Category: Uncategorized

I posted in this blog last in 2017, so about eight years ago. Initially, I thought I would make this big “comeback” post and detail everything that has happened in my life since then, but I’m trying to keep this light and fun. I’ve been entrepreneurial with my websites in the past, but let’s be real: nobody is reading blogs anymore. I’m not coming back for you; I’m coming back for me. I wanted a place to journal again, and I just can’t wrap my head around a private journal. Even though I’m not looking for an audience, journaling just makes more sense to me if it’s “out there,” you know?

Ashley and I did have a whole second kid since my last post, though. About a year later, actually. Her name is Eloise (Ellie) and she is an absolutely beautiful and goofy seven-year old. Of course Lincoln is 10 now, and a total preenager. Is that a word? He’s my clone in pretty much every way which always fascinates me but also scares me for him a little, just because I know what he’s up against, haha.

My plan for this blog is pretty simple: I’m going to use it as a journal. I stripped out all the fancy design and plugins the site was using (the theme and some of the plugins had been abandoned by their developers over the years anyway) and set it up with a bare-bones minimalist template. Again, you’re welcome to read but this blog is for me. Writing has always been therapeutic for me, and a great way for me to clear my head.

I will choose to share entries with you, world, but I’ll also keep some entries private. Maybe I’ll make a “member’s only” section that only Ashley will get access to. We’ll see.

See you around. We’ll catch up more later.

Since I haven’t made an update in a while, I thought I’d touch on a few random topics on this lazy Sunday afternoon.

Settled In and Loving the New Home

It’s been about three months since we moved into this house and I’m almost ashamed to say we’re still unpacking a bit. Of course we’ve been 95% unpacked for a couple months now, but that last 5% seems to be taking forever. That’s okay, though, because we’re in no rush.

We’re loving being next door to my parents. Having family close is a comfort for both of us at this exciting and stressful stage in our lives as we’re settling into our careers and making big plans for the near future. In today’s society, you don’t always get the privilege of being close to your family – a reality I’ve lived with ever since we moved here from Mississippi – so we’re happy to be able to take advantage of the circumstances which have allowed us to live so close to Mom and Dad.

I think my favorite part of living in a house rather than our condo is having my own lawn and plants to take care of. I believe I’ve inherited my grandmother’s fondness for gardening, and I also thoroughly enjoy getting out on a nice day and mowing the lawn. I get a lot of thinking done during that time, as the sound of the lawnmower engine drowns out everything in the world except for my own thoughts. It’s moments like that which make me realize that in the fast pace of our lives today, it is a rare opportunity for the conditions to be just right for any extended period of free thought. I wonder if this is to blame for what seems to me like a slow era in our world for true innovation.

I’ll try to get some pictures up sometime of our new home. The delay is pretty simple to explain: I never feel like our house is clean enough to justify taking pictures. We’re still adjusting to having 2,400 square feet to clean (in addition to the addition of yardwork to our schedules) rather than the 1,100 square feet of our condo.

Speaking of our condo: we sold it in about two weeks. I noticed that my last entry was discussing how we purchased our house before selling our condo, and my initial fear was going six months or more having to pay two mortgages. While we were prepared for that, it was a huge relief when someone put in a fair offer just two weeks after having it on the market.

George Zimmerman Trial

I feel compelled to weigh in on this subject, since it has been the source of intense debate recently. I want to start off by saying that minorities -and especially blacks- struggle in today’s world a lot more than non-minorities are willing to realize. As a volunteer for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, I have been mentoring a young black child for more than three years now. He’s truly a good kid with all the potential in the world, and for the first time since I met him, I just don’t know what to say to him about this situation. I want to tell him that if he continues to be a good person, people will see through the color of his skin and he’ll never be discriminated against. I want to tell him that. If I did, though, I’d be lying. The reality is that he will face struggles in his life that I couldn’t even begin to understand. I wish it wasn’t that way, but it is.

With all that said, I am strong in my convictions that the shear publicity of the Trayvon Martin killing does nothing to help the struggles of blacks in America. On the contrary, I think it is harmful. This situation has divided the country, and not for the betterment of mankind. It has created additional animosity among the different races, and served only to draw a line in the sand and give the majority of our population the belief that they need to stand on one side or the other. Where there was once a great deal of common ground, now there is very little. The shame of it all is that the media hand-picked this case for that very purpose. They picked this case among the thousands of other murders that took place in the last year because this one had the biggest potential for division and thus profits in the pockets of the corporations that own the media companies.

I’m not interested in discussing whether or not I “agree” with the verdict of the case. There are no winners, here. One life was lost and another life has been ruined due to that split-second decision. I believe the Martin family will eventually reflect and understand that while Zimmerman was not convicted, justice has been done. Conversely, Zimmerman will eventually realize (if he has not already) that though he was acquitted, he will never be free.

I’m going to wrap things up on that note, as I took a sleeping pill about an hour ago and my eyes are getting very heavy at this point. Hope you all have a great and balanced week! Enjoy!

While my wife was at work yesterday evening, I was sitting on the couch with my laptop when a commercial for Ancestry.com came up on the television. It was advertising a 14-day free trial, which piqued my curiosity. I had always wanted to try to trace my genealogy, but figured my rural southern roots would make that difficult or even impossible. My grandfather’s sister had spent much of her adult life tracing his side of the family (this was prior to the days of Ancestry.com) so I figured I could at least start there and see if I could replicate some of what she did.

The first thing I found when typing in my grandfather’s name was a US Federal Census from 1940. I opened it up, and was amazed that this was an actual scanned document with the names of my grandfather, his sisters, and his parents in original handwriting. Back in 1940, they would actually go door-to-door to collect this information by hand. I realized that the person who wrote this data down might have been sitting in my grandfather’s kitchen or living room, with my two-year old grandfather crawling around the house. It’s a weird thought, but oddly fascinating to me.

Tracing further up the blood line, I found my grandfather’s grandparents, except this time there was a picture attached to the name of my great-great grandmother. Immediately, I recognized the woman. This exact portrait has been sitting in my grandparents’ spare bedroom ever since I can remember. Theodocia Ann Virginia Blackstone – that’s a mouthful of a name! It’s also interesting that at some point in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, they dropped the “e” off the end of the name and made it “Blackston.”

I spent the better part of the night tracing up the blood line to see how far I could get. Unfortunately, once you get into the 1700’s and earlier, you see fewer and fewer official supporting documents, so you’re relying on the accuracy of data put together by other distant relatives whose family tree crosses with yours. I traced up my grandfather’s family to England (which it was known that the Blackstone’s did originate in England). Along the way, I found some neat tidbits. There were Civil War soldiers, soldiers in both World Wars, the Revolutionary war, and even an ancestor who died at sea on a ship heading to England in the 1600’s.

Then it Got Very Interesting… 

I decided to trace up my grandmother’s side of the family and was actually able to get all the way up to my great-great-great-great grandmother and grandfather with full supporting US Federal Census data proving the connection. This was fairly simple since that side of the family has been in the same area in Mississippi at least since the early 1800’s. The interesting thing about this individual, Edward DeWitt Edwards Sr., is that he is apparently the subject of local folklore because he and his son, Luther Edwards, were killed in a gunfight on his plantation in 1861. Edward DeWitt Edwards Sr. was a judge, and originally owned all the land that my small hometown of Eupora, Mississippi currently sits. He had 12 children who he parceled out his land to over the years as they became adults and married. One of his children, Edward DeWitt Edwards Jr. (his eldest son) died unexpectedly due to an illness. The incident that resulted in Judge Edwards and his son Luther’s death was over the inheritance of his deceased son’s land. I was able to find a very detailed and elaborate story of how this went about online: http://thatedwardsbunch.tripod.com/

The detailed story there is consistent with all the other renditions of the story I’ve read elsewhere (some attached to Judge Edwards’ profile on Ancestor.com from local newspapers), but I’m sure the story has been unintentionally altered over the years as it is passed down from generation to generation. But the fact does remain that the majority of these folks are buried in the Edwards Springs cemetery, so I find it fascinating to be able to trace the line from myself all the way up to Judge Edwards, and it’s even more fascinating to read some of the folklore about my ancestors (whether potentially dramatized or not).

My next step is to dig a little deeper and see how much more I can find. Looking online, there is actually a book at Mississippi State University about Judge Edward and his descendants, so thankfully somebody has done a lot of the legwork already. Hopefully I can find a way to get my hands on this book to learn a little bit more about who he was and what he was about.

I was pretty amazed at the wealth of information that’s out there to help people trace their genealogy. At the very least, a site/service like Ancestry.com can at least give you a good base to start your own independent research.

If, by chance, somebody stumbles onto this blog entry and has information/advice that can help me, please send me an email at zdfields@gmail.com . Thanks!

The first speed bump of 2013 hit me like a truck last week. Every financial analyst at the company I work for was pulled into a room (about 60 including the managers) for a conference call. Without getting into too much detail, we were told that the company had identified a lot of work being done in some areas as “non value-adding” and they were going to eliminate that work. Over the next week they were going to identify which areas were going to be overstaffed as a result of the change and unfortunately, some job eliminations would be announced.

Before I go any further, I was relatively confident that this reorganization wouldn’t impact me. Still, nobody was specifically excluded from this process and as a result it’s impossible not to worry. The thought that my group was going to be under a magnifying glass (just like all the others) over the next week was enough alone to cause concern. As expected, I was not impacted by this reorganization. Further, since this was not a cost-cutting move but rather a move to eliminate unnecessary work that our customers should not have to pay for, I have no reason to be concerned for my job in the immediate future… so don’t worry about me 🙂

All the same, stressful times like this do have some value. It was a cold smack in the face that forced me to sit back and think about whether or not I’m heading in the right direction so that if I did find myself jobless, I would be as prepared as I possibly could be. I sat down with my wife many times over the last week figuring this out.

Ultimately, we decided that we need to be much more diligent in becoming debt-free. When things are going smoothly in life, I think it’s easy to become complacent and make assumptions such as “I pay the monthly student loan payments, so they’ll be paid off eventually. No big deal.” Suddenly, that $500 per month becomes a routine part of your budget that you don’t question or concern yourself with. We had been driving older vehicles until recently, so we purchased new ones. Similar to the student loans, the idea had been to pay the car payments for five years and they’d be paid off at that point.

As far as saving money, we have been doing a fine job at that. The existing plan was to build up our savings balance to a very large amount before having children, and before having our second child we would sell our condo and move into a house, putting 30% or more into a down-payment. It’s not a bad plan, and the fun thing about personal finance is that it’s really all about what you’re most comfortable with. After last week, we’re no longer comfortable with that plan.

New Plan : Pay Off the Debt

Instead of building an exorbitant amount of savings, our new plan is to tackle our debt. While we have zero credit card debt, we do have two auto loans and plenty of student loans. We’re going to hold onto a reasonable level of “emergency cash,” which I’ll define now as the amount of money it would take to survive six months at our current budget if either me or my wife were out of work and had zero income. All new excess will be used to tackle our debt in a modification of Dave Ramsey’s “Debt Snowball” approach.

Debt Snowball – My Way versus Ramsey

I’m an enormous fan of Dave Ramsey. I’ve read his books and I understand his philosophy well. He advocates something which he calls the Debt Snowball, which consists of tackling (“with a vengeance,” as Ramsey famously says) your debt with every excess dollar you have. You start with your smallest debt, such as a $500 credit card balance, and once you’ve paid it off you work your way up to the next smallest balance. With each balance you pay off, you free up a little more money to tackle the larger balances with.

My debt situation is a little unique in the sense that my wife and I have no credit card debt. We have various disbursements of student loans for small amounts that all have small monthly payments associated with them. As you pay off each disbursement, your total monthly student loan bill drops by a small amount. Other than student loans, we only have our condo and our auto loans.

I could tackle all the small disbursements of student loans as the Debt Snowball suggests, but since those are 15 to 25-year loans, the payoff in terms of dropping my monthly expenses is small. One of my student loans is a $3,500 disbursement that currently costs $50 per month, for example. Alternatively, I could attack my car loan and pay it off by March of this year and free up nearly $400 per month. Then if I diverted all our excess to Ashley’s car, we could pay her’s off in about a year and free up an additional $500 per month. Then, my math tells me that we’d be armed with enough monthly excess to knock out both of our student loan balances in total in a little over a year from then. All in all, I think we could be completely debt-free except our home in about three years. That would take twice as long if we started with our student loans.

Saving Cash versus Paying Down Debt

As I said before, personal finance is really all about making smart decisions that fall within your comfort zone. When I was driving a 12-year old car and my home’s HVAC system was 30 years old, I valued having a large balance in my savings account because I had a lot of risk for cash emergencies. Those situations have changed in the last few years and I just never really re-calibrated my strategy to compensate for it. Today, I value creating as much excess monthly household income as possible, and a great way to do that is by paying down debt.

Don’t get me wrong, once this process is over I will certainly be diverting my excess household income into rebuilding my savings and my brokerage accounts, but at this stage in my life and my current frame of mind, my values have changed and I’m comfortable with a standard 6-month emergency fund and attacking my debt with the remaining excess.

At the end of the day, this is just a different strategy toward the same end result. Personal finance is kind of like chess. While there are multiple ways to get a checkmate, it’s important to make sure you are strategically placing your pieces.

With 2012 officially in the rear view, things have definitely calmed down in my life… temporarily, that is. It’s winter in Iowa, so currently my free time is largely spent indoors with a warm cup of coffee catching up on my writing, my website ventures, and my favorite movies/TV shows. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is also a slower time at work, as so many of my coworkers scramble to use up the rest of their vacation before the cut-off date of December 31st.

To make a long story short, this is easily my favorite time of year. Life always runs a little slower and a little smoother right about now, and it frees up my mind to focus on the big picture for a while. I’m not sure how to describe what I mean by that, other than by saying that this time of year is when I do my best planning.

Financially, the big news right now is what my wife and I are affectionately calling “Baby Savings.” Baby Savings is the amount of money we’ve decided we would like to save prior to having a baby. Without getting into too much detail, we’re looking to have six months worth of expenses saved up before we start trying to have a child. Right now, we’re about 47% of the way there. With tax returns and my bonus, we still think we’ll be there probably by June of this year.

I invest most of that money in a mutual fund called the Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTDX), which invests almost exclusively in bonds and is one of the safest mutual funds out there. I’ve got some of it invested in Disney (DIS), of course, which is up about 10% over the last two months (the golden goose continues to lay eggs for me). Finally, I keep a small amount of it in cash. While we call this a “savings,” it’s really not a short-term savings account intended to be used for anything in particular, it’s actually more of a long-term “buffer” we’re trying to build up.

Now that my obligatory financial commentary is through, everything is going well otherwise. Ashley and I are starting up our walks again after a brief hiatus over the holidays. We put in about an hour and a half on the trail today, and it was really refreshing. I enjoy our walks because it’s when our best conversation happens. Plus, we burned about 400 calories, so that’s a bonus too!

2013 is going to be a really exciting time at work, with a lot of potential opportunities for me. I discussed with my manager yesterday about some projects coming down the pike that I’ll be able to take the lead on that I’m really excited about. I’ve learned a lot in the last year, and I’m eager to get the opportunity to take a lot of steps forward this year. I’m going to get more opportunities to prepare and present some key financial data, and I’ve also got some fun ideas for the Emerging Professionals Connection group at work that I’m the Chair for. Again, it will be a fun year at work.

Right now, probably what Ashley and I are most looking forward to is our cruise in May! We decided to take a cruise for our one-year anniversary, and we actually just paid it off today so we’re all ready to go! Now is the hardest part: waiting the 120 days until May 4th gets here! This will also potentially be our last vacation before we have kids, so we’ve already discussed that “anything goes” on this one. It’s going to be seven days of eating what we want, drinking what we want, doing whichever activities we want, and overall just living in the moment, completely.

The only thing that sucks right now? I’ve gained about 10 pounds since winter hit and I stopped riding my bike outside. Yikes! I’ve got to get back to 195, stat! I ride indoors on the trainer sometimes, but it’s not the same as the 3-hour rides I was putting in this summer. Soon as the daily high gets above 32 degrees, I’m strapping on my road tires and blazing the trail again!

I’m going to get off here now – thanks for reading!

Let me go off the premise that today really is our last day on Earth. While never an ounce of my being has believed this to be the case, I do think it provides an ideal catalyst to deep reflection about our lives and what is important to us.

The year 2012 could have been my last year on Earth. For many people, 2012 was their last year on Earth. For some, it was just their time to go and for others, they went too soon. The major question I’m asking myself tonight is: If I knew 2012 would be my last year, would I have changed anything? Would I have tried to do something more?

A Perfect Union

Approaching 2012 in chronological order just doesn’t seem right. The most important day of my young life happened on May 5th, 2012 aboard a cruise ship called the Carnival Paradise. On that day and on that ship, I married my best friend. People say that a lot, but the truth is that my relationship with my wife began more than 11 years ago, and indeed, it started out as a great friendship. Over the next 10 years, we leaned on each other through life’s daily struggles, and while some say we waited too long to tie the knot, we would say we did it at just the right time – and we did it our way.

The wedding was everything we had hoped for years ago when we would talk about what our wedding would be like. It was an ideal wedding for the introverts that some describe us to be – with only about 30 in attendance – but we wouldn’t have had it any other way. We had most of our closest family members and friends there – it was perfect.

We spent the next five days celebrating our union with our closest friends and family members. Again, it truly couldn’t have been better. Fond memories were made, and at the end of the day that’s what life is all about. That’s what will be important to you on your last day. Not how much money you made or the stuff you bought with it, but the memories that you get to take with you forever.

Moving forward from that day, I’ve become more and more excited about our future together. We’re making plans now that we’ve previously never seriously discussed, and I couldn’t be more delighted about the direction we’re heading. (More on that later in this entry)

Health and Weight Loss

This year, I got to watch my wife-to-be lose 60 pounds between January and May before our wedding. Her weight is something she has struggled with for much of her adult life, but she decided one day that she had had enough and that she was going to do something about it. I watched her transform in front of my eyes – it was truly amazing. I’ve told her this before, but she has been and always will be beautiful to me, but the change in her attitude and her confidence throughout this ordeal was really something to behold. She came out of her shell in ways I hadn’t seen since I first met her, and my favorite thing to do with her during this time was take her to the store to buy new clothes and see the happiness in her eyes when she would fit into sizes she hasn’t worn since high school. She is a lot stronger than she would ever give herself credit for.

About August, we decided to start biking. We thought it would be a good, healthy activity for us to do together. So we went and bought a couple bikes and a bike rack for the car, and proceeded to put hundreds of miles on the bikes before the weather started to turn cold. I had even found myself down to my goal weight for a brief while before drifting back up a bit. We instantly enjoyed biking – starting at the bike trail in Cedar Rapids and riding out to my parents’ house in Ely, or going the other direction up through the Hiawatha area. We even biked at night a couple times. We’re looking forward to next bike season!

The “At-Home” Reception

We held a small reception at the end of September for all our friends and family members who couldn’t attend the wedding. The stress leading up to this was even more than the wedding! We actually had people taking care of most details relating to our wedding, but the reception was almost totally organized by us. It was great to see all of our friends and family that we don’t get to see often. Ashley and I were happy, though, to finally close the book on our wedding process. The reception really gave us that closure.

Vegas

In October, Ashley and I went to Las Vegas so I could attend a Utility Finance seminar. It was actually a blast on both counts. I really enjoyed the seminar and I enjoyed booking it out of there at 4 oclock every day and hitting the strip. We were only there for a few days, but it was constant activity the whole time – the way Vegas should be done! We mostly walked around and checked out a lot of the exhibits and shopping, and just overall sight-seeing. Ate at a few cool restaurants, met some interesting folks on the bus each day, checked out the Pawn Stars pawn shop (underwhelming, actually) and just about burned through our shoes with all the walking.

“The Test Results”

I won’t get too deep into this, but there is a genetic disorder that Ashley was potentially a carrier of called Hypohidrotic Ectodermal Dysplasia. This is something that has run in her family that they have learned a lot more about just in the last 20 years or so. While Ashley showed no symptoms of the disorder (as oftentimes carriers don’t), there was the chance that any children we had would have the disorder. The symptoms range in type and severity, but the most common are the lack of (or dysfunction of) sweat glands, missing teeth, thin hair with little or no pigment, among others. Ashley’s brother actually has the disorder and spent a lot of his young life ill and often struggled with not being able to do some of the things other young boys were doing for fear of getting overheated causing hyperthermia.

While we hadn’t discussed it at length, Ashley and I always knew our first step before considering having children would be to get herself tested for this genetic disorder. Since the test itself is very expensive (thousands of dollars), we had decided to put it off for a few years as we weren’t ready to have kids yet anyway.

This fall, Ashley was contacted by an organization that provides funding to Ectodermal Dysplasia research, notifying her that she was a potential candidate to get this genetic testing done for free as part of a “40 Women Strong” program where they were going to pay for 40 women to have the test. Of course, we jumped at the opportunity.

Much to our excitement, the tests came back a few weeks later and were negative! Ashley’s genes show no sign of the disorder. The conversations Ashley and I had in the weeks and months since her test results have been very exciting.

Starting our Family

Ashley and I had been privately discussing (previous to her test results) the idea of perhaps not having children at all, or having them much later in life. The looming test results that were potentially devastating to the prospects of us having children made us somewhat pessimistic about the idea, but once the test results came back we suddenly had an entirely new outlook.

With all that said, Ashley and I hope to be officially starting our family late 2013. No, we are not pregnant now, nor are we planning to be in the next six months. We’ve laid out some things we would like to accomplish first (financially as well as physically with our fitness goals), and overall we want to let the idea sink in for a while as we prepare ourselves emotionally for what’s to come. Ultimately, our plan is to be pregnant by about this time next year (perhaps a little earlier or later, of course). So, there you have it. Not sure what else to say, as this isn’t some grand “we’re pregnant” kind of announcement, but the significance of this to Ashley and myself is huge since we have been on the fence for years about having children at all.

In Case the World Doesn’t End Tomorrow

If the world did end tomorrow, I have no regrets. 2012 has actually been the best year of my life, so if I cease to exist tomorrow then I’ll at least know that I went out in one heck of a year and I got to see plenty of the people I love most before it all ended.

The reality is that we’ll all still be here tomorrow, so what have I learned from this reflection?

• Nothing will ever be more important to me than family. I learned that at my wedding. Circumstance has unfortunately separated me from many of the people I love, but your family bends over backwards to support you at important times in your life. I’m happiest when I’m surrounded by my loving family. As I embark on the next stage in my life and my marriage, I aim to never forget that.
• I want to be remembered as a good person. Whenever it is my time, I want people to remember me as a good guy who took good care of his family and helped others when he was able. I want my future kids to see their father as someone to idolize and emulate – a guy with integrity and good morals. I know I won’t be remembered as a perfect individual, nor could anybody, but I want to leave my footprint on this world in a positive way. Every choice I ever make in my life, I want it to reflect this goal.
• Money spent on memories is never wasted money. When I take my last breaths, I’m not going to be thinking about how nice the cars were that I owned or the houses I bought or the big-screen TVs I enjoyed. I’ll be thinking about my wedding vacation. I’ll be thinking about my trip to Disney with my family in 2009 when Orlando, Florida set a record for weekly rainfall. I’ll be thinking of all the great times I’ll spend with my kids.  These are the things that are truly important. A camera and a camcorder might be the most important things I carry with me for the rest of my life.
• Always take time to step back and look at the big picture. It’s easy to get stuck in the daily grind, but it’s also easy to call a time-out and reflect on what’s truly going on in my world and really take stock of what I’m all about (and whether I’m happy about that).
• Go all out. If I’m going to do something, I’d might as well do it up good. Don’t leave anything on the table. That goes with my job, my family, my hobbies, and everything in-between.

Ultimately, every year past is a year closer to your last. This is why we choose this time of year to discuss New Year’s Resolutions – we want to make sure each year is not just another wasted year. This year rather than resolutions, I’ve made it a point to understand that concept. I didn’t waste this year, and I definitely won’t waste the next one.

This year I celebrate the end of a very important year in my life, with the full realization that the excitement is only beginning. The next couple years may very well be the most important, complicated, and exciting years of my life and I plan to approach it with an eager  and unwavering enthusiasm. I’m thankful to have my loving wife and our amazing family to be with us and support us every step of the way.