What a Curve

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  • October 24, 2008

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I’m so glad that Lee joined our ‘grand experiment’; here is what he says on his own blog on the subject of planning:

If planning is the way to success, it’s no wonder I’m always a day late and a dollar short.

… Now, you just gotta love a guy who can write like that!

Also, Lee candidly shares his thoughts with us in his posts, for example, telling me via e-mail before he sent this post in:

OK Adrian here’s the deal.  I don’t think I can do any different until I get some feed back from you so go ahead and publish my post.  GULP! I’m afraid I’m going to the back of the class on this part.

Well, Lee, I don’t think you have anything to fear from any of OUR readers … instead, let’s see if they can help you finalize this part of the exercise …

I have had more difficulty with this part of the experiment than any other part.  Possibly it’s because I don’t do speadsheets well.  I can cast a vision and dream outside the box and move towards a goal but to figure out how to do it on paper, I’m sorry but I get totally lost.

I don’t have a lot of bills presently, no credit card debt, a small student loan and a refinanced mortgage.  My life style is pretty low key since I’ve learned to live on less and enjoy it.

I’m not ever sure how to send the spreadsheet but here it is.

Lee’s Spreadsheet

Now 1 Year 5Years 10Years 20 Years

Annual Income:

From Jobs $ 26,500 $ 50,000

From Businesses $ 0 $ 50,000 $ 800,000 $ 1,000,000 $5,000,000

Houses

Now $ 120.000 $ 500,000

Cars

Value Now $ 6,000 (1) $ 60,000

Living Expenses

Credit Cards $ 0

Loans $ 8,000 paid off

Travel expenses Gas $ 3,000 $ 5,000 $ 8,000

Student loan $ 20,000 paid off

Food & Clothing $ 4,500 $ 6,000 $ 8,000

Total Expenses $ 161,500 $ 576,000 $ 568,000

Lee’s List $2,280.000

$2,848,000

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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Scott
Posted on:
October 24, 2008 at 4:53 am

Looks like you did a great job to me, Lee. Keep it up!
(p.s. I think we are all not so great at doing this spreadsheet, so it’s not just you Lee 😉 )

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
AJC
Posted on:
October 24, 2008 at 7:43 am

Great work on your s/sheet … I appreciate that you are sharing it online with the world!

A couple of comments:

1. A $5 Mill. p.a. business when you are 80?! More power to you 🙂

2. Think about the Date; the date when you want to cash out of everything and devote yourself 100% to your Life’s Purpose … even though you can do this WHILE you are earning an income, presumably a huge driver is the fact that you can do so much more with HUGE gobs of BOTH Time AND Money?

3. Now, we need to use your s/sheet to come up with the Number BY that Date:

a) Take all the One Off purchases on your s/sheet: (houses/cars/etc.) and list them here using 2008 estimates of cost: __________ ; Great, what’s the total? $________ ; Now, what will you get for the stuff that you already own: $__________ Wonderful! Now, subtract the two $________ That’s what you need to buy b/w now and your Rear Deck Speech (i.e. 80 y.o.).

b) Now take all of the Recurring expenses (lifestyle; any Lee’s List items or purchases that are annual or can easily be budgeted as annual expense): and total them up here using 2008 estimates of cost $____ Multiply by 20 $________

c) Convert your final answers for both a) and b) into Date dollars using the inflation table from Monday’s post: http://7m7y.com/2008/10/21/accounting-for-inflation/ then add them together: $______

Congratulations! That’s your Number ….

Hope this simplified (!) methodology helps … if not, I have the same advice for you as for Josh: stand by for Ryan’ spreadsheet, which will be a great format to help you detail your cost items.

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
Lee
Posted on:
October 24, 2008 at 10:11 am

Just FYI…Slight Correction… listed under possibly related posts, “Bright forever of Lee Martin” is not me, although it is a good story:) I guess that’s the risk we run with the “Possibly related” sites.

Comment Number:
4
Written by:
AJC
Posted on:
October 24, 2008 at 11:08 am

@ Lee – That’s an automatic feature of WordPress; it uses basic keywords lookups to find other posts FIRST within 7m7y.com THEN in any other worpress.com blog.

I can turn it off, depending on the consensus of our 7M7Y Community, but then our posts won’t be listed on any other WordPress site (it becomes a way to pick up some potential new readers). I’m open on this …

Comment Number:
5
Written by:
How do I handle future purchases? «
Posted on:
October 28, 2008 at 3:25 am

[…] asks: You said“  take my one off purchases and list them according to 2008 cost estimates,then to figure […]

Comment Number:
6
Written by:
Diane
Posted on:
October 29, 2008 at 3:41 pm

@ AJC – I say leave it on – I’ve read one of the related posts and found it interesting, but realize for the most part that they are not related very much at all. (I am sure our readers are bright enough to figure that out, too!) Did you say it was related by the keywords we chose for the post?

Comment Number:
7
Written by:
AJC
Posted on:
October 29, 2008 at 4:55 pm

@ Diane – Not sure how they do it; either by tags or by the text of the post itself – probably tags as you suggest.