Occam’s Razor

Real Life 101, Lesson 7: Fitness and Health Basics

This is the seventh in an indeterminate series of entries that provides my “real world” lessons to young adults. It is my conviction that these lessons are rarely taught either at home or in the schools. For those who did not get them growing up you can get them from me for free. This is part of my way of giving back to the universe on the occasion of my 50th birthday.

Young man (or woman), look at this site. It should sober you up. It is not exactly news that obesity is a “growing” problem among Americans. Nonetheless, as you delve into the details you should feel aghast. Today a shocking 8 out of 10 Americans over age 25 are either overweight or obese. A quarter of us lead completely sedentary lifestyles. In less than twenty years, there has been a 76% increase in the number of adult Americans with Type II diabetes. This is the type of diabetes does not develop until adulthood. 85% of those who develop Type II diabetes are overweight or obese.

Maybe by comparing yourself to others at your school or college, you do not feel out of the norm. This may be because so many teens and young adults are following these unfortunate national trends. If you go back just sixteen years though, the number of obese young adults age 18-29 has doubled. It does not take a Texas Instruments calculator to figure out that if you are not already obese or overweight, the chances are you will get there one day. If you grew up eating pizza, drinking colas and your idea of exercise is keyboard calisthenics, project your current lifestyle ten, twenty and forty years in the future. What do you think is going to happen if you do not change some habits? (Hint: look at your parents, but most likely your situation will be worse.)

If you are overweight or obese, it is not necessarily all your fault. Placing blame does not solve the problem of course, but it is helpful to know that modern society will encourage you to be obese. Unlike hundreds of generations before you, your career is not likely to be hunter or farmhand. Your future will look a lot more like Dilbert’s. Our modern world needs knowledge workers, not farmhands, and encourages us to be knowledge workers by tempting us with higher salaries. You will likely spend your days in either a cubicle or its equivalent. Even if you aspire to be a truck driver, you are unlikely to escape the trend. Truck drivers sit on their butts all day too. These days we have machines to do our hard labor. Unfortunately, you inhabit a body that was designed to be a hunter-gatherer. Perhaps fifty generations hence our bodies will adapt to our new reality. Perhaps then, our livers will pass fats undigested instead of storing them. Little good that will do you now. Unless exercising is your passion, or you enjoy working outdoors with your hands, you have a big problem. You need regular exercise. You also need to eat better. If you do not, expect your lifespan to be shorter than your parents. Do not be surprised if the last third of your life is full of chronic health care issues. Is this how you envisioned your adult life?

Even if you are 18 and skinny as a rail, your body is going to throw you a curve ball. This is because about the time you graduate high school you should not just be grown up, but your body has finished growing up. All those extra calories will soon no longer be needed. If you never gained any weight during your adolescence and you continue your eating patterns, you are guaranteed to gain weight.

Not surprisingly, this was my dilemma as a young adult. One day in my early twenties, I weighed myself and was shocked that although I had never exceeded 180 pounds (I am 6′2″) all my life, I was suddenly 195 pounds. Now, at age 50, although not obese, I remain overweight. How do you know if you are not overweight? You need to have a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or less. In my case, given my height I need to be 190 pounds or less.

Being healthy as an adult though is a lot more than having a healthy weight. It also means you have to take care of your body’s other needs. You know, the boring stuff: eating healthy foods and getting regular exercise. If your weight is normal but you survive on pizza and you never exercise, you are leading an unhealthy lifestyle.

You already know what I am going to suggest: get regular exercise, maintain a healthy body weight and eat better foods. If you are overweight or obese though, none of these things is likely to be easy. Diet books will always be popular because we will always want to believe that by following one book that we will solve all these problems. What we really want is some sort of magical formula that will allow us to continue our sedentary lifestyles and eat like pigs yet stay in optimal health. You might as wish to win the lottery.

Obesity is going to be the challenge of your generation, just as smoking and drugs were the challenge for my generation. (Obesity though is affecting the baby boom generation too. We just started later.) You need to be very mindful of this. Staying healthy is likely to be a constant challenge for you throughout your adult life.

If you are at a healthy weight, then congratulations. You mission is now to stay this way. You need to start increasing your exercise without increasing your calorie intake. That does not mean you need to run marathons, unless you want to. This does mean that you need to work in regular sustained physical activities that hopefully you also enjoy. Since you are young and still have your joints, group sports like volleyball and basketball are excellent means toward accomplishing this goal. Pick activities you enjoy. Weigh yourself at least once a month. Once a week is ideal.

If you are already overweight or obese, you will have to change some habits. You can try Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and similar commercial solutions. These diets are often quite effective at taking weight off. The problem is that almost all diets are temporary. Pounds will come off but they will soon come back. You may find yourself all worn out after a long day of work and use this as an excuse to skip your evening exercise. You will find yourself taking an extra donut when you know you should not. Sadly, there are no free calories.

There are three proven solutions to losing weight and keeping it off. The sooner you start the easier it is to do as a lifetime habit. Here they are: count your calories, weigh yourself regularly, and use support groups. I have a friend who recently lost 65 pounds. I was impressed. How did he succeed where others have so often failed? His wife convinced him to enroll in the George Washington University Weight Management Program. Most diet programs have a long-term success rate of about 5%. This program, while not perfect, has a 40% success rate, which is phenomenally high. The essence of their secret is to follow the elements above. This program is based on the understanding that weight loss and healthy living is a lifelong journey, not a short-term destination. Taking the weight off is wonderful, but is meaningless if it goes back on. Therefore, it offers considerable therapy and support groups to help people work through these issues. (I will need to see if my friend is still at his weight in a year. His odds are 40%.)

I am not suggesting that the only way to become and stay healthy is to use a program like this one. The younger you are the more flexible you will be both mentally and bodily to develop your own weight loss solutions. Unless your job involves heavy physical demands though you are unlikely to burn off the calories you consume unless you change your practices.

There are a few other things that I discovered during my own journey that you might find useful. First, aerobics is probably not enough. Granted, marathoners as a class tend to look extremely lean, but you are unlikely to be a marathoner. Here is the problem with doing just aerobics: as you grow older your muscle mass tends to decrease. Ideally, just as you want to keep all your brain cells as you age, you want to keep the same muscle mass you had as a physically fit teenager. If you do not engage in regular weight training (which probably should be in addition to regular aerobics) your muscle mass will decrease over time. This means that even if your weight is stable your BMI will increase over time, so you will become overweight. Why is it that so many of our elderly have such a hard time getting around? It is because they never did regular weight training. Depending on which experts you ask you will get different answers, but most will suggest you need to be lifting weights at least three times a week. The general strategy involves rotating the muscles that you exercise. Ideally you will have enough spare cash to work out with a personal trainer, who can show you how to do it correctly. Essentially, proper weight training involves lifting weights a lot heavier than you think you can lift. To do it correctly, you have to be able to start by lifting a set of weights but at some point find it impossible to continue lifting them. For most weight machines, this is between ten and fifteen repetitions per set. (Note: before starting any exercise program like this, consult a physician.)

All this takes a lot of time. I do it after work and on weekends mostly at my local Gold’s Gym. Each trip takes a minimum of an hour and often consumes two hours of my precious free time. I should enjoy it but most of the time I do not. (Listening to podcasts on my MP3 player while I exercise helps a lot.) This is the price that I have to pay in order to be a healthy human and work a sedentary job. The good news is that by doing both, while I am technically still overweight, my BMI is improving. It is quite possible to be overweight yet be healthy. Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, at least before he gave up the weight training. Notice what happened since: Arnold is now overweight, but he has replaced a lot of his muscle with fat.

Welcome to real life, young adult. I hope that you can find some combination of diet and exercise that works for you. I am afraid though this will mean tearing yourself away from Second Life and instead engaging in real life. If this sounds like you, it is time to back away from that PC and get moving instead.

August 22nd, 2007 at 09:23pm Posted by Mark | Advice | no comments

Real Life 101, Lesson 6: A few of life’s little lessons

This is the sixth in an indeterminate series of entries that provides my “real world” lessons to young adults. It is my conviction that these lessons are rarely taught either at home or in the schools. For those who did not get them growing up you can get them from me for free. This is part of my way of giving back to the universe on the occasion of my 50th birthday.

Last night here in Colorado we had a little mini family reunion. It consisted of my next younger sister, my youngest brother, and me. I just turned fifty, and my sister and brother are still in their forties. My sister and I in were in a wistful mood. We are now wiser in the ways of the world, not due to any innate wisdom but from having dodged and parried with life for so many years. My sister posed the question: if you could go back in time, which life lessons would you teach your younger self?

When I think of the person I am today compared to the one I was then I am not sure that even if I could transport myself back in time that my headstrong and younger self would have listened. Perhaps you will. Each of us draws our own lessons based on what life throws at us and how well or badly we dealt with these challenges. Here, for your consideration, are some of mine.

Failure is a temporary phenomenon. When you were in school and screwed up, you may have heard the threat, “This is going on your permanent record.” Guess what. Failures happen to everyone, not just once, but periodically through life. No one becomes a permanent outcast from life based on a single failure. Failure is not only a fact of life, failure is often a virtue. You will learn the truest and most enduring lessons from failing at something. The only true failure is not learning from failure. It may take a while to recover from the shock and the hurt feelings, but picking yourself up and reengaging life in spite of a failure is something you will have to do regardless. Life goes on. You too will surmount a failure, although it seems impossible at the time.

You do not need to go to an Ivy League school to be a great success. Throughout America, parents are obsessed with their kids’ success. Here in the Washington metropolitan area, there are parents who are planning their kids’ overachievement from before conception. For many of these parents it becomes critical that their children get into the right Montessori preschool, the Gifted and Talented program and eventually end up in an Ivy League school. Anything less means their children have not really succeeded in life. While there is certainly nothing wrong with attending an Ivy League school, you are hardly doomed to be on life’s second tier if you make other choices. Not convinced? Look around you. Clearly, the world’s business is getting done even though the numbers who attend Ivy League schools are paltry. In my case, I got both my bachelors and masters degrees from convenient and reasonably low cost public universities. My grades were typically a mixture of A’s and B’s, with the sporadic C and F. Yet I consider myself quite successful and am very pleased with my life. No, I am not a Wall Street baron earning millions, nor did that sort of life hold any appeal. Yet I live a very fulfilling life, have a very well paid and interesting job and have virtually every possession I could want. I am hardly unique. It is what you do with your education and skills that quantifies your success, not which tickets are punched.

A grunt job is the best preparation for success. Had I gone to prep schools and spent my school days in overachieving mode I believe I would be quite unhappy today. This is because that while grades and intellect are important, they are meaningless unless they can be applied inside the current social context, i.e. reality. You learn what real life is about by engaging it on its ground level, not by avoiding it. Do you want to know why our current president is a miserable failure? Not only were all his failures cushioned so he did not feel their impact, but he never had a grunt level job. Perhaps that is why during a recent Central American tour where President Bush worked in a carrot factory, he said: “It was really, really fun — and really heartwarming. As a matter of fact, it was one of the great experiences of my presidency.” It is too bad he did not get this when he was sixteen. Do not shun away from those first (and often necessary) entry level jobs, embrace them. Your eyes will open wider than they ever have been before. In my case, I spent my high school years working part time at a Winn Dixie supermarket. My unglamorous work involved bagging groceries, unloading trucks, mopping store aisles and flirting with cashiers. I experienced with crystal clarity what my life would look like if I did not embrace other choices. By the time I left Winn Dixie’s employment, I was anxious to spend my life in more engaging pursuits. Look upon every job you take as a lesson in the laboratory of real life. You cannot get this kind of education in school but these kinds of lessons are essential to succeed in life.

Play makes life meaningful. Because you are technically grown up, that does not mean that you are not allowed to regularly feel childhood delight anymore. Play is essential for happiness and growth, not only in childhood, but also throughout life. You can be adult without being “an adult”. You do not have to don the robe of being a sober, serious adult when you “grow up”. The term is really something of a misnomer. None of us really grows up. In fact, if you do truly “grow up” then you have ceased to grow. You might as well be dead, because you will have killed yourself spiritually. Do your best to carve out some time within your busy life to engage in activities that amount to play and that bring you the same sort of joy you felt as a child. Find activities that fill you with joy and wholly engage you. Just because you are over 21 does not mean you must stop being fun and silly. Parents do not need to be somber all the time. They can teach their children that adult life can be fun too. If you grew up singing to yourself, there is no reason to stop as an adult. If you liked playing Dungeons and Dragons as a teen, keep playing it as an adult. A life that is all work and no play is an empty life. Surprise your neighbors and go trick or treating on Halloween. Wear a goofy hat to work. Sing in your car at the top of your lungs to your favorite music. There is enough serious stuff in adult life. There is no reason to engage in more of it than is necessary. Do your best to find at least a couple hours a week for the frivolous and fun.

Life is about living. No one really knows what we were, if anything, before we were conceived. It is absolutely certain that you will die. No one knows what, if anything, will happen after death either. Most religions will try to persuade you that they have the answers to all of life’s persistent questions. At most, only one of them can be absolutely correct. Most likely, none of them is correct. What is absolutely true is that you are alive. Your life is your reality. If you have a mission, it is to live it in a way that feels natural to you. So live life as robustly as you can. Fill it with as much joy and meaning as possible. Since you like me will die someday, you do not want to spend your last days regretful that you lived only half the life you could have. Fill it with knowledge, with fun, with passion, with insight, with friends and with relaxation. Life is your pot to stir. Do not let others stir it for you. Grab the handle and stir it yourself.

March 25th, 2007 at 11:10pm Posted by Mark | Advice | one comment

Real Life 101, Lesson 5: Relationship Basics, Part 3

This is the fifth in an indeterminate series of entries that provides my “real world” lessons to young adults. It is my conviction that these lessons are rarely taught either at home or in the schools. For those who did not get them growing up you can get them from me for free. This is part of my way of giving back to the universe on the occasion of my 50th birthday.

In my last entry in this subject, I discussed my thoughts on how to create a solid foundation for a committed relationship. I may have put the cart before the horse because there is also this murky area business of sifting through the dating pool for a lifelong mate.

Let me assure you that anyone you hope to hang around with for the rest of your life will have some problems and issues. While dating, couples finding ways to accentuate their positives and minimize their negatives. Consequently, when you are sizing up someone be mindful that what you see is not necessarily what you would get if you lived with them for the rest of your life.

This is of course because when you date someone he or she is not presenting their true self. Because they are likely interested in you or they would not be going out with you, at least some part of them is projecting an image of themselves that they think you want to see. The nice thing about a date though is that it tends to last only a few hours. You can go home, kick the cat and indulge in some habit like picking your toes you would not want to show your date.

Recognizing this I figured one-way around the problem would be living together. Shacking up was actually my wife’s idea. I was somewhat reluctant because I had never done it before. For me it was a further education in real life. Eventually though it wore on my wife. Like many a woman who have tried this arrangement, eventually they feel used. I got all of the privileges, like virtually all the sex I wanted, with none of the responsibilities. Moreover, she was responsible for half the rent, even though I made more money than she did.

Since I loved her and living together was certainly not a bad thing, I eventually agreed to tie the knot. I had a good idea what I was getting into at that point, or so I thought. Yes, the stockings on the shower rail and the collection of medications splayed over the bathroom counters took some getting used to, but these were minor annoyances. I rationalized that if the problems got too bad we could always divorce.

I do not know how typical my case was, but I found that there was a huge difference between living together and actual marriage. Part of it was psychological. For the first time in my life, my assets were legally tied with someone else’s. When we lived together, our biggest joint problem was making sure we both paid our share of the rent on time. Now there was all this other stuff to work through. It ran from the relatively trivial, like deciding how our apartment would look to the very personal, such as how to accommodate differences in our sex drives. I was not in Kansas anymore. Moreover, since we were married, we did not have to wear our masks anymore. I found the first five years of my marriage were constantly full of surprises.

How much of what I experienced would happen to you is of course impossible to predict. What is true is that both my wife and I are different people. There was no way to really know how things would work out until we worked through issues as a married couple. I am confident though that stuff will happen in any such relationship that will surprise, upset you or be of concern. When this stuff happens, you learn where the friction points in your relationship really lie. How you navigate through them will tell you volumes about yourself and your spouse.

Most of us though want to minimize that stuff. We want to feel harmony with our partner ten or twenty years into a relationship, not strife. Given that most marriages eventually devolve into divorce (and arguably many that remain are not that happy) finding that harmony without surrendering your self-identity and self-respect can be one of life’s thorniest problems.

As I mentioned in the first entry in this series, the best thing you can do before getting hip deep in the dating pool is to work on addressing your own issues. Granted, this is not an easy thing to do. We all come with baggage, but young adults do not tend to come with much money. Therapists are not cheap. Anything you can do to address what you feel are your biggest relationship problems before you get too far into intimate relationships will be time and money well spent. If you do not, you will be tackling them later. Moreover, if you are in a lifelong relationship, they will affect your spouse too.

Although hardly anyone bothers, simply writing down what you are looking for in a partner will make you more mindful of people who may meet your needs. It will also tell you a lot about yourself. Virtually all of us on some level will crave a partner who is attractive. However, your ideal partner is probably someone on roughly the same attractiveness scale as you. If you examine the standard deviation for the human population, after all, you will find relatively few 1s and 10s. Most of us are in the middle and that is perfectly okay. If you are one of these types for whom looks are paramount, you can save yourself a lot of grief by adjusting your standards. Not only is a perfect 10 likely saddled with their own baggage, if you were married to one of these people your life may be much more stressful than you can imagine. (For one thing, if you were the jealous type, you would be constantly worried about the competition eager to snatch him/her away.)

When your significant other suggests it is time to meet the family, rather than run away from this activity, you should embrace it. You will learn volumes about the person from their family. Let us say that you come from a family where your parents have a happy, comfortable and mutually fulfilling marriage. You discover that both your girlfriend’s parents have been divorced twice and she has known two sets of stepfathers. You find out that her brother is also divorced or had a child out of wedlock. You discover that Aunt Mabel hates Uncle Jeff. One or two incidents like this in a family is excusable, but still a caution flag. A family rife with these issues should be ringing your claxon bells. Know that if you marry this person the odds are your marriage will likely be full of similar issues.

I suspect you came from a family that had issues too. Full disclosure is the best policy. Let your boy or girlfriend shake out your family too. If you have concerns about her reaction to a particularly toxic person in the family, tell her about it in advance. Tell her what you have learned from of it, and how a long term relationship with you would be different.

It should go without saying that if your potential partner is evasive then claxon bells should be going off too. It is fine to be evasive if you are dating casually. It is another thing entirely if you are both seriously contemplating a lifelong relationship.

Indians have a rigid caste system that has endured for millennium. While I certainly do not endorse the system, the best partner for you is likely to be someone who is in a similar socioeconomic class. If your background and outlook is blue collar, you probably carry those values with you. Most likely, you will feel more comfortable with a partner who is also blue collar. Mixed marriages are fine, but the ones that are more likely to endure occur when both are from the same socioeconomic background. I dated two black women during my dating years. One was a pediatrician and the other the daughter of an Air Force general. I am sure a mixed marriage would have been full of challenges, but they would have been less so because both women came from solid middle class households where the parents were in stable marriages, like mine.

Your best guide is likely your gut instinct. If you feel uneasy about your potential partner, trust your instinct. He or she may be attractive and on the surface, everything may seem terrific. Wait for that someone who, when the flush of infatuation fades, still fills you with a warmth and contentment. He or she is likely the right partner for you.

March 10th, 2007 at 02:49pm Posted by Mark | Advice | no comments

Real Life 101: Lesson 4, Relationship Basics, Part 2

This is the fourth in an indeterminate series of entries that provides my “real world” lessons to young adults. It is my conviction that these lessons are rarely taught either at home or in the schools. For those who did not get them growing up you can get them from me for free. This is part of my way of giving back to the universe on the occasion of my 50th birthday.

I am 21 years into my marriage. I do not know if my marriage is typical or atypical, nor would I claim that my wife and I have a model marriage. However, we are still hanging in there. I do know that after all these years that I still sometimes find myself baffled in my own most intimate relationship. I suspect my wife feels the same way. Just who is this weird person I married? is what I am sure she often asks herself. What happened to the man I knew? I often have similar feelings. I view the current state of my marriage and compare it with a time when it seemed to me to be at its most wonderful stage, which was around 1986, and certain aspects of the way it is today are a let down. In 1986, we were childless and had few obligations. Since then lots and lots of life has happened. All these normal things that happen to normal people over 21 years put stress on our marriage. Just as a waterfall will erode the rocks at its base, life will tend to erode even the most solid of relationships.

Since you are likely young, you are probably not a homeowner. However, I think you can understand that if you were a homeowner that basic home maintenance is not just a good idea, it is required. Life sucks when your roof has a hole in it or the air conditioner dies in the middle of summer. Most homeowners quickly learn to anticipate these things. Your house, like your marriage or any partnership arrangement you get into, will also have to fight the forces of entropy. Unfortunately, just saying, “I love you” to your partner every day will not be enough.

My wife and I have learned through painful experience that complacency is not a great marital strategy. In any committed relationship regular spadework must be done. I suspect that marital complacency is likely the number one reason that marriages fail. If you do not place much value in your relationship, then go ahead and be complacent about it. Just do not be surprised if you end up divorced, or unhappy, or upset because your feelings are not being addressed. If you do value your relationship, you and your spouse need to regularly invest your most precious asset: time. This does not necessarily mean if you are a guy that going out with the guys is now out of the question. It does mean that that satisfying your partner’s needs for intimacy comes first. When that cup is full and if there is time left over, then go hang out with the guys.

If you are already in a committed relationship, I hope that your better half feels the same way you do about your relationship. If he or she does not, you should be hearing the deafening sounds of claxon bells. Now is the time to run, not walk and get some joint counseling. No positive relationship can remain in imbalance for very long. No relationship that is worth keeping should be one sided. The premise behind marriage is that the relationship is very valuable. Just as you would make sure a precious heirloom is protected, so should you and your partner work to ensure your relationship stays optimal.

I have written about marriage before. For me one of the key lessons that I have learned is that the participants actually define the scope and meaning of their relationship. A marriage certificate may offer some legal protections, but otherwise it really means nothing. Only you and your partner can judge the value of your relationship. If it feels dead, it is dead. You can both stay together for the sake of the children or to spare hurt feelings, but neither of these things changes the fact that the relationship is dead.

The good news is that unlike actual death, which is final, it is possible to bring a marriage back to life. However, it has to be done before the body cools. In addition, it requires the sincere commitment of both partners. Sadly, there is no guarantee that it will work and unfortunately, the odds are against you.

Since presumably you are starting out on this committed relationship business, you can learn best practices for building and sustaining healthy, long-term relationships. It starts with a solid foundation. Do you and your potential partner share the same vision and goals? What is your idea of a successful long-term intimate relationship? What are your partner’s ideas? Under what circumstances would you break up? It is far better to discuss these things candidly before you tie the knot. Do not assume that you can read your partner’s mind. If during this discovery phase you find that you have different expectations and agendas then it is far better to move on rather than deal with the carnage many years later.

I once posited in an online forum in dead seriousness that parents should be licensed. I also wish that couples planning marriage were required to wait at least six months and attend a rigorous premarital counseling course as well. A marriage should be given the same respect you would give a firearm. For marriages can kill too. When they go wrong they typically kill or wound a person spiritually, but sometimes they can actually kill you. If you examine homicide statistics, the person most likely to murder you is your spouse. Spouse abuse, be it physical, emotional and sexual (or often a combination of the above) is so common that it is likely someone within a few hundred feet of where you live is currently a victim. The NRA will strongly encourage you to take a gun safety course before owning a firearm. I am encouraging those of you contemplating a committed long-term relationship to make a very wise investment and get relationship counseling.

Star struck lovers often have little idea what a long-term relationship is all about. Sometimes they do know, but simply do not care, since their body is awash in love hormones. Trust me, the infatuation phase will end. While love and mutual respect should be the foundation of a committed relationship and sex its spice, on a daily basis relationships like marriage are far more prosaic. What it amounts to, frankly, is they tend to be a whole lot of work. It works much better though when the partners are in a harmonious relationship based on mutual understanding.

Through premarital counseling, you can garner vital insights and perspectives. If you receive good counseling, you will discuss those issues that tend to be given short shrift in the flush of a romantic relationship. What are your expectations about children? Who should do what housework? How will the money be managed? Should you have separate bank accounts? What are your needs for sex? What are your needs for privacy? How clean should the house be? How will chores be allocated? What does fidelity mean to you? Knowing you agree on similar values and have common expectations means that you can enter a relationship like marriage with a solid foundation. You may learn a lot about your partner from these sessions. Indeed, you may very well discover that the person who you thought would be your ideal lifelong partner has very different needs and expectations than yours.

I believe that more marriages would succeed if there were sets of older, experienced marriage veterans to act as mentors for the young couple. Having a couple ten or twenty years ahead of you in their marriage to discuss marital issues would provide the wisdom and perspective that so many couples lack.

Finding such resources may prove challenging. If you are religious, your place of worship may offer such a service. Any marriage counselor can provide this service and a few sessions are likely all you will need. They would probably be thrilled to have a couple anxious to avoid mistakes for a change. Most marriage counselors learn from experience that by the time a couple makes it to their office, the marriage is usually over and they end up in the role of facilitator. However you get such counseling, it is an excellent investment. While having a facilitator like a marriage counselor is ideal, there are no lack of self help books on premarital counseling too. A counselor is a better choice than a book but if you are financially challenged a book may suffice.

Divorce is likely the most traumatic and costly event that can happen in any life, but living in a bad relationship can be equally damaging as well. Taking proactive steps to ensure your relationship is solid before starting a long-term committed relationship is just common sense.

March 6th, 2007 at 08:30pm Posted by Mark | Advice | 2 comments

Real Life 101: Lesson 3, Relationship Basics, Part 1

This is the third in an indeterminate series of entries that provides my “real world” lessons to young adults. It is my conviction that these lessons are rarely taught either at home or in the schools. For those who did not get them growing up you can get them from me for free. This is part of my way of giving back to the universe on the occasion of my 50th birthday.

I hope that during your high school and college years you developed reasonably good dating skills with the gender to which you are attracted. However, your experience may be like mine: you were socially awkward, which made it hard for you to make these kinds of connections. Even if you were the most popular boy/girl on campus, consistently had your top pick and always dated perfect 10s, it is likely that you too have not mastered the fundamentals of sound relationships. This is not surprising. Even a lifetime may not suffice.

I will concentrate in this entry on romantic, potentially long-term relationships and will save for other entries the considerable issues associated with family, work and collegial relationships. Deftly navigating the world of relationships is challenging work. If you have the inclination, you can pick up Daniel Goleman’s now classic book on Emotional Intelligence. It acts as something of a primer for understanding and navigating through the emotional relationship cloud in which we all must navigate.

In the area of romantic relationships, you most likely want to know how to find that perfect individual that you will love and cherish you. In particularly if you are a male, you will also want someone who will meet all your sexual needs, particularly the kinky ones. (If you are a woman, the research suggests you are looking for a man that will be faithful, a good father, and will not be abusive.) Here is the bad news: he or she does not exist. He or she does not exist because none of us grows up perfectly and we are all different anyhow. Even if you could clone yourself and have your clone be the gender that turns you on, your replica would still not be your ideal mate. This is because, and I hate to break this to you, but you like all human beings are not perfect either. On a daily basis, if you had to encounter yourself as others see you, then you would probably run away. You would want nothing to do with yourself.

Therefore, in your primary intimate relationship, you are not likely to hit a home run. You can get to first base, but a double or triple is quite possible. I may be 50, married and love my wife but I am not too old to have my fantasies. In my fantasy, I am married to Catherine Zeta Jones or maybe, since I am a Firefly fan, Jewel Staite. Being 50 and sanguine though, I know that neither of these lovely women would be my ideal partner. Even if they were attracted to me, I doubt they would be into my particular sexual kinks. My idea of making love might be once a day; theirs might be once a month. Moreover, they would come with their own sets of issues. As I pointed out recently, this is particularly true of celebrities. I do not know what they would be but if I were with them 24/7, they would irritate me.

If you want to find the optimal (but not ideal) mate for you, you have to do some homework. This does not mean placing personals ads on eHarmony or Yahoo! Personals. Nor does this mean surfing the personals ads for that petite 5′4″ blonde with the cornflower hair who has a Master’s Degree in Human Sexuality and who lives around the block. Rest assured that if she exists, she is in a committed relationship to someone higher up the food chain than you are.

You will have to set your sites lower. As is true with everything else in life, you cannot always get what you want in a relationship either. That so many singles are unwilling to accept this partially explains the high numbers of singles in their 30s and 40s today. It is fine to set high standards if you aspire to be celibate and childless. If you do not then you need to lower your expectations. As I will get into in a subsequent entry, you do not want to lower them too far. You want someone who has their act together, not a psycho. Fortunately, there are plenty of people in this group. You are likely one of them.

Humans of course come in all shapes and sizes, with innumerable variations from being emotionally sophisticated to psychotic. As life is a crapshoot, so are relationships. There are however, certain things you can do to improve the odds that you will find a healthy and sustaining relationship rather than end up in a dysfunctional one.

One nervy thing you can do, if you can muster the courage, is to ask your friends and family to critique you. How do they see you? What do they see as your strengths and weaknesses? Particularly if you have platonic friends of the opposite sex (assuming you are attracted to the opposite sex) seek them for their perspective. Be prepared to cringe a bit. Perhaps you dress like a slob and you never noticed. Perhaps having pizza boxes stacked up toward the ceiling in your apartment is something of a turn off to a lady. The more opinions you get the better. Nevertheless, you should notice some general trends. This process will give you some valuable insight into yourself and areas to work on. The more you improve yourself, the more attractive you will be by those you want to attract. In short, you are widening the pool of potential mates, which is good.

What if like me you are socially awkward? I have a cousin so socially awkward that he is in his forties and lives with his brother and his wife. Ideally, you would invest in your personal life the same way you would invest in your career. In my last entry in this series, I suggested that it is okay to go into debt to advance your career, providing you have taken care of your necessities. It is also okay to go into debt to straighten out your social awkwardness or any of the other kinks in your armor that resulted from childhood and adolescence. Lord knows we all have them. This can be intimidating. Let us say you figure you need six months of weekly therapy from a competent clinical psychologist at $125 a session to get through your social awkwardness. That is $3250. That is a lot of money, but when measured against your entire life and even the cost of college tuition these days, it is not a lot of money. If your therapy succeeds, you will be well positioned for healthy relationships and more likely to attract a higher quality mate. That is because you will be less messed up. In short, to achieve the goal of competently navigating the complex emotional waters of dating and mating, six months of your life and $3250 is a sound investment. If you have health insurance, some or all of your therapy may be covered. In addition, you may be able to deduct the expenses.

I will have more suggestions on navigating intimate relationships in a future entry. Stay tuned!

March 1st, 2007 at 02:36pm Posted by Mark | Advice | no comments

Real Life 101, Lesson 2: Personal Finance Basics

This is the second in an indeterminate series of entries that provides my “real world” lessons to young adults. It is my conviction that these lessons are rarely taught either at home or in the schools. For those who did not get them growing up you can get them from me for free. This is part of my way of giving back to the universe on the occasion of my 50th birthday. It is my hope that at least some of you reading this will benefit from my experience and save yourself a lot of unnecessary anguish.

When I was growing up managing money was straightforward. If you were just starting out it was almost impossible to get a credit card. Consequently, you lived within your means, no matter how modest they were.

Now managing money is much more complicated. Unfortunately, it is a good bet that you graduated high school without a money management class. Credit card companies spend millions trolling for financial fools willing to get themselves deeply in debt. They especially target young people, and try to make your indebtedness to them a lifelong habit. It appears that many Americans and young people in particular now see money as wholly abstract. As long as your ATM card works or your credit card is not over its spending limit, you assume your head is above water. Personal debt has become as abstract as the National Debt.

If this is what you think, you are sadly mistaken. Debt matters and the kind of debt you carry matters even more. Carrying debt costs you dearly and limits what you can do with our own money. Your goal should be not to be one of the millions of Americans with a negative net worth. Your goal should be to get out of debt entirely and start accumulating both a reserve of cash and a supply of assets that exceeds your debts. What you will get are financial resiliency and peace of mind. You want to be one of the financial winners in life, not one of the many losers out there always struggling under a crushing load of debt. If a real financial crisis hits, like a banking crisis or the need for an expensive operation not covered by insurance, these people will end up as financial road kill. You should not aspire to be one of the unfortunate.

Having no debt is ideal, but impractical. Credit card debt, like any debt that is unsecured is bad debt. Any debt that does not help you work yourself up the food chain is also bad debt. Consequently, student loans are probably good debt, providing you use the money to study earnestly in a program that will provide you with a good and steady income in future years.

All your expenses can be placed into three categories based on decreasing priority: things you need, things that will enhance your long-term financial solvency, and things you want. You need food, housing and a way to get to and from work. You may aspire to be a college graduate or a truck driver. Money spent here is your second priority because it enhances your long-term solvency. The latest Xbox game station may be something you think you need for your happiness. Do not delude yourself. It is something you want. You can live without it. If after satisfying the first two priorities there is money left over, go and buy something off your want list, providing you can pay for it without going into further debt.

You might say, “But I need high speed internet so I can respond to emails for job searches.” Sorry. It is convenient to you to have high-speed internet, but it is not a need. You can go to most public libraries and use their internet service for free. Similarly, you do not need a car. You can walk, bike, join a carpool or take public transportation. You might even be able to work from home. If you live in the middle of nowhere you can move to some place closer in. People survive without cars all the time and so can you. I used public transportation for years until I could afford a car. Similarly, you may think you need your own apartment. However, you could also find a roommate, take a room in a group house or even live in your parents’ spare bedroom if they will let you.

Granted this sort of life will not necessarily be fun. However painful what you are doing is in the short term, always keep in mind that it is a sound long-term strategy that has been proven effective over millennium. It means that you are living within your means. It means that you are positioning yourself for your long-term prosperity.

After seeing where your money goes, the next step is to make sure money goes where it needs to go first. This involves the prosaic but vital exercise of making and sticking to a budget. If you have more expenses than income, you either need to cut expenses, increase income or do both. Creating a budget is not rocket science. If need be you can do it with a pen and paper, as most generations until now have done it. Any spreadsheet can be used to create a budget. If you cannot afford Microsoft Excel, download the free OpenOffice suite, or use Google’s free spreadsheet tool.

For years, I would end up going “ouch” whenever that big bill arrived. I did not necessarily have all the cash on hand when, for example, the auto insurance bill arrived. Eventually I figured out that if I escrowed equal parts of the money I needed every month I would have all the money on hand when I needed it and I would not be so anxious. You can use the same strategy. My criteria is that any bill paid less often than monthly and which will be for more than $250 when it arrives I will escrow for in advance. I divided up one of my bank accounts into a number of imaginary accounts, one for each of these major expenses. For example, I pay $765.18 a year for homeowner’s insurance. That is $63.77 a month. Therefore, every month I put $63.77 into that account. I expect the bill in 4 months, so I have paid 8 months into the account so far and have accumulated $510.16 in it. When the bill comes due, I have the money to pay it in full. In addition to known bills, I also escrow for anticipated major expenses. For example, I put $250 a month into a car savings account. It is there to act as a down payment for future car purchases, as well as to pay for any major car repair bills that come up. I have a similar account for major repairs. This generally means that I do not need to touch savings when I have to install a new roof or put in a new air conditioner.

To use an escrow system you first need a pile of cash that you can subdivide this way. If you have no pile of cash because you are making payments on your credit card instead, work to get its balance down to a zero balance as fast as possible. You can use a debt calculator to figure out how much money to pay every month to get rid of a credit card balance. For example if you have $8000 in credit card debt and are being charged 15% interest and want to pay it off in 2 years, you can use an online debt calculator like this one. Pay $383.10 a month over two years and you will pay off the debt.

I suspect you will find that when you pay off a debt that you will feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. While you are paying off the debt, you will have the satisfaction of seeing your finance charges and outstanding balance drop lower every month. When finally paid off, there will be no more finance charges ever. You can use the money on other priorities. $383.10 a month can buy a lot of Xboxes.

I plan to offer more financial guidance for you to ponder will be coming up in future entries.

February 25th, 2007 at 12:43pm Posted by Mark | Advice | 2 comments

Real Life 101, Lesson 1: Job Basics

Having turned 50 recently, I realized that I have finally mastered some major lessons from the school of real life. I thought I would use the excuse of my birthday to pass on some of these lessons to younger generations. While I enjoy pretending to be a fountain of wisdom, in reality, like most bloggers, any wisdom I have achieved is likely more the result of successful marketing than anything else is.

Today I am starting an occasional series of entries in a “Real Life 101″ series. Maybe you can find these on Motley Fool or in a Dummies Book, but here you can get them free. These strategies have been tried, tested and proven true in the sphere of real life. Unlike a stock market investment, where you earnings are never guaranteed, these principles will work. They have been painfully acquired from navigating through real life for five decades and in many cases through making the wrong choices. They are not always easy to implement, but life never is.

Today’s topic: job basics.

Unless you happen to have inherited a large estate, the most important factor in avoiding misery is a good, steady and well paying job. Ideally, the job will be one that you will also enjoy. While there is no lack of jobs out there, few of them meet all these criteria. Most likely, you do not have one of these jobs. Here are some strategies that will get you there.

When it comes to any job, consistently going beyond the expected almost always reaps rewards. I am amazed by how many workers cannot seem to grasp this basic truth, even after their fourth or fifth job. Strive to be exceptional in whatever you are doing, no matter how menial or mundane. In the unlikely event that your efforts are not noticed in your current job, your attitude will be noticed by some future employer. Save the snarkiness for when you get home. When you are at work, focus on your work. Be the first to volunteer to do difficult or not so glamorous work. Unless your chain of command is full of pointy haired bosses, most likely your work attitude will be quickly noticed, and you will be given more challenging and interesting work as a reward. It is quite possible that you will earn a promotion and/or more money too. Having demonstrated your value you are much less likely to be pink slipped or downsized.

Constantly steer toward jobs that offer the three critical factors: steady employment, good wages and benefits. While I generally do not like debt, I have gladly gone into debt so that I could compete for better paying jobs that advanced my career. Be hard nosed. For example, it is better to go into debt to get a degree than a certification. It might seem a worthy goal to be a Microsoft Certified Software Engineer, for example. Nevertheless, certifications have a limited shelf life. A degree in software engineering though will carry the broad education that you will likely be able to apply for the rest of your career.

Few things have the potential to be more personally catastrophic than unemployment. This means that it you should always do your best to avoid being fired or laid off. Regardless, you will probably get a few periods of unemployment in your career. If it happens to you, expect to feel devastated, but do not think that you are unique. Unemployment happens. You will recover from the experience and reemerge on your feet. In most cases, you can anticipate your termination. If you sense that are likely to lose your job then take action. Start aggressively looking for your next job. Rats know when to desert a sinking ship. So should you.

Another rule of thumb: the best job for you will likely not come from a newspaper or an internet jobs site. It will come through a referral from someone you know. You would probably not pick a doctor out of the phone book. Instead, you will get recommendations from friends. The same applies doubly with jobs. People’s actual experience with employers will tell you a lot. After all, you do not want to waste your time dealing with the trauma of a job that does not fit you. Consequently, you need to develop networking skills.

Recently a contractor I have not worked with in seven years sought me out. We kept in touch and traded occasional emails and holiday cards. We would meet for lunch every year or two when our schedules allowed, which they usually did not. She was interested in applying for a job and wanted to know if I knew anyone who worked at the place where she was applying. It just so happened that yes I did know and worked rather extensively with someone who worked there. Although it had been several years, I contacted the man I used to work with, who I considered part of my own personal network. He gave the background on the culture of the place and what they were likely looking for. It sounded like a good match for her. She has applied for the job and will use me as a reference. I suspect that if she is interviewed she will do well. In addition to having the skills, she will have an understanding of the culture of the place to carry into the interview. We all know people with whom we can network. It could be your friend, a neighbor, a coworker’s spouse, or someone you know at church. By marketing yourself to these people, you are actually marketing yourself to a larger number of people, and they will likely keep you in mind and let you know of opportunities. Make networking a habit and if you are in the position to return the favor, do it.

Since unemployment will visit most of us at least a couple times in our life, devise a proactive approach so you can be prepared when it strikes. If you are chronically low on cash, your backup strategy might be to move back in with your parents for a time. (Please check with them first to make sure they will agree.) Putting your expenses on a credit card is the wrong way to go, so strive to create a nest egg that will play for at least three months of expenses. The current trend, unfortunately, is that while unemployment is happening less often, when it does happen it lasts for longer periods. Most experts are now recommending saving six months of expenses to emerge from unemployment financially intact. Whatever your strategy is, you must be realistic about it. Even if it is to live off your credit cards, you will still need income to make those monthly payments. This means that while being unemployed you will likely have to be underemployed by doing some work that you would normally consider beneath you.

Your first jobs are likely to offer little in the way of benefits. If you are young you may be able to go without health insurance for a while, but it is always risky. Benefits should be a primary consideration for accepting any job. Health insurance in particular is a crucial factor. Granted, the job has to pay enough so that you can afford the health insurance premiums, but you should make it your goal to find a job that offers health insurance benefits.

Another way to judge an employer is to find out how much money, if any, they will contribute toward your retirement. Many small employers simply cannot afford to contribute to a 401-K plan, but will let you contribute your own money into a plan. Others cannot be bothered. A decent employer will match your contributions to at least three percent of salary. An ideal employer would double this amount. If you can find an employer that also provides a traditional pension that would be nirvana, but it is not realistic anymore. If you want this degree of protection, look toward state, county or federal employment.

Of course, if you get benefits like these do your damnedest to take advantage of them as soon as possible. Health insurance is most important, since any condition you may have or develop can leave you financially devastated. Otherwise contribute to the 401-K as much as you possibly can. You will pay less in the way of taxes and, of course, the sooner you start, the more you will reap when you retire. You may not believe that the money will actually be there when you retire. Do not be stupid. You too will age and if you are lucky, you will live to see your retirement. You will not want to eat dog food in your retirement. While social security may be problematical, your 401-K will generally be invested in commercial stocks and bonds. Our financial system has shown extreme resiliency. Even the Great Depression did not wipe out the stock markets. Invest early, invest regularly and invest until it hurts.

More job and career advice will follow in subsequent entries in this series.

February 18th, 2007 at 01:06pm Posted by Mark | Advice | no comments