Back from the gym. Today’s Crossfit workout: Run 800 meters, then jump rope 100 times (or do 30 double-unders, for advanced CFers). Repeat this sequence for 30 minutes. I did six complete rounds. My calves are toast. Now, on to your comments…
@Randy (#44)
We do have a sub-account for travel, but it’s just been depleted to pay for our trip to France and Italy. I should have mentioned that regular contributions to this will add a few hundred dollars by February. Thanks for the suggestion to check out oattravel.com.
@Stephanie (#46)
Though it pains my trainer to hear me say it, I find the scientific and anthropological basis for the paleo diet unconvincing. I don’t want to say it’s hogwash, but I think much of it is wishful thinking and not based on hard evidence. So, no — I don’t follow the paleo diet. I know many people who do, and it works great for some of them. I think that’s awesome. For myself, I practice calorie restriction, and I do try to eat more protein than I would if left to my own devices. (My target is 150 grams a day.) And yes, eating healthfully is expensive. I’ve been eating a lot of fresh fruit, and those prices add up!
@Kevin (#49)
Hm. If you’re sensing “justification” in the post, it may be because I’m being pre-emptively defensive because I’m worried that others will judge my existing spending without being able to see the big picture. I’m confident that the Crossfit and the soccer tickets are reasonable and affordable. And the Africa trip is a sort of case-study. It’s an example of the sort of decisions I’m making lately. Note that I have not made a decision on Africa. It’s likely that we’ll go, but first I’m going to have to find ways to make it feasible. And, as I mentioned, I’d rather not tap the emergency savings, so I have to look at other options. As for separate vacations: Believe me, there’s some of that in the future.
@Fantasma (#53)
Yes, it makes perfect sense to re-direct savings earmarked for the Mini and other goals toward the Africa trip in the short term. But I will not compromise on the retirement contributions. For me, there are certain minimum financial standards that have to be met on a regular basis. One of those is retirement contributions. Another is a full emergency savings account, which is why I’m reluctant to tap it. (The difference between retirement and emergency savings is that the savings can be replaced; also, the savings is significantly over-funded, in that it could support me for almost a year of regular spending.)
I marked the comment from Shalom (#56) as a great comment simply because it gets to the heart of my thought process on the Africa decision. If you want to know how I’ve been sorting through this, read her comment.
@Raghu (#61 & #63)
Right. So, this is why I’ve been reluctant to share these sorts of things at GRS, and I think it’s a shame. Yes, one of my goals is to help others get out of debt. But it’s also one of my goals to continue my own journey. I’ve stopped writing much about my journey precisely because I’m worried that doing so will cause reactions like yours. But is that the right thing for me to do? Should I hide what’s really going on simply because some people won’t be able to relate? This post is “testing the waters” to see how people react. Most seem okay discussing these topics, and they seem to understand that I’m in a different financial place than I was five years ago…
@GV (#64)
My Crossfit trainer has talked to me about some of the stuff you bring up. He even has people sign up to learn the Crossfit exercises, and then they quit to build their own home gyms because they can do that at a fraction of the cost of sticking with Crossfit. For myself, I’m still getting a lot out of CF, and I love the 6:30 group, so I’m not about to stop. But you have a very valid point.
RE: The tax account
Yes, I pay taxes quarterly. And maybe if I explained my method, that would set some minds at ease. My tax account is actually way ahead of what I need. I’ve already paid my estimated obligation for 2010, for example. Now, over the past couple of years, my estimated obligation has been below my actual obligation, thus the need for the tax account. But even so, I’ve generally had a cash surplus in that account, which was precisely where I got much of the money to purchase the Mini Cooper last year. (After I paid taxes, there was a ton left over in the tax account.) This is why I’m not worried about drawing from it: my 2010 estimated obligation is already fully paid, and I have a nice chunk of change there for any excess taxes.
To everyone
This is a great discussion. I was really worried about sharing some of this stuff, and while I understand that not everyone agrees with my choices, I like that we’re able to have a productive discussion about the whys and wherefors of these expenses. And I especially love the stories from other folks who are in this stage. I don’t do a good enough job of getting those out there at GRS. I’d like to share more of them.
A look at great reads from the editor of the TLS. This week: an economist takes issue with Niall Ferguson’s life of banking legend Warburg, the myths of Charles de Gaulle explored, and does Cardinal Newman deserve to be sainted?
To be thought a good man, it is always useful to cultivate a good myth. The TLS this week looks at mythmakers from the City of London to the Vatican and from General de Gaulle to Napoleon.
High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg By Niall Ferguson 576 pages. The Penguin Press. $35.
Highest Finance
How good a man, for example, was the mid-20th-century London banker Sir Siegmund Warburg, the subject of Niall Ferguson’s much-praised new biography? Tim Congdon takes issue with the virtuous reputation of a man who he sees as being “lionized” by his biographer in an attempt to highlight Warburg's ethical superiority to the City slickers and shysters of today. Congdon, a longtime monetary economist and adviser to Conservative governments, is unconvinced by the noble case, judging Ferguson naïve about the low tricks that have ever been at the heart of high finance, and too keen “to see in them a public benefit that is not and never was there.” This argument may run and run.
The General: Charles De Gaulle and the France He Saved By Jonathan Fenby 720 pages. Simon & Schuster. £30.
The Myths of Charles de Gaulle
Richard Vinen is intrigued by two new books on General de Gaulle and, in particular, the light they shed on the differing reputations of Churchill and Napoleon, too. De Gaulle, he points out, had to achieve his personal mythology before he achieved any of his own victories; Napoleon needed mythmaking when his victories were long behind him. Churchill’s memoirs are treated in Britain as a source of facts and are found wanting by historians as a result; de Gaulle’s are published in France alongside Gide and Proust as “a kind of fiction” and are venerated accordingly. The books under review are Jonathan Fenby's The General and Sudhir Hazareesingh's Le Mythe Gaullien.
Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint By John Cornwell 256 pages. Continuum. £18.99.
Saint Cardinal Newman?
As British Catholics await the pope’s visit in September, during which he will beatify the influential English cardinal, John Henry Newman, there is much discussion of whether the virtues displayed by the author of Apologia Pro Vita Sua will in time boost his own mythology still further? Is a formal declaration of sainthood the imminent next step. Anthony Kenny, reviewing a biography subtitled The Reluctant Saint, praises Newman’s prose style and intellectual power, while dismissing briskly as “absurd” the notion, popularized in the media, that he was ever homosexually active. Bernard Manzo examines the paradox of Newman as the literary man who instinctively preferred reading and writing tales of dreams to becoming a part of one himself. Newman considered Scripture to be a “record of an idea that lived in its fullness in the minds of the Apostles.” The letters of St. Paul were “literature in a real and true sense,” comparable in the cardinal’s mind to great Greek plays and the most powerful political speeches.
Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles and authors and excerpts from the latest books.
Peter Stothard's latest book is On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey Through Ancient Italy. He is also the author of Thirty Days, a Downing Street diary of his time with British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the Iraq war.
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