Happy new year! 2016 was a really awesome year for the Tiedemann tribe. The Mrs. and I really dedicated ourselves to becoming pretty serious about a minimalist lifestyle. We did a full declutter around the house and have pretty much moved into a maintenance mode with keeping track of what things we have coming in to the house. As part of this process I’ve decided to put being a musician on hold for a while. I’ve sold all of my equipment and have decided to give myself a bit of a mental reset in relation to music. I’ve spent more than half of my life in the pursuit of making music and as of right now I’m much more interested in being a consumer rather than a creator.
We also finally paid off my school loan! This was one of the biggest achievements of the year as the loan was twelve-years old by the time we got it paid off. It’s definitely been a cloud hanging over our heads and the push we’ve made towards being debt free (coinciding with the push towards minimalism) definitely encouraged us to really work towards it. Along the same lines, this year we took out our first credit card, almost maxed it out, and paid it back off. At this point I will likely be calling the company and cancelling the card because we both came to see how easily a credit card can dig a really big hole. Considering things we’ve learned from listening to The Minimalists’ podcast, we’ve decided we will rely more on a regular debt to income ratio and an underwriting service if we really want to take out a loan for anything. We’ve gotten so dedicated to closing out our debt that we’re even looking at paying off our auto loan within the first quarter of 2017!
On a slightly different point, this year also marked the first full year that I’ve had facial hair (as in a grown out beard and mustache) and the first full year that I’ve been using a Mac (Book Air) as my primary computing device. Both of these changes took place at the end of 2015 but I found myself being committed to both of them this year. I know neither of these are really life-changing decisions but they have played a pretty big part in the way I perceive myself since.
There were some other pretty big changes for my family and myself in 2016, so despite all the negativity that was floating around about the year, I think it was a pretty awesome one. I’m actually feeling pretty optimistic about this new year. As I said earlier, we’re expecting to pay off our car loan in the next few months which will make us debt-free aside from our regular month-to-month bills. It won’t necessarily be a huge burden off of our backs as far as extra income available each month, but the idea of not having the shackle of owing money will be a big relief to us.
I wouldn’t really say I’m the resolution setting kind of person, but as I was thinking about what I accomplished last year, I started wondering if there was anything I would have liked to do that I didn’t. One of the things I always find myself regretting that I hadn’t done more of is writing. I finally released my first short story in the form of a post at Steemit.com (and later here, my personal blog). I’ve decided I want to hold myself to really make an effort at doing more writing. As I said, I don’t want to call it a resolution, but it’s just more of a goal I want to set. I’m going to work at keeping myself to a one-post-a-month minimum. With the ease of our financial burdens I’ve started to become more interested in finding some kind of work I can do from home and it usually ends up pointing towards something relating to writing. Maybe something along the lines of freelance editing, as I find it easier to be critical (constructively) of other people than I do to sit and work on my own writing. I’m hoping that by forcing myself to sit and do more writing that I can get better at doing the work of editing and find myself better equipped to put myself our there in the hunt for something like a stay-at-home freelance editing job.
So here’s to an awesome new year to you and yours, and may all your desires and aspirations find the fuel they need to keep the fire burning!
Original post found at my personal blog, Robsteady.computersforpeace.net.
Rob, I love your piece; From what you have revealed, let me tell you that you are just starting out in life and that you can be debt-free but at this early stage, it is inevitable for you to have debt. You mentioned being interested in freelance writing/editing and i would like to suggest fiverr.com to you and also warriorplus.com, you can make some money from home. But as I said, don't stress over the debt now; as for New Year Resolution, no one really follow through on that. I upvote you, take care.
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Thanks for the reply. As to the debt, I've only run against it since taking out the school loan over a decade ago and a few years ago with the car loan. Even the car was something extra I didn't need but since I was working at a dealership I felt I "needed" to have something newer than the clunker I was driving around. Debt is definitely avoidable, but it may take some work.
Thanks for the suggestions of fiverr and warriorplus as well. It may take me some time to really get into the working from home thing, but I've already started working towards it. I'm trying not to consider any of this a New Year's resolution (because I know I won't keep it) but I wanted to put it down so I can at least be held accountable by my server if nothing else.