool of money to budget independently.

This sounds like a viable alternative to a standard emergency fund. I don’t plan to implement a Freedom Account for myself — I like my current system — but it’s something I would have considered during the three years I was working to pay off my debt.

In the past, I’ve shared the story of the worst job I ever had. In a lot of ways, it felt like I was part of a pyramid scheme or multi-level marketing operation. I’ve been approached to participate in similar operations since then: once by my veterinarian (?!?) and once by a stranger in a book store. Sometimes you cannot tell a scam is a scam until you see it up close, and then the sunk-cost fallacy will sometimes force you to make a poor choice. GRS reader Bozemblem recently sent me this story of his close encounter with a “business opportunity” that turned out to be a scam.

I’ve been reading Get Rich Slowly for about a year now, and I can definitely relate when you talk about your struggles and triumphs with money. Here’s an experience I recently had.

I currently work and live in one of the most expensive parts of the United States. I’m going to school part-time to get my MS in Computer Science. School is very expensive, even with my employer paying a great deal of the tuition. On top of that I’m getting married next year and I have a tiny amount of credit card debt.  I do a very good job of budgeting my money; I follow it quite closely and it won’t be long before I’ve rid myself of the debt.  However, as you might be able to tell, money is a bit of a concern and so I’m always looking for way to either decrease my spending (which I think I’ve done a good job of so far without going crazy) or increase my income (which is much harder to do, and it is my attempt to do so which is why I’m writing you).

Business opportunity
The other night I was in the grocery store buying some items for my sick fiancee.  Unfortunately, there was only one cashier on duty and I was one of an unusually large number of customers that night.  As I waited in line, a nice gentleman in line behind me struck up a conversation. I spent some time talking to him and eventually we got around to talking about what we did for a living, and I mentioned that I am a software engineer.  Upon hearing that, he got pretty excited and told me that he was a small business owner in need of someone with my skill set.  Seeing this as an opportunity to possible earn some extra money, we exchanged number and he promised to call me the next week to talk about opportunities for some part-time work with his company.

Later that next week he called me, and we set up a time to meet.  He told me to meet him at a hotel the next week; he and some of his fellow small business owners were part of a larger corporation, and he presented this to me as an opportunity to network and meet other people who may be interested in my skills.  Cautiously optimistic, I agreed.

Well tonight I met this individual and had quite the experience.  It slowly started to come together for me, and the saddest part about it is that those were three hours that I will never get back.  Turns out, it was just one large pyramid scheme, and it didn’t matter if I was a software engineer or not.

Pyramid scheme
Here’s how the operation works: you join as an “apprentice” of another member, and you maximize your profits by getting other people to become your “apprentice”.  It was disguised as an “e-commerce” (sorry for the abuse of quotation marks) operation; basically you bought your home goods from this one organization instead of a place like Wal-Mart.  Everyone else you got to sign up and buy those same goods from that organization would gain you some money.  And when they got people to sign up, then you would get a cut of the profits as well.  As soon as I had an opportunity, I left, feeling disgusted and embarrassed.

I however, was the only one.  Of the other “candidates” in the room, only I left.  Everyone else seemed excited.  It’s not hard to see how.  The speaker was very compelling; very funny and personable.  He spoke of living a “lifestyle” as opposed to a life (my first red flag).  Then he talked about stuff like “how would you feel if you could drive a different car…every day of the week!”  He then had us list out which 7 cars we wanted.  Actually, we listed out 6.  Aston Martins, Rolls-Royces, etc…  The 7th car he picked.  And it was the car he drove, and he implied that it was through this program that he was able to afford it.  I wish I could have left right then, but I was sitting near the front and although I hated myself for being there, I couldn’t bear to be rude either.

Your readers should be aware of these operations!  They may sound good, and the money may be real, but it’s all top-heavy.  The ones at the bottom (ie. YOU) won’t be making all that money, but you’ll help someone else do it!  Beware of the charismatic speaker; this guy was really good; going so far as to say “I don’t even care if you join or not”.  Implying, of course, that he’s doing us a favor, despite the fact that he wouldn’t have any money if no one signed up. 

But that one statement was so powerful, and I could tell my fellow attendees were getting sucked in.  That one statement created such a sense of urgency and yet indifference on his part.  He was basically saying that he didn’t need us, that he can find more people, the “right” people.  And he kept talking about us being “candidates”, and he spoke often of a selection process.  I’m not privy to such information, but if I had to guess, I would say that we were all going to be selected. 

Get rich quick!
That and numerous other methods were employed to give us a sense of opportunity, and give us a taste of the rich lifestyle.  He was damn good at his job, and I don’t doubt that he’s made plenty of money off of his considerable talents.  Oh, and don’t forget the $200 registration fee, the $150 insurance costs, and the undisclosed costs of the training materials.  By the way, I only got those figures by pressing my “sponsor” until he finally relented.

It’s easy to see how people can get sucked in.  Everyone else was just like me; needed a little extra cash, pressed for time and anxious to explore any opportunity, we were rip for picking.  I thank goodness that my dad instilled in me a sense of skepticism, else I may have ended up with the rest of them. 

Unfortunately, the road to riches isn’t that easy.  It’s simple, but it isn’t quick and painless.  You just gotta spend less than you earn (by prioritization and reducing the number of unnecessary “wants”), save as much as you can, diversify your investments, and constantly improve the most critical investment, yourself (through taking on a variety of tasks at your job, even if they’re outside of your typical skillset and by continuing your education).  Invest in index funds, open a high-yield savings account, contribute at least enough to your 401(k) to max out your company’s match and fund your IRA; doing so will provide plenty of wealth going forward, just do the math!

A learning experience
There is one positive that came out of my experience with the pyramid scheme.  The speaker preached constantly about how his program is different than a typical job because it gave you “freedom”.  That’s not really true, it just transfers your obligations, and it provides you with a significant amount of risk if you are one of those who chose to do that type of thing full time (and there are those people). 

The bright side for me was that I realized how much I hated the lack of freedom that working in a traditional career offers.  And I’ve always had an idea for a real small business (as opposed to the scheme’s definition of a small business) that I’ve always wanted to open, and I’m going to start working towards that goal.  I’ve been inspired to work to free myself from work, and to get to the point where I won’t be susceptible to schemes like the one I got sucked into tonight.  Perhaps not the motivation these guys were looking for, but that’s what I got out of it!

Bozemblem’s experience is similar to several I’ve had in my own life. I believe he’s right: programs like this can provide income and success to those at the top, or to those who have special luck or motivation. But for most people, they’re actually a net loss. Do you have experience with pyramid schemes or multi-level marketing? Was this experience positive or negative? What advice do you have for others who might be considering this as a way to make money? Checkout line photo by szlea. Conference photo by Jeffrey Beall.

When our friends Mike and Rhonda moved into their new house a couple years ago, their yard was just like every other in the neighborhood: green grass. Chances are, that’s what the yards are like in your neighborhood, too. But over the past two years, Mike and Rhonda have transformed their lot into something different. They’ve created what might be described as a suburban farm.

Mike ripped out all the sod and built stone walls and paths. Rhonda — a certified Master Gardener — planted berries and vegetables in the backyard. In the front yard, she created a garden of flowers, fruits, and native plants.

They’re not our only friends to do this. Craig and Lisa — whom I mentioned recently — have spent the past few years transforming their suburban plot into a network of gardens as well. Craig, in what some Oregonians might call a fit of insanity, is even growing hops this year. (Lisa writes: “Whether the plants engulf and eat the house is another question altogether.”)

Andrew and Courtney tore out a large section of their front yard to install two raised vegetable beds. Another friend, Amy Jo, has similar aspirations at her new house. Last week she forwarded this video story about suburban farming from the Wall Street Journal. (Here’s the accompanying article.)

I’m not ready to rip out our entire lawn and convert to farming. (We have too much lawn!) But Kris and I already have a kitchen garden — we grow many of our own berries, fruits, and vegetables. Someday we’d like to have chickens, and maybe even a goat.

I’m pleased that suburban gardening seems to be thriving. It may or may not be cost-effective (I’m running my year-long gardening project to find out), but the food quality is excellent and the work rewarding.

Here are some past articles related to this topic:

• An introduction to homesteading
• An introduction to square-foot gardening
• The bountiful container: Gardening in small spaces
• Gardening 101: Plan today for summer success
• The year-long GRS project: How much does a garden really save?

See also: Little Homestead in the City and a recent New York Times article about kitchen gardens.

As I continue to achieve my short-term goals, my attention is turning increasingly to long-range plans. What is it I want to do with my life? I’ve always toyed with the idea of early retirement, and lately I’ve been reading more about the subject. Three books that have helped me so far are:

• Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, which explores the notion of “mini-retirements”. (I recently recorded a phone interview with Ferriss on this subject — look for a transcription soon.)
• Work Less, Live More: The Way to Semi-Retirement by Bob Clyatt describes techniques for leaving the traditional job path years (or decades) before the traditional retirement age of 65. This is a great book.
• Fred Brock’s Retire on Less Than You Think, which argues that the traditional rule of thumb — you’ll need 80% of your pre-retirement salary during later years — is misguided.

I’m still in the early stages of my research, which means I love finding new information about the subject. Recently Walter Updegrave, Money’s “ask the expert” columnist, fielded a question from a reader who hopes to retire early:

I’m 50 years old, my wife is 44 and we would like to retire by the time I’m 55, if not sooner. We have a little over $600,000 in 401(k)s, IRAs and other retirement accounts and another $250,000 or so in stocks, mutual funds and cash that we can draw on once we retire. Our mortgage will be paid off shortly and we have no other debt. Do you think we can pull off early retirement?

“I can’t give you a definitive answer to your question,” Updegrave writes. “But I can tell you how to assess your situation [on your own].” Whenever you discuss early retirement, he says, you need to consider two factors: money and lifestyle.

In fact, Updegrave (and other experts) believe it’s important to focus on the retirement lifestyle you want first, and then run the numbers. A lot of retirement advice is based on “percentage of current income”, but a more accurate picture of your needs can be obtained by looking at your current expenses. It’s important to look at both income and expenses.

If you, too, like to crunch the numbers to explore the feasibility of early retirement, be sure to remember the following:

• If you retire at young, you will not be able to draw on Social Security for several years. You’ll have to tap into more of your savings.
• You also won’t qualify for Medicare for many years, so you’ll need to consider healthcare costs.
• There are penalties for accessing certain retirement accounts early, so it’s better to withdraw from taxable accounts first and save tax-deferred for later.

Whatever your plans, it’s important to start saving as much as possible as soon as possible. A story from Monday’s Morning Edition on NPR described how older workers are more frequently opting to remain in the workforce rather than retire. For some, it’s because of the economy. But for many others, it’s because they didn’t save enough when they were younger.

Updegrave’s subject has $850,000 saved at age 50. I’m 39, and am a long way from that. It may be that my dreams of early retirement are just that — dreams. But that’s not going to stop me from working toward that goal.

Personal finance is filled with tough decisions. Prepay the mortgage or invest the money? Pay down high interest debt first or use a debt snowball to tackle the small balances? Roth IRA or traditional IRA?

Sara wrote recently with another dilemma I think many of us have faced: is it better to pay down debt or to begin investing for the future?

I’m 28. I work at a job with no retirement benefits and I want to open a Roth IRA.

My husband and I have about $9,000 in credit debt on a credit card which, unfortunately, has a high interest rate. (I plan on transferring the balance soon, but am investigating cards carefully.) We also have a small loan that we are paying off quickly.  

Your recent posts on the benefits of compound interest for retirement are making me question my current plan of “pay off all debts first, then invest”. I don’t want to lose out on the benefit of time any longer. What should I do? If I have $600 a month to throw at something, is it better to focus it all on the debt, or start on my Roth?

In this case, it might be helpful to reframe the question. Would you take out a loan at 12% or 15% or 18% interest in order to make an investment with an uncertain return (but which would most likely yield about 8%)? That’s basically the situation here. From a purely mathematical perspective, it doesn’t make much sense.

But there’s more than math involved in this decision. Building retirement savings can be a powerful motivator. Just getting in the habit of setting money aside is a valuable skill itself. Although there’s a cost involved, I wouldn’t say that it’s wrong to save for retirement while also repaying debt.

As always, do what works for you. If the debt bothers you, or if you think you might struggle to pay it off otherwise, then focus on the debt. But if you’re worried about the lack of retirement savings, then focus on that.

I did a little of both. While I was paying off my debt, I began to set aside a little cash every month to fund my retirement. It wasn’t a lot at first — just $100 — but as my expenses dropped and my income grew, I was able to contribute more. This allowed me to get into the habit of saving while also making progress on debt reduction. I know that I wasn’t making the most of either situation, but I didn’t care — it felt right for me. (And to be honest, I’d probably take the same approach again.)

What about you? What would you do in a situation like this? (Or what have you done in a situation like this?) Would you sacrifice a few hundred dollars in order to develop the saving habit? Or would you buckle down and get that debt paid off first?

On Saturday, The New York Times published a brilliant chart illustrating the spending of the average American:

“Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gathers 84,000 prices in about 200 categories,” the paper writes, “like gasoline, bananas, dresses and garbage collection.” These numbers form the Consumer Price Index, one common measure of inflation. And this graphic makes that information accessible.

This chart is neat for several reasons:

• The circle itself represents 100% of the average consumer’s spending. The circle is divided into eight large shapes, each of which is divided further into a number of smaller shapes. The size of each shape represents an estimate of what the average American spends on the category it represents. For example, gasoline is the largest shape in the transportation category.
• Each shape is color-coded by the change in prices for that category between March 2007 and March 2008. The three dark red shapes (representing price increases of more than 40%) are all petroleum products. But eggs — with a 29.9% price increase — are close behind.
• Hovering over any shape will reveal the category name, the share of spending from the average budget, and the amount by which prices have changed in the past year.
• You can use the “zoom in” tool to get a better view of the action, and then drag the chart around to look at different categories. It’s only by doing this that you can see lettuce has its own category, and that the green, leafy stuff has declined in price by 3.2% over the past twelve months.

I’ll confess to feeling like a total geek because I spent twenty minutes exploring the different numbers. I even started taking notes and making extrapolations and comparisons.

For example, Americans, as a whole, spend three times as much money on cigarettes as they do on financial services. Actually, because we know that 0.7% of expenditures are made to cigarettes, and because we know that 21% of Americans smoke, then (if my math is right) about 3.5% of a smoker’s expenses go to cigarettes. (Note that I’m not criticizing. At one time, comic books accounted for 7% of my own expenses.)

I would love to find more charts and graphs like this one. (The New York Times has a history of producing great charts and graphs, such as their graph of home values from 2006 and their rent vs. buy calculator.)

[The New York Times: All of inflation's little parts]

This piece originally appeared at Andrea’s Consultant Journal in a slightly different format.

Exercise is a funny thing. When you start a fitness regimen, you feel awful, especially if it’s been months (or years) since you’ve been physically active. The first couple of weeks can be grueling. But once you make it a habit, once you find the groove, exercise can become exhilarating, even addictive.

During the summer of 1997, I lost 40 pounds. My ten-year high school reunion was approaching, and I wanted to look good. I made it a goal to get fit.

On May 8th — clocking in at 200 big ones — I got on a bicycle and rode 2.4 miles. I felt terrible. My shorts barely fit. I moved slowly. I had to get off and walk at the big hill. I had no endurance.

I felt like a cow on wheels.

That first ride was short and painful. Many people claim that the first time you make any sort of change is the most important. I disagree. I think the second ride was more important than the first. Anyone can take just one ride. It took tremendous force of will for me to get back on that bike again May 9th.

But I did get back in the saddle, and then again the following day. I didn’t ride everyday, but I stuck to it as best I could. I kept reminding myself of the ten-year reunion.

Progress was slow at first. My mental fitness changed before I made any significant gains to my physical fitness. (Today I know that must always be true, but back then it seemed odd.) But eventually changes did happen.

My strength improved. My belly shrunk. Then one day I made it to the top of the hill without having to walk the bike. Such a small victory, but so important, too! I felt a sense of accomplishment out of proportion with the actual achievement.

My rides began to lengthen: 3-1/2 miles, five, ten. I would reach my normal turnaround spot and tell myself, “I can go farther today!” And I would!

By the middle of August 1997, I was riding ten miles in half an hour, when once I could only ride five. One afternoon, on a lark, I spent ninety minutes riding 25 miles through the Oregon countryside. It was awesome. I felt awesome. My legs looked awesome. I was in the best condition of my life.

In fact, by the time autumn gave way to winter, I had lost 42 pounds. When my class reunion rolled around, I was happy to attend. I was proud of what I had accomplished.

But it didn’t happen overnight. First, I had to get on the bike. More than that — I had to get back out there a second day.

Note: As most of you know, I’m again trying to become physically fit. I’m taking the lessons I learned while defeating debt and applying them to diet and fitness. I’ve been chronicling my experience at Get Fit Slowly.