Welcome to Building Arks Blog
Welcome to the Building Arks blog. My name is Dan and I am using this blog as a way to keep some of my notes about personal finance and behavior as they are so intertwined. I chose the name Building Arks based on a quote from one of my hero's Warren Buffett. The quote "Predicting rain doesn't count. Building arks does." I really like this because we should not focus on what people are saying is going to happen in the market, in the country, in the world. Because we cannot control any of it. When it comes down to it, we need to focus on what we can control which is really only our world. How we act, spend, think, speak, treat people, work, etc. We cannot control politics, the stock market, or what mortgage rates will be. But we can control our spending, invest wisely and most importantly treat people well. That is building an ark for a storm.
I have two reasons for starting this blog.
The first reason is that I have learned a lot in my years of personal finance, as I started off a reckless spender and in debt. I had worked may years and read a lot to change my mind on spending and financial behavior. I have 3 kids and although I speak to them a lot about this topic, am not sure it always sticks. So I wanted to get my thoughts down somewhere in case they need it in the future. I would like to write this as if I am letting them know what I have learned, but I also think it could be helpful for other young people starting out, or older people who want to make a change. I really just want to serve people by giving them some guidance from things I have learned in life.
The second reason is that in the past couple of years I have been feeling like I need to get into personal financial coaching. This is my initial start into it. I figure if in the future someone is to want a financial coach to give recommendations, they should have a pretty good understanding of the coach they are getting. This will act as my resume. My honest hope is that by reading this blog you would not need my coaching, but if you should I would want you to know what you are getting.
A little about myself. I am in my late 40s, and have a beautiful wife and 3 sons. I am a Christ follower and am devoted to Him in what I do. Prior to a career shift 10 years ago I was in various corporate accounting/finance roles. For the last 10 years I have been a consultant at a financial planning software company. I get to help built corporate budgets! When I was in college, I was not good with money. I had credit card debt, and I sometimes paid the minimums. I was always into personal finance, I just was not much of a reader so, I just took the advice from the easiest places, the people selling it to me! Credit card companies, banks, investment advisors. Also the "common sense" financial advice that goes around from school, and in blurbs in the paper. I was always into tracking my spending. I remember after I started my first job out of college, I set up a quicken account. After hours of setting it up, I was excited about seeing my first Income Statement after the first month. When my wife and I got married, we were very normal Americans. Car loans, mortgage, student loans. My wife had 3 rules for me when we got engaged. The first was that I had to pay off my credit cards before we got married. The second was that we would always pay off our credit card each month. The last was that we would not pay ATM fees. That was my first foray into personal finance discipline. As my wife would tell you now, she created a monster!
I plan to update this weekly, so please come back!
