At long last, work has begun on my first book. The outline is complete, the contract approved, and writing has commenced. It’s a little overwhelming. Writing for GRS everyday has taught me to create short personal pieces on a deadline. But 300 pages? Wow. That’s like Mt. Everest! As clichéd as it sounds, I’m trying to take it one step at a time. I’m breaking things into small pieces. If I can finish three manuscript pages per day, I’m golden.
Speaking of “golden”, here are some great finance articles from elsewhere around the web:
First up, I enjoyed these questions and answers with a lottery winner. This fellow managed to get rich quickly — but he’s being smart with his prize. He won a $30 million lottery jackpot, which netted him $20 million after taxes and fees. He gave a million to each of his parents, gave a million to his sister, and paid off the debt of some of his life-long friends. Determined to avoid the mistakes of other lottery winners, he put it all in a blind trust and has been traveling the world ever since. (To get “just the good stuff”, track the fellow’s answers by his username.)
You all know that I’m a fan of JLP’s number-crunching over at All Financial Matters. Well, he’s done it again. He has two posts that look at the real-life numbers behind our economy. First, he shares the 20-year rolling returns of the S&P 500 from 1926-2008. How has the stock market performed over any 20-year period? You can find out here. He’s also worked up a table showing the history of inflation in the United States from 1920 to 2008. Look at 1973-1981! Wow.
Many GRS readers loved Karawynn’s recent articles during the Staff Writer auditions. I did too. She’s continuing to produce good stuff over at her site, Pocketmint. Recently, for example, she posted “an unflinching look at America’s fascination with cheap“. This is a fascinating article (er, book review). Karawynn fans should look for a guest article from her soon at GRS.
Finally, a reader named AmyJo pointed me to a post at Buttons Magee in which the author describes her efforts to construct a wardrobe using thrift-store clothing. Rachel decided on a look she wanted, inventoried the clothes she already owned, and then created a shopping list for the new items she needed. She made a plan. She says that smart thrift shopping takes work, but can yield huge savings.
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JD, you have an error in the link to Karawynn’s article. A little at the end breaks the link. Good article though.
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That was…strange. Thanks, Hanna. I’m not sure exactly what happened there, but it was easy enough to fix…
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The lottery link…really? I’d take that with a grain of salt, considering it’s on reddit and the commenters there are…less than reliable. It sounds very much to me like “forum dude trying to impress random strangers.” Especially the bit where he talks about paying some guy to smuggle him into North Korea and how he almost got arrested for taking pictures. I dunno, if he’s legit I’ll eat my hat but it all seems very “O RLY?” to me.
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Congrats on your book deal it will be just as great as all the posts here and very informative for all your readers and more. I have tried to write a fiction book and got about a quarter of the way through, it is very difficult but just need to keep plugging at it, you will be fine.
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You’re going to do great on the book! Breaking it into small pieces is the right way to go so you won’t get overwhelmed. Whether you’re writing a book, paying down debt, saving for a goal, or running a marathon, the approach is the same: one step at a time. Good luck!
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I read the lottery winer link a few days ago when kottke linked it, and laughed at the “ran around locking all my doors” comment …. when people ask what I’d do if I won the lotto, I always start thinking about where I’d store the ticket until I could cash it in. I’m sure the stress would kill me.
Looking forward to the book already!
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Writing a book was the hardest thing I ever did for just the reason you refer to here. Writing needs to be organized to be effective and the organization needed for a book-length manuscript is much more difficult to pull off than the organization needed to write a post or a short article.
You will pull it off. And you will be a better writer forevermore as a result of working through it. So please do not let the frustration of taking on something hard discourage you. My experience is that there will be times of great frustration when it appears that nothing is moving forward but then there will be breakthrough times when it seems you are making huge progress all at once (the reality is that you are moving ahead slowly during the times of frustration, but you don’t see it until the breakthrough takes place).
Rob
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The lottery winner sounds interesting. I’m always interested in hearing about the success cases – the cases where people got rich quick but are living/investing in a way that is sustainable for their future. I hate when people figure that all lottery winners go broke within a year or two (though I agree there are many).
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Good luck with the book! My husband has been writing his dissertation for the last 6 months or so, and he gave himself a daily goal and/or a weekly goal: 2 pages a day or 10 pages a week. I’d recommend giving yourself that kind of goal: if you’re in a real groove and write more than your daily quota, it gives you the permission to take an afternoon off some time that week. On the other hand, if you’re having a slow day you don’t have to beat yourself up over it if you still meet your weekly quota.
My only other unsolicited advice: take breaks. Schedule them ahead of time, if you need to. Like training for a long run, you need rest days to pursue fun stuff. (Not that writing isn’t fun, but…)
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The lottery winner thread is definitely worth a read. He appears to be completely legit and handles himself very well. I found it fascinating and enlightening…and useful in case I’m lucky enough to be in his shoes someday.
This is one of the best links I’ve seen on here in awhile — I read the whole thing!
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My husband and I have the plan, if we ever win the lottery, to put it somewhere and not touch it for a whole year, living like before.
After the year has passed, we should know what we want to do with the money, not to mention we’d get interest on it. That would prevent the two biggest mistakes of lottery winner: buying loads of crap without thinking, and giving money to everyone and their mother. After a year, we would know who is really our friend and who isn’t, and how much we’re willing to give.
A lot of people seem to think our idea is stupid, but I like the fact that it would force us to keep living normally for a whole year. After that, hopefully, we’d be able to live about the same as before, instead of going to fancy restaurants every night and buying a house in every country.
And we have so many projects, a year of thinking would allow us to decide in which order to accomplish them, starting with those that might end up paying for themselves (any business project, such as real estate and such) and ending with big plans that won’t yield any money (donations, trips, entertainment…)
I think the problem is that so many people start with the second category, and then they have no money left for the first one, and go back to not being rich (or even being poor and in debt).
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Very interesting reading on the lottery winner – he’s the 3rd or 4th person I’ve read about who has significant money who invests very conservatively – wants to preserve his capital, cover inflation and his yearly outlays. His information regarding how he handled the lawyer, the blind trust, the financial advisers and auditors was worth the thread reading. Additionally, his comments regarding lifestyle costs are valid. As a perpetual traveler, his lifestyle costs go down everytime he stays in another country where the lifestyle costs are less – this is borne out by other PTs (Billy and Akaisha and the Terhorsts). He also stays in hostels and then rents – another money saving tip. He then mentions that many of the higher or expensive countries/cities bleed you dry. He’s a fairly frugal person who still has some of that mindset. His comment regarding owning versus leasing or ‘paying debt’ to own things is right on. His advise to people to live in the suburbs and commute in, pay down debt early and as fast as possible, lower lifestyle costs are spot-on as well.
Thanks for posting the link. Really enjoyed reading it.
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JD,
I wanted to point out that just looking at inflation-figures along like JLP did is slightly misleading. If you look at real (that means inflation adjusted) per capita income, you can see that it is rising very fast, even in the period which we have inflation. Prior, we werent seing much growth. So, regardless of inflation or not, Americans were getting wealthier.
Inflation isn’t something you want 0% of. Or negative. Just slightly positive, for lots of reasons (mainly macroeconomics)
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2007/07/22/real-gross-national-income-per-person/
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