No, it was that song.

The pink elephant on the page

Some of you may be wondering where I have been for, oh, the past year or more. Experiencing recurrent emotional breakdowns at big box stores all over western Pennsylvania, perhaps?

No. I’ve been right here—same city, same job, same family—just living life, but not publishing my thoughts online. I’ve also been gutting and remodeling my new home (more on that below).

My last blog post was January 2018. After taking an unplanned break from writing for a few weeks after that, I wasn’t sure I would return to writing. Ever.

Blogging slowly morphed from enjoyable pastime into a distracting obligation. I couldn’t spend an hour or two each day on WordPress and still work and hang out with my family. Thus, dormant weeks became dormant months and dormant months became over a year.

But I’m here to write again, for now, without promise or expectation that I will do it regularly or that anyone will bother to read it. How’s that for a promotional message!

Meanwhile in the home goods section…

I won’t leave you in suspense; the song that evoked my unexpected wellspring of emotion was right there in the post title: “These Are Days” by 10,000 Maniacs.

It’s a danceable, upbeat tune which would not be out of place at the school dance on Dawson’s Creek. At the time of its release in 1992, I was 13 and obsessed with the adventures of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. My brothers and I watched a lot of MTV too, sometimes recording sweet VHS mix tapes! I became familiar enough with “These Are Days” from its heavy rotation that, even today, I could stumble through it at a karaoke bar.

Years later, the song popped into my life again at a moment of significance: my wedding. “These Are Days” was a favorite of a dear medical school friend, who requested it to the wedding singer. During a disorganized square dance which mutated into a large spinning circle of all our medical school friends—we were married the summer after school ended, and this was a last hurrah of sorts—quite a few of us had something in our eyes

Suffice to say the song held some emotional resonance for me before that fateful day in the towel aisle. But as I blithely began to sing along, the lyrics were so unexpectedly poignant and apropos I quite literally sat down to listen.

These are days you’ll remember
Never before and never since
I promise
Will the whole world be warm as this
And as you feel it
You’ll know it’s true
That you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you
Are touched by something
That will grow in you, in you

These are days you’ll remember
When May is rushing over you with desire
To be part of the miracles you see in every hour
You’ll know it’s true that you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you
Are touched by something
That will grow and bloom in you

These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break
These days you might feel a shaft of light
Make its way across your face
And when you do you’ll know how it was meant to be
See the signs and know their meaning
It’s true
You’ll know how it was meant to be
Hear the signs and know they’re speaking to you, to you

An older me, a new meaning

What do the lyrics mean? To me, the message simple and ancient: live in the moment. You only experience each moment once, and you should savor it. Life can be painfully beautiful if you take the time to observe it.

As to why the song had such an effect on me at that precise moment, that is not so simple.

First, the lyrics (and video) allude to the magic of childhood, of discovering life for the first time. As we age into adulthood, novel experiences become less and less common and—to save precious time and energy—our brains subconsciously categorize experiences into well-established mental models: “been there, done that.” A strawberry tastes like this; driving with the windows open feels like that. This is why vacations to exotic locations—new places, new people, new food—can be so exhilarating and reenergizing.

Many of us rediscover the magic of the world through our kids. Yet despite lovely and energetic young children, my world had lost some of its shine over the past couple years. How did I lose my way?

Home sweet home

From an outside perspective, my life couldn’t have been rosier: I was young (40 is still young, damnit), healthy, wealthy by almost any measure, and had a beautiful wife and children whom I love.

But near the end of 2017, we purchased a (much larger) house and proceeded to completely gut and remodel it. As of May 2019, the project is not yet complete. If you’ve ever done something similar, you will empathize with the stress and mess of such an undertaking. As most home remodeling projects go, ours went over schedule and over budget, to the detriment of planned retirement and college savings over the past 18 months.

And in the middle of all this, we sold our old home and moved into a construction zone.

Only recently can I reflect on the past 18 months with levity and see how, at times, I allowed setbacks and difficult decisions—which were trivial in the grand scheme of life—to consume my attention and occasional ire. As I absorbed the meaning of those lyrics, I was ashamed of my misguided self pity: Is life really that bad? Can’t you see the good and beauty that is right in front of you?

My children were experiencing the wonders of the world for the first time, and I was missing it, lost in the concerns of “adulting.” My agonizing over tile and grout choices was a thief, stealing those small moments with small children that only happen once. I was as much saddened that I was missing it as I was frustrated that I could not snap myself out of it.

Sea change

After a sudden moment of insight, we often ask ourselves: Why did this realization take so long? Why, in my case, did it take an alt-folk-rock song from the 90s to cut through the haze of the past year and a half?

I don’t think there is anything special or unique about that particular song. Plenty of other songs—not to mention movies, philosophies, and religions—have for time immemorial espoused the virtue of “living in the moment.”

But sometimes the stars of meaning align, and a single thing—a song, a painting, a mountain—can change everything. Our conscious and unconscious thoughts can coalesce around it and create that wow moment. It just so happened that this song caught me in the right moment and the right state of mind, and I knew the lyrics.

But that’s not all…

To recap my lesson of the day: live in the present, doofus. Like the song says, “feel a shaft of light make its way across your face.”

But Natalie Merchant’s vibrato was the gift that kept on giving, and as the song continued I began to ponder other problematic mental states.

The mind is often at war—a mental tug-of-war, akin to a virtuous angel and villainous devil whispering in each ear. But rather than this archetypal internal battle of good versus evil, some of my recent struggles could be compared to a battle of logic versus emotion.

Prehistoric man no doubt wrestled with similar decisions: between collecting kindling for the night’s fire—obeying his logical bents—or making out all afternoon with Zuna in the hot spring—listening to his heart. In more recent history, none other than Mr. Philosophy Mustache, Friedrich Nietzsche, contributed his two cents to this struggle.

Apollo and Dionysus

Nietzsche is a polarizing fellow. I gather he led a fairly miserable life and was kind of a dick (ref.?). Few, however, would contend that his ideas are boring or uninfluential.

In his book The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche introduces the concept of Apollonian and Dionysian worldviews. Apollo was the Greek god of the sun, the light, the music, and the prophecy (overachiever!); Dionysus, the god of wine and the grape harvest (paaaarty!).

Nietzsche used the mythology of these semi-opposite gods to illustrate the battle between man’s logical and emotional sides. (He kind of did this, I think. Actually I didn’t read the book.)

The Apollonian side of our character is rational and analytic—a Spock-like worldview; it champions individuality and introspection. Our Dionysian side embraces enthusiasm and ecstasy (um, god of wine), and encourages oneness with the whole of humanity, nature, and the universe—a loss of individuality. Music is the epitome of the Dionysian: it emphasizes chaotic (or non-) thinking, and surrender to the emotions.

We have a bit of Apollo and Dionysus in each of us. One whose nature leans too much toward one or the other will have a difficult, or at least unbalanced, life.

To be sure, my default mode is Apollonian—structured, rational, analytic—most of the time. Presented with a challenge, I relieve stress by analyzing the problem and focusing on a solution. Becoming a parent had rekindled my Dionysian side a bit (including more wine), but it is easy to fall back into the well-worn, Apollonian mental ruts that I’ve been running in my whole life. In short, I suffered from too much analyzing and not enough dancing.

What is the right balance between the Apollonian and Dionysian; between the mind and the heart? Who knows.

How did I pop out my Apollonian rut? If this mental jump were easy, everyone would be happier. All I know for sure is that, for some reason, a song helped me this time.

Will I relapse into my old ways at some point? Almost certainly. When that happens, maybe Sarah McLachlan can help me next time.

In Conclusion?

I’m unsure if this comes across on the page, but to me this has felt like a rambling, stream-of-consciousness, and emotional post—anathema to my Apollonian nature. How shall we wrap it up? Why not add to the schmaltz and discuss the meaning of life.

The pursuit of worthwhile goals can certainly give life meaning, but life itself is not merely a series of hurdles to jump and peaks to climb. When you achieve those hard-earned goals, what next?

I’ll answer that with an excerpt from Alan Watts’ monologue about life and music. Given the musical impetus for this post, it seems a fitting conclusion.

One doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition… We thought of life by analogy with a journey…which had a serious purpose at the end… success…or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing — and you were supposed to sing, or dance, while the music was being played.

So stop and listen to a song, or read some poetry, or meditate on a mountaintop. Hug your kids or parents or significant others or pets. Add a little Dionysus to your life.

There’s no time like the present.

The post These Are Days appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

The year is 2078, and I am in a haze of morphine, barely conscious. In the next few hours, my brain activity will cease and my heart will stop—I will die.

Bummer.

When I imagine my own death, it puts my life in perspective. Most of what I do and think about—including some of my writing here—becomes unimportant. The best music for a summer bbq? My experience in a sensory deprivation float tank? Worrying about taxes or stressing about buying a home? Dumb and pointless (well, the summer bbq music list is kind of important).

While the reality of mortality helps me dismiss the more frivolous aspects of my life, it also brings that which is important into clearer focus.

Many would have us believe that the pursuit of happiness is paramount. But I’ve come to think this approach is incomplete at best, and completely wrong at worst. As my children grow, my parents wrinkle, and I approach the big 4-0, I contemplate the big questions more and more, and no question is bigger than “What is the meaning of life?”

Of course, there is no “right” or universal answer, but here are a few candidates I’m considering at the moment.

Suffering

The Buddha infamously said that life is suffering. What he meant by this simple phrase is not so straightforward, but real suffering nonetheless permeates our world. Whether it is the physical anguish of starvation or psychological anguish of depression, the amount of suffering in this world is endless.

If you are reading this, you almost certainly have the time and the means to alleviate suffering in someone. You could do it directly via donating time and energy, or indirectly via donating money. It might be as simple as comforting a friend or family member in physical or psychological pain, or as complex as running a charitable organization. Our professions can relieve suffering too; as a radiologist, I play a role by diagnosing conditions that cause suffering in patients.

If there can be a silver lining to endless suffering, it is that the opportunities to relieve it are also endless.

Joy

Life is not all suffering; in fact, it can be pretty freakin’ fantastic sometimes.

The potential for joy and beauty in the world is, like suffering, endless. The first time another’s lips touched your own. Laughing so hard that you cry. Driving through the desert at night, singing John Denver at the top of your lungs. Watching the sun set over the Mekong River. The smell of fall leaves. Sharing a beer and a conversation with an old friend. A taco with a Dorito shell.

You get the idea.

Those closest to us can bring the greatest joys in our lives. My wife, children and I undoubtedly create joy in each other. If my life ever flashes before my eyes, I suspect that montage will include my wife on our wedding day, my infant daughter’s giggle as I kiss her wiggling feet, and my son’s smile as I push him on the swing in the sun.

Memories

The lives of most humans in the last 200,000 years of our species (about 110 billion people) are unknowable to us. Those who were born and died thousands of years ago are forever lost to history, but even today—with the extensive digital footprint we each create—precious little will be known about our lives centuries from now.

But our friends and family—with whom we share our hopes, fears, dreams, ideas and lives—can carry a part of us with them after we die. To bear witness to the living and remember the dead is a simple yet profound gift we can give to those closest to us.

My brothers and cousins carry with us the last living memories of our late grandmothers. Born in the years between WWI and the Great Depression, they were both baptized with the solid Irish Catholic names of Mary. From an outside perspective, their lives were not very remarkable, but long and full of life nonetheless. I wish I had known them better when they were alive, especially their inner lives. I crave even the smallest window into what they were thinking and feeling. 

I recently viewed a long-lost super 8 video of my teenage mother. Before this tape surfaced, the oldest known video of my mother was taken in her late 30s. In this newly discovered, soundless clip, she sat and laughed on a couch with her father, who died before I was born.

I was absolutely captivated. Her face and mannerisms were familiar, yet she was a complete stranger. I found myself wondering what it would be like to meet her and know her when she was a young woman.

Even today, my parents’ inner lives are largely a mystery. I realize I could simply ask them what they are thinking and feeling—and I do sometimes—but they can’t share everything, and those thoughts and feelings can change over time. They have lived whole lives that are unknown to me.

I’m starting to ramble, but my point is this: Years from now, I want my children to know who I was when they were young—my curiosities and obsessions, my concerns about the world and about them.

One of the driving forces behind this website is to get some of my thoughts on “paper,” so that my children can get a sense of their wacky dad in the years when they were tiny tots. They may not care to read them until decades from now, but I’m convinced by my experience with my own parents and grandparents that, one day, they will want to know more about me.

After-life?

Many people find solace in the promise of eternal life after death. Not me, because I don’t believe it.

When the lights go out for old Dr. Curious many years from now, I don’t expect to see any pearly gates or old relatives. One minute I will be there, and the next gone.

But rather than depress me, these thoughts give me energy. If one does not believe in an afterlife, then anything and everything that matters occurs during our time here on Earth. I plan to make the most of it.

The search

If you think you know the meaning of life—no offense—but you are probably wrong, and you will probably change your mind with time. Humans have struggled to find meaning in existence since we slept under the stars and were snacks for saber-toothed tigers. I won’t pretend to find the answers in a 1200-word blog post.

What I will do, however, is continue to search.

What gives meaning to your life? Has it changed over time?

The post The Meaning of Life appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.

January 2—the first business day of 2018—not only brought flurries of frozen precipitation, but also flurries of financial transactions at the Curious household. Along with tax time, early January is period in which I spend the most amount of time on our personal finances. How much time?

Thirty minutes, maybe an hour.

This is no humblebrag, and certainly doesn’t reflect any particular financial acumen or mad investment skillz on my part. I would guess most individuals who have a passing interest in personal finance spend a similar (small) amount of time actually executing the necessary financial transactions throughout the year.

In this post, I explain how I do it.

First, some homework

If you are reading this website and other personal finance blogs, there is a good chance you are familiar with much of the terminology and techniques I will discuss here. If you aren’t familiar, don’t worry: I was just like you a few years ago. 2018 could be the year of your financial education!

I’ve been asked more than once how long it takes to learn the basics of personal finance and become comfortable managing one’s own finances. My answer: more than a weekend, but much less than a year. My 4-year-old would call it a “medium” amount.

How much do I need for retirement? What is a sustainable withdrawal rate in retirement? What is a stock/bond/mutual fund? What is asset allocation? What should my asset allocation be? What is the difference between tax-advantaged (401(k)) accounts and taxable accounts? Do I need to save in both of these for retirement? What is a 529 plan, and how much should I save for college?

As you might imagine, it would be a challenge to summarize these answers—which took me a few months of reading to answer for myself—into single blog post. Elsewhere, such as on the White Coat Investor website and Bogleheads, you can find many great articles summarizing much of this information. Following my initial education via financial blogs and personal finance books, I now spend very little time and energy managing my personal finances. How little?

It takes me, on average, one hour per month to manage my personal finances. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I still read about finances and there is an occasional additional nuance that enhances my knowledge, but the basics generally remain the same year to year. The truth is that—while I like reading about personal finance well enough—I consider it a means to an end. I could imagine a thousand other subjects I would like to read about or activities I’d like to experience rather than sit down with the new edition of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street.”

So how do I spend just one hour each month to manage all my personal finances?

The automatics

AVERAGE MONTHLY TIME SPENT: 10 MINUTES

First, there are a couple of important items on which I expend minimal (if any) time and energy.

1. 401(k) retirement investment
2. Bills

These two items are obviously critical for financial health. Why do I neglect them so?

Because it is simpler and more effective for me to automate them.

401(k): Contributions to both my wife’s and my 410(k)-style retirement plans are deposited regularly by our employers and automatically invested in the mutual funds of our choice. Done.

Our desired asset allocation is simple (more on this below) and—for the time being—our 410(k)s are invested entirely in bond index mutual funds. If this were to change in the future, i.e. we were to invest in stock mutual funds in our 401(k)s, it would only add a modicum of time and complexity to the situation.

Bills: In years past, bills were a mindless time suck for me, a regular thorn in my side. The envelopes would sit in a pile near my front door, mocking me each time I came and left, until I had time to sit down at the computer and silence them.

Now, I automate all the bills I possibly can. Most utilities (curse you, water company. Curse you) can be set up to autopay with credit cards, and the credit cards can be set up to auto-debit from my bank account. I still get notifications when the bills/statements arrive and I glance over them to ensure everything looks kosher.

The semi-automatics

AVERAGE MONTHLY TIME SPENT: 20 MINUTES

Now would be a good time to briefly mention the asset allocation of my investments—the underlying classes of investments compromising our total portfolio. I use a three-fund portfolio, which I love as much for its simplicity as its effectiveness:

• 40% total stock market index fund
• 30% total international stock market index fund
• 30% total bond market index fund

Some add complexity via small/value tilting their portfolios, or adding real estate in the form of REITs, but I prefer to keep it as simple as possible.

Taxable investments (monthly): In addition to 401(k) contributions, we also make regular monthly contributions to a taxable account at Vanguard—using those sweet, low-cost index mutual funds. Our Vanguard brokerage account is linked to our checking account, so it’s as simple as typing in a number and clicking “buy.”

Each monthly purchase of Vanguard Total Stock Market and Total International Stock Market in these accounts also allows me to easily rebalance toward my desired asset allocation for these funds. Instead of rebalancing by selling one type of taxable investment to buy another (and incurring capital gains tax), I can direct new share purchases toward the mutual funds that have been lagging behind in performance.

Dividend reinvestment (quarterly): The mutual funds we own in taxable accounts distribute quarterly dividends. Dividends can be automatically reinvested, but I choose to have them deposited to a Vanguard money market fund. I can also use this money to help rebalance without selling.

Estimated taxes (quarterly): We aren’t at Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth, but we do well enough to require quarterly prepayments of estimated federal and state taxes. I either write a check (boring) or use a service such as pay1040.com (sexy!) if I want/need to earn some credit card points for travel.

The once-a-years

AVERAGE MONTHLY TIME SPENT: 5 MINUTES (60 minutes once per year)

My wife and I receive variable but usually sizable bonuses at the end of the calendar year, which sets us up for that flurry of investments in the frozen days of early January.

Backdoor Roth IRA: Both of us have fully funded our Roth IRAs in each of the past 6 years using the “Backdoor” method (described detail with luscious screenshots in a recent post by Physician on FIRE). In short, a financial sleight of hand allow those above the income limits for Roth IRA contributions ($199k for married couples in 2018) to still contribute the full $5500 each to their Roth IRAs each year.

529 plans: Let’s not forget the cute little resource parasites that sleep down the hall from us each night. Each January, we lump sum an unconscionable amount of money to pay for the obscene future projected college costs of our sweet baby angels.

The outsourced

AVERAGE MONTHLY TIME SPENT: 10 MINUTES (120 minutes once per year)

I can hear some of you screaming, “What about your freakin’ taxes?!” Confession time: I don’t do my own taxes. But I do sign them. You can read some of my thoughts on outsourcing here, and suffice to say paying a competent CPA to do our taxes has been money well spent.

You cannot fathom the joy it brings me to send off all those tax forms in the mail and—like magic—receive a large packet of completed federal, state, and local taxes in the mail a couple months later. I give them a good once-over to make sure our names are spelled right *wink*, and then put my John Hancock right at the bottom.

Done and done

If you add up the times above, it’s closer to 45 rather than 60 minutes per month—but who’s counting? I’m certainly not, and that is the point. I spend so little time dealing with my personal finances that it is almost an afterthought, and I can tell you—after a decade of doing it this way—that it works.

How to you handle your personal finances, and how much time do you spend doing it? Are there other facets of my financial life that I should automate? Do you think I spend too little time on my personal finances?

The post One Hour per Month, or The Beauty of Financial Automation appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.

Selfishly, I usually buy myself this gift but, thankfully, Dr-Mrs-Dr. Curious shares my passion and travels with me. We bring the rest of the Curious family too. Our trips have certainly changed since children entered the picture, but they remain highlights of our year and of our lives.

Jersey shore?

When I talk about travel, I don’t mean a week binge-drinking at the beach. Now, there’s nothing wrong with some clubbin’ and hot tubbin’, and we can all benefit from this sort of “unwind and unplug” vacation sometimes. The term “vacation” is quite appropriate here, for its origin comes from the Latin vacare—to be unoccupied. Absorbing UV radiation on the beach with a Corona in hand can certainly serve to “unoccupy” both the body and mind.

But my favorite type of travel is quite the opposite: active, occupied travel, filled with seeing, doing, tasting, drinking, and just experiencing the place I visit. Exotic travel—the more foreign the better—can not only help me unplug from my current life, it can plug me into a completely different way of life.

Point/Counterpoint

People have either traveled abroad, or they have not. The former generally look back fondly on their travels and look forward to new ones. The latter might aspire to travel abroad one day, or they might not. I’m here to convince this group of naysayers that they should give it a try.

For a myriad of reasons, quite a few of my friends and family members are dismissive of international travel. I agree with them in one important way: it is possible to have a rich and meaningful life without travel. As much as I love it, travel is, after all, a hobby—not a necessity like food or shelter. My argument is not that foreign travel is compulsory, but that it can enhance and improve almost any life.

I could give you lots of reasons why I love travel, and why you should too (and I will). But let me start with some common excuses I hear from those who don’t travel abroad, and my responses to them.

Travel is too expensive. Roundtrip flights to Europe, a week at a nice hotel in a big city, and miscellaneous tours, food and souvenirs can set you back $10,000 without much effort. Long-haul flights to other continents approach $2000 in many cases—and that’s before you even spend a dime on the ground. I can understand why travel feels out of reach for many individuals.

However, a Google search for “budget travel” yields a 339 million hits. (For perspective, “bitcoin” yields a mere 282 million.) So yes, inexpensive travel abroad is possible. People do it every day! With a little bit of effort and know-how, an international trip can approach the price of domestic travel. Here are just a few techniques I use to drive down costs:

• Search for flights early and often. You will get the best deal for most international flights by purchasing tickets 3-4 months in advance. Some websites, like Google flights or Kayak, will even let you put a “price alert” on a certain flight, and will update you if they price drops.
• Use credit card rewards points. I’m not a credit card churner or points junkie, so I’ll leave the sophisticated rewards games to the experts. I open up a new card every few years for a big sign up bonus, but otherwise use my AMEX Premier Rewards Gold and Chase Sapphire Preferred cards to pay for all my daily expenses.
• Stay at an AirBnB: I’ve not studied this scientifically, but anecdotally AirBnB and Homeaway/VRBO provide great value compared to most hotels. On a recent trip, I reserved a 3-bedroom penthouse in central London for $500/night, less expensive and more comfortable than the two mid-range hotel rooms we would have otherwise needed.

I don’t have enough time. You are right: most Americans get far too little time off. According to this recent study, a staggering 23% of Americans get no paid time off, and the average worker receives a mere 10 days. I can understand the difficulty and hesitation with taking a two-week vacation under these circumstances.

My friends at Sightsee MD—a couple of married surgeons—make time in their busy schedules to indulge their passion for travel. Even 5 days or a long weekend in a European city can be enough to invigorate the senses and give you new perspective on the world.

Or like another friend, Physician on Fire, you could go part-time or even retire early to allow slower, longer trips.

Traveling with children is too hard. Alright, I hear you on this one. I have two children—a 4-year-old and 6-month-old—and dragging everyone to the restaurant down the street can be a challenge, let alone dragging everyone to Singapore.

You can read my previous treatise on travel with children here; in summary, it is a fantastic and worthwhile experience. Some may say travel with children is worse, but I say it’s just different. Keep your expectations low and your tolerance high.

Travel abroad is unsafe. Some travel is unsafe. For example, don’t go hiking in northern Afghanistan when one of you is pregnant, and then get kidnapped (like these two idiots).

But the vast majority of travel is extraordinarily safe, especially when compared to living your everyday life. The annual risk of dying in a plane crash is often cited at one in 10,000,000. The risk of dying in a terrorist attack varies by nationality, but is about one in 3,500,000 for Americans (this risk is skewed higher by 9/11. Excluding 9/11, it is one in 19,000,000). To put these numbers in perspective, your annual risk of death from a car accident is one in 19,000, from firearms is one in 25,000, from a home appliance is one in 1,500,000, and from a deer is one in 2,000,000.

You could pore over statistics all day, and perseverate about terrorism or plane crashes, but it is a fact that the risk of death or serious injury while traveling is low. You don’t see people stressing over getting killed by their toaster or mauled by Bambi.

No matter the actual risk, your perspective on the dangers of travel—and the innumerable other dangers of life—is a choice. You can choose to live your life in fear, or not. If you chose the former, you might never leave your house, but you could still drown in the bathtub (risk one in 800,000). I choose the latter.

So be smart about when and where you travel and take the appropriate precautions, but don’t let fear be your guide.

I’m simply not interested in travel. This is a hard nut to crack. If—after being convinced that international travel is possible, safe, and affordable—someone still resists with this excuse, I almost throw my hands in the air and walk away. Almost.

My response? Don’t knock it til you try it. If you have never traveled, you don’t know what you are missing. Pick a country in Europe or South America that appeals to you, and spend two weeks there. Don’t make too many set plans, and don’t use a tour group. Find a rental on AirBnB and get to know some locals.

Get back to me afterward and let me know when you are planning your next trip

My travel philosophy

I’ll round out this travel diatribe with a few more benefits of travel that I’ve come to realize over the years.

New culture, new people, new experiences! My wife and I spent three weeks in Nepal and India about five years ago. Talk about culture shock! Our guides in Nepal had never listened to Madonna. For their entire lives, they had been completely ensconced in the world of Bollywood and Indian music. It was new to us and fantastic.

I want my children to see the lives of others, and not just the neighbor kids down the street. As an American,  It’s easy to live a sheltered, suburban existence, driving to our strip malls and massive supermarkets and taking most of it for granted. A wonderful and varied world is out there full of people from all walks of life, with views that may be starkly different from your own. Over the years, we have formed lifelong friendships with a number of people that we met on our travels. I want my children to have that opportunity as well.

No matter which country is listed on your passport, you are a citizen of the world too. Just because someone lives across some artificial border from you doesn’t mean you don’t have something to gain from meeting them, and they from meeting you. Go hug (or kiss) someone!

And it’s not just people! You can try a new language, food, sport, etc. when you travel abroad. The brain thrives on this novelty, and the opportunities are endless.

Anticipation and Reflection. Once the travel bug has bitten, you are permanently infected. I am constantly either planning my next trip or reflecting on some aspect of a previous travel. Although the actual travel experience may be relatively short, you can stretch out the joy of travel over much longer periods in your own mind.

Travel is really, really fun. (mic drop)

If you love travel, why? What benefits of travel did I miss? If you don’t travel, why not? What are the obstacles you see to travel, especially international travel?

The post Why I Travel (And You Should Too) appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.

My family is with me on this walk. We are on vacation in a warm, sunny place, and relaxed. The children run through the field. They are healthy and the future looks bright for them, and this makes me happy too.

Brief pleasures of the senses and long-term feeling of contentment are quite different, but both are clearly linked to “happiness.” Before we explore what makes us happy—or even if we should pursue happiness—we need to explore what it means to be happy.

What is happiness?

Humans, including young infants, have no trouble communicating if they are happy in a given moment, or in their lives more generally. But happiness is such an intuitive and evolutionarily ingrained emotion that, if put on the spot, I think many of us would have trouble coming up with a coherent definition.

Even the professionals—philosophers, psychologists, economists, and biologists—perpetually struggle with and argue over the definition of happiness. Satisfaction, well-being, flourishing, love, and meaning are terms that capture aspects of happiness, if not its entire scope. “Well-being” seems to a widely-accepted synonym for happiness, and a good starting point.

Put in the simplest terms, happiness is the state of being happy. Who could argue with that?

On the origin of happiness

Even if we can’t precisely define happiness, we all have an intuitive sense of its meaning. But why do we, as humans, experience the emotion of happiness? In other words, what would Chuck Darwin say is the evolutionary reason for happiness in our species?

Throughout our lives, each of us hovers around a certain level of happiness—the “set point” for our happiness thermostat. This set point is determined mostly by genetics, and likely influenced by our upbringing to some degree. Positive or negative events might temporarily bump our happiness levels up or down, but over time we will tend to return to that same set point. Why are we wired this way?

Our pre-human ancestors (i.e. animals) may not experience happiness in the same way we do, but evolution has taught them to be attracted or repelled by certain sensory stimuli in the world—to classify experiences as “good/beneficial” or “bad/noxious.”

As evolution progressed over millennia, consciousness arose in more complex creatures. Now, rather than a reflexive attraction to the good or repulsion from the bad, animals (and eventually we humans) consciously experience stimuli and the associated emotions. Cold water on a hot day feels refreshing and pleasant, or a porcupine quill causes pain and fear.

Humans (and perhaps other intelligent animals) eventually came to associate the emotional response directly with the stimulus, rather than through the intermediary of sensation. Cold water on a hot day just made us happy.

The three cavemen

We don’t know much about our earliest hunter-gatherer ancestors. We do know that life sucked pretty hard most of the time: they were in constant search of food, at the mercy of the elements, and most likely headed toward an early death. They were also part of the food chain, and not always at the top.

Let’s visit a small tribe of these ancestors in the Great Rift Valley of Africa about 100,000 years ago. Three of them—Steve, Frank, and Carl—are prehistoric pals, but each with their own “set point” of happiness, like the three bears.

(Apologies for and credit to Tim Urban for the drawing style.)

Steve is so, so happy, all the time. The sunrise makes him weep with joy. A mere look from a pretty cavewoman keeps him satisfied for months on end. He’s not worried about much of anything—food, finding a mate, or having children. He has no ambition to seek more pleasure, because he is happy with what he has.

One day, before he has children, as he ponders the beauty of the wind through the grass, a lion sneaks up on him and eats him. Poor Steve.

Frank, on the other hand, is a real sour puss. Nothing makes him happy. The men killed a wooly mammoth on the hunt! “Whoopee,” thinks Frank, “I guess it’s mammoth burgers for the next month straight. How, exactly, are we going to keep all that meat fresh? I better not get food poisoning.” No one much likes Frank, including the women in the tribe. He doesn’t care to improve life for himself or others.

One day, before he has children, he wanders away from the campfire because he simply can’t stand the conversation a moment longer, and is mauled to death by a pack of hyenas. Poor Frank.

Carl is the de facto leader of the tribe. Everyone considers him as the most reliable and level-headed male. His mood is never too happy nor too depressed. He enjoys himself during the feasts after a good hunt, but knowns the food will not last forever. He is sad when a friend or family member dies, but he is not paralyzed by grief and helps other to deal with theirs.

The ladies like stable Carl. He has many children with his partner in the tribe, and passes on his just-right happiness traits to his children.

All of this, of course, is a gross and silly oversimplification.

Throughout human history, plenty of cavemen like Frank and Steve passed on their genes, and still do today—perhaps even to a greater degree than in eons past. But throughout much of human history, evolution favored, if only slightly, those who were neither always happy or always sad, and were able to quickly move on from the temporary ups and downs that life threw at them.

As a result, the human race is neither deliriously happy or constantly depressed, but rather somewhere in the mediocre middle.

What makes us happy?

Few would argue that family and community are important for life satisfaction. They seem to be more important than health and money, at least. If the opposite were true, the healthiest and wealthiest of us would invariably be the happiest, which is clearly not the case. We return to our “set point” of happiness quickly after changes in our health or finances, but a life of loneliness and lack of connection can permanently lower our happiness thermostats.

So far, we have only discussed external stimuli that make us happy or sad. But what of the underlying mechanism of happiness—that which occurs internally, within our brains?

What REALLY makes us happy?

Happiness is—like anything we think or feel—a chemical reaction in the brain; it is a result of the interplay among serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin on your neurons. Both the elation when I first glimpsed my children at their births and the pain of my aunt’s suicide were the result of molecules being released, their interactions with receptors on neurons, and tiny electrical impulses inside my skull—nothing more, nothing less.

On a evolutionary level, we can also consider how happiness and other emotions might have come to be in the first place. The initial step in generating happiness or other emotions is an unconscious, physiological response to a stimulus—the primitive reaction of “good/beneficial” or “bad/noxious.” We are attracted to food, or recoil from pain. Some call this the Darwinian good of a stimulus.

Next, the conscious experience of that emotion takes over. We feel happy, and we know that we feel it. Now the emotional good can take on a life of its own. The pleasure of experiencing the emotion can become an end in itself, rather than a reaction to an external stimulus.

We become slaves to that emotion. We can’t fight that feeling anymore.

A corollary to this stimulus-reaction-emotion phenomenon will be familiar to those interested in behavioral economics: the hedonic treadmill. Our biology screws us here. Humans are designed to “accommodate” to sensory stimuli, so we don’t overwhelm the system; responses to continuous or repeat stimuli weaken over time.  Our emotional reactions—closely tied to sensory stimuli—similarly weaken with time. Thus, we constantly chasing that initial “high” of a positive emotion, but never quite get there.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..” — John Milton, Paradise Lost

My own happiness

Like many (most?) people, I have struggled through periods of mild depression. I never required medication or therapy and, thankfully, I always emerged from the shadows eventually. But my high school years were pretty dark at times, and I can’t be certain it won’t happen again.

These days, I have much to be happy and thankful for: family, friends, a job, travel, money, my health, jalapeño chips, etc. Still, I find myself sad and frustrated by silly things—a broken car, a mean comment, or just a bad day—with some frequency. Heck, writing this very post has brought about feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction!

I have all the reasons in the world to be happy all the time, but I’m not. Is there some way I can “hack” my own brain to enter a more permanent state of well-being and satisfaction?

The secret(s) to happiness

As mammals, we have an advantage (when it comes to emotion) over our primitive-brained relatives: our neocortex. We have the ability, however difficult, to “outthink” our feelings. The reactions and emotions of the more primitive parts of the brain can be tempered or even neutralized by the rational thought process of the neocortex, particularly the frontal lobes.

Easier said than done, right? But still possible.

Perhaps we are going about this all wrong. The discussion so far assumes that happiness is the goal—an end in itself. But is this necessarily true?  Maybe long-term happiness is a byproduct of the pursuit of life goals, with the emotional ups and downs that pursuit entails. Maybe we can’t find happiness—it has to come to us. Life’s a journey, not a destination. Why shouldn’t happiness be that way too?

Look to the East

The Buddhist philosophy has long been obsessed with the mind and happiness. The Dhammapada, the earliest known collections of Buddha’s teachings, mentions happiness in the second verse:

“If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves.“

What is meant by a pure mind? Buddhism famously teaches that “life is suffering,” meaning (in part) that our minds are programmed to hold onto the positive feelings of our past and crave positive feelings in our future (and push away or dread negative feelings). According to the tenets of Buddhism, this is a mistake.

True happiness is independent of our feelings, and can only be attained by exiting this cycle of grasping and craving experiences in the past or future. In other words, learning to focus on the present. Simple idea, but extraordinarily difficult to execute for most. Buddhists move closer to a life without “suffering” through wisdom, compassion and meditation.

Thanks for reading and have a happy day!

What makes you happy? Have you found the ideas mentioned here helpful in finding happiness? Do you have other techniques or strategies? Please comment below!

The post The Unhappy Pursuit of Happiness appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.

I have not seen many of you in quite some time. It’s not because I don’t want to, or I don’t enjoy your company. I have two children.

If you had children too, you would fully understand, and nod your head with a grimace and a knowing smile. But you don’t, so I owe you an explanation.

I was like you not so long ago: an adult without dependents. Independent. I wondered why my friends with kids were so stressed. Why they were exhausted and mentally scattered. Why they didn’t simply bring their children along to our evening get-togethers. 

Now, I know.

And I apologize to those friends whom I silently condemned, dissing and dismissing them in my mind for their conspicuous departure from the social scene after their children were born. I have followed in their absent footsteps now that I have my own brood.

Why, exactly, are children so detrimental to our adult social lives? Why are my wife and I asleep before 10pm on most weekends?

I can’t speak for all parents, but I will tell you how I feel.

I’m tired. So very tired. Fatigue is reasons number one, two, and three for lack of adult socializing. It’s hard to know how much exhaustion is due to me getting older versus me getting children, but my money is mostly on the children.

My older son was not a good sleeper. He woke up in the night regularly until around age three. Following a few months of blissful slumber after he turned three, my daughter was born. And we got to start all over again.

Parental fatigue is compounded by factors other than simple lack of sleep. Parents get sick, but not sick days (when it comes to childcare). And you will get sick from your precious little petri dish.

What about catching up on sleep during “down time?” Well, down time and free time have a way of evaporating with children around. Heck, the laundry alone is a part-time job.

Of course, we could hire a babysitter for the night and leave the kids at home. While it might sound lovely to arrive home at midnight with the kids snug in their beds, they inevitably stay up much later with the babysitter (at least in our house). Based on scientific research (fig. 1), a later bedtime means an earlier awakening in the morning. My children and/or dog simply do not get the memo to let me sleep in. I can’t remember the last time I awoke later than 7 a.m. It’s been years, if not a decade.

I care about my children more than I care about you. Sorry.

They are my flesh and blood, and they are extremely cute. Plus, my wife and I are responsible for corralling them away from trouble and toward a productive adulthood. Thus, we need to spend time with them and get to know them.

We both work full-time, so weekends and evenings constitute the bulk of the precious hours necessary to implement our parental guidance.

My children notice when I am gone. My 4-year-old’s joyous reaction when I see him after a period of absence both warms my heart and pains me to know that he missed me. My 5 month old increasingly recognizes mommy and daddy’s faces over those of strangers, and responds with a drooly smile. I want them to see on me as a regular presence in their lives, a reliable adult who is there to help them and—as they grow up—answer questions about the world.

You, my adult friends, may miss my company, but my absence will (hopefully) not have a lasting negative impact on your lives.

It’s a lot of work to take a child outside the home. In the years before I had children, I used to consider this excuse rather weak. I no longer do.

Like Ralphie’s mom in A Christmas Story—who had not had a hot meal for herself in 15 years—a dinner out is far from an exercise in pleasure and relaxation for us parents. The first order of business is to ensure big brother and little sister are eating, drinking, or otherwise occupied. After that, we might shovel some warm-ish food into our mouths—that is, until our son decides he wants to explore the restaurant kitchen or our daughter needs a diaper change.

We still take our children to dinner, and sometimes even enjoy ourselves. Teaching them expected behavior in public is important to us, and can’t be done at home. But a full-on relaxing night out is not in the cards when young children come along.

When kids get out of their routine, hell is unleashed. When children hit the magic years after age three or so, they develop a sense of agency, and exercise this previously undiscovered freedom of choice with regularity and vigor.

“You know, Mummy and Daddy, I do believe I would rather spend the evening scattering toys all over the downstairs living space in lieu of a quiet dinner out with your friends.”

Our older child loves the comfort of routine. Same foods, same games, same books. Breaking this routine can throw off the whole day.

The occasional novel experience can be fun for him, as it can for most children. We regularly encourage (force?) him to try new things. But too much “new” finds us a paying a price in the form of a cranky or overwhelmed kid later that day.

So rather than that trendy new restaurant, maybe you, friends, could join us for some takeout pizza on Friday night.

In the end, the reason is time. Children grow really freaking fast. My 4-year-old still needs help getting dressed sometimes, but his transition from toddler to kid has been astounding in its rapidity. He told me I was “not organized” the other day. I don’t want to miss too many of these moments.

I want to spend time with my children. I need to. And I only get one shot to do it.

I sincerely hope we can remain friends. It’s difficult to maintain a relationship with someone whose life and priorities are so foreign. More often than not, we find ourselves drawn to our parent-friends, with their nods and knowing grins. They understand and mind less when we cancel last minute, for no other reason that it’s Friday and everyone is tired.

I still hope to occasionally connect with some of you, my friends. In a few years, it will probably be easier. I may find more time as my children become more independent, or you may decide to join the parent club and frequent our meetings.

Don’t give up on me yet.

Yours Truly,

Dr. Curious

The post To My Friends Without Children appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.

“That guy is an asshole.”

We all know that guy. Maybe he is a friend from high school. Maybe he is your older brother. Maybe he is you.

That guy has been an asshole all his adult life. He never changes.

But then, one day, he does. You meet him in the K-mart parking lot, and he is profoundly and truly different. Perhaps marriage changed him, perhaps children. Perhaps, like a prized Bordeaux, he simply improved with age.

Most of us know someone (like this asshole) who has changed his personality, or at least seemed to. So yes, personality change is possible, even as an adult. But can this change be intentional, or must it be left to the whims of fate, chance, and life experience?

A case of radical personality change (with a capital “R”)

You never want to be a noteworthy case in the medical literature, and Phineas Gage is certainly one of those.

Phineas was a healthy, 25-year-old railroad foreman whose date with infamy occurred while blasting rock near Cavendish, Vermont in 1848. If there is a lesson to be learned from his accident, it is to not position your head over a hole filled with gun powder while tamping it down with a three-foot metal rod.

And leave a mark it did: among other damage, it destroyed his left eye and significant portions of the frontal lobes of his brain. Incredibly, the otherwise young and healthy Mr. Gage survived only moderately worse for the wear.

Surviving such a devastating physical injury would have been noteworthy in itself, but that is not why Phineas has his own Wikipedia page. While his physical recovery was near-complete (apart from vision, obv), his friends and family reported remarkable changes in his personality after the accident—for the worse.

Pre-massive-headwound Phineas was hard-working, responsible, and well liked by his peers, but after the accident, Phineas was a changed man. “Fitful, irreverent…impatient…at times obstinate…capricious…gross, profane, coarse, and vulgar” were some of the adjectives used to describe his post-accident personality.

You see, the frontal lobes play a key role in high-level brain functions—including motivation, planning and social interaction—and damage to them can result in behavioral and emotional changes described in Mr. Gage.

Rather than a trip to the quarry with a crowbar, some TNT, and a bottle of whisky, are there less dramatic methods to change personality?

What is personality?

I had always thought of personality as this…thing…that people just…had. Uncle Bill yells at cats and drinks pickle juice; it’s his “personality.” But modern psychologists are in near consensus that we can boil down personality to five major core traits: extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Extraversion is epitomized by the so-called “life of the party.” Individuals high in extraversion are social and outgoing, and harness energy from interactions with others. Those with the opposite trait—introversion—prefer and even need solitude, and gain energy from time alone.

Individuals with a high level of conscientiousness are organized and thoughtful, with good impulse control. This is the guy or gal at the office on whom you can depend to get the job done. Those low in this trait are sloppy procrastinators.

A high level of openness indicates open-mindedness and a willingness to try new things; these individuals are highly imaginative and creative. People with a low level of openness embrace routine and resist change.

Mr. Rogers (who actually lived in my neighborhood) would have scored high in agreeableness. These individuals are kind, helpful, friendly, and empathic. The opposite individuals are, well, assholes.

Neuroticism is the tendency to easily experience negative emotions. Those high in this trait are moody, anxious, and emotionally labile. The opposite of neuroticism is emotional stability.

Each of us falls somewhere along the spectrum for each of these traits, and this shapes overall personality.

Personality: Nature vs nurture?

How we develop our personality is far from agreed upon among psychologists. Elements of genetics (nature) and environment (nurture) are involved. Most estimate the degree of influence of nature and nurture at about 50% each.

Thus, if your mom and dad are both assholes, then you’ve got at least a 50% chance of being one too. I’m being facetious here, but you get the idea: genetics play a large role in our adult personalities.

The contribution of social environment and life events, i.e. nurture, to personality is less straightforward. Traditional teaching places the influence of nurture squarely on the parents. I have been convinced otherwise, and believe peer group is much more important.

Fear and loathing in Pittsburgh

Everyone has personality quirks and idiosyncrasies that they would like to rid themselves of. I am no exception.

Rather than expound upon all my psychological defects for the next 2000 words (and I could), I’ll focus on a few salient problems in this brief auto-psychoanalysis.

Introversion: I skew hard toward introvert on the extraversion/introversion scale, with social anxiety sprinkled on top. Entering a room full of strangers with the expectation of mingling is nothing short of a nightmare. Dr-Mrs-Dr. Curious tells me I hide it well, but I certainly feel it inside.

Fear: John Lennon supposedly said, “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love.” A bit schmaltzy, and the stuff of inspirational posters but, in my opinion, profoundly true. In my own decisions, I strive (and struggle) to use love as a motivating factor rather than fear.

Fear plays an evolutionary role in keeping us alive, but too much is paralyzing. It is a complex emotion connected to multiple personality traits. In my own personality, I suspect tendencies toward neuroticism and a lack of openness are partly to blame.

Appeasement: I’m a people pleaser, and I generally avoid conflict like the plague. At base, I care too much what others think of me. I give far too much weight to how my life choices will appear to those close to me, or even strangers, rather than what they mean to me.

This one is tricky to pin to a specific personality trait. It is related to fear, and thus the underlying neuroticism and lack of openness. My introversion likely contributes as well; I spend a lot of time inside my own mind, and as a result tend to over-think and over-analyze people and situations.

Anger: Yeah, I’ve got the stereotypical Irish temper. I learned to quell outward emotional bursts of anger many years ago, but I still feel that unmistakable rise and flush when some fool does me wrong. I’m not sure if this qualifies as scoring low on the agreeableness scale, but I’ve been told on good authority that I sometimes approach asshole territory.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Up until the 1990s, psychology dogma had claimed that personality did not change in adulthood. Research over the past few decades, however, has contradicted these formerly held beliefs.

Individual personality can and does change in young adulthood through old age. The average personality traits of populations also change, and in a predictable way: middle-aged individuals score higher than young adults on conscientiousness and agreeableness (damn kids!) and lower on openness, neuroticism, and extraversion.

Research regarding intentional personality change in “normal” individuals is hard to find online. A small Australian study seemed to indicate that it was possible via “personality change coaching.” Participants chatted with counselors (coaches) over a 10-week period, and the results suggested that personality traits can change over even this short period of time, and that the participants viewed the changes as “worthwhile and practically relevant.”

The techniques used to coach and change personality traits were eclectic and tailored both to the targeted trait (or sub-trait) and to the individual participant. More important than the actual techniques were the fact that it worked, at least in this small study.

Do I want to change my personality?

Let me kill the suspense: I have not yet hired a personality coach. But even if I could, would I want to? What impact would positive changes in one or more of my personality traits have on my life?

At least one large meta-analysis suggests that higher levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness and lower levels of neuroticism were associated with more positive life outcomes. Increased extraversion, for example, is correlated with improved friendships and romantic relationships, increased life satisfaction, and more meaningful community involvement.

Armed with this information, some might still hesitate to attempt personality change. After all, isn’t personality who we are? Would we even be the same people after changing it?

At the risk of getting too deep and metaphysical, I don’t think these concerns are valid. We carry the same bodies with us throughout our lives, but what we think of as our “self”—our thoughts, feelings, desires, interactions with others, and even personalities—are in a constant state of flux throughout our lives.

So yes, I would (and should) want to change my personality if I could. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Do you have personality traits you would like to change, if you could? What are they? How might your life be different if you could change?

The post Should I Intentionally Change My Personality? appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.

• First, we had a baby! As a high income family, we can expect to spend $372,210 raising our child through age 17. That doesn’t count college, with estimates for a 4-year, private education at $500,000+ when our infant starts college in about 17 years. Yikes!
• Then, we hired a nanny! The celestial alignment of young children and working parents had us scrambling for child care options, and we eventually decided that shelling out $38,000/yr for a nanny was the best option.
• And the icing on the cake, the pièce de résistance: We just bought a new house! That’ll be $485,000, please.

Why???!!!

We had a baby ’cause we wanted one, and we hired a nanny ’cause we needed one. Why did we buy a house, then?

We currently live in a home which we own free and clear. This “starter” home of just under 2000 square feet was purchased in 2006 when it was just Dr.-Mrs.-Dr. Curious and me. A few years later we added a dog, then a child a few years after that, and finally a second child this past summer. In the end, size mattered (home-wise), and what used to feel spacious and breezy began to fill up with the stuff of little humans and canines.

While our second child was still gestating, we recognized the eventual desire for more space and began to explore the possibilities.

What is a private home sale?

A private home sale simply means that we were purchasing the home directly from the owners—without the assistance of a real estate agent on either side. Sounds sketchy. Why would one want to do this?

In short: money. A private sale avoids incurring real estate commissions. In Pennsylvania, the real estate agents collect typically collect 6% commission—3% to the buyers agent and 3% to the sellers agent. Who doesn’t like saving thousands of dollars?

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood

We love our neighborhood, so we kept our home search hyperlocal—within-a 10-minute walk—encompassing an area containing maybe a few hundred homes. Having lived in the neighborhood for a decade, we covetously ogled a few prize homes and held our ears to the ground for any grumblings  of impending moves.

Last fall we noticed one of the homes on our short list got a new roof. We knew an elderly couple lived there, but had not yet met them personally. “Ahh,” we connived, “perhaps they are preparing for a move!”

There was some debate as to how to approach the homeowners. A knock on the door, followed by “sooooo…are you selling your house soon?” seemed a bit unseemly. A cold call also felt a bit too forward. We ultimately chose a handwritten letter in the mail—a choice which has sharply divided opinions among friends and family. Some think it sweet and old-fashioned, others odd and tacky. But the proof is in the pudding: it worked!

Mere days after they received the card, the owners called to ask if we were psychic. You see, they had just been discussing the need to move to a smaller townhouse in a nearby retirement community. Our note was the impetus to get them moving!

Confirmation

Before we threw a suitcase full of cash at the owner, screaming “We’ll take it!” there was one small issue remaining: we had never been inside the house. The owners were happy to oblige, and a tour of the house confirmed it was shockingly close to a perfect home for us.

The owners/sellers had lived there for over 50 years, and needed some serious time and effort to vacate the premises. My wife was early in her pregnancy at this time, and we did not envision moving until at least several months after the baby was born. So we all shook hands and agreed to powwow in 8-10 months for more serious discussions.

This past July, the call finally game: it was time to negotiate.

Negotiation

Our thought process at this point was: now what? The obvious first step was negotiating a mutually agreeable sale price, but where and how do we start?

Cue the internet. Most real estate websites suggested a private sale begin with an appraisal—specifically, that the buyer and seller each get independent appraisals. We did, and for a cool $400 I obtained a 30-page report detailing the relevant comparison homes in my neighborhood, and that elusive starting price point.

The sellers got their own appraisal, and the gantlet was thrown. Ours was $465k, theirs $535k. (We were secretly thrilled with both of these numbers, as the seller had been floating hints in the $600k-700k range.)

So far, so good.

Both the sellers and we begin negotiations via email. This way, we can all take the time to consider offers, and minimize the chance of a reflexive angry or emotional response. Here is how it went:

• Following receipt of our initial appraisals, we used $500k—the midway point between the two appraisals—as a starting point. However, the comparison homes used in the appraisals included a 6% real estate commission, so we needed to account for this. We settled on subtracting 5%, resultng in an initial offer of $475k. Boom, email sent!
• After a few days, we receive a long reply touting the many unique and custom features of the house (the owner was an architect who helped design it) with a counter offer of $500k.
• In a move that would haunt us later, we came back with an offer of $485k, “as is.” We knew the house needed some minor structural work and significant cosmetic updates and, in our minds, “as is” meant that we would not attempt to negotiate a price decrease for these items after inspection. We would come to learn that “as is” means something quite different in real estate parlance.

The sellers replied with a jubilant “YES!” to our offer of $485k “as is.” My wife and I hugged in celebration like The Price Is Right showcase winners, but little did we know it was only the start of a long and stressful few months.

After our handshake agreement on sale price, two key processes simultaneously commenced:

1. Mortgage application
2. Home sale

Something old, something new, something borrowed

Applying for a mortgage is straightforward but silly. An incomplete list of the necessary documents we had to submit included:

• Prior two years of tax returns
• Prior two years of W2’s
• Two most recent paystubs from each of us
• Two most recent bank statements for all accounts held
• Photocopies of driver’s licenses
• Property tax and homeowner’s insurance information from current residence and new residence
• Numerous letters of explanation from us explaining: how we found the property without a realtor; our relationship to the sellers; our motivation to purchase the property; our intention for the property (i.e. primary residence); and the exact remodeling we plan to perform.
• Cheek swab for DNA profiling*

*only in dystopian future.

Before the mortgage application was sent to underwriting for final approval, they needed a signed sales agreement. For the uninitiated, the sales agreement is a standardized form stipulating the terms of the home sale. Among other things, it specifies the sale price, timing of the sale, and the so-called contingencies—items which, if both parties agree to them, must be addressed for the sale to proceed.

Two important contingencies are the mortgage contingency—i.e. the sale is contingent on our approval for a mortgage—and the property inspection contingency (bold is for foreshadowing).

We got (a) problem(s)

Transactions involving large sums of money are rarely simple. Ours was burdened by an added layer of difficulty and thorniness due to the lack of real estate agents as middle men for our communications. Any problems that arose were addressed directly with the sellers, for better or worse.

Problem #1: “AS IS”

When presented with the sales agreement, the seller balked at our election of a home inspection contingency. In his view, “as is” meant that we had agreed to purchase the property without an inspection. Technically, he was right.

In our naiveté, we took “as is” for its colloquial meaning rather than its real estate meaning. A buyer chooses one of three options regarding the home inspection contingency:

1. Full home inspection. This most common options allows a full inspection, with the buyer and seller negotiating repairs and price afterward.
2. General inspection. A full inspection is also performed, but there is no option to negotiate. However, the buyer can still completely opt out of the contract based on the findings at inspection.
3. As is. Buyers waive the right to any home inspection. We had inadvertently agreed to this. Whoops and shit.

The buyer refused to allow a full inspection. We pinky swore that we would not negotiate price after the inspection, but he was stuck on the “as is” sale, and he would not budge. All are frustrated and a bit angry for a few days.

At this point, we seriously considered backing out of the deal. No inspection, no sale, damn it! Once our tempers cooled, we discussed our dilemma at length with my wife’s architect brother.

His take: the seller’s disclosure was detailed and without red flags and, if a significant structural problem was present, it should be blatantly obvious even to our inexpert eyes. He talked us through a few items to look for, and we walked through the house one more time with the sellers. It looked good to us. Plus, we really loved the house.

After a few days of deliberation and hand-wringing, we decided to purchase without the inspection. Only time will tell if this was a foolish and expensive mistake.

Problem #2: RADON

Two additional contingency items (with which the seller did not take issue) were the radon and pest inspections—standard in my state. The pest inspection was mercifully fine. Radon levels, however, were elevated.

Radon is a radioactive gas implicated as a causative factor in lung cancer. It is ubiquitous in the bedrock in many parts of the world, and can leak through the foundation into homes, especially in basements.

[As an interesting digression, the threshold level above which radon is considered “elevated” is not without controversy. The epidemiological data used to determine this threshold is from underground miners exposed to much higher levels of radon over 5 years. The cumulative dose to which the miners were exposed was then extrapolated to an arbitrary, longer period of time that someone might live in a given home.

Herein lies the controversy: to determine the threshold, the EPA and NRC (National Research Council) assumed a household member would be exposed to radon for 18 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 70 years. That’s a lot of time spent at home! It’s also far from clear that longer, lower levels of radiation exposure pose the same risk as shorter, higher exposures. The threshold level also assumes the individual is a smoker, which further increases lung cancer risk by a factor of 10.]

End digression. Our radon level exceeded the threshold value of 4 pCi/L, and the seller was required to perform radon mitigation. This involves hiring a mitigation company to drill into the bedrock and vent the radon gas via a pipe extending above the roofline.

Problem #3: MORTGAGE RATE LOCK EXTENSION

Just as we glimpsed calmer seas ahead, another storm arose. The sellers were moving to a retirement community, and discovered that their new residence would not be ready until 2 weeks after our mortgage rate lock expired. Whoops and shit.

Mortgage companies don’t like being jerked around. Oh, they will gladly allow you to postpone the closing date and maintain the interest rate on your mortgage, but not without throwing some Benjamins their way. Mortgage companies call this extra money “points,” expressed as a percentage of the total mortgage amount.

In our case, extending delaying our closing and extending the mortgage rate lock would cost us nearly $2000.

It wasn’t a pleasant conversation, but the sellers ultimately admitted that they were responsible for the delay and our additional incurred cost. They agreed to pay this cost at closing in the form of a “seller assist.”

Problem #4: DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

Sprinkled throughout this entire process like evil salt and pepper were several personal disasters which befell the sellers.

First, the seller’s brother died unexpectedly. He was 99 years old, so it wasn’t exactly a shocker, but obviously still traumatic.

As a result, the seller had to deal with the apparent mess of his brother’s estate, and take over the family business, from which he later discovered some employees had been stealing.

A few days later, the seller’s wife fell and broke her hip, requiring surgery. After a relatively short hospital stay, she was discharged home to recover. Whew!

Unbelievably, she fell again about a week later, and re-fractured her femur, requiring yet another surgery and longer recovery. Dang!

When it rains, it pours.

For the sake of brevity, I will omit countless forms, signatures, and communications needed during this process. The emails, texts, and phone calls certainly number in the hundreds, perhaps over one thousand.

Suffice to say that many governmental and private agencies collected their taxes and fees, and our signing hands were cramped by the end of it.

THE CLOSING

After the prior months’ roller coaster of emotions, the actual closing was a breeze. Our mortgage broker put us in touch with a lawyer who performs closings for a flat fee of $500. Forty five minutes after sitting down with the lawyer and the sellers, the home was ours!

Private-home-sale lessons

We are the proud and slightly beat-up owners of a new home. What did we learn in the process?

• Be patient. The time from initial contact with the sellers to closing was almost a year. Admittedly, the length of our home sale process was unique to the situation, and augmented by the fact that we were in no hurry to move. But all home sales, private or traditional, need to be approached with patience for the process and time involved.
• You need help. The number of moving parts and deadlines in a home sale made my head spin. Realistically, I don’t think it is possible to complete a private home sale without either personal experience or professional help. We received extensive guidance and answers to our questions from the mortgage broker, closing lawyer, and home insurance agent, among others.
• Speak to the seller in person, if possible. I hate conflict. This made it extremely challenging when a problem arose, forcing me to confront the seller with the issue. I found that speaking in person (or less ideally on the phone) invariably resulted in less anger and frustration compared to a text or email interaction.
• Have access to a scanner, preferably in your home. The home-buying process moves forward in spurts and starts, and you occasionally need to get papers signed and sent ASAP. In this age of PDFs, many forms can be sent via email, signed, scanned and sent back via email in a few minutes. A scanner at home is a bit time and headache saver.

A home sale almost never occurs without a hitch—big or small—and a private home sale is that much more fraught with potential pitfalls. Was it worth saving the 3% buyer’s real estate commission (~15k in our case) by pursuing a private home sale? At some points during the process, I might have said “no.” But in full retrospect I am glad we did it, and are the proud owners of a wonderful new home.

What are your experiences with home buying and selling? Have you ever purchased privately? Please comment below!

The post Ins and Outs and Ups and Downs of a Private Home Sale appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.

As with many childhood fantasies, this one eventually collided with reality as I grew older. You see, I had never actually climbed a mountain, and discovered that I didn’t really enjoy sheer heights nor getting my hands dirty. I still love hiking in the mountains, but I gave up my Himalayan ice climbing dreams many years ago.

Money isn’t everything, but it’s a thing

I struggle with how to dispense career advice to my children, if I should even try it at all. It is a rare child and young adult who possess a clear, linear vision of their career at the outset. Most of us take a more circuitous route—fraught with detours, false starts, and dead ends—before a career is ultimately settled upon.

And if my children are anything like me (i.e. stubborn and contrarian), my attempt to guide them toward a career choice is more likely to backfire than not.

Something that channels creativity should mitigate against the risk of job loss to technologic automation, but many creative pursuits can be economic feast or famine. I’d prefer they obtain a college degree, but accept that college may not be the right choice for them. It’s much too early to know which jobs may fit their personalities, or even what their adult personalities will be. Any guess as to what career path my children will take would be just that: a guess.

The sky is falling?

If you believe economic Chicken Littles, children born these days have a daunting employment future ahead of them. Advancing technology and artificial intelligence are poised to usurp many (most?) blue-collar and white-collar jobs over the next few decades. We may all be on the dole collecting universal basic income in 50 years, if some prognosticators are correct.

There is no doubt some truth in these predictions. But as Niels Bohr (or Yogi Berra?) supposedly said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” For the purposes of this post, I will assume a future in which jobs are still very much a thing performed by flesh-and-blood human beings.

To what should they aspire?

Rather than address this question directly, I’d prefer to start a conversation with them—at the appropriate ages—about the financial impact of different types of careers. Work that provides meaning and impact can be crucial to happiness for some but, for others, compensation and time off is equally critical. I’d like them to learn to consider the entire “package” that comes with a job.

Pick your poison

Future job possibilities for my children (assuming no AI apocalypse) are essentially endless. In my career conversations with them, I want to illustrate several critical, interrelated financial concepts: compensation, taxes, savings, and debt. To make the examples more concrete, I chose 3 careers which vary considerably in average salary, necessary education and job training, and debt burden:

The Doctor, the Engineer, and the Plumber.

I am intimately familiar with the life and career of a doctor, but woefully less so with that of an engineer or plumber; please forgive any related mischaracterizations or inaccuracies. And to reiterate, I focus completely on the financial implications of career choice, ignoring the other tangible and intangible aspects of the job.

Assumption, assumptions

I had to make tons of assumptions in the following exercise, but I tried to maintain internal consistency. The four main categories of assumptions were related to salary, education and debt, cost of living, and savings.

Salary

My salary assumptions are primarily based on data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS). Anecdotally, I think the BLS underestimates physician salaries, so I included data from recent physician salary surveys to arrive at the number I used.

• Plumber: Mean annual wage (BLS): $56,000
• Mechanical engineer: Mean annual wage (BLS): $89,000
• Physician and Surgeon
  • BLS: $210,170
  • Medscape(registration required): $294,000
  • Doximity(registration required): Primary care $200,000-$285,000; Specialist $267,000-$359,000.
  • Dr. Curious ballpark mean annual physician salary: $250,000

Education and debt

Student debt is a big deal, with no solution in sight. The averages below are for students graduating in 2016, and the cost will presumably be higher when my children graduate sometime in the 2030s.

• Plumber
  • The rules for becoming a licensed plumber vary by state, but training can involve a course lasting as little as 2-3 months. I assumed a start of employment at age 19, one year after completing high school.
  • Training to become a plumber has associated costs, but compared to college or graduate school the fees are nominal. I rounded it down to $0.
• Engineer
  • Yes, I realize there are many different types of engineers with varying training and expertise. To be honest, I just picked mechanical engineer out of a hat. I used age 22—after 4 years of undergraduate training—as the start of employment.
  • The average student loan burden for undergrads finishing in 2016 was $37,172.
• Doctor
  • Assuming a doctor takes no breaks from kindergarten through medical school, he or she will be finished at age 26. After that, residency training takes another 3-7+ years depending on specialty. I assumed completion of residency training and first full-salary employment as a physician at age 30.
  • Average medical school debt varies by source, but seems near $180,000. Added to undergraduate debt, we obtain the lovely sum of $217,172 in total student loan debt after medical school.

Cost of living

• Accounting for cost of living involved the most hand waving of all.
  • First, I assumed the monthly take home pay of an average plumber as a baseline level of spending for all 3 professions.
  • The plumber spent it all, resulting in no additional monthly cash flow.
  • For the engineer and doctor, I assumed an additional amount of spending due to “lifestyle inflation,” equal to 20% of their monthly take home pay.

Savings

• I assumed 6% growth of retirement savings, an optimistic estimate to some. Accuracy here is not too critical, as I am more interested in comparing careers rather than the exact numbers.
• Although doctors begins their first “real” job at age 30, they had been drawing a salary during residency and, hopefully, saving for retirement. I assumed they threw some money toward their 401(k)s during those years, resulting in a $50,000 nest egg by age 30.

The Results

What does the interplay of debt, compounded monthly savings, and age at which savings begins show us?

Below are retirement savings illustrated in graph form, followed by the raw numbers.

A few observations:

• All three professions can accumulate impressive nest eggs by age 65. A change in savings growth (I assumed 6%) could significantly change those end numbers.
• Saving early harnesses the power of compounding, but is overcome by a high-enough salary and savings rate. At least in this scenario, saving more was more important than saving early.
• Doctor begin savings later, but robust monthly contributions allow them to quickly surpass the nest eggs of the more modest savings rates of our plumber and engineer. The crossover point was around ages 33-34.
• With enough discipline and a reasonable monthly budget, the average doctor should be able to reach an 8-figure retirement savings nest egg near age 60.
• Some student debt can certainly be “worth it” for the potential higher salary and retirement savings. Of course, one could also earn a high salary without student loan debt—becoming a small business owner without attending college, for example, or getting a full ride scholarship would accomplish this. But on average, those with more advanced degrees make (and hopefully save) more money.

I don’t worry too much about the future careers of my children. The best I can do is impart knowledge that I hope will help, and then let them have at it. The events which will lead them to their chosen careers are unknowable, unpredictable, ultimately up to them.

When I discuss career and finance with my kids, my aim will not be to highlight how much money one can make in different professions. Too many variables are involved, not the least of which is an uncertain future for them, the economy, and the world. But I do hope that exercises such as this will serve as an impetus for them to mull over perhaps the most important, complex financial decision of their lives: a career.

What do you think of this analysis? How do you discuss the finances of career choice with your children? Please comment below!

The post Best Future Career: Doctor, Engineer, or Plumber? appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.

While night shift weeks are challenging, the disruption is only temporary. We just suck it up. However, it’s difficult and unwise to attempt to “suck up” those weeks with a more typical schedule, as they constitute the vast majority of the year in the Curious household.

During a normal week, our schedule is hectic: both my wife and I work full-time as physicians; we have two children—an almost 4-year-old in preschool and a 4-month-old under the care of a nanny; and I’m fairly certain we still have a dog. As working parents with two young children, I believe we sit at one of the peaks of life-hecticness, with another one visible in the distance—the middle/high school years (with the after-school activity blitz that I hear so much about from friends and neighbors).

As much as I try to impose my will on it, my day-to-day schedule is almost never exactly the same. I occasionally work odd shifts beginning at 6 a.m. or 1 p.m. Even a standard workday—in which my wife and I both work from ~8 a.m. to 5 p.m—can vary considerably due to factors both in and out of our control.

What remains constant is the struggle to find time—be it hours, minutes, or mere seconds—to pursue the activities and goals that are important to me.

A well-being index

My life to do list is constantly expanding. Many items are long-term goals that may be fun or admirable, but have no specific time frame in which they need to be completed: a bucket list, in other words. Travel, for example, would fall into this category.

Other items are daily activities that I view as necessary to maintain a healthy and sane life. If I accomplish them daily, they augment my mental and physical health; if I do not, my health suffers. Each of these activities effect a small, positive change on my well-being. Together, I have come to think of them as part of a “well-being index.”

What do I include in my well-being index? In no particular order:

1. Sleep: both quality and quantity are important
2. Exercise: ideally 30-45 minutes of mixed aerobic exercise and strength training
3. Family Time: time with my children and wife (and dog. Sorry you are parenthetical, Rio!)
4. Meditation: preferably 15-20 minutes per day
5. Self Education: lifelong learning is important to this curious dude. Books and podcasts are my media of choice.
6. Leisure/Down Time: sometimes I just need to kick back with a beer and go down a YouTube rabbit hole for a while.

Each activity that I can tick off on a daily basis is an extra “point.” I don’t regularly tally up these numbers, but I do keep an unofficial count in my head, and I notice changes in my mood and attitude during long stretches of particularly high or low compliance.

Some items on the well-being index are fairly universal; I’d imagine that quality sleep and exercise would be included for the vast majority of people. But on your well-being index, you may include other items quite different from mine. More important that the items included is the forced introspection entailed in creating your own index, and the discovery of what happiness and satisfaction means to you.

Days of my life

To summarize so far: There is much I want to do, but not a lot of time in which to do it. I am reminded of a simple yet powerful quote that changed my mindset about time management:

“You don’t find time, you make time.”

It’s not easy to make time, and most days I fail to perfectly attain all 6 components of my well-being index. The average day is probably closer to a 3, with a particularly bad day a 1 or even 0. Each item is not all-or-nothing; for a few minutes of meditation, for example, I might assign a value of 0.5.

My workdays fall into 3 general categories: the elusive, rare perfect day; the common average day; and the thankfully also-rare bad day.

Again, the numbers are subjective and arbitrary, but you get the idea. The closer my days get to perfect over longer stretches of time, the more calm, relaxed, and happy my life becomes.

Can I increase my well-being index score?

I’d love for more days to approach my perfect well-being index score of 6, and I can think of several ways to do accomplish this.

Retire: The most obvious solution to free up more time for these activities is to retire early and completely. I’m not psychologically ready for this yet, even if I had enough money to pull the plug right now. At some point, my well-being index will be permanently elevated in retirement, but until that time I want to explore other solutions.

Work part-time: Any move which minimizes those big “WORK” blocks in the middle of my daily schedule increases the chance of higher well-being scores. At my current practice, a part-time position would mean working one week on and one week off. Free time during my weeks off will almost guarantee increased well-being index scores, but I still have the specter of average and bad days hanging over me during working weeks.

Tweak my current schedule: In the short-term, this is the most straightforward and realistic solution. However, it can only take me so far, and there are only so many hours in the day. Like skinny jeans, too much squeezing in one place can leave you popping out in another.

I have, for instance, attempted earlier wake-up times for a week or more. Morning is reliably the quietest time in the Curious household, and on my most ambitious days I have knocked out exercise, meditation and a little reading before anyone else wakes up. But almost invariably, I fall out of this habit for one reason or another. It might be a bad night’s sleep that sees me hitting the snooze button come morning, or a string of pre-dawn awakenings in my older child.

But I haven’t given up, and I am constantly searching for the best solution to my time puzzle.

Accept imperfection: This final approach is fundmentally different from the first three: in lieu of a change in schedule, I would attempt a change in mindset.

Most of my schedule disruptions—and I would guess those of most parents—are tied to the whims and moods of the tiny humans that reside in my home. Instead of becoming frustrated by one of these disruptions, I could opt to express gratitude for my two healthy, lovely children and the joy they create. In truth, I will probably never have a perfect day according my well-being score, but I can choose to see each day as “perfect” in its own way.

In the end, any approach that gets the job done—i.e. increases happiness and satisfaction in my life—could be seen as the correct one. If it merely entails a change in perspective rather than an actual change in my schedule, so what? The ends justify the means.

In other words, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Simple advice is often the best.

What is your daily schedule like? Do you find the time to improve your well-being? If so, how? What items would you include on your well-being index? Please comment below!

The post What Is Your Well-Being Index? appeared first on My Curiosity Lab.