Special situation: Grown up children and parents/parents-in-law

This is the Part 2 of my answer to M.'s question: How to deal with ungrateful family? I can't cut them off entirely but my irritation is at the point that I want to.

The first part was dealing with "ungratefulness".
This second part is about specific problems in relationship with mother and mother-in-law.


Grown up children and parents/parents-in-law.

1. Grown up child and mother

This happens a lot: Mother gives a lot of advise to her adult daughter.  
The mother gives a good reason for all her advise: she knows what is best for her daughter. She is worried about her and want only the best for her. But the daughter can't live her life as her mother wants her to. Both are unhappy with the relationship.


The mother's reason sounds legit. But it is not the real reason. In this reasoning there are many levels and the mother herself often don't know the real reason.

When I dig deep to find the real reason I can identify 3 levels. 

Level 1: The apparent "ungratefulness"

This is the very surface. You can fix few things on that level. But they will keep coming up again and again until you fix levels 2 and 3.
See the Part 1 for how to fix level 1.


Level 2: Fear of loneliness

The mother feels lonely after her child grows up. She fears to be excluded and not to be needed anymore. She fears to be forgotten.

She tries to fix that by demonstrating how much she cares. And expects care for her in exchange. Here it the reciprocity expectation again: she cares and expects care in return.
Her ways to show care may not the best but she can only do what she can. An average mother is not a super human, she is a regular person and she will use only the methods that she knows.

Her care full of advise how to live life is not the care a grown up child needs. That "care" turns quick into "annoyance and aggression" and by reciprocity that what the mother is going to get back.
Aggression in the relationship is the result. Both sides are irritated and unhappy.

If the adult daughter understands the reason on level 2, she can give care to solve that problem. Because care is what is expected. It is difficult and the adult child needs to be careful by making sure that the care is something "good" on the receiving end (see example 3 in the Part 1).
Trying to decrease the loneliness and fear to be forgotten would be the solution but it is not easy with a parent who is irritating and aggressive.

It is easier to break this circle of irritation if you jump straight to level 3.


Level 3: Love jug

On this level the real problem is not the fear of being forgotten or loneliness.

Mother usually sees her child as an extension of herself. 
If the mother is happy with herself, she will be happy with her child. 
Anything the mother doesn't like in herself she projects onto her child and tries to improve her child. The child is not accepted how it is because the mother does not accept herself how she is.

The mother who doesn't have enough love for herself will never give enough love to anyone else, including her child.

Imagine that everyone is carrying a jug filled with love - the love jug.
Only the self-love is as thick as honey.
All the love substitute people can get from others is sugar water which evaporates quickly.
People who don't have enough of honey (love for themselves) still have to fill the jug. They desperately try to at least collect sugar water from others. They collect that love substitute  in form of approval from others, being people pleasers, by self-sacrifice, or attention of any kind. Those substitutes fill the jug but evaporate quickly and have to be constantly refilled.

By completely accepting yourself how you are you fill your jug with thick honey. You don't need any sugar water anymore.

If you know how, you can make honey yourself. The sugar water is different. It can only be received from others. People with empty love jugs are going around trying to get that love substitute from others because they can't make it themselves.

There will be enough people who will try to give you the sugar water, because by reciprocity they will try to get some sugar water from you.

Once you have honey, you will have no need for that love substitute.

You will be able so see and differentiate people with their love jugs filled with honey from others who don't love themselves, are running around, busy trying to get various kinds of love substitutes from others (approval, attention, admiration, jealousy) to fill their jug with at least some sugar water.

Since it evaporates, they have to work for it all the time. If they don't get enough from others, they are unhappy and that is a painful feeling.

Back to the mother.
Mother who can't accept herself how she is, doesn't love herself. Because there is not enough true love (honey) in the mother's love jug, she will try to get the missing love from someone else including her child.

To fill the jug, the mother will go to whoever is closest to her. If the mother a good relationship with someone, she will try to get the sugar water out of that relationship first. That's why mothers who have active relationships themselves don't bother their children as much as when they are lonely.

All "I want the best for you" justifications are just a cover for a scream "Give me some love. I can't make honey, please give me at least some sugar water."

That jug has to be filled somehow.

The same is for children. If mother was not able to give them enough true love (honey) when they were growing up, their jug is not full unless they learned to make honey by themselves, became self-sufficient and independent from the need for love substitutes.


To fix the problem on level 2 you will need to give more attention to your mother. But that is difficult if the mother constantly needs a lot of attention because her love jug is empty.
Mother can't make sugar water herself. By demonstrating her care for the child she tries to give the child some sugar water to get some in return. But the child only gets irritation and by reciprocity gives irritation back. But even irritation is better than nothing, it is like a very low quality of sugar water, at least some attention instead of being completely forgotten.

It will be up to the child to work on the solution.

Acceptance is what makes honey. Accepting yourself and others. Accepting your mother how she is and telling her that will produce a portion of honey you can give her. Her jug will fill with that a bit and she will be less thursty for sugar water.

By saying: "Mother, when you say things like that to me, it is difficult for me to be close to you. And that makes me sad. I will always love you because you are my mother. I want to live my own life how I can. It is sad that you don't accept it. But even if you don't accept my choices in life, I will still love you."
And then give her some time.

If you want to know how it feels to hear it, you can imagine that you don't like a certain part of your own body, for example your right hand. You try to convince the hand to change, because you care and also because it will be better for the hand to change. For example it will be better for the hand to get longer fingers or smoother skin. And the hand tells you: "I can't change. That is how I am. But I will always love you because I am yours, I am part of you".


When mother realizes that she is accepted how she is, she will feel different.



2. Mother-in-law


She is afraid to become obsolete in her son's life.
The son's wife is a threat to her because her son will have to divide his attention and there will be less left for the mother. And that is very scary for someone with an empty love jug. She will do everything to get the competitor out of the game.

The daughter-in-law can try to give her some attention but the love substitute from close relatives like her own son is always stronger and more valuable, it is a bit better quality sugar water. She will still fight for that.
It is in the hands of her son to fix that problem. The daughter-in-law has very little chance to fix anything.

Fixing the problem on this level is the same as for the mother and daughter: acceptance.

How to deal with ungrateful family? Transaction of "doing good" to someone

M. asked me: How to deal with ungrateful family? I can't cut them off entirely but my irritation is at the point that I want to.

Part 1

From this question it sounds like M. tries to help her family members and her help is not accepted or it is taken but nothing comes in return.
M. has very kind and soft personality. For me it is difficult to imagine that she will really cut anyone off. But this threat shows the level of her unhappiness with how things stand.

M.'s question is very general. It could be a mix of a few  things. The first what stands out is "ungrateful". The second is "family". I will go trough them separately, starting with "ungrateful". In the next post (Part 2) I will touch on "family" specifically.


Ungrateful

Generally (actually almost always) when people do something they consider "good", they expect something "good" in return. Not always it is material, but at least some acknowledgement or "gratefulness".

This giving and getting back is a transaction. But this particular kind of transaction of "doing good" is somewhat tricky.

If you do "good" to your friend or family member you expect them to be at least grateful.
You did something for them. It was something "good for them". Not neutral or bad, it was good. STOP! That was something YOU think was "good". Was it really good for them?

This transaction requires reciprocity. By reciprocity you will receive back the same what they have received. NOTE: Not the same you gave them but the same they have received. Those can be two different things.

The tricky part of this transaction is that the valuation can change as soon as the "good" changes sides. 

On the receiving side the "good" can turn "bad" instantly.
The "good" turns to "bad" and you will receive "bad" back by reciprocity. That is the reason to make sure that something you give is not only "good" on your side but will also be receives as "good".

The key moment for a successful transaction is that during the transaction the "good" stays "good".

There are many reasons for something "good" to turn into something "bad".

For example, the people's taste is different.

A very simple example (1): a very strong coffee. You like very strong coffee and consider strong coffee something "good". 

But it is not the same "good" for everyone.
If it is offered as something "good" to someone who doesn't like coffee, especially a strong one, that offering of "good" immediately turns into something "bad" for the receiving person.
A joyful, accepting and happy "Thank you" can't follow that offer. 
By reciprocity that what was RECEIVED will go back. A "bad" drink was received and something "bad" will have to be returned. 
People are polite and try not to hurt others feelings but there will be at least some bad emotion coming trough instead of happy accepting. And that was just a simple coffee offer.

As soon as the offer is evaluated and is classified as "bad" the reciprocity kicks in and you will get the mirror of what was received. "Bad" will be paid back with "bad". "Good" will be paid with "good".


Here is another example (2). Your friend is shopping for a dryer. You recently have discovered a new dryer that can not only dry cloths but also de-wrinkle them and even perform dry-cleaning. You think it is the greatest thing and everyone should enjoy it, especially you close family members or friends.
You want to do your friend something "good" and convince her to buy that new dryer. Your friend doesn't like it, but she is shy and polite and doesn't want confrontation. She buys it because your advise is so pertinent.
You think you end up with having done something "good" for her. But actually it is not "good" for her at all. She had to spend more money on those extra options, it doesn't match the washing machine she already has, it doesn't fit into the space that well, and in addition, your friend doesn't use the de-wrinkling or dry-cleaning options.

The "good" you gave her turns in to "bad" on the receiving end. By reciprocity there is no way you will get something "good" back.
But you are still convinced that you did something "good" and by reciprocity you expect "thanks" as something "good" back. You don't get it and classify your friend as "ungrateful".

Your friend has received something "bad" and now will have to return something "bad" by reciprocity. Of course there will be absence of gratefulness. Even if your friend likes you a lot and is very polite, and also realizes that you wanted the best for her, the fact stays there - she has not received anything "good". 
It is very difficult and unnatural to be grateful for something "bad". It is like saying Thank you for new unnecessary problems. Most people will not thank for that. And almost no one can do it with an honest looking face.

Here is a more complicated example (3).
Your mother-in-law is not good with money. She buys a lot of useless things and can't manage her money well. She is talking about her money problems and complaining about it. But she is not asking for help with managing her money.

You think that the best for her is to learn how to manage money and try to teach her that. She is irritated and unhappy. You consider her ungrateful.

What she really wants is attention. Complaining about her money problems may be one of the ways she gets the attention she wants. It is especially true if she does nothing to fix the problem and only complains. Getting attention trough complaining is her solution to get that secondary gain of attention.  
This is not a perfect way to get attention but that is one of a few she knows and it has worked before. By offering to teach her money management you actually offering her a way to get less attention after the problem is solved. You are attacking her secondary gain. That that is nothing "good" for her. Her response will be appropriate.

Unwanted help and unasked advise are the same as an attack. The real reason is not always visible. Unwanted help starts an involuntary transaction.
In those cases one has to be really sure that the receiving person will classify it as "good".

The "gratefulness" or its absence is the sign for what really was received on the other end.

Someone who has a lot of ungrateful people around has to take a break to think about all the "good" he does to friends or family.
He runs a big risk of doing a lot of "bad". With the reciprocity it will come back to him as lot of "bad".


I just described the most common reason for "ungratefulness".
Lending money to help is a special topic and the consequences of money transactions are described in this post.

It seems to me that it might not be entirely applicable to M. I don't have an impression of being a person who goes around giving unasked advise to everyone.

If her troubles involve "family" it could also be relationship between her and her parents or parents-in-law. Relationships with mothers and mothers-in-law are a special situation and I will describe in separately in Part 2.

Dave Ramsey's debt Snow Ball Method - how good is it?

Dave Ramsey recommends using the Debt Snowball Method. 


That means to knock out the debts one by one starting with the smallest without worrying about the interest rates (unless there are two debts with similar payoffs, then you take the highest interest first). 

You are supposed to attack the smallest debt and keep paying the minimum payments on all other debts. After the first debt is payed off, you apply the additional payments to the next one. 

This method will definitely work - at some point you will pay off the debt if you stick with the payments. But is it the best method? 

The trade off will be some $ versus increased motivation. This would work best for people with multiple debts who start to lose overview and motivation and are about to give up. 

For anyone with enough motivation and who is less prone to panicking, it would make sense to go with the highest interest debt first. Since it is a trade of $ versus increased motivation, for those people the $ will be more useful than additional motivation. 


I made calculations to illustrate the difference between the two methods: the Snow Ball Method and the method where you pay the highest % debt first. 
I used multiple calculators. The calculations  are not extremely exact, but good enough to get the picture. 

Debts:
$1,000 at 4%
$10,000 at 10%
$20,000 at 18%
Minimum payments are approximately 2% of the loan (that is what the credit card companies are using for their minimum payment calculations).


Snow Ball Method

1. We start with the smallest debt, disregarding the interest rates. 

Starting with $1,000 at 4%. Minimum payment is $18.42 (approximately 2% of the loan). 
We apply extra payments of $100 per month. 
Total payed for this loan: $1,016.
Time it took to pay it off: 9 months. 


After 9 months, the first $1,000 loan is paid off. The extra payment of $100 can now be added as extra payment for the second loan of $10,000 at 10%. 

During those 9 months the minimum payments were still paid on the other two loans. 
After 9 months the $10,000 loan at 10% shrank to $8,997 and the payments plus interest amounted to $1,718 for that time.
The third loan of $20,000 and 18% shrank to $19,117 and the minimum payments plus interest were $3,528.

After 9 months the total paid for all loans is $6,262.

2. Now we start to add extra payments to the second loan which is now $8,997. 
We can add $118 of extra payments (extra payment of $100 for the first loan and the minimum monthly payment of the first loan of $18). 
The time to pay it off is 36 months. 
The total payment will be $10,347, including $1,350 in interest. 

During those 36 months the last $20,000 loan was still needing minimum payments and it shrunk now to $15,961. 
Now after 45 months (9 months for the first loan and 36 months for the second loan) the total payments are $16,154. 

3. Now  we start paying off the last loan, originally $20,000 at 18% which is now $15,961.
The extra payments are now $310. The time to pay it off is 28 months. 
The total amount paid in these 28 months is $19,580. 

Totals for the Snow Ball Method:
$1,000 loan: $1,016, 9 months
$10,000 loan: $1,717 and $10,347, additional 36 months
$20,000 loan: $3,528, $16,154 and $19,580, additional 28 months
Total payments: $52,342
Total time to pay off: 73 months or 6.08 years


Highest Interest First Method 

1. The highest interest loan will be paid off first. 

That is the $20,000 at 18%.
With $100, extra monthly payments it will take 58 months and the total payment is $30,032.

During those 58 months the other two loans required minimum payments. 

The smallest loan of $1,000: only $203 are left to pay and $913 were payed in total.
The second loan of $10,000: it shrunk to $5,062.
The total paid during those 58 months was $8,463.

2. Now we focus on the second loan with 10% interest. 
The second loan already shrunk to $5,062. 
While paying off the second loan, the smallest loan took care of itself. There were only $203 left to pay. It was completed in a few months. 

It took 9 months and the total payments for the second loan were $5,262.

Totals for the Highest Interest First Method 
:
$20,000 loan: $30,032, 58 months
$10,000 loan: $8,260, and 5,262, additional 9 months
$1,000 loan: $1,126, 0 extra months, it was paid off with minimum payments only wile paying of the other two loans
Total payments: $44,680
Total time to pay off: 67 months or 5.6 years

So it is $52,342 versus $44,680. The Highest Interest First Method wins. 

Dave Ramsey's philosophy on debt - are you his target audience?

M. asked me: Dave Ramsey's philosophy on debt - do you agree? He recommends to delay any retirement contributions or filling up the emergency fund until all debt is paid off. He also doesn't recommend to use credit cards. I don't understand what speaks against using them, collecting the rewards but paying them off each months? 


I heard of Dave Ramsey a bit on some of the FIRE blogs, but I didn't look up his philosophies before.
So who is Dave Ramsey? Per wikipedia, he was in the real estate business and after some successes and failures he started counseling couples at his local church and developed a set materials based partially on his own experience and partially others. He published books and has significant presence in the media.


Here are his 7 Baby Steps to financial freedom, which you can read in their completion on his website here.

Dave Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps:

Baby Step 1 – $1,000 to start an Emergency Fund

Baby Step 2 – Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball
Baby Step 3 – 3 to 6 months of expenses in savings
Baby Step 4 – Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement

Baby Step 5 – College funding for children
Baby Step 6 – Pay off home early
Baby Step 7 – Build wealth and give!


M. has the impression that Dave Ramsey suggests to follow the steps one after another. And she doubts that it would make sense. 

Let's see what would make sense. 

Imagine yourself giving recommendations to someone. Any recommendations. The structure of your recommendations will depend on if you are talking to a child or to an adult.  

The more background knowledge and resources the person has, the more nuanced will be your recommendations. In addition, it will also be limited by the amount of your own knowledge. 

For example if you talk to someone who just starts his first job, with very limited knowledge about finances and who maybe never heard of emergency fund, Dave Ramsey's steps could be great. They sound simple to follow and they are not too many. 

But the more people know, the more questions they will have and the more they will think for themselves. They will test the suggestions to agree or disagree with them. Those 7 simple steps may not be sufficient for people with more background knowledge.  

Target audience is the key.

You can check it if you are Dave's Ramsey's target audience. 
If some information in those steps is entirely new to you, you may be his target audience.

If you see nothing absolutely new, and if you start thinking and maybe questioning some of the mentioned strategies, you are not his target audience. You have grown beyond that.


You see that the Step 1 is about starting an emergency fund with $1,000. Yes, everyone has to start somewhere and that would be a good start. 

Trying to pay off all debt before putting anything into the 401k will not always be the smartest thing to do. If your employer contributes to your 401k too (many do that), you would not get that additional money if you don't contribute anything yourself (see my post here).

To me it looks like after the completion of Step 1, all other Steps can be taken care of at the same time. 
Paying off mortgage and other debt can go hand in hand with maxing out your retirement accounts. Unless your debt/income ratio very bad, which will require some special handling. 

Organizing your personal finances is not about winning in every area immediately. It is about optimizing it for your personal situation and sometimes trying to lose the minimum amount because sometimes losses are inevitable. 

Once you get used to the idea that it is not possible to win everywhere, the expectations will adjust to "realistic". Realistic expectations will reduce your decision making stress, especially the fear of missing out on something. 

By ranking your priorities - pay off all debt, max out 401k, or pay off your mortgage, if you miss out on something, that will be the area of your least priority. 

How to determine the priorities?

1. If paying off debt is your least priority, you can pay only the minimum payments for the rest of your life. It will not bother you very much that your debt will still be there when you die and it will be counted against the inheritance if there will be any. 

2. If you think that you will not live very long and don't want to die with a lot of unused money, retirement accounts may not be your first priority. But if you don't die early, you will have to work until you die or until you are so sick that you have to retire, hoping that the social security will be enough. 

3. If you are sure that your life will always go as planned and your salary situation will always stay stable to pay off your 30 year mortgage as scheduled, you can just go with regular payments without any extra principal payments.

Those descriptions are extreme and don't really apply to high income professionals. But they can help you to decide what would be the least comfortable option for you. If all of those scare you equally, you may attack all three of them at the same time equally.  

Your strongest fear will determine your highest priority. The others will follow in order of decreasing fear.   

You can work toward minimizing all three but at a different percentage for each. If mortgage bothers you most, allocate the majority of the additional payments toward the mortgage. If it is debt, allocate more toward debt. 

My priorities were 1. Debt, 2. Retirement funds, 3. Mortgage. 
According to that I started making extra payments to the mortgage only after retirement contributions were maxed out. 

I could shrink Dave Ramsey's 7 Steps to only 2 Steps:

1. Start an emergency fund (I had $2,000 in my emergency fund before even thinking about anything else).
2. Assess your debt, your retirement accounts and your mortgage. What is the highest priority for you? Allocate % accordingly. Re-evaluate every year.  


Regarding using credit cards: to me, nothing speaks against using them for cash back or points as long as you pay them off each month. The cards are not evil just by themselves. It is the lack of self-discipline and organization. If you can make sure to pay them off every months, there is no problem. It is like giving a little child a toy with small parts he can chock on. He doesn't understand. There is no danger to give anything with small parts to an adult who knows not to swallow them or to stuck them up the nose. 

All my credit cards give me cash back.  I don't want worry about missing a payment while traveling, so they are all on auto pay. 

But again, think of Dave Ramsey's target audience - people with limited knowledge in personal finance. 

Here is another interesting topic related to Dave Ramsey - his recommended Debt Snowball Method. He recommends to reduce the debts one by one starting with the smallest without worrying about the interest rates. Is it really a better way? I made my calculations, see my post about the Debt Snowball Method here. 

How I would pick a financial advisor

You should be able to trust your financial advisor. 
For me, since I trust almost nobody, it is very difficult. 


I have one financial advisor which comes for free together with my employer related 401k. Do I trust him? No. 

He didn't offer his additional services outside 401k yet. But if/when he asks, I will have a serious talk with him. 

Just imagine you are thinking about consulting a dietitian. You would definitely have to see how he looks like. To see with your own eyes if he is successful himself in the assumed area of his expertise of weight loss and weight maintenance. 
If he looks slim, you would interview him to see if his experience is real and he is not just someone 20 years old fresh out of a dietitians school and had never had any weight problems himself. 
You would like to see the real results of the strategies he can offer. 

The same is with the financial advisor for me. 
His financial strategies and results will not be as obvious as the body of the dietitian. 
So I would have to ask him to provide his own results for me before I can trust him. Especially I would focus on how the accounts were handled just before and during the last recession. 
Anyone can talk. I would ask to see the results. 

But I don't think he will go for it and show me the results. He probably would say that this information is too personal or something like that. 
And I probably wouldn't insist if he is still against it after I explain the example with the dietitian to him. 


I know, some would bring the arguments against it, such as: a doctor who is healing a particular disease doesn't have be sick with it himself. He can still heal it going with the treatment guidelines. I agree with that. 

A financial advisor can give you general "treatment guidelines" for your finances. But those guidelines are not very difficult. You can gather that information yourself. 

I would compare a personalized financial advise to a opinion of a medical expert. Like one on some specific topic where the general information is not sufficient anymore. 
What you usually get from financial advisers is the general information. If your financial situation is very complicated, that can be compared to some complicated disease where you need an expert medical advise. 

For that reason I will probably stay without a financial advisor, at least for now. My situation is not complicated and I already have sufficient general financial knowledge. 
Maybe my expectations of a financial advisor are too high. 





  

Update on my "Challenge 102" - December 2018

There was an interesting effect I got from starting this challenge. 
In many ways I was just the same as many other people - struggling to lose weight which was slowly but surely creeping up.

After starting "Challenge 102" I stopped focusing on weight. My thoughts went deeper. Much deeper. 
Thinking my deeper thoughts I used my already available knowledge on the human body processes but suddenly the puzzle pieces became strangely rearranged. Suddenly I saw everything in a different new light. 

After applying my new understanding I lost weight without any struggle. 
I am physically stronger than I ever was and I wasn't as strong even in my twenties. I always was a weakling. 

My body shape has changed. Sometimes I look at it and can't believe it is my body. It is like I am living in a parallel reality where I got a different body. 

I always thought: genes are genes, you can't do much. And yes, genes are genes, but there was a hidden capacity I didn't know about and that is quite amazing. 

The phrase "I don't have anything to wear" doesn't exist for me anymore. I am happy.

This amazing transformation made me think about the mechanism behind this thoughts rearrangement which appears to be produced by asking a different question. 

What has actually happened? It looks like I stopped focusing on just one aspect of what I thought is a component of a healthy life. 
Instead I generated an overreaching goal: Leave to at least 102 years old. Achieving that goal already implies the underlying health. The answer to a question "What do I have to do do live that long?" came on its own and it was quite unexpected.

Now I am trying to deconstruct this example and apply it to another situation.
The example with the weight:
The conventional goal was "lose weight" as a representative for health.
The overreaching goal is "become at least 102 years old" which implies health as a major component.

What about money?
My conventional goal right now is to reach $3,000,000. It is a representative for financial freedom.
But what is the overreaching goal? The financial freedom? But comparing to the weight example that can't be my overreaching goal. The weight loss was representative for health, but the health was not the overreaching goal. I have to change magnification and see what is above the financial freedom. 

What do I want this freedom for? Having financial freedom  means that I will not bother by being dependant on work circumstances, on people, on people's opinions. But that is impossible when I live in a society. As long as I have connections and people I want to have relationships with, I will always have to adjust to some degree. And I don't mind that. I learned my ways and I like being in relationships with people. I also like my work. So relationship with others or work is not the factor. 

Maybe I want to reduce anxiety and have more fun. I want that much money primarily to feel safe. Feeling of safety is when you know that you will always have enough resources for your needs. What will I do when I know that I am safe? I will enjoy life? Is "Life joy" that overreaching goal where the financial freedom is a component, like health is a component for becoming 102 years old? 

It could be. 

Things that work, work fast. I started seeing the effects of my "Challenge 102" in about 5 months.
So if this new goal is defined correctly I could start seeing the effects in approximately the same time. I will add few months wiggle room and see what happens. 

So the results may come in May-September 2019. If nothing happens it will be either because of the wrong goal definition or maybe different goals require different times to work. 

I will think about it again in May-September 2019 and adjust. Of course I know that my interpretation of those mechanisms may be wrong, but  I will not know if I don't try. 

Thank you for your comments!

Thank you for very nice comments, guys!

I started this blog in September 2017 as a write up of information that I need to research for myself. Then one of my friends started to ask me financial questions which I found very interesting I and incorporated them as posts which usually start as "M. asked me".

Recently I started to see comments which are very positive. It is especially nice because I was not asking for any comments and I was not expecting any comments, sinse I am not producing any commercial material. 
I am glad that the information I collect and write up for myself is useful for someone else.

I have the comment moderation switched on so that no nonsense comments appear, something like "make money working from home" you can see on some blogs with unmoderated comments. But I have not had any of those yet.

I am not advertising anywhere. You can see the real time total blog view numbers on the right side which is at 3343 today. It is not much but it doesn't bother me. 


I do have some ads running but it is not a viable source of revenue because since the start of the blog they brought in $2.91.  Obviously this ad revenue is not a motivation for me to have this blog. But I will keep the ads out of curiosity to see if they will ever cover the blog costs which are $12 per year. The $12 are very tolerable and if I would classify this blog as a hobby it makes it a very cheap hobby. 

My main motivation is collecting reliable information which I research thoroughly myself because I trust so few people. I have to check everything myself, that always works best for me.

Why am I staying anonymous? I am writing down the information I have found and sometimes I also write down my thoughts to that. I like to write down my thoughts.
When I am anonymous, I can write what I really think. I am not bound by any need to keep my image because I don't have any. I really can write what I think. 
Only 5 people know who I am. 4 of them are not  interested in finances and they don't read my blog. I think that only one of them really reads it from time to time (that is M. who asks questions).

Basically I only use this blog for my personal needs and I am glad to see that it is useful for some people I don't even know. Thanks again for the nice comments!