Wrapping up 2012 - When the Stars Align

It's been a fantastic financial season for the Simmons' household. I started this blog just two months ago and the first mountain we had to scale was our Timeshare debt. At that time we owed $16,000 on that ugliness, and I was able to make the last payment on it the final day of the year. What a reason to celebrate!

And, on an even more positive note, my career at the shipyard has taken another amazing turn: I just got a promotion! I'm working on a new boat with another coworker of mine who was also promoted to supervisor. I'll be working for him as his work leader on the project. I couldn't be happier because this guy works like crazy, takes care of his people, and is a blast to be around.

I've worked hard for the past four years. I graduated near the top of my class and have also had exemplary attendance. But I still know a lot of people that could work circles around me at the yard, and I consider myself just an average guy who tries to do the best he can. And at every place I've worked it's been the same thing: it's not always the most skilled people who get things, it's often the ones who have the best attitude and who continuously strive to improve and better themselves. It's the ones that decide to love their jobs and the people they work with regardless of the negative pressures to do otherwise.

And it's the same way with money too. Most rich people in the world aren't the richest because they have the highest paying jobs. They're the richest because they have consistently made wise decisions with their finances. They consistently were able to separate wants from needs, and they knew that ultimately "things" and "stuff" wouldn't make them happy. And you'll find time after time that it's these people who most feel like "the stars aligned" for them and they ended up rich. But I believe the stars align for the people who are ready for it, the ones that have day after day put in the work and believed that anything was possible if they gave their best.

That's the fantastic thing about being in America. You and me, just average Joe's making an average living, have the opportunity to die incredibly wealthy if we just choose to do so. We can leave a legacy for our future generations, and prepare them to have it even better than we did. Or, we can follow the majority of our peers and live as slaves to debt and consumerism for the rest of our lives, living our final years dining on Spam and off of the pittance of Social Security we hope will still be around.

One of the things I've been working on is my optimism. By nature, I tend to be pessimistic (or, as we like to call it, "realistic"), and pessimism can never take you as far as optimism can. That's why I started this thing off saying, "I am rich", because I know now that financial freedom is not only going to come through hard work and discipline, but also through a mindset that believes it is an inevitable result of one who optimistically hopes for the best for themselves. See, hard work and discipline can only take you so far in money, but optimism has the ability to positively effect every aspect of your life: your work, your family, and even your own personal well-being.

So, what's up for 2013? I'm super excited because this will be the first year that we are able to seriously begin accumulating wealth. The first thing we plan on doing is maximizing out input into my TSP fund (the government’s version of a 401K), which is $17,500 for the 2013 fiscal year. In order to do so, I figured out that I will have to contribute 28% of each paycheck into the fund. After I do this, we need to build up our emergency fund again because I drained it paying off the Timeshare. Then, I have to determine if I want to invest our extra money into our mortgage so that it will be easier to move in a few years , or if we will start buying index funds to build our portfolio, or doing a combination of both. I have to redo all of our numbers after I see what my paycheck will look like after the new TSP deductions.

Most of the country is worrying about the fiscal cliff, but for those of us who are learning the value of money, 2013 can be our most profitable year yet! Let's go!