It's Sunday morning as I write this, and my weeklong adventure at Fincon 2022 in Orlando has come to an end. I'm exhausted.

As has become customary, I didn't actually attend any workshops or keynotes or breakout sessions here at Fincon. Instead, I spent the entire week connecting with friends:

• I enjoyed chatting with Rob Berger about how he's managed to grow his excellent YouTube channel from 0 to 63,000 subscribers in two years. He now makes more than he used to earn with his blog (and he made plenty with his blog). He does this by putting his audience first and only promoting a handful of products that he actually uses and endorses. Love it.
• Rocky Lalvani from Richer Soul told me about Marisa Peer and the biggest disease affecting humanity. As a guy who has struggled plenty with his mental health, I like Peer's message: "I am enough." (This is now the lockscreen on my phone!)
• Donna Freedman told me all about her frugal adventures in Anchorage, Alaska. Donna is just as funny and resourceful in person as she is in her GRS articles (and those at her own site). I have high hopes that she and I can reach some sort of arrangement to feature her writing here regularly again — but we forgot to discuss this because we were talking about gardening and education and moose.
• I talked with Carl Jensen about podcasting, friends, and home remodeling. He suggested something crazy but cool: What if he and Pete (a.k.a. Mr. Money Mustache) were to fly out to Oregon for a week to help me remodel my bathroom? I like this idea. Carl says he's serious about it, so it's just a matter of getting MMM on board. I suspect I can lure him to Oregon with promises of bikes and beer.
• Yesterday, I had a delightful conversation with Tanja Hester. I've never told her this, but I always feel like she's a female J.D. (or that I'm a male Tanja). Some examples: she's nerdy af, plagued by ADHD, and loves great writing. And we're both competitive pedants (as that sentence illustrates). Tanja and I are both notebook nerds. She showed me hers. I showed her mine. For years, I've been using the Hobonichi Techo planner (because I love the A6 size), but Tanja convinced me to test out the Jibun Techo from Kokuyo next year. Next time, I want us to compare notes on our computer-based writing workflows.

Because I didn't attend any sessions at Fincon, I didn't actually learn much about business. That said, I did learn lots from the conversations I had with friends. For you folks out there who like to read, let me give you a tip that I found eye-opening.

Today, the Get Rich Slowly summer of books concludes with an excerpt from Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away from Julien and Kiersten Saunders. Julien and Kiersten are the power couple behind the rich & Regular blog and YouTube channel.

The following excerpt from Cashing Out (published by Portfolio/Penguin) is used with permission. Copyright © 2022 by Rich & Regular LLC. This passage has been edited to be more readable on the web.

Dr. Sue Johnson is a clinical psychologist who specializes in emotionally focused therapy. She says that when couples fight (regardless of the topic), they're doing a dance. One partner makes a move, and the other one responds accordingly. She insists the dance is always the problem — not you, not me, not us — and not the topic.

By focusing on the dance, we can shift our focus and look at our interaction patterns whenever there's an issue. The rhythm of one person responding to the other person's moves is what ultimately. defines the dance, and our ability to instinctively know when to reach and and grab the other's hand for a spin requires what Dr. Johnson calls emotional attunement.

If the conflict is the dance itself, think of your emotions as the music. Being emotionally attuned means you can both hear the same song, or at the very least can acknowledge that yours isn't the only song playing. In other words, it's not enough to just go through the moves together if one of you is grooving to Barry White and the other is swinging to Barry Manilow.

When you've been in a pattern of avoiding conversations with your partner about money, it's as if you've both been attending a silent disco. Everyone's dancing, but you can't hear any music. If you want to get attuned, it's important to understand what unresolved money arguments sound like, emotionally speaking.

Hey, folks. We have/had a good discussion going here, but something happened to nearly all of the comments. I'm not sure what the issue is. They're still in the database, but they don't appear on the site. We'll work to solve the problem.

Update: Holy cats! It's not only the comments on this article. It's the comments on every article on the site. They're all gone. I can see them in the database, but they're no longer tied to their posts. They're just here hanging in the ether. I have zero clue what happened. May be time for a database restore.

A couple of weekends ago, Kim and I enjoyed a short vacation on the Oregon Coast. She's been taking foraging classes, and she had an early morning workshop on harvesting sea vegetables one Sunday. Rather than wake in the middle of the night to drive out, we rented a small place in Tillamook and took the dog for an adventure. (The dog loves the coast.)

We let Tally lead us on a walk through town one rainy afternoon. Coming home, we cut through a trailer park. "We're in the poor part of town," Kim said.

"Yep," I said. "But look at that trailer house right there. That is almost exactly like the one I grew up in." Here's the trailer I grew up in:

We stopped to look at the trailer. I pointed out the tiny windows and the sagging roof. "It's small," Kim said, frowning.

"Yes," I said. "Yes it is." The trailer was a beat-up 1970-era single-wide. Nothing about it looked appealing. I could imagine the inside: shag carpet, thin wood paneling on the walls, faded linoleum, colors like Avocado and Harvest Gold on every surface.

If you've been watching Stranger Things season four, as we have, the trailer houses in that show remind me of ours too. Look at this mobile home from Stranger Things; it's very, very similar to the one my parents owned:

Everything about that image feels like my childhood to me. (Well, except for the demonic tentacles wrapped around the house and car...)

It's December 1972. I am three years old. My parents have to be away for the night. They drive me to stay with Dad's brother and his family. It's cold and it's raining. We stand on a covered porch and knock. A big lady with a big smile opens the door to greet us.

"This is your Aunt Janice," Mom tells me. "And this is your cousin Nicky."

You are standing behind your mother. You are eight years old. This is the first time we meet. You're not interested in a little kid like me, and I'm too timid to pay much attention to you.

Mom and Dad leave. Your mother reads to me: The Little Engine that Could, Curious George, Doctor Seuss. You sit nearby and listen. Before bed, I learn that you wear plastic pants like I do. You're a big boy but you still wet the bed.

It's a Sunday in autumn 1978. You are fourteen; I am nine. My family is visiting yours after church. You are curled up in a chair watching football on a black-and-white television. You have a magazine in your lap. I am watching you watching football. We don't have a TV, and I don't know anything about football.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"I'm watching the Pittsburgh Steelers," you say. "They're my favorite team." You show me the magazine — an entire magazine only about football. It lists the teams and the players and the schedules for the entire season. You show me how you take notes in the magazine, writing down the scores of each game, writing notes about your favorite players.

I tell you that I like comic books. When the game is over, you take me upstairs to show me your comics. You don't have many, and none of them are about superheroes, but when you offer me a Richie Rich, I take it home with me.

This is our first real interaction not as cousins, but as friends.

Howdy, folks. I don't have any personal-finance news for you today because my life continues to be in one of two states.

• I spend three or four nights at Duane's house, helping to care for him. I buy him food. I prepare him food. I help him walk from room to room (because he cannot reliably do this himself anymore). I administer his drugs. I feed his fish. I take him on "field trips". We watch the Aquarium Co-Op channel on YouTube. Or...
• I spend three or four nights at my house, mostly sleeping but also rushing to get as many household chores and errands done as possible. I buy groceries. I (slowly) work to build a fence. I water plants. I walk the dog.

This has been my life for the past six weeks, and will continue to be my life until the inevitable conclusion of this adventure. While I'm not looking forward to The End, I will say that I've learned a ton from this process. I've grown even closer to Duane (at least when he's not in a narcotics-induced fog) and I've surprised myself with my ability to provide hospice care. Who knew?

So, that's the life update.

Monday, I drove north to help my cousin, Duane. We moved him out of his apartment last weekend and into a smaller place close to family. As a result, everything is in chaos. He's living out of boxes. At this late stage, his cancer affects every aspect of his life, and that includes his ability to sustain prolonged physical activity — such as setting up a new home.

I spent Monday afternoon unpacking his kitchen, buying groceries, installing his internet and television, and so on. In the evening, Bob and Audrey came over (Duane's brother and his sister-in-law). The four of us sat in the kitchen and sorted the boxes of food into three piles: Duane's pantry, going home with Bob/Audrey, going home with J.D.

When we were done, Duane insisted that we enjoy some birthday cake. He turned 58 on Sunday, and some friends had brought him a fancy carrot cake from a 100-year-old Portland bakery. Duane couldn't eat any cake himself (he can't eat or drink much of anything anymore), but he wanted us to taste it.

After his brother left, Duane and I began preparing for bed. "Tomorrow," I said, "we'll replace the water in your fish tanks and get the last of the stuff from your apartment. Plus, anything else you want to do."

Duane was sitting on the edge of his bed, half undressed. I could see that he was still in pain.

Today, I did the second-hardest thing I've ever had to do: I took away Mom's cat.

Mom's assisted living facility called last Thursday. "We strongly encourage you to consider moving your mother to memory care," the director told me. "I know we talked about this a year ago, and at that time you and your family decided she wasn't ready. We think she's ready now. She's refusing her meds. She's refusing to eat. She's wandering. She's more confused than ever."

I phoned my brother, Jeff, who has handled the bulk of Mom's care since she moved to Happy Acres a decade ago. "What do you think?" I asked.

"I think they're right," he said. "Mom has been to the emergency room three times since the middle of November. She seems relatively lucid after each hospital visit, but that fades fast. Within a day of returning home, she's out of it again. And her confusion does seem to be getting worse."

"Yeah," I said. "You're right. Even when she's lucid, she's confused. Remember when she called me from the hospital two weeks ago? She was speaking in complete sentences for once, but the sentences made no sense. She was asking to see the sherriff. She was talking about her dog, but she hasn't owned a dog since the 1980s."

Then I added, "The tough part is that she can't keep her cat if she moves to memory care. And she loves that cat."

My mother's health has been declining over the past few months, and it's produced a wee bit of year-end financial drama in our family. (The word "drama" is a bit of an exaggeration. Maybe it's produced some year-end financial consternation?)

As long-time readers will recall, my mother has been in assisted living for more than a decade now. She lives a mellow life filled with television, her pet cat, and a regular routine. Because she has cognitive problems, it's difficult for her to communicate. The doctors call her "non-verbal", and they can't explain the cause. She cannot form complete sentences (sometimes two words is tough!), and it seems as if she cannot formulate complex thoughts. It's a mystery to everyone.

Today — at this very moment — my brother is driving my mom to the emergency room. It's her third visit in six weeks, and it's always the same issue: vomiting, dehydration, confusion. During the previous two episodes, a few days of hospital rest helped her, and she returned to the assisted living facility feeling better (and actually able to carry on a basic conversation, like you might have with a two-year-old).

So, Mom's health is declining. That's important point number one.

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

You've probably heard that saying before. It's from motivational speaker Jim Rohn. He used it as a way to encourage people to learn and grow from others' experiences, habits, attitudes, and so forth. He wanted folks to seek out and spend time with people of high quality.

Unfortunately for most people, this advice can be difficult (if not impossible) to implement.

That's because we tend to group with like-minded people, which includes hanging out with friends with similar levels of success. Those who are unmotivated often spend time with others who are unmotivated. And those who are motivated by achievement tend to associate with others at a similar level.

When you resolve to improve yourself — to become smarter or fitter or wealthier — it can be tough to find new friends with a similar desire. It can be difficult to change the five people you spend the most time with.

Today, I want to talk about finding a money mentor.

Talking to your parents about their finances probably seems like one of the most awkward you conversations you could ever have. I'll bet it ranks right up there with the sex talk your parents gave you when you were a kid — or that you’ve had with your own children.

I grew up in the South, where we don’t talk about money or sex. So when I asked my mom where babies came from, she told me a man and woman "make love". That’s it. That was the extent of the conversation.

I have three kids, so clearly I figured out where babies come from. When my oldest was 10, she asked me where babies came from. I didn’t say something vague like, “A man and woman make love.” I simply told her the basics. She then looked at me – and remember, I have three kids – and said, “Ooh, you did that three times.”

I decided to be upfront with my kids because I wanted them to know they could feel comfortable talking to me about a topic that many people consider taboo. Like the money talk with parents, it’s only as awkward as you make it.

However, unlike the birds and the bees talk, you cannot figure out your parents’ finances unless you actually get the details.

I learned this the hard way.