In case you are not familiar with Adam, he is the creator of the popular Man vs Debt blog and recently started a business called You vs Debt that helps people sell their crap, eliminate their debt, and live the life of their dreams.  The mission of You vs Debt is the subject of Adam’s presentation.

Although Adam is crazy busy, he was good enough to take a few minutes to answer some of my questions via email.  Adam’s responses to my questions helped to clarify for me exactly what Adam’s philosophy is and how it has impacted his life.  I hope it does the same for you.

Adam:  Well, yes – there is some credibility to that belief. But there’s two reasons why we don’t subscribe to that thinking.

First, you can “live for today” for a few days… or a few weeks… or a few years… before you have to “live shitty” for a much longer time as you pay for choices you made.  In other words, you can’t just continue to live for today (in your example) over and over when it’s unsustainable.

Instead, I think sacrificing a bit now – so that you can live for today SUSTAINABLY will allow you to create a life where it is possible to do fantastic things on a regular basis. So we choose to fight for the sustainable future, rather than throw everything at the short-term.

That said, I don’t think you should get too crazy with the sacrificing. There IS a balance – and exploring that fine line is a journey we each are very lucky to be able to have as living, breathing humans.

The second reason is that when you get in a relationship – or certainly when you have kids – the stakes change. “Living for today” can then mean passing on financial stress, troubles, and unsustainable habits to a future generation.

Even without kids, ridiculously unsustainable habits can poison relationships, family members, and even jobs.

Bottom line: You can “live for the moment” AND take control of your financial life at the same time. It’s not one or the other.

Adam:  So this is what happens when you “sacrifice” too much – or you don’t take time out along the journey to enjoy the ride.

I might challenge you though. Did your people REALLY sacrifice along the way to reach retirement? I’m convinced that many people THINK they are sacrificing while living in McMansions and enjoying a suburban life that only .025% of the population of the world could only imagine. Obviously that’s not everyone – and may not be the people you are referencing – however in general we’ve got pretty stuck up about what we think we deserve (at least I struggle with this!)

On the flip side, what item do you want to hold onto as you die?

On that deathbed, what gadget are you going to regret never getting to buy?

The “sell your crap” philosophy is about prioritizing experiences over “things” in your life. And it’s also about trading in our addiction to stuff in order to get more flexibility in our lives. Flexibility to do those things we WILL actually regret on our deathbeds.

Sure you can spend just as much on experiences than things. But given the choice. I’ll always choose people and experience over another item!  (Well not always, I’m not perfect – but I try!)

Adam:  I don’t think your primary home that you live in is an “investment”. I wouldn’t buy one as an “investment”.

Simply put, it’s too emotional! If you plan on being in one community – for whatever reason – for 5-10 years, then I’m o.k. with buying a home.

In general, I believe people are too quick to purchase. Renting is awesome and we love it right now.

I also believe your TOTAL housing expenses should be well under 25% of your income if you buy. And that you should be debt-free in the rest of your life.

Right now we are fine with renting because we have no plans to pick one place for 5+ years yet, we wouldn’t have our mortgage and expenses be under 25% of our income right now, and we need to finish our remaining student loans (and continue to invest in our business).

Once we pick an area we enjoy, finish our student loans, grow the business to the point we want – I *welcome* owning a home. It won’t be an investment, but a fun, emotional experience for my family.

Adam:  Yuck. I don’t know.

I’d probably still be living paycheck-to-paycheck in the Real Estate industry. Trying to make a commission to pay the bills that were late. Courtney would likely be teaching, we’d likely have a huge mortgage, still be in debt, and still wondering if there was “more” to life.

Maybe we’d be happy, maybe not. It was only 3-4 years ago, but I’ve changed so much – in mindset and in other areas – that it’s really hard for me to even brainstorm what it might be like!

Adam:  I’m not sure about my “life’s work”. I feel like over the last few years I’ve found any amazing way I can help a LARGE amount of people improve their lives.

So that’s powerful, amazing, and something I’m grateful for.

Eventually, I’d like to push the envelope more. Explore other creative means for helping people “wake up” and tinkering with other areas outside of finance as I grow and experience those myself.

I want to thank Adam for graciously consenting to answer my questions.  Be sure to check out Adam on his blog and at his online business, You vs. Debt.

Here is a list of the goals I have set for myself along with notes on the progress, if any, I made on the goal during December.  The majority of the goals were detailed in my Making Plans for 2011 post from earlier this year.  I’ve added a few goals to the list since then as well.

You can find updates from previous months here:

• January 2011
• February 2011
• March 2011
• April 2011
• May 2011
• June 2011
• July 2011
• August 2011
• September 2011
• October 2011
• November 2011

And yet, despite the challenges we are facing, opportunities abound. Not only are there opportunities everywhere, but the tough economy actually provides us with advantages that we wouldn’t have during stronger economic times. Don’t believe me? Read the following thoughts from resident genius Seth Godin. It helped to pull me out of my funk and re-focus on what is really possible right now. I hope it does the same for you.

A friend asked me the other day, “…given the sorry state of so much in the world, what’s possible to look forward to?”

The state isn’t sorry. It’s wide open.

Interest rates are super low, violence is close to an all time low, industries are being remade and there’s more leverage for the insurgent outsider than ever before in history.

The status quo is taking a beating, there’s no question about it. That’s what makes it a revolution.

I said this nine years ago and I stand by it. In the years since I wrote this essay, people have started social movements, built billion dollar companies, toppled dictators, found new jobs, learned new skills and generally made a ruckus.

Go!

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Hindsight is 20/20. People are already looking back on the 1990s and wishing that they had had more courage. When you look back on the 2000s, what will you have to say for yourself? [The following is reprinted from 9 years ago].

Here’s a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?

Many people will have to answer that question by saying, “I spent my time waiting, whining, worrying, and wishing.” Because that’s what seems to be going around these days. Fortunately, though, not everyone will have to confess to having made such a bad choice.

While your company has been waiting for the economy to rebound, Reebok has launched Travel Trainers, a very cool-looking lightweight sneaker for travelers. They are selling out in Japan — from vending machines in airports!

While Detroit’s car companies have been whining about gas prices and bad publicity for SUVs (SUVs are among their most profitable products), Honda has been busy building cars that look like SUVs but get twice the gas mileage. The Honda Pilot was so popular, it had a waiting list.

While Africa’s economic plight gets a fair amount of worry, a little startup called ApproTEC is actually doing something about it. The new income that its products generate accounts for 0.5% of the entire GDP of Kenya. How? It manufactures a $75 device that looks a lot like a StairMaster. But it’s not for exercise. Instead, ApproTEC sells the machine to subsistence farmers, who use its stair-stepping feature to irrigate their land. People who buy it can move from subsistence farming to selling the additional produce that their land yields — and triple their annual income in the first year of using the product.

While you’ve been wishing for the inspiration to start something great, thousands of entrepreneurs have used the prevailing sense of uncertainty to start truly remarkable companies. Lucrative Web businesses, successful tool catalogs, fast-growing PR firms — all have started on a shoestring, and all have been profitable ahead of schedule. The Web is dead, right? Well, try telling that to Meetup.com, a new Web site that helps organize meetings anywhere and on any topic. It has 200,000 registered users — and counting.

Maybe you already have a clipping on your mirror that asks you what you did during the 1990s. What’s your biggest regret about that decade? Do you wish that you had started, joined, invested in, or built something? Are you left wishing that you’d at least had the courage to try? In hindsight, the 1990s were the good old days. Yet so many people missed out. Why? Because it’s always possible to find a reason to stay put, to skip an opportunity, or to decline an offer. And yet, in retrospect, it’s hard to remember why we said no and easy to wish that we had said yes.

The thing is, we still live in a world that’s filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity — we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them. To push ourselves and the people around us to demonstrate gratitude, insight, and inspiration. To take risks and to make the world better by being amazing.

Are these crazy times? You bet they are. But so were the days when we were doing duck-and-cover air-raid drills in school, or going through the scares of Three Mile Island and Love Canal. There will always be crazy times.

So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That’s why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.

You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It’s never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment — just one second — to decide.

Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that’s to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?

There are thousands and thousands of people out there living lives of quiet, screaming desperation who work long, hard hours, at jobs they hate, to enable them to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.
– Nigel Marsh

My friend Adam Baker is an amazing young guy.

Adam was in his early 20′s when he suddenly realized that the script he’d been given by society really wasn’t in his best interest.  You know the script I’m talking about.  We all receive the same basic one.  It goes like this:

• work hard in high school so you can get into a good college
• borrow money so you can attend the good college so you can get a good job
• get an apartment and borrow money to fill it with stuff
• find a mate, get married, and then borrow more money for a house
• have some kids, borrow more money and get a bigger house

Do all of this, and someday you can enter the promised land of retirement.  Problem is, until you hit retirement, all of your money goes to pay your debt.  And if you make it to retirement age, you’ll probably find out that there’s no money left to retire on.  For most of us, we don’t figure out the deck is stacked against us until we get close to retirement age.

When Adam started his journey, he was in a position like a lot of us.  He was in debt and he was working to pay the bills.  But he asked himself one question, and the answer to that question changed his life.  The question?  What does freedom mean to me?  He wasn’t looking for a dictionary definition.  Instead, he wanted to know what his life would look like if he was truly free.

Last month, Adam was invited to share his story at the Tedx Conference in Asheville, NC.  a video of that presentation is attached.  In the video, Adam tells his story and issues a challenge to anyone who is still going to work every day to pay their bills.  In an upcoming post, I will give you some of my thoughts about the presentation.  I’ll also discuss how Adam’s message can be applied to my life.  To be honest, I’m struggling with Adam’s message at the moment and I will be hashing it out in my mind over the next few days.

Here’s Adam’s presentation:

What is the biggest difference between managers and leaders?

Both roles are important but they seek to do different things…

1. Leaders lead people. Managers manage people.
2. Leaders set destinations. Managers navigate the roads to get there.
3. Leaders cultivate change. Managers cultivate creating stability.
4. Leaders inspire. Managers comfort.
5. Leaders appeals to the heart. Managers appeal to the head.
6. Leaders set direction. Managers set plans with details.
7. Leaders work on a system. Managers are working the system.
8. Leaders have vision. Managers are about reaching goals.
9. Leaders   are about effectiveness. Managers are about efficiency.
10. Leaders have followers. Managers have subordinates.
11. Leaders take ownership. Managers take responsibility.
12. Leaders shape culture. Managers enact culture.
13. Leaders are proactive. Managers are reactive.
14. Leaders accomplish achievements.  Managers accomplish compliance.
15. Leaders break rules. Managers make rules.
16. Leaders use conflict. Managers avoid conflict.
17. Leaders set new direction. Managers go on the existing roads.
18. Leaders go inward. Managers work outward.
19. Leaders are concerned what is right and managers are concerned about being right.

As you can see managers and leaders are two different people. Do organizations need both? YES.

Leadership begins where management ends and smart organizations value both and great organizations work hard to make each a part of their team.

Here is a list of the goals I have set for myself along with notes on the progress, if any, I made on the goal during November.  The majority of the goals were detailed in my Making Plans for 2011 post from earlier this year.  I’ve added a few goals to the list since then as well.

You can find updates from previous months here:

• January 2011
• February 2011
• March 2011
• April 2011
• May 2011
• June 2011
• July 2011
• August 2011
• September 2011
• October 2011

Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.

– Ferris Bueller

At the end of every year, I take off a few days to evaluate what I accomplished during the course of the year and plan for what I’d like to accomplish in the upcoming 12 months. This year-end planning session will take place next month.  I’m already looking forward to it.

In addition to taking off a few days next month, I’m taking off this entire week. I’m not going to beat myself up for not writing this week. I’m also not going to get overly involved in any projects. What I am going to do is just sit and think.

It seems to me that a real weakness for a lot of people is their inability to sit quietly and consider their life. I’m not so much talking about meditation (although that can be valuable too). I’m talking about taking a long hard look at your life and deciding what should change and what should stay the same. I don’t want to do things a certain way in my life because I have always done things that way. Whatever I do, I want to do it consciously.

Everything is on the table. If I’m involved in something that no longer serves me, then I’ll work to change it. If something I’m doing seems to be working just fine, I’ll continue it. Nothing is off limits. Everything will be considered.

Time to get back to thinking.

I started writing this blog as a way to share my thoughts and ideas with other people. I guess I was egotistic enough to think that I had something to say that others could benefit from. But honestly, that motivation changed not too long after I began writing here. What I found was that if I wrote a blog post about something that I was struggling with, writing the post would help me get my thoughts clear in my head.

For instance, a while ago I was thinking back on a great opportunity I had that I let slip away. The memory of my mishandling of the situation made me feel pretty lousy. I was feeling bad about myself, but I wanted to analyze the situation and hopefully learn from it. That resulted in two blogs posts about what fear had cost me in my life (Post 1, Post 2). In hindsight, I hope that anyone who read those blog posts got something valuable out of them, but the real goal in writing them was to help me learn from a bad experience.

I’m afraid that there may have been times that I have come across as a know-it-all or as a guy who has life by the tail. I’m also afraid that I have come across as preachy. That was never my intention. What I’ve tried to do is write in a manner that gets through to me and teaches me the lesson that I need to learn on that particular day. As I said, I hope that my writing gets through to everyone who reads it, but on this blog, I’m writing primarily for me.

In a way, this blog has turned into my own private therapy session. The only thing is, I serve as both the patient and the therapist. I guess it’s my version of talking to myself, but I do it in a manner that allows others to follow along as well.

I hope you continue to follow along and to find something of value here. By all means, comment on the posts with your thoughts. As I go through life and talk to myself here on this blog, I can use all of the input I can get.

Here is a list of the goals I have set for myself along with notes on the progress, if any, I made on the goal during October.  The majority of the goals were detailed in my Making Plans for 2011 post from earlier this year.  I’ve added a few goals to the list since then as well.

You can find updates from previous months here:

• January 2011
• February 2011
• March 2011
• April 2011
• May 2011
• June 2011
• July 2011
• August 2011
• September 2011

October may have been the least productive month I had all year.  I was traveling the entire month and because of that, I got very little done.  Here’s what my travel schedule looked like for October:

• Murfreesboro, TN to Arlington, VA
• Arlington, VA to Murfreesboro, TN
• Murfreesboro, TN to Port St. Lucie, FL
• Port St. Lucie, FL to Murfreesboro, TN
• Murfreesboro, TN to Elgin, IL to Viroqua, WI
• Viroqua, WI to Elgin, IL to Viroqua, WI
• Viroqua, WI to Elgin, IL to Aurora, IL to Somonauk, IL to Murfreesboro, TN
• Murfreesboro, TN to Port St. Lucie, FL
• Port St. Lucie, FL to Murfreesboro, TN
• Murfreesboro, TN to Atlanta, GA to Murfreesboro, TN
• Murfreesboro, TN to Viroqua, WI
• Viroqua, WI to Wisconsin Dells, WI
• Wisconsin Dells, WI to Viroqua, WI
• Viroqua, WI to Murfreesboro, TN

That’s a lot of driving! I’m disappointed that I didn’t get more done during the month, but I understand that the circumstances weren’t the best. More traveling is planned for November, but it shouldn’t be nearly as bad as it was in October.
Here’s how I did on my goals during the month:

Write a Novel — I made very little progress on my novel during October.  I probably only wrote about 2500 words.  I’ve got to do better in November.  I had planned on having the book finished by the end of the year, but that is looking unlikely now.  I did come up with an exciting plan to publish 3-4 books each year, but of course, that is going to be tough to do if I continue to spend my time driving instead of writing.

Continue With Plans to Race in the Rolex 24 at Daytona — My trip to Alexandria, VA early in October was to pick up a new race car I purchased on the cheap.  The car is a Geo Storm and should be a fun little car to drive in ChumpCar in 2012.  The 2012 ChumpCar schedule came out at the end of October and if things work out, I’ll be doing 11 races in the Storm and the RX-7 we purchased previously.  Now the trick will be to get the cars ready and motivate my potential co-drivers.

Learn to Play Guitar — I had my final guitar lesson in June.  CJ Vaughn, my guitar teacher, is terrific, but I just haven’t found time to attend the lessons or practice like I should.  I may still try to learn, but if I do, it will be by using a DVD or Internet-based lessons.

Learn to Play Piano — I had planned on starting on this goal by now.  However, with the time I am spending on writing and my travel schedule, I just haven’t found time to pursue it.  This goal might be one I push back until next year.

Kayak the Length of the St. John’s River — I had hoped to make a run at this goal during October, but that didn’t happen.  I’m going to be tied up with work and family matters during much of the rest of the year and simply won’t have time to get it done this year.  Maybe in 2012.

Circumnavigate Wisconsin by Bicyle or Foot — This goal is officially changed to hiking the length of the Ice Age Trail (IAT).  That’s 1,000 miles across Wisconsin.  I visited the IAT offices in Cross Plains, WI in July and purchased the maps and companion guide for the trail.  I’m currently in the process of breaking the trail down into daily hikes.  That’s the easy part.  The hard part will be figuring out the logistics (drop off, pick up, where to sleep) of such a goal.

Start the Adoption Process — I hate to sound overly pessimistic, but I just don’t see this goal coming to fruition.  I hate that because adopting a child is something I have felt driven to do for many, many years.  It is more than just something that would have been nice to do.  I feel an obligation based on my personal beliefs to adopt a child, so failing to do so feels very disingenuous and even hypocritical.  I can live with failing to achieve some of the other goals I set for myself, but this one hurts me to my very soul.

Apply for an MFA in Creative Writing — I applied for the MFA in January and received word at the beginning of March that I had not been accepted into the program.  I’m disappointed, but not surprised.  I applied solely to Vanderbilt University.  They received more than 600 applications and chose just six candidates.  I’m convinced I was 7th on the list.

Launch Short Stories Website — Accomplished!  Check it out.  Update: The site is currently not working.  I’ve done nothing with the site since August or September, and I don’t think I’ll be relaunching it.

Launch Other Internet Businesses — I spoke to Rob Monster from Epik.com about using his services on some of my domains.  Still no decisions, but at least we seem to be moving forward.  I need to get together with Rob again in November and get things moving.

Read the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century — During October, I read two of the novels from the Modern Library’s 100 best novels of the 20th Century.  The first was Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  I really enjoyed it.  I have to admit that my expectations were pretty low.  Most of the books I have read from the list recently were long, drawn out stories about nothing.  Others were practically incomprehensible.  Slaughterhouse Five was a funny, poignant story about a soldier’s life after returning from Germany in World War II and suffering through the bombings of Dresden.  The book reminded me of Catch-22 (they are both World War II books), but to me,Slaughterhouse Five was a more enjoyable read…The second book I read during October was Henderson The Rain King by Saul Bellows.  Again, my expectations were low, but I found that I liked the book.  In fact, I really liked the first third of the book.   I thought Bellows did a very good job of telling an interesting story.  He drew me into the book.  But then the story started to drag.  As I went from chapter to chapter  in the middle of the book, I felt like I was trying to walk through knee-deep caramel.  The story dragged on, but nothing much was happening.  The end of the book picked up speed a little, but it never regained the enjoyment I found in the beginning of the story.  Even so, I still enjoyed the book and would recommend it.  I enjoyed Bellows writing and look forward to reading more from him in the future.