As paradoxical as it may sound – Casey Serin has brightened up my personal financial life. You see, until recently I – like many people – treated personal finance as an annoying chore to be shoved to the back of a metaphorical desk drawer. Admittedly I’m ahead of the game – cash comes in, slightly less cash goes out, as the title of this blog implies not a penny of debt in any form – but I’m letting opportunities to do better slip by.
So what has Snowflake done for me? Well, back in late 2006 I first stumbled upon IAFF – I’m not sure how, I think someone mentioned it on the geeky tech site Slashdot. I was astounded by the depth of Mr. Serin’s problems, yet at the same time I remember getting a positive impression about how he was dealing with them. Then I forgot all about it.
Fast forward to February this year, and I was browsing in a bookstore when I came across an intriguing publication bearing the title “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by a certain Mr. Kiyosaki. It had just come out in German translation (I live in Germany), and flicking through it some choice sentences caught my eye, and before I knew it I was handing over a shiny €10 note so I could peruse the book at my leisure. I liked the book because it affirmed one or two thoughts I’ve been thinking, and opened my eyes to new ways of looking at personal finance. Most of it’s common-sense “I could have thought of that” stuff, but sometimes you need someone else to think it for you. (However, fear not, dear readers – that €10 is as far as the financial relationship between myself and Mr. Kiyosaki will go).
Shortly afterwards, my brain cells invigorated, synapses started snapping and a thought popped into my mind: “Kiyosaki? Rich Dad, Poor Dad? Where have I heard that before? Ah yes, that iamfacingrealestatefinancialmeltdown.com site from Stacey Cerin or someone”. A little bit of googling later – I have l33t IT sk1llz, you know – I was back at IAFF and gorging on the stream of mursey trainwreckedness emanating from BlueBallCentral™. Who needs reality TV when you have stuff like this?
So, off I went leveraging six-figure real-estate deals financed using chump change I scored off the local homeless guy, and now I am just two real-estate seminars away from full financial independence.
Sorry, don’t know what got into me there. It was like, a vortex to an alternate reality. No, what happened is I surfed off into the world of private finance blogs – ranging from Ramit Sethi’s iwillteachyoutoberich.com to debtkid’s “journey to repay over 300K in unsecured debt”, and I was hooked. And it occurred to me I might use the anonymity of the intarweb to for my own PF blog, to get a new perspective on my own financial situation.
So, here we are. Now all I have to do is write some content (note to self: put on list of things to do after powernap) and the world, as they say, is my lobster.
If it was anyone else I’d probably donate a symbolic $10 to the guy’s coffers. However I have no desire to support the Californian murse industry, but should I ever be in the Sacremento area (admittedly unlikely), I’ll personally invite Casey to JambaJuice for a shot of wheatgrass. (I’ll get him to bring his blue ball along too for a commemorative photo).
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