January is the month where I pull together financial information and think strategically about how I allocate time, and money.

One of the most useful tools for understanding what’s really happening… as opposed to what we think is happening, or what we budgeted to happen… is an operating account.

I’ll illustrate with a range of examples.

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Cash movements matter.

If you’re going to get ruined, financially, then it will be due to running out of cash.

So, how to track the cash?

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Family Joint Account — every dollar that runs through my household leaves via a single checking account.

Annually: I do a 12 month search on every credit entry into that account. Where did I get my cash?

Monthly: I check total outgoings in the account. How much did we burn this month?

This gives me an understanding of the big picture. While figuring out how to save 20c on a gallon of gas makes me happy (CostCo FTW)… gasoline could be free and it wouldn’t move the needle for my family spending.

Knowing the big numbers, keeps me from making my family miserable by distracting us with the little stuff.

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House Account — From 2008 to 2012, we lived in a very big house.

Aside from the time spent taking care of the place (65 bags of leaves each October!!!), I was curious what this place actually cost me. So I opened a checking account, gave my wife a checkbook and took one for myself. Every-single-thing connected to the house went through there.

Monthly, check the out-goings. Boom, you know exactly what the asset is costing.

You can do this for RV, boats, second homes, you name it.

By the way, the real costs were time, emotion and opportunity cost. We fixed that in 2013.

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Nanny Account – When the kids were little, we spend a ton on childcare. It was the best money we’ve spent since being married. Always remember to structure your childcare so it benefits the marriage.

Preschool, while part of childcare, is where I give consideration to what benefits the child. Everything else runs through the filter of strengthening the marriage.

Get a debit card for the account, run payroll and all other expenses through the account.

Making the cash easy to track saves many ethical mistakes.

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Business Checking Accounts

#1 // When I was running my athletic coaching business, I had a habit of blowing cash that was in the company account. I’d use it for “business related expenses.” When there is a tax deduction, we can justify a lot of marginal spending.

To give myself better spending discipline, I set a target of paying MY WIFE’S account $5,000 a month.

Worked great. The year I started to focus on cash generation, the business saw a $100,000 swing in profitability.

#2 // These days, in my fiduciary services business, I have a brokerage account at Vanguard. Right now, the account invests in a money market fund (VMFXX). To see what the business is _really_ making, I check the account balance at December 31, 2021 vs a year prior.

The business has two checking accounts. I keep the minimum balance in those accounts for free checking, and sweep the excess to Vanguard. The Vanguard balance tells me how things are going.

#3 // I sit on the board of an investment company in Hong Kong. All operations related expenses flow through a single account. Monthly, quarterly, annually… we check the outflows against what we think the operation is costing us.

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Virtual Accounts

#1 // My kids have accounts with the Bank of Dad. These spreadsheets help me teach them the power of compounding (BoD pays 10% per annum).

The first entry into these accounts is October 2016. It’s been a useful teaching tool. I break out the “earnings” component of their weekly interest and they are amazed at the “free money” they earn from investing with me.

#2 // My own Dad lives outside the US and has me pay things from time to time, we have a simple spreadsheet we use to track (Item, Amount, Date, Reference).

We’ve been rolling it for three years. So, much better than when I used to run QuickBooks to track family spending outside my household. We check the total at the start/finish of the year and we know the cash outflow.

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Cash Tracking

Rather than making myself miserable with (endless) low-value bookkeeping, I do a monthly review of every account where money can leave my life.

I enter the closing balances for everything. I compare account balances, and totals, to the prior period. One page.

I also run a monthly cash flow projection (March to February) so I remember to make lumpy payments. One more page.

• Federal / State / County Taxes
• Insurance
• Retirement account investments
• All of the above by legal entity, subsidiary and currency

When I create the forecast, I insert calendar reminders (7 days ahead) to make sure I haven’t swept the cash away.

I nearly bounced a payment to the IRS this month, so the system isn’t perfect but it’s better than jamming my head with dates and payments.

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All of these systems let me quickly get a feel for the key numbers in my life. They let me know what’s happening with a minimal investment of time. With accounting, it is easy to spend hours (and hours, and hours) bookkeeping, while generating zero useful information.

The overall system quickly shows me when my expectations are out of whack with reality.

I’m back on Twitter, daily – sharing ideas about living better. The focus is health & wellness with financial education for you and your family.

It’s a good place to ask me Qs on my writing.

Capital over and above the needs of current adult family members can be considered multigenerational.

• When I was younger, I focused on building net assets. I started saving out of my first paycheck. If a young adult aspires to a family leadership position then this is where they should start.
• Looking backwards from 53, the big gains have come from moderating personal choices, particularly associated with assets that don’t produce cash flow. Being an exemplar, here, is the role of senior family leadership.

A better way of viewing financial wealth…

• Assets “divided by” current-year spending => gives you a figure expressed in “years-spending”
  • $2 million of net assets means something very different when…
    • There’s $2 million of debt sitting on top of it vs being debt-free
    • Baseline spending is $125,000 vs $250,000
    • Average age of the earning membership is 35 vs 55
    • Context matters
• Time Horizon also matters!
  • Family is a dynamic process. I visit for a limited period of time. I change continuously while I’m here.
  • Years-spending can be compared to life expectancy of senior members and working-life expectancy of earning members.
  • Each adult member pays their own way.
    • This is HUGE for long-term returns.
    • First, because there are no “bad” deals in the family system.
    • Second, because the high-earners are free to live their lives in a way that most benefits the family system
      • HINT: teaching young members about life generates a higher return than creating more unearned capital within the family system.
  • Often overlooked => years left until the youngest members take over their own living expenses. Family is a dynamic process with clear generational shifts (deaths, retirements, careers, graduations, births).
• Families don’t need to budget for taking care of everyone, forever. When I started my kids’ allowance, I began teaching the concept of pay-your-own-way. They’ve also been raised with an expectation that they will move out. Living nearby is OK!

As a family, you need to decide the split between future-focused and present-focused capital. Until I was 52, I was totally future-focused. A change we are gradually making is shifting some capital towards present enjoyment. I like to call this capital “recreational.”

If you are going to deploy capital in a “recreational capacity” then consider the nature, and likely impact, of a mistake. Mistakes can come in many forms. Here’s what we’ve learned.

• Multiple, smaller bets, with the minimum capital deployed to solve the issue.
• Make sure you factor in the cost of ownership, forever. A high cost of ownership can turn a gift into a burden. I know families who spent many years unwinding the financial legacies of wealthy elders.
• Remember, the highest form of endowment is the TIME of a parent. How will this choice impact the family member’s time? Don’t tie down your most effective members with admin!
• More than comfort, consider how you might be able to deliver “time” to future family members. What is it going to take to assist my children in having the time to be great parents?
• Related, my children will have a range of financial “success” in their lives. Constraining myself, today, reduces lifestyle friction in the future (at no cost to their nature-loving Dad).
• The role of the family is to support its members in living the lives they choose to live, not to facilitate consumption. My current choices will become the (unconscious) baselines for my grown children.
• Adults have a preference for individual family utilization, over collective utilization.
  • From my dentist, “My kids will use my ski place a lot more… when I’m dead.”
  • From a friend, “They like to visit… when we’re not there.”
• Single geographic locations, with separate living arrangements, have proven a popular way to strengthen families.
  • From a friend, “Close but not too close.”
• Choose peers, and location, with intention.
  • Our environment exerts a powerful, often invisible, influence on our desires and actions.
    • Vegas, Aspen, Global Financial Centers… these locations strength traits that lead me astray
    • Far easier to reach-for-better in Boulder, than struggle with my past.
  • Where will this location, this choice, take our Human Capital?
  • What sort of people will we meet?
    • Availability heuristic, in all things – friends, choices, life partners
• Zillow & AirBnB enable families to quickly compare capital-to-own with fully variable access.
  • I did a quick check for Edwards, CO => $5 million homes available for $7,000 per week in August, the summer peak.
  • The same capital in VTSAX yields $60,000 per annum.
  • The smallest real estate mistake is usually 10% in-and-out costs. Even a “money-back” error on a $1 million house has a true cost of at least $100,000 (because you might have to have to hold for a decade).

Wise allocation of time is what grows human capital.

Assets are often a distraction from what needs to be done.

Specific tactics, I’m working on in 2022.

SELL an investment property to enable a market neutral move into an asset the family will use for shared experiences.

At 40, I had too much runway left to finance to make this choice.

At 53, I don’t want to wait until I’m old for (some of) my assets to better serve my life.

It might be tempting to borrow and defer the tax/agents’ fees => recourse leverage is a risk we don’t need to take.

An aside… at the back of my mind, I want to purchase an all-season van. I used to own a Sportsmobile and we had a lot of fun.

I worked for a guy who loved cars and a wise investor noted, “It’s better for Ferraris to be bought from carried interest than management fees.”

If you’re going to do something indulgent then: (a) pay down debts, (b) take some money off the table, and (c) limit the size of the outlay.

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BUY equities at a reduced weighting.

At this stage of my life, I tend to balance “current enjoyment” with “future protection” on a 50/50 basis.

I’m nervous about current valuations. That said, I’ve been that way, FOREVER!

So… stay invested, at a reduced weighting => buy less.

• In March 2020 I increased equity allocations to 72% of my Vanguard portfolio.
• Allocating additional capital in 2022, I made a reserve for “an investment that benefits the present”…
• …then rebalanced to 60% equity allocation.
• This reduced the size of the new investment and got me past decision paralysis, driven by a fear of near-term loss.

“Buy less” got me to “stay invested.”

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HOLD quality local real estate

Years ago, my family purchased a quality piece of real estate where my kids are growing up. Holding the asset, for 10-20 more years, would help my kids get on the property ladder. It’s also a good-enough hedge for an uncertain future.

As I wrote a couple weeks ago, the main financial deliverable for my kids is debt-free education.

If I can hang onto to the real estate asset then they will get a bonus above the debt-free educational start in life.

Simple decisions, good-enough decisions, can free your thinking.

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WATCH

Be patient, change slowly and focus on sharing experiences with those you love.

For the next 15 Thursdays, I’ll publish a tool, or a lesson, to help you with family finances.

Tweet your Qs at me.

Start the game this weekend.

Here’s a template you can use.

If you have Qs then tweet them at me and I’ll help.

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We are going to play a ten-year game, the purpose is to build an EMOTIONAL attachment to the power of compounding.

You’re going to need the emotional attachment to counter the impulse to spend what you have.

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The best way to play is to check your portfolio no more than once a quarter. My kids have gone close to a year without asking me to update.

Give the game YEARS to play out, eventually your students will be amazed.

Investment: each Monday, each player gets $1 for each year they have been alive. I started my kids in Kindergarten so we kicked off with $5 or $6 per week.

Return on Investment: the “bank” pays 10% per annum on invested capital. My template has a little math embedded which converts the annual rate to a daily rate. This allows the player to see, and get excited about, weekly earnings.

Earned Money is Your Money: Most kids have a piggy bank, some kids have side-gigs where they earn spending money. If a player wants to invest that money then they can grow earnings faster.

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There are two types of spending from the family account.

Investment spending – if the money came from “the bank” then spending approval needs to include Mom & Dad, or another savvy adult.

Earned income spending – Mom & Dad have no veto rights over money the players earn on their own. This allows real world learning to happen. Lending to friends, pain of crappy impulse purchases…

Teaching this to your kids, or grandkids, will change your relationship with money.

The inspiration for this game came from a 2015 post by MMM. What I’m Teaching My Son About Money. We started the day I read his advice. I’m grateful for his sharing.

Keep it simple, be patient, and remember the goal is an emotional attachment to compounding.

Here’s a Dropbox PDF and a link in Google Docs.

Please like, share, follow and retweet so I can see where our interests overlap.

Monday I published Multigenerational Capital on WordPress, shared tips for Parenting Alpha Pups on Twitter and discussed How An Olympic Sports Doc Uses HRV in his life on Twitter.

Tuesday: 20 years after winning, I looked back on Ultraman Hawaii on Twitter.

1. Attempting the impossible changes our lives in unexpected ways
2. We can be unaware of our limiting beliefs
3. Public success can be highly addictive
4. Life gives us feedback
5. Don’t quit, change the game
6. Metabolic Fitness Matters
7. Stay Humble

Wednesday I shared a worked example linking time and money for the self-employed on Twitter

Thursday I published The Allowance Game on WordPress and shared How I Use HRV on Twitter

Friday I shared When To Eat on Twitter and gave a tour of my home gym on Twitter.

In the home gym thread are two goals of mine: hang with my kids through my early 60s and hoist my carry-on (with ease) at 80!

Saturday I shared Losing Five To Ten from my WordPress archive. It’s on the impact of elite environments.

I was asked about asset allocation by a reader on Twitter and pointed towards a PDF, a book and free Vanguard resources.

One of my 2020 goals was to establish “ski week” as a family tradition. I booked a week in Telluride for each of February and March.

Feb 2020 : Ski Week 1.0 => Everything was going according to plan. The night before we drove through a storm and arrived ready to shred.

Two hours into our powder day, after dropping a double black in style (!), my daughter slipped on a catwalk and fractured her wrist.

We drove home that afternoon.

March 2020 : Ski Week 2.0 => Our trip was blown out by COVID.

I’m not the sort of guy to be put off by setbacks.

I’m patient with execution.

We checked out JHMR last summer.

Feb 2022 : Ski Week 3.0 => Vail, Beaver Creek, Steamboat Springs then Jackson.

We currently have two family traditions, matching Christmas PJs and Christmas in Mexico. Adding Jackson fits with my medium-term goals.

It gives me a forum to relate with my kids in my best environment. I should be able to rip until our youngest is done with high school.

It gives me a forum to expose them to my mentors, Doc J was there.

It gives me a forum to introduce them to younger, role models of outstanding character. Justin Daerr, Ironman Boulder Champ, all around good bro, was along for the week. I’d like to get his wife out for Ski Week 4.0.

As an athlete, I learned “the first time you go somewhere is usually a hassle.”

This was a reminder to stay put and train… as well as a warning against thinking life is better somewhere else.

The first step is making it work, where you are.

The next step, once it’s working, don’t mess with a streak.

Jackson worked great, eventually.

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When we arrived, we were greeted by an AirBnB that smelled like stale cigarettes and dog!

My wife and daughter were flying in the next morning.

My son kept asking me… “Are you OK, Daddy?”

I was not OK.

I couldn’t fall asleep.

I got up.

Rather than spending energy assigning blame, I jumped on a travel app and made the problem go away.

I booked a very nice room, slope side.

The bill was large. However, just like I recommend with taxes, I compared the bill to my family net worth… it was manageable. I will remember the lesson, and not miss the money.

My thirst for blame and revenge was replaced by gratitude that I had the insight to make the problem go away.

I slept great, despite the staleness!

Doc J has an athletic wife, kids both older / younger than mine and a family tree where elders live a very long time.

He faces many of the same challenges/concerns as me. Plus, he actually went to med school…

He also has a proven track record of giving me advice that nudges positive change.

He’s a better listener than me.

The list goes on and on…

The good doctor is helping me with a project and we are talking about compensation…

You could pay me, but I’m good at earning my own money. What would be better is if you could teach my family in an area where I’m not an expert => finance, money, forms of wealth.

A strategic family relationship, combined with a family tradition, combined with the kids not noticing we are teaching them while they’re having fun.

Similar to bible camp, but we shred.

A thought on kids.

You don’t need to be a parent to have a child reflect your inner goodness back to you.

Teaching kids has proven to be a surprising source of strength, and quiet pride, within my life.

It was really nice to spend time with old friends.

Recap:

• Spending time, and money, in a way that meets the family’s strategic goals of building its human capital.
• Exposing young family members to various lifestyle options, of friends with strong character.
• Providing a forum for young people to speak with young adult role models.
• Listening to the advice of friends who know me well.

When I moved to the US, I went from a 5 to 30% tax rate.

Why move?

Because it saved me money.

Taxes are one slice of your family budget

I used to live in Hong Kong, a low-tax part of the world. Thing is, it’s a high cost location – especially for school fees and residential housing.

Landing in in the US, I chose a part of the country with an excellent public school system. With three kids, that choice saved me a lot of money.

But there are trade-offs.

I grew up in Canada and my family’s basic healthcare needs were covered by the provincial government.

Not so in the USA.

My insurance, HSA contribution and dental cleanings mean I pay $25,000 before anyone’s gotten sick.

I run the $7,000 HSA contribution down against my family’s $14,000 deductible.

Anybody breaks a leg, I’m quickly over $30,000 for the year.

Still cheaper!

In my last year in Hong Kong (2000) I was living in a place that cost $100,000 per annum to rent. The senior partners paid 3-5x that amount.

School fees: friends pay up to $50,000 per kid, per annum. Mine go to public school, a $75,000 saving.

Taxes are the price we pay for living a wonderful life.

Clean air, pleasant climate, easy access to nature, an ability to avoid traffic.

As a friend pointed out, all those Californians moving to Austin are going to find out something… they’re still complaining about taxes, it’s hot as stink, they’re sitting in a traffic jam AND they lost the benefits of living in Cali.

The ability to escape tax policy is 100% in our hands.

Here’s the game.

Take your tax bill and divide it by your net worth.

In my mid-20s, I worked in London. I earned $75,000 and paid $18,000 in taxes. My net worth was $20,000. My tax bill represented 90% of my net worth.

A change in tax policy, or a move to Hong Kong, would have a material effect on my family finances.

Most of us, can’t change hemisphere’s for work.

Many of us, can work remotely from a lower cost location.

Go deeper.

Consider time.

My former self, he saved 50% of his take-home pay from 1990-2008.

Year after year, his family net worth grew.

The government’s 90% take is now under 5%.

We freed ourselves from tax policy.

It’s in your hands.

Teach this to your kids.

• Taxes are one piece of the family budget
• The goal is a wonderful life
• Taxes are a cost of living well
• Over time, we control the government’s tax take

PDF Link on Dropbox

gDoc Link with view rights open, make yourself a copy.

I think these ideas were inspired by The Millionaire Next Door.

Teach your kids to become experts at applying wisdom across time.

You can follow me on Twitter. Likes, RTs and questions help guide my writing.

Getting A Better Body

• Starting from scratch
  • With strength (12 min a day, 2-3x per week, 10 wks)
  • With plyometrics (5 min per day, 2-3 per week, 8 wks)
  • With nutrition – lingo summary
• My winter week structure
• What “easy endurance” feels like
• My strength coach’s library of exercises

Generating Family Wealth

• Three Truths About Taxes – meet my 20-something self
• How Wealth Endures – meet the richest person in my family tree
• Building a Family Tradition > blind spending

Using High-Performance Insights

• Facing the fear of less
• Training metabolic fitness & idea generation
• No Secrets – The usefulness of envy
• Applying insight
• Overcoming self-sabotage
• How to place load

Elite Athletic Performance

• Thread of my wife’s swim workouts
• AC on overreaching, includes my note on HR suppression
• AC shared what I did when I was fast
• Building volume safely

Last week, I was in Telluride with my buddy, Mark. He asked me a question, very much on point…

Aren’t you afraid you’ll gain weight?

Why yes, I am terrified!

The context was my current “far less than I used to” training program. Sure, I was scared, and that’s why I kept the volume rolling for so many years.

However, like so many fear-based quirks in my life, my fears proved groundless.

Further, creating a lifestyle catered to misplaced fear crowds out a lot of useful work!

Get Off the Wheel of Sugar

AC has been crushing with a series of threads encouraging athletes to improve their stamina and fat burning. The lessons run much, much deeper. Creativity, cognition, and metabolic health – all benefit from working on the low-end of our fitness.

Many of us use training protocol as a way to justify our food choices. With the best intentions, we remove a food group, and end up replacing it with sugar.

OR

Starting to train, we shift our nutrition towards “sports nutrition.”

My buddy, Jonas Colting, calls this getting caught in Gel Hell.

Not a win.

Two tips work here:

1. Aim to eat more veggies than my vegetarian pals.
2. Stay below my sugar threshold.

#1 requires a bit of effort, but not too much. My main gig is salads and stir-frys.

#2 can be scary – it implies less total duration, less intensity.

Both these changes nudge us towards sustainable choices and, as we age, reduce the risk of ruin from following a Chronic Endurance lifestyle.

Get Strong

Back in the day, folks used to debate the utility of strength training for endurance athletes. Do y’all still do that?

I’m not into debating, I’d rather use something that works.

Strength Training Works.

There is a conscious, and unconscious, attraction to people who move powerfully – moving well, is attractive.

You want to be more attractive, trust me (see below).

Being attractive improves our self-image, which sets up a virtuous circle in our larger lives.

Remove One

Trying to change everything at once leaves me feeling scattered and distracted.

It doesn’t work.

Again, here’s what works:

One person, one habit, one pattern, one choice…

Each of us has a habit, relationship or pattern that we can eliminate, for gains.

• 2 beers before bed
• A basket of bread with lunch and dinner
• Cheese
• Bread + cheese = pizza
• French fries
• Soft drinks
• A friend who’s a feeder

Don’t try to do everything.

Don’t think you need to change “forever”.

Simply take a break for 30 days and pay attention.

With all this stuff, letting go of my fears seems daunting.

No way, I’ll be able to pull that off.

You don’t have to.

Try it out for 30 days and pay attention.

Iterate towards better.

I am going to show you how to connect spending, time and wealth.

Let’s bring back my 20-something self. He was living in London, working in finance and renting a room to keep his overheads down. 

Coming out of college, having more cash flow than he needed, he felt rich.

But was he?

He earned $75,000 and was spending $32,000. How wealthy was he?

Remember from last week, his net worth was $20,000.

Net Worth “divided by” Spending = WEALTH IN TIME

His WIT was 7 ½ months.

Roll forward to my early 30s. I’m a young Private Equity partner and hit $1 million net worth.

I was spending $250k a year, felt flush, but was I wealthy? Let’s find out.

$1,000,000 / $250,000 = 4 Years

Not wealthy, especially when you consider my life expectancy (>50 years).

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At 31, I realized my spending was buying me NOTHING. What I liked to do was swim, bike and run. I had fantasies of leaving the corporate world. I took action.

I applied to emigrate to New Zealand. Arriving in Christchurch, I was able to buy a five-bedroom house for US$110,000. My cost of living plunged to $25,000 (NZ$60,000).

My WIT jumped to 40 years.

I didn’t return from my leave of absence. Most of my family thought I was nuts.

Best trade I ever made.

Getting A Better Body

• My WordPress article about Gel Hell and staying lean
• A thread about Big Guys getting fit
• Phase Two of Strength Training: Push Pull Press

Breaking Free From 9-5

• My WordPress article about Wealth in Time
• My take on @dvassallo’s thread about self-employment

Athletic Performance

• Monsy Swims of the Week
• Jeff asked me how I’m applying HRV in my own life
• More on me and HRV
• Hamstring (P)rehab – break the cycle of injury & eccentric loading
• Straight-legged athletes and my daughter’s dryland link
• Weekly workout structuring tips in this thread, expand the replies

Using High Performance Insights

• Set the higher strategy, first
• “LOL” is info – a reminder from Stephen

Family

• Kids & Screens
  • a daily habit of reading, chores and sport
  • know your why
  • my best strategies for kid tech

In your 50s and 60s, you’re going to have the money to do neat stuff.

Are you going to have the body?

I propose three goals to guide your training:

• Burn fat
• Add muscle mass
• Maintain sexual function

If you’re still into race performance then bookmark me and come back in a few years.

Why?

Because you might be screwing up all three by leaving sustained tempo in your program.

Now, you’re probably thinking that it’s impossible for an older person to add muscle mass.

You might have even resigned yourself to a long, slow decline in personal function.

That’s certainly the way aging was taught to me (by members of your profession).

Are you sure?

An elder surgeon confided in me that “half the stuff I learned in med school, turned out to be false.”

Perhaps a shift in approach could get you a better outcome?

Besides, there is little downside from shifting your program, away from endurance fatigue, towards doing what it takes to add functional strength.

So how might we do that?

During the pandemic, I learned this protocol by accident.

I was locked in my house, with three high-energy kids, and I needed a way to chill out before endless days of Home School.

I turned to weights, a lot of them.

I worked my way through Rob Shaul’s SF45 program. The full program was eight modules and took me 60 weeks to complete.

Total body transformation.

Not only did it transform my body, my wife started having fire fighter fantasies.

I became much better at moving through the mountains.

Rob’s redone the modules and now splits them by age (40, 50, 55 and 60). You can find them under General Fitness Plan Packets on his website.

I’ve taken what I’ve learned from Rob and interpreted into my life as a coach to kids, adults and elders. I use pieces of Rob’s protocols to address specific concerns (balance, fall risk, muscle activation, injury prevention and rehab). I tweet about these on Wednesdays.

I use Rob’s stuff for creating a valuable form of stress on my 53 yo body.

• Gaining functional strength
• To do neat stuff
• Outside
• With the people I love
• For as long as possible

My training schedule is built around placing my key days (my strength-focused days).

I never skip a strength day but… I do delay it when I know it would be counter-productive to stress myself further.

So how to place those key days?

That was my central problem across 2021.

I kept getting run down, I felt old, my mood was crap, I was worried that I was “done” as an athlete.

To be sick of sickness is the only cure

– The Tao Te Ching

Eventually, I committed to do whatever it took to get my recovery on track. If that meant “getting old” then I’d just have to deal with the consequences.

It wasn’t all that complicated. My Garmin watch had be collecting resting heart rate data for years. Data that I had been ignoring because I was scared to recover properly!

To my resting HR data, I added heart rate variability from an Oura Ring. Recently, I added HRV4Training to better see the differences between my acute and chronic movements.

I don’t use the Readiness Scores because I don’t need precision (and have doubts that any of us can predict outcome on a complex system, like the human body).

All I am seeking is a signal from the raw data.

• Red – you’d better dial it down
• Yellow – no surges, just aerobic maintenance (ie fat burning)
• Green – Go For It, Bro!

So when I’m at home, it’s a simple choice each morning.

Strength or Cardio

• Strength is whatever plan I’m using from Rob.
• Cardio is a bike workout, usually with a 130 bpm cap.

If I’m not “green” for a strength day, then I dial it down, or delay.

If I’m “red” then I spin easy on the bike (HR < 120) and schedule a neighborhood walk for the afternoon.

ZERO anaerobic load on a “red” day.

By waiting for a green signal, I avoid putting myself into a hole, that takes days to clear.

I’d been running this system (morning strength or cardio) for most of the pandemic (2020 & 2021) but was not paying attention to my HR, and didn’t have the HRV data.

With the HRV data, and guidance from Dr Jeff Shilt, I am able to better place the days that make me tired. Doc J shared his traffic light system, which let me create this article I’m offering you.

As we age, how best to define “getting better”?

My proposal…

We will work towards improving the self-confidence that you’ll be able to continue to share outdoor activities with those you love.

We will use a training approach that builds a large physical reserve against the fears we hear from our elders.

Confidence that, while absolute performance is declining, we continue to enjoy the physical side of life.

Confidence that, while we’re all going to “get old” eventually, we will be able to live independently for as long as possible.

This is going to require a shift in focus from “athletic performance” to maintaining “functional performance.”

The very good news is this approach is time efficient.

Yes, the strength days will kick your butt BUT, when they are placed wisely, you will bounce back and end up with more energy across your week.

Keep it simple.

Start every day with a win.

Burn fat or strength train.

I was taught that all my (financial) problems would be solved if I made enough money.

Money, absent saving, doesn’t work.

Spending, absent reflection, creates golden handcuffs.

Living a big-city lifestyle had my younger self trapped. His large spending created a hurdle that would have taken him years to overcome.

Valuable years!

Put another way, the weight of my spending was preventing me from launching towards my true self => meeting a wonderful wife and creating my current life in Colorado.

My solution was simple

• Save half my take home pay
• Get myself to a low-cost environment
• Create independent income streams to cover my cost of living
• Surround myself with people who lived my values

All well and good, and my 30-something self got some things right.

What he wasn’t able to see was the Window of Time. It didn’t matter to him because he was rich in time, and knew it. Having his basics covered, he risked time on changing direction.

For the prudent, the march of time will eventually require a change in approach.

Each of us is free to change our approach at any time.

At some point, all of us are going to realize that our wealth in time is approaching the point where we have more wealth than time.

This is most likely to occur in what we call the “peak earning years.”

It’s really hard to change direction when you’re coining it.

I know, I did.

Cutting spending, leaning into saving, buying an extra couple years before I’m old…

…all trades you should consider.

Even if you don’t change your path, knowing that you could will strengthen your ability to act with integrity.

So the two landmines I hope you avoid are:

1. Peer-driven spending that leads you away from what fills your heart
2. Creating capital for future family members, when they’d rather spend time with you now

Buy time gradually.

Spend time with intent.

None of us get a refund.

Training Protocols

• Monday’s post on Optimizing Training for Middle Aged Doctors went big, for me
• Four Hidden Hazards for Aging Athletes was the tweet for Archive Saturday
  1. High Performance vs Active Lifestyles
  2. Stress from Fueling Requirements
  3. Heart Health
  4. Chronic Injury
• On Twitter, a possible example of selection bias when comparing different training protocols
• Workout Wednesday was my favorite balance move and how I use plyometrics
• I took the time to help someone understand run lactate testing
• I’ll keep posting swims on Tuesday from my wife who is on Twitter
• Middle aged female athlete links/resources into this thread
• I posted about learning to swim

Decision Making

When looking at a land war in Europe, I felt it was useful to review the lessons from COVID

• The folly of prediction
• The future being unknowable
• The cognitive cost of rushing (with the crowd) when fearful
• Human systems, like markets, tend to swing past optimal
• There is likely to be an on-going crisis for the rest of my life
• Live my life, do my work, deal with the future when it arrives

Parenting

• Some ideas for parents on how to get a kid to play with something other than a screen, or an adult
• If you want your kids to be good at racing then seek positive race experiences from a very young age => link the sensations of racing with “fun” in their young minds

Wealth & Money

• Readers enjoyed => The Window of Time // applies to athletics, too

Growing up, I had a buddy.

James Brown, his real name!

James was a lot of fun, and very patient with my younger self.

James used to joke that his boat had two speeds: full and repair.

As a young man, much of my life was lived this way.

ON or OFF

The greatest achievement of my married life was finding another gear => SUSTAIN

EVERYONE knows what’s required to gain weight.

Where we struggle is sustaining weight.

The ability to sustain is the key that unlocks the ability to choose.

The capacity is choose is a foundational skill for success.

I’ve got two things that are going to help.

Let’s start with the most important.

What’s the trigger for eating more than 1,000 calories after 10pm?

For me, it was ALWAYS one of the following…

1. Didn’t eat enough during the day
2. Drinking

By the way, combine the two and I was going BIG.

So if you’re going to “go binary” on something… you get a much better bang for your buck by not getting wasted.

Slamming 700 calories, of anything, at 2pm is a winning strategy => break the habit of late-night binging. You don’t have the option of being binary with food – you gotta eat.

Anybody that tells you otherwise has already lost the weight and forgotten what’s going on.

Not eating, and thinking about eating all day… losing strategy, not sustainable.

Next tip

Do something before breakfast.

It doesn’t need to be a workout!

Do one positive thing that moves you towards where you want to take your life.

Every. Single. Day.

After you do it, you get to eat.

That’s it.

1,000 day pacing.

Keep small promises to yourself.

It works.

Let’s cast our minds back to my 30-something self.

He’s bought a house in Christchurch, covered his taxes/utilities by giving a room to his property manager and has the ability to live free by renting out additional rooms.

Create a base of operations where you can live for free

Tick

Next up, he needs to figure out what sort of work to do and how to cover his cost of living.

A dozen triathlon coaching relationships (US$250) per month was what it took to cover basics. Those relationships were worth more than money. The relationships made his lifestyle sustainable.

Tick

Basic client filtering over time.

Which relationships to strengthen and retain? Green light client rating – immediate response, has all personal contact details. Travel to them.

Invert, which relationships are a source of distraction and drain energy? Red light client rating – still high service level, hand-off to a better fit at a natural breakpoint (end of season, end of project).

Move on to…

Next level client selection because => there is a limited number of close relationships we can sustain

What do I want to learn about?

• Pro cycling
• Lifestyles of the rich and famous
• Olympic level triathlon
• Sports medicine, orthopedics, biomechanics, kidney function, cardiology
• Exercise physiology, metabolic health, blood markers
• Financial planning
• Military aviation
• Theology and ministry
• Addiction, Al-Anon, AA, recovery
• Trust, estate and family law

These are areas I was able to study, from world-class experts, while covering my core cost of living.

Put another way, there are millions of interesting people out there. A consultant needs 5-12 relationships for a viable business. Craft those relationships with intent because your time is worth more than someone’s ability to pay.

Wise client selection is a game of getting paid to learn.

…but you gotta be lifestyle sustainable. So get that first!

Where do I want to visit?

Back in 2000, Christchurch NZ was cheap for a reason. It was far off the beaten path!

A material slice of my cost of living was international travel (airfares & hotels). I really enjoyed this aspect of my life.

I’m not alone. A key form of marketing is the ability to offer clients/investors the ability to travel to nice places. Most large companies have advisory boards, with a membership consisting of their key relationships. The advisory board has the perks of being a director, with none of the fiduciary risk.

I’ve had gigs in: Aspen, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Scotland, LA, Italy, London, Dubai, Paris, Cannes, Hawaii…

So, where do YOU want to go? Find that client, help them achieve their goals and undercharge them.

Rich folks love random acts of financial kindness. They’re always expected to pick up the tab, so paying for coffee/breakfast is a high-return investment.

A long term value added relationship with someone in a place you enjoy visiting – it’s worth more than whatever your financial deal is.

Invert (again) => don’t take work from a location you don’t want to visit. At any price.

One of my gigs came with an around-the-world ticket every six months. With a bit of planning, that covered an entire year’s worth of air travel. Another slice of my budget, covered.

What demographic am I curious about?

Tim’s blog on fame shares the Bill Murray quote, “trying being rich first.”

Actually, being rich is tough. It takes a lot of time and striving. Living rich is even worse, not for me.

Before you try to “be something” => get to know it. See what it’s like when nobody’s watching.

Coaching the rich, the fast, the famous, the savage, the beautiful… and paying attention, helped me look under-the-hood with regard to my values.

Be careful, desire is contagious.

High-Performance Strategies

• This thread contains Howard’s excellent article about treatment bias. Treat the self-identity as well as the injury! Also HERE
• When it comes to ultra endurance, AC reminds us that there is no fate but what you make
• A thread on visualization – this worked for calming my internal experience of open water

Getting The Body You Want

• I contributed to Brady’s thread about eating on easy days
• More information isn’t the answer for Big Guys Losing Weight => thread and article link. Think in terms of 1,000 day pacing and remember “not eating” is a losing strategy.
• Jumps & Plyos are prehab for life – don’t accept the common experience as your personal baseline!

Family Money

Personal Real Estate can be a high-hassle asset but it has benefits, some hidden

Life Lessons

• Archive Saturday was Lessons from my Divorce
• Three Lessons from hitting a dozen ski resorts
• We are the editor and owner of our lives. Five questions you can ask about work, your business and your inner circle.

Athletic Performance

• Workout Wednesday on the benefits of Bar Work
• I contributed to another thread on lactate testing – don’t “step” past your physiological markers
• I pulled together my getting started strength tips into a Single Page for you – MAKE A COPY if you want to edit. View rights are open, edit rights are closed in the Google Doc.
• Monz kept it rolling with weekly swims

For medical-grade depression, best to see your doc.

My condition, for most of 2021, is better described as “the blahs.” I was fully functional, grinding away, often angry and rarely engaged.

I wrote about what we were going to do in our marriage HERE. 20 weeks later, it worked far better than I expected – schedule time with those you love.

I have proven judgement about what it’s going to take to make things better. Just need to get off my butt and follow my own advice!

This piece is about three small changes I made in my life. The payback was in a strange currency => I’ve been repaid by feeling better.

I’m feeling better because I’m not fixated on the negative.

Happier is the absence of…. [whatever was bothering us, I guess].

HRV is the addition I wish I made earlier

Tracking my heart rate variability has proven to be a game changer.

I’m giving HRV a lot of credit but before y’all head out and buy another gizmo, I want to share something Scott Molina once told me

G-Man, sometimes you simply need someone else to tell you the same thing.

We were talking elite ironman training protocols but, like everything, it applies to everything.

Once I heard HRVs “message”, I was able to see it elsewhere.

What I perceived as a problem with my life situation was, mostly, a recovery issue. My emotional state was being screwed up by excessive fatigue.

HRV, and periodic misery, got me to change.

The change is what nudged me towards better.

I wasted a lot of time thinking I needed to change _everything_ when the solution was a bit more sleep and not making myself “more tired when tired.”

Turned my watch alarm off, and shifted load as I wrote about two weeks ago.

Remove time in your worst environment

The cherry on top was spending $75 a week to retire from driving my kids.

Driving, itself, wasn’t the issue.

I noticed my worst moments were happening in my car.

Change the environment, change the result.

I stopped hanging out in my car, I felt better.

Over 20 years, I’ve redirected my environment => one choice at a time.

Simple project, visible feedback

I have a habit of rejecting the part of my personality that craves external feedback. I pretend I am above external approval, I’m not.

I brought back external feedback by way of my return to Twitter.

Playing a low-stakes game where you get random, positive feedback => surprisingly useful.

I am going to repeat that… if you have the blahs then you should try…

• A low-stakes game
• That pays out randomly
• With positive emotional feedback

I shouldn’t be surprised! Before I left Private Equity in 2000, I had a message board (pre-Facebook) where we used to shoot the breeze just like Twitter. Loved it, met some great people.

My Twitter Game => seek to help a stranger daily.

Huge leverage, near-infinite niche opportunities.

Previous simple games: improve aerobic run performance, and log daily training minutes. These two games kept me engaged for over a decade!

Simple games work because they offer a focus different from my negative fixations. They are most powerful when attached to a system of daily rewards.

Another game was inside my advice to the Big Units… breakfast after one positive step.

The purpose of the game is neither to win nor to finish.

The purpose of the game is to keep me from getting fixated on something with the potential to ruin my life.

When stressed, you are going to be tempted to shuffle your asset allocation.

Churning your portfolio isn’t the answer.

Geography, Citizenship & Right of Abode

I’m parked in the middle of the American Empire => by choice.

I naturalized to the US and don’t need anyone’s permission to stay here.

Being born Canadian, I have the option to live in Canada. It’s a valuable option to a wonderful country (with a different political system).

I also have the right of abode in New Zealand (a third political system). I like to think of it as a smaller Canada, on the other side of the world.

My Kiwi visa doesn’t expire. Unfortunately, I can’t pass the visa to my kids. However, each of my kids has a Canadian Citizenship certificate.

Three political systems, two hemispheres, all English speaking.

Hemispheres, continents, countries and political systems.

The location to start from scratch.

Monetary Environments

Who regulates the custodian for your financial assets?

Unsure what I mean?

Who has the ability to lock your money inside a political regime?

Where can you send money, with a single instruction, that’s outside of your home regulatory environment?

The capital to start from scratch.

Income Streams

• Do you have an alternative source of income?
• How long might it take to develop one?
• Are your skills marketable internationally?
• Might you be able to develop a set of marketable skills?

The skill set to start from scratch.

Look at the above on an individual, generational and family-wide basis.

The unimaginable happens once a decade.

Mood Management

• Monday’s Blog was three simple actions taken to improve my life
• Wondering if constantly talking about our fears, makes them more likely

Athletic Performance

• Vets at altitude
• Mental & Physical health for high functioning athletes
• AC’s tips for coaches starting out (bit from me)
• Weekly Monsy swims
• This thread is how I turned up at 30 and was beating most everyone five years later
• AC’s thread on Zone 2 (bit from me) – tip: hold Zn 2 for 2 hours & watch

The Body You Want

• Fit pregnancy & a couple things that didn’t work
• Free your mind from dogma & how we run our house
• Archive Share was Nutritional Vigilantes
• Let hunger train your (good) food habits

True Wealth

• Our financial lives have been stress tested in March – how’d you do?
• A portfolio of skills, start-up capital and geographic options

We’ve been having this debate for years, it simply took me a while to notice

First clean athlete – remember that person in the Euro Peloton?

Not just Europe, my wife and I been that athlete

…and had to figure out how to deal with it.

I’ve been dealing with cheats and scoundrels for 30 years.

Not just in sport.

This moment, it’s not about cheating, but look deeper.

Pay attention.

I’m not sure if banning “them” from “our sport” has ever achieved the result we were truly seeking.

Even if it did, very temporarily, our children need to learn how to operate in a world where we don’t dictate the rules of engagement.

Tolerance is an effective strategy for a world that rarely delivers my personal definition of fairness.

Choose the role of sport with deliberate intent…

• personal excellence
• overcoming one’s self
• crowding out negative habits/influences
• a lifelong habit of exercise

Free your mind from the choices of others.