Uncommon Cents with Bowman Financial Strategies

Welcome to Uncommon Cents, your go-to podcast for financial education and retirement planning. Hosted by Erik Bowman of Bowman Financial Strategies in Englewood, Colorado, this series offers clear explanations, honest advice, and expert guidance to help you navigate the complexities of financial planning. Tune in for the latest commentary on investment, retirement, and insurance topics and trends. Discover the 80/20 Retirement Formula, focusing on three key areas: Clear Explanations, Honest Advice, and Expert Guidance. Our mission is to empower you to confidently manage your finances and achieve your retirement goals. Prepare for your financial future with helpful tools and actionable ideas to live a better life in retirement. Whether you're climbing the financial mountain or standing at the summit, Bowman Financial Strategies provides personalized roadmaps to simplify complex financial terms and investment options. We help retirees across the country reach their goals, ensuring you live well in retirement. Join us on Uncommon Cents for wealth management and retirement planning made simple. Subscribe now and let us help you reach the summit of financial success. Visit us online at https://www.bowmanfinancialstrategies.com/ or call 303-222-8034. You can also find the video version of the podcast on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRlMIf7b7rcOxboPiwq5AGg

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The Beauty of Simplicity When Planning For Retirement 06/27/2024

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The Secure Act, part 1 02/20/2020

Required Minimum Distribution 12/02/2019

Three Primary Risks in Retirement 09/09/2019

Common Beneficiary Mistakes 08/26/2019

Colorado State Tax Exemptions for Retirees 08/12/2019

Social Security Maximization 07/29/2019

RICP, My New Designation 05/06/2019

Fitness for Retirees, Interview with Janelle Graham Fitness Trainer 04/08/2019

Fitness for Retirees, Interview with Janelle Graham Fitness Trainer 04/01/2019

Health Savings Accounts and Retirement 03/28/2019

Fitness for Retirees, Interview with Janelle Graham Fitness Trainer 02/25/2019

Preparing for Tax Season 11/25/2018

Interview with Connie Pshigoda Author of The Wise Woman's Almanac 11/18/2018

Interview with Connie Pshigoda Author of The Wise Woman's Almanac A full interview with Connie Pshigoda discussing the concept of seasonal eating and its health benefits. Your Health and Your Body Are Not Cookie Cutters . . . Create a New Beginning to Last the Rest of Your Life - and That Never Go Out of Season - Starting Today! It doesn't matter what age you are . . . author and Natural Health Consultant Connie Pshigoda has crafted a variety of seasonal health tips and delicious recipes to satisfy your hunger for a better life and year-round well-being. Within the Wise Woman's Almanac, she connects Nature's seasons and your natural life rhythms, resulting in perfect harmony and balance. Throughout The Wise Woman's Almanac, you will use reflective questions, seasonal food lists, charts and exercises to achieve optimal well-being. You will discover that your physical, emotional and spiritual vitality are the essence of good health and wellness . . . not the lack of disease. The human body's physiological needs are profoundly influenced by the rhythms and cycles of the Earth's seasonal changes. You will discover that there are 5 seasons in your yearly well-being almanac: Springtime is youth, young adulthood, beginning a first career and growing through education and life experiences. Summertime is an abundance of mid-age adventures: maturing, raising a family and expanding your career options, even creating new ones. Autumn becomes a time to shine as the next empties and reaping the harvest of a successful career and your life investments. Winter brings a variety of multi-generational blessings from grandchildren, retirement, stepping into the roles of role model and mentor and sharing the wisdom that decades have accumulated. Overlapping Season combines Springtime, Summer, Autumn or Winter with one or more of the other seasons resulting in a wondrous and welcome rebirth and rejuvenation. New classes, new careers . . . a new you! /episode/index/show/bowmanfinancialstrategies/id/7599650

Interview with Kristina Lynn of Kristina Lynn Photography 11/17/2018

Interview with Kristina Lynn of Kristina Lynn Photography ERIK: Hi I’m Erik Bowman your host and owner of Bowman Financial Strategies, where we provide straight answers so you can make confident decisions to live the retirement you have always dreamed of. Today I’m speaking with Kristina Lynn Marshall of Kristina Lynn Photography. Kristina, thank you so much for joining me today. KRISTINA: Thank you so much for having me. ERIK: Before we dig into a discussion on photography and how the average person can significantly improve the quality of their pictures, whether they use a camera phone or their own digital camera, I want to give you a chance to tell everyone a little bit about yourself. KRISTINA: Yes, absolutely. My name is Kristina Lynn Marshall. I am a portrait photographer based in Stillwater, Minnesota. I also have a satellite studio in Clarion, Iowa, which is my home town. And then I also come out to Denver, Colorado a couple of times each year. I have had my business for about ten years now. January will actually be my ten-year anniversary of starting my own business. ERIK: Nice. KRISTINA: I mainly specialize in portrait photography which means high school seniors, kids, families, weddings, corporate headshots. But I also do some product photography, some architectural photography such as real estate, and interior design photos. ERIK: Very good, and just for full disclosure Kristina actually took photographs for Bowman Financial Strategies and if you go to www.bowmanfinancialstrategies.com, you’ll see a selection of photographs that are on that website that Kristina actually took for us and it was a great experience, so I highly recommend utilizing her if you ever do need professional photography services. Let’s move into really addressing some of the concerns that maybe our clients and friends of the podcast might have and specifically we know that many times a professional photographer is necessary. And a photographer is necessary for things like wedding pictures and maybe senior pictures and a professional shoot like you did for Bowman Financial Strategies, but of course people also want to take good pictures when they are on vacation or they’re visiting with their grandchildren. We can think of a lot of different moments in time where somebody just wants to take a picture and they might only have their iPhone with them. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the things that people should be thinking about when it comes to photography. And maybe we can start with what I have heard you refer to as the pre-shoot preparation. What should we do before we even think about taking a picture to give us the best chance of capturing a great picture? KRISTINA: Everyone has a camera on them almost any point and time of the day with their phone. Right now, you are seeing a lot more photos being taken, and life being documented in photography. And so yes, there’s lots of really great tips I can share with you to take those photos and can make them a little bit better. For example, a couple pre-shooting tips I have. One is clean your camera lens. So you have your camera or your phone in your pocket all the time and you are grabbing it and you are touching it. A lot of times the camera is exposed, whether it is a front facing camera or rear facing camera, and so it gets finger prints on it a lot. So one of the first tips I usually do when I pull out my camera or phone to take a picture is to wipe off the lens. ERIK: That seems so obvious and yet I can’t remember the last time that I actually cleaned the lens on my camera or on my phone camera. And if I did, I’m sure I just did it with my thumb and smeared more grease onto that lens so using a soft cloth and just not forgetting to clean that before you shoot that sounds like basic but extremely important. KRISTINA: Yeah, even now as a professional a lot of times I will quickly pull my phone out of my pocket to take a picture. And I will take a picture and look at it and it is not as sharp as it could be and it’s because my lens is dirty. So it is a very common thing and it happens all the time, but it is a very quick fix to make your photos sharper. ERIK: Awesome, well thank you for that. Why don’t we talk about some basic concepts that everyone should follow, whether they’re using their camera phone or if they are using their DSLR or digital camera. What are some of the basics they should understand and maybe we could break this into pieces, the first one being lighting. Does that sound like an appropriate place to start? KRISTINA: Yes absolutely. So when you are taking photos, one of the trickiest things to kind of think about and after is the lighting. And that is because the camera doesn’t have as much dynamic range as your eye does. So what you are seeing does not always translate into the camera. Because your eye’s adjusting to the differences between the lightness and darkness. Lighting is a really big part of taking good photos. ERIK: Can you highlight a little bit when it comes to different environments, perhaps maybe it’s a birthday party indoors compared to maybe an outside bright sunny day? What are some basic ideas about how you should think about that lighting when you’re taking a picture? KRISTINA: So if you are, for example, taking photos at your granddaughters first birthday party. The best place to take the photos if you’re indoors is closer to a window because that’s going to give you more light, more natural light, and you won’t have to rely on your flash as much. So the closer you can move your subject to the window is usually best. If you are outdoors and you are trying to photograph something, finding shade is probably your best bet. Because you are not having to deal with really bright conditions where your subject is squinting, or your camera is trying to figure out if you are backlighting with the sun behind your subject or if it’s in the front. So shade is really good and overcast days are really good. ERIK: So Kristina, when you are talking about working in the shade as an example, are you saying that the subjects are in the shade or the photographer is in the shade? KRISTINA: A lot of times for sure your subject is in the shade. You know, if you are under a tree, me as a photographer and if I’m not in the sun, it is not that big of a deal as long as the sun is not shining directly into your camera lens. It is more important for your subject to be in the shade just because the lighting is more even. If both of you can be in the shade, even better. ERIK: What would you recommend then out here in Colorado, you may very well be at a place like Daniel’s Park where there really is no shade and you want to get that background of the mountains or the backdrop of the mountains? How do you handle that if it is a bright sunny day, what are some tips? KRTISTINA: Usually, shooting earlier in the morning or later in the day when the sun is a little bit lower in the sky makes for better even lighting. So a place like Daniel’s Park, it all kind of depends on what your goal is. If you were just out there photographing the mountains and wanting a nice landscape scene, it’s better to shoot earlier in the morning because the sun will be to your back, the photographer’s back, and shining on the mountains. If you’re shooting a family out at Daniel’s Park, it is better to photograph them in the evening, closer to sunset, because then the sun is behind the subjects and you can get it so it’s maybe slightly back lighting them a little bit. But that way you don’t have the sun directly in their eyes and they are squinty. ERIK: And you know that seems counter-intuitive, I think that naturally most people who don’t do photography for a living, they think that a bright sunny day in the middle of the day actually is probably the best. And what I’ve heard you say is that it is probably the worst time of the day to get a really good picture, that you get better color, better shadows, and maybe better contrast, by taking your photos early in the morning or late in the afternoon. KRISTINA: That is exactly right. This morning I photographed this family and it was cloudy out and they made this comment of, oh how this must be horrible lighting for you. And I said no, actually a cloudy day is perfect for me, because everything is nice and even lighting, you don’t have to worry about really bright highlight spots and really dark shadows. It is more even. And it opens up the opportunity that I can take you kind of wherever and not have to worry about, well will you be facing the sun, how do I get the sun to your back. ERIK: Excellent. I have a question that keeps popping into my mind and I know when I take photos with my iPhone or really any camera, the one thing, especially if I am taking pictures of the mountains or a landscape if you will, is that it just doesn’t do it justice. You know, a sunset, as beautiful as the colors may be, you just don’t seem to get the, I don’t know, the depth or the detail or the expansiveness that you are seeing with yours eyes. What is it that causes the difference between what you are seeing and a photograph that just doesn’t really pull it out and make it look as great as you think it is when you are looking at it live. KRISTINA: Great question. It all has to do with, your eyes are very dynamic. Because, you know they are attached to your brain. And so your brain kind of knows that this is the thing you are looking at and you can see the different colors whereas when you are taking a photograph, you are at the mercy of your camera and what your camera thinks is how it should be. Especially when shooting with your smartphone. Your smartphone is programmed to kind of look at the entire scene and kind of average it out so that your brights aren’t too bright and your darks aren’t too dark. It will kind of be in the middle. When photographing something like a sunset on the mountains, it can be kind of tricky because you have that sunlight pouring into your lens. And your camera is saying, oh it’s really really bright and I need to darken it down. So then you lose the detail in the mountains. Or your camera will go the other way and say, oh look at the mountains and that is the really dark area, let’s brighten that up, which then makes you lose your sunset because it is overexposing it and you lose all the colors. So there is actually a setting on all the cameras that I recommend using for situations like this. It’s called the HDR setting and that stands for High Dynamic Range. And while that is not a fix-all for everything, it does really help create more of a little bit closer to what your eye is seeing. Because what it does is your camera is taking all this information and saying those are the really bright spots, those are the really dark spots. Let’s kind of average that out and not overexpose or underexpose, but kind of go right in the middle. ERIK: I always wondered what that meant, I didn’t know what it meant, I didn’t know what it did. Sometimes my camera would be on HDR and sometimes it’s not. So that’s very helpful, so there is a specific time and place for using that, so that’s awesome to know. So we have talked a little bit about lighting, actually we talked a lot about lighting and I know I have learned a couple of things for sure. One of the other components of photography is staging. Which in my mind, and correct me if I’m wrong, is really talking about what elements do you have inside of the picture. Are there things on the table? If there is a birthday cake with candles, what do you do to make the photograph more interesting knowing that sometimes you have limited control over what you can actually do as far as staging is concerned. But maybe you can enlighten us a little bit on some tips and some techniques that you use. KRISTINA: Staging is definitely important because it is kind of setting the scene for what you are taking. But kind of a couple things to think about, anything that is in the foreground. You are photographing a birthday, and there’s a table with a cake, and your one-year old granddaughter behind the cake. But then there’s a bunch of presents right in front of you on the table. If you were to put those in the picture, they’re going grab your attention and it is going to take away from the actual picture you want to take of your granddaughter and her birthday cake and the candles. Something as simple as just moving things off of the table, getting them out of the foreground, will help. When you are grouping people together, like if you are doing a family photo, put people in groups so that obviously the taller people are in the back and the shorter people are in the front. But to create even more interest, you can do different levels. So instead of just having everyone standing, put people on different levels where there are some standing, some sitting, to create some interest. ERIK: And I think that little bit of controlling the environment and changing those head heights as you say can really make a big difference, so that’s really good input. KRISTINA: Yes, and even doing something where instead of lining everyone up in one big line, you do two different rows. So have the taller people in the back and the shorter people in the front. And put the taller people towards the middle of your grouping so that kind of naturally falls off on either side. ERIK: Excellent. The next topic we had talked about a little bit earlier today and I just find it extremely interesting how the human brain works and when it’s evaluating a picture, what makes it just seem better, naturally. And when it comes to framing a picture appropriately, what are some of the techniques and rules of thumb that the amateur photographer should be thinking about? KRISTINA: One of the rules that first comes to mind is what is called the Rule of Thirds. And this is more for composition. So to make something a little bit more interesting in your photos, instead of putting your subject directly in the middle of your frame, move it slightly to the left or to the right. So picture your view finder, or looking through your view finder, as a grid going across to kind of make like a tic-tac-toe board. ERIK: Right, so there’s nine blocks. KRISTINA: Yes, exactly. So when you do that, put those people kind of on one of the, not right in the middle, but the line to the left or to the right. That will kind of just create a little more visual interest. That way it kind of draws your eye through the photo a little bit more. ERIK: I do believe that the iPhone actually has the ability for you to have that grid up and probably you could expand on this too. Do the DSLR cameras actually have a grid that you can see? I think the iPhones do. KRISTINA: Yes, a lot of time on your iPhones and on your smartphones just in general, there are apps or ways you can put up a grid on there. So that you can kind of be mindful of the Rule of Thirds and be like, oh instead of right here in the middle, let’s move them to the left or to the right depending on what we are trying to capture just to add a little bit more interest. ERIK: And I think to expand on that one little bit, is the Rule of Thirds applies vertically as well. So depending on the photo you’re taking, it’s not always a left or right adjustment, it may be an adjustment high and low, correct? KRISTINA: Correct. For example, let’s say you are doing a landscape photo and you have the mountains and you’ve got beautiful clouds in the sky and you want to be able to capture both of those. It’s better to put maybe towards the bottom of the frame versus right in the middle so you can get more of the clouds or vice-versa depending on what you are going for. ERIK: Excellent, it seems straight forward and obvious when we talk about it here. When in reality, I probably haven’t been using any of these techniques when I take pictures and then I wonder why they don’t look as good as they probably could, so that’s great information. Next let’s talk a little bit of what I think what is becoming more and more important, which is nobody has photographs anymore. I know down in our basement, we have hundreds of photographs of our first three children. And then since iPhone’s became kind of ubiquitous, my youngest child, Jacob, who is eleven years old, that poor kid, he’s not in any paper photographs. And what it really highlights is the need for appropriate backup and then how you might be able to use those digital pictures other than showing somebody your phone periodically and then one day it gets deleted and it’s no longer there. Do you have any advice on backing up the photos? KRISTINA: Yes, so backing up is becoming very important. Because when you think about it, if you are documenting everything on your phone, what do you do if you lose your phone? For example, I know my sister, who has four little kids, she doesn’t have a camera. She has her phone, that is what she uses for her camera. Which is great, because then she can take pictures on the go. But she doesn’t print them as often as she should. And so a lot of her memories are living on her phone. Well what do you do then when you go to upgrade your phone? Are you saving them to an external hard drive? Do you even save them to an SD card in your phone? Are you just saving them on the actual phone hard drive itself? ERIK: What are some ways of backing it up? Maybe what are the top two ways you would recommend for somebody to quickly and easily get those photos off of the iPhone for future use? KRISTINA: One of the quickest ways to back up your photos, is most phones in general will even let you setup so that every photo you take on your camera will back up to a DropBox folder or your Google Drive. And so it is actually constantly backing up with every photo that you take once you attach yourself to WIFI. Sometimes it will pull everything from your phone and put it into your DropBox folder. So that would be my number one recommendation, if you don’t have something like that setup, do it now. Super easy, both Dropbox and Google Drive are free. And so it’s a very simple thing that you just go into your camera settings on your phone and tell it where to back up to. So it will just upload it to the cloud for you. ERIK: If they don’t have that, somebody might not be quite tech savvy enough or have a desire to work with an app, how else do you simply get your pictures off your phone if you need to do it manually? KRISTINA: There’s a bunch of different work arounds I would say. You can always email yourself photos. But that can be kind of cumbersome. A lot of phones have like an internal SD card that you can put in there and you can set it so that your camera is saving your photos to the SD card, which then at some point in time you can take out and you can download them to your computer and back them up on a hard drive that way. But again, if you lose your phone, you lost your SD card. The backing up to the cloud is actually the easiest, and a lot of times it is as simple as finding it in your settings and saying go. ERIK: That explains though why most people have all these photographs and then when they run out of room they have to start deleting them. It is because it actually isn’t just obvious and straight forward how to get them off of your phone and onto your computer. So using either the cloud, and I think that Apple offers an Apple cloud kind of area where you can download photos, but using a free app called DropBox or Google Drive, once again, which I use extensively for saving documents actually for business purposes.... /episode/index/show/bowmanfinancialstrategies/id/7596821

Interview with Rolf Potts, Author of Vagabonding 11/17/2018

Interview with Rolf Potts, Author of Vagabonding ERIK: Hi everyone and thank you for joining me today for the first episode of Mastering Monday’s, the interview segment, with our amazing guest Rolf Potts. Have you ever considered travelling to far off lands and staying not just for a few days or a week, but for three weeks, one month, or maybe even longer? If the thought of living in another country and exploring their culture and not just sight-seeing excites you and gets you dreaming about places you have never seen, you must get familiar with Rolf Potts. Rolf is perhaps best known for promoting the ethic of independent travel and his book on the subject, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel from Random House 2003, has been through thirty printings and translated into several foreign languages. On a personal note, Vagabonding has transformed how my wife and I think about travel and has propelled us to action. We now have some very exciting travel plans in this next year, but that’s for another day. More about Rolf. Rolf Potts is reported for more than sixty countries for the likes of National Geographic Traveler, the New Yorker, Outside, The New York Times magazine, Sports Illustrated, National Public Radio, and the Travel Channel. His adventures have taken him across six continents and include hitchhiking across eastern Europe, traversing Israel on foot, bicycling across Burma, driving a Land Rover across South America, and travelling around the world for six weeks with no luggage or bags of any kind. His collection of literary travel essays, Marco Polo Didn’t Go there: Stories and Revelations from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer (Travelers’ Tales 2008), won a 2009 Lowell Thomas award from the Society of American Travel Writers and became the first American authored book to win Italy’s prestigious Chatwin Prize for travel writing. Though he rarely stays in one place for more than a few weeks or months, Potts feels somewhat at home in Bangkok, Cairo, Busan, New York, New Orleans, and north central Kansas, where he keeps a small farm house on thirty acres near his family. Each July he can be found in France where he is the summer writer in residence and program director at the Paris American academy. And I am honored to have Rolf with me today, so without further ado, here is my interview with Rolf Potts. ERIK: Thank you for joining me for another episode of Mastering Monday’s. This is the interview segment, and this is the interview segment that I mentioned in the last Mastering Monday email with Rolf Potts. So Rolf is with me today, Rolf thank you so much for being with me today. ROLF: I’m happy to talk with you. ERIK: I’m really excited to speak with you. I know that many of the concepts in your book, Vagabonding, have actually impacted my way of thinking about travel, and actually how my wife and I think about travel is a more accurate description, and I want to thank you for that because the information in this book has just truly revolutionized the way I’m thinking about our future travel. We are currently engaging in the planning and the dreaming of what this potential travel is going to look like 2019 and we’re looking at doing an experimental trip of maybe four to six weeks over in Europe or maybe south America, but I thought maybe you could take just a moment and provide a high level summary of your book Vagabonding, which is the source of my inspiration, and how do you experience or how have you experienced long term travel and the primary way that long term travel differs from traditional travel and vacationing. ROLF: Yeah, well the core idea is to enable people, practically and just as importantly philosophically, in a matter of attitude. Travelling the world in earnest for weeks and months and years instead of just previously allotted vacation time. You should think about how you spend your time and spend your time in a way that enhances your life and causes you to dream. And so quite simply, and I’m not going to knock vacations, because vacations are rewarding activities, but often times vacations are very short term, they are very constricted, they are sort of bought like a commodity. You tend to throw money at a vacation. Whereas Vagabonding is more taking your life on the road. And there are some parts of the world where you can literally spend less per week than you spend at home, with rent and food and everything else. And so you are travelling not as a consumer but just sort of moving through the local economy, finding a way to save money and make it pay out in time. And really just to live those travel dreams that most of us have had our whole lives that we don’t think apply to us. When in fact not only do they apply to us, that we should take practical ways to make sure that they can happen to us. ERIK: Right, you know as I have listened to your book and read your book, I have done it both ways, that way I can tab it and mark things that are interesting, I have just wondered to myself, “How did you begin doing this?” What was the impotence or the origin of you deciding to travel and maybe you could offer my audience a short story that describes how you became such a world traveler in the first place? And maybe even how that relates to your ability to write about that so poignantly in your books in essays. ROLF: Sure, well I am a very American soul. I grew up in Kansas, right in the middle of the country. I always loved going on vacations when I was a kid, but I didn’t see the ocean until I left because my family travelled locally but not very much far distance travel. And I really grew up thinking that I would save all of my travels for the end of my life, I didn’t even think about it too much. This describes my travel plans as it was post-retirement. But then as I got older, there were several factors that made me realize that regardless of how you shape things out in your life as a traveler, it’s good to optimize travel now. And so I was in my early twenties when I thought this, but I’m not saying this in a way that should deter the older demographic such as your clients, but I just thought that based on a summer job in Kansas stocking shelves in a grocery store, I really didn’t like it very much. And then I realized that any ongoing work, regardless what relation it was, I didn’t really care for, was sort of what I was in for. I thought I was going to create my own alternative to the American workaholic life – I’ll take a dream trip and then I can go back to being an American workaholic. So when I was quite young, actually I was still in college, I graduated in college and I worked as a landscaper. A good blue-collar job. Saved a lot of money, got a van. Travelled around the United States for about eight months. And it’s still one of my favorite trips, and I have been to many more exotic places since then. But you can only have that first deeply meaningful trip once I guess. And I just realized that travel wasn’t as expensive as you might think it would be. It’s not as dangerous or difficult as you think it might be. Travel was something that I could accept, not just travel in the vacation sense but long-term travel, as something that I could access my whole life. And so I later went and started to run out of money. I went to Korea to teach English oversees for a couple of years. And that is something we can come back to, working oversees and teaching oversees. And that can apply to all different kinds of all ages and demographics. But I saved some more money, and two years working in Korea afforded me two and a half years of travelling around Asia full-time, and that is when I transitioned into being a travel writer. That was twenty years ago this November, nineteen years and eleven months ago that I was still in Korea doing my work. And now I have been a travel writer. That Asia and European and Middle Eastern Vagabonding trip brought home the lessons from my first Vagabonding trip. That travel doesn’t need to be super expensive, you can take your time, you don’t have to micromanage it, you can learn as you go, and it can be a really life enhancing project. And so I have sort of internalized that, it’s not like I have been travelling fulltime for the last twenty years. I alternate periods at home, I actually have a home, a home base at least, back in Kansas. As a travel writer, I am gone most of the year, probably more often than not. But I have a place to come home to. And travel has really enhanced my life and home has enhanced my travels. And it has become a, well it’s a normal way of living for me. And my book Vagabonding, which showed up on your radar, has been out for fifteen years now. And it’s been out as an audiobook for about five years now. And I’ve just had this conversation with many, many, people over the years and often times it’s just a matter of reassurance. It’s just a matter of me reassuring people that it can happen. You don’t have to be an extraordinary Indiana Jones person for this to happen. You just have to make some small adjustments to enable it to happen. ERIK: Right, you know when you hear about how you started your travel life, it seems so unique compared to the experience to most people. And I just thought of so many questions as you were describing that. So really, in no particular order, one of them is that yes, our listeners are transitioning from this stage of accumulating wealth so that they can retire and not have to work anymore and maybe they haven’t had a chance to do that. And they may not be interested or physically able even to do a year at a time, but maybe certainly more than a week at a time. Which is where you get that buzz of sight seeing that can be a little unfulfilling as opposed to living somewhere and getting into the culture and getting to know people. One of the other associated, I think, built in limitations that people have, are that they presume they need high end accommodations. They presume they need a granite countertop, a hotel bed of a certain quality. What would you say to those people that are now just considering this maybe after age fifty-five and trying to give them a comfort level about what the accommodations may actually be like and why you don’t necessarily need that fancier four-star hotel feel to truly, truly, enjoy your trip. ROLF: Well, addressing one thing that you mentioned earlier, which is length of travel. And I have taken some trips that have been eight months, two years. But I have always insisted that travel isn’t a contest. It’s not about how long your trip is but what kind of trip fits your desires and dreams as a traveler. I don’t know if I could travel for more than two years at a time. And I know some people who would travel for six weeks and that scratches their travel itch and it just makes them happy, and I really respect that. I think one thing for your listeners to consider is just how much of a chunk of their year they want to spend travelling. Because they could take a whole year, or they could do a smaller portion of that year that is longer than a typical vacation. As far as accommodation, this is something that shifted slightly for me. There was some dirt bag, hostel, travelling that I did in my twenties that I don’t do now that I am in my forties. I am more likely to rent a car now that I am in my forties. And I am more likely to seek out certain kinds of comfort simply because I can afford it. And you know, in a place like Thailand, you can find a dirt bag guesthouse for ten dollars and it’s fine. There is not much room in it, you might be sharing a little hall with backpackers from all over the world, which is kind of interesting, but an older demographic of travelers can spend maybe thirty dollars and get a place that is clean and beautiful and comfortable. And it is just locally owned. It is not a Hilton or a Radisson, it is just owned by the local people in Thailand or Colombia or Romania. And it’s not an extravagant place, but as I have said in my book, I quote a guy who says, “For all your wealth, you only sleep in one bed.” A bed and a combination is the place where you are going to be sleeping. For most of the day you will be seeing the world. You don’t travel the world to have your best night’s sleep. And actually, the best way to enable a good night sleep, even if you are not in a super expensive hotel room, is to have some good adventures during the day and earn your sleep. I am a big fan of travelling in that local economy. Side stepping, I think there is this assumption that we need a lot of middle men, or we need to plan everything in advance, that a brand name hotel is going to be a better hotel. And I’m not going to knock brand name hotels, but the world is full of cheap hotels, inexpensive restaurants and food stalls, even in a place like Mexico or eastern Europe – bus lines that are wonderfully comfortable and a fraction of a price to the other ways of getting around. This is something that you can research or something you can discover on the road. ERIK: It almost seems like one of the basic behavior patterns that somebody might need to break is that of preconceived ideas of what it is going to be like. Open yourself up to the idea that it may not be as uncomfortable or that people will be interested in you or being around people you don’t know is actually going to be an enjoyable experience. ROLF: Yeah, it’s not going to be uncomfortable, but even just slightly changing your idea of what comfort is. Maybe you don’t need a super high thread count sheet. Maybe you don’t need a five-course meal or a personally driven tour car. There are just ways of keeping an open mind to what’s required because I think that there’s a mindset in the US that is tied into a fear of faraway places and what might happen there. But it’s not routed in empirical information. Its routed in workspace scenario. And it’s so easy to be safe and to save money, and to have a great time on the road. Even if your fifty, sixty, seventy, years old. It’s just a matter of being open to that empirical reality rather than the fear. ERIK: You know that brings me to a quick question which is when you really went on maybe one of your first more exotic trips, to a place you hadn’t been before. And you had less experience under your belt. I’m assuming there was a level of anxiety as you have just expressed, can you tell me just a little bit about what was different about that first or second travel experience oversees? How was it different than what you thought it would be like and talk on how that related specifically about your pretravel anxiety. ROLF: Well, when you’re asking that question – what popped in my head was actually my USA trip, my very first one before I went overseas, and I lived in a camper for eight months. And I was just worried, should I bring a firearm? What should I do – I was living in a van much of the time. Is that going to create a problem, what am I going to do every day? How are expenses going to shape out? And I just found that just by planning for but confronting those sorts of fears, it’s as if a part of me was waiting for the bad things to happen and they just never did. And each day on the trip I not only became more confident in regard to those fears, I also became more competent as far as granting those things and becoming a savvier traveler. I had weird anxieties like would I be accepted in the youth hostels, what would people make of me? Did I have the right shoes? All of this stuff. And every single case was just something where I walked into each situation and the worst-case scenario never really actualized themselves. And I could use my competence and could jump ahead a little bit in my travel career - in 2010 I went around the world with no luggage. ERIK: Right, for six weeks, right? ROLF: Yeah, it was sort of a stunt. Just stuck a few items in a vest, including a little bit of backup clothing. And I had a cameraman with me, and you can find that video series online, the one problem was that I adapted so quickly, that after a week having no luggage wasn’t a challenge. I just washed my extra clothes every day. And I didn’t worry about what kind of junk I had in my pockets, because all my entertainment, all my activity, all my food, was outside of my person. It was in the destination itself. And so that was a trip that I undertook ten years into my travel career, but it reminded me how easily adaptable we are. And I say it in the book, but the way to create the money to travel is to simplify your life, is to downsize a little bit. And an actualization of that is trying to put everything you own in a backpack and trying to go around the world, which you can’t. Travel already forces you to simplify. And in this very extreme case of simplification from my baggage trip, I realized that even having next to nothing, even having two spare pares of underwear, a spare t-shirt, a toothbrush, and a few other things, even that is something that I got used to. ERIK: You know another aspect, the folks that are listening to this podcast, the fantastic realization is they actually have experience. They’ve been alive for fifty-five, or sixty, or sixty-five years old or more. And they have travelled. And they probably know more than they might even think they know that they could apply to maybe long-term travel. And a lot of them actually are at a point where they want to downsize so they don’t have as many material things. I see that happen as a natural course of events from retiring. So in some respects, the idea of longer travel, less material possessions, or a smaller place to house those, is a natural fit for this. And just a realization that longer travel could be a perfect fit for retirees. That brings me to really this idea that you’ve travelled so extensively, that I’m sure that you run into folks fifty-five plus that are travelling around the world. Some vacationing, some longer-term travel. And as you’ve run into those people, can you just briefly talk a little bit about – what have you found is their rationale at that age for doing longer term travel? How did they overcome some of the barricades to making that happen? The norms and the culture that might naturally preclude that from taking place? And how have they felt differently having been on a trip? ROLF: I’ve met a spectrum of travelers who are older. Who are around retirement age. And the funny thing is that the happiest ones are the kind that you meet in the hostel and the unhappiest ones are the ones you meet at the resort. And I’m not knocking resorts, and just saying resorts bring out your inner adolescence. I’ve heard so many complaints, people spending a lot of money in a beautiful part of the world who complain because their soup is cold. And they didn’t get another towel at the swimming pool or something. That somehow these small little worries creep into the vacations of even the most expensive travelers. Whereas older travelers who just are relaxed and ease into it and sort of travel on the cheap, sometimes on the same trails as backpackers take, sometimes a little bit more money than most backpacker’s take, they learn to appreciate that it just doesn’t matter if the soup is cold. You are on the other side of the world, you are living your dream. That is the irony that I have found, the happiest retiree travelers I have met are the ones out having adventures. One thing you were talking about earlier, that people of the retirement age have more life experience. Those things are so transferable to the travel experience. I’ve met men and women who have spent their whole life negotiating contracts and clients who are lights out in a market on the far... /episode/index/show/bowmanfinancialstrategies/id/7596725

Richard Koch, the 80/20 rule, Pareto's Principle 11/17/2018

Hot Sauna, Book: Tools of Titans, Photography 11/17/2018

Benjamin Franklin biography, Meditation App, Wine Recommendation 11/17/2018

Benjamin Franklin biography, Meditation App, Wine Recommendation Mastering Monday’s is a podcast designed to provide you with tools to live better. Hi, I’m Erik Bowman your host and owner of Bowman Financial Strategies; Where we help you create a boring retirement plan and an exciting retirement. Hi all I’m Erik Bowman your host and I really hope you are enjoying this day. It is after all the only one like it that you will ever experience, so welcome. This is the inaugural podcast of Mastering Monday’s and I want to give you background on why I am creating this and what you can expect. Future Mastering Monday podcasts won’t have this prologue so bear with me for just a minute or two and then we will dive into the first Mastering Monday topics. I’ve been thinking very hard lately about ways that I can more fully serve the needs of the people, that I am grateful to be able to call my clients and friends. The primary reason we create financial plans at Bowman Financial Strategies is so that you can live the life that you want to live without worrying about finances. I like to think of it as creating a predictable or boring income plan and an exciting retirement. To this end, I am going to be sending out an email on the first Monday of the month called Mastering Monday. I will discuss various topics and obsessions of mine that revolve around living well. There will also be a podcast, you are listening to it right now, that goes into slightly more detail than the email. Target listening time should be no more than five to ten minutes at the maximum. I am also going to be creating additional content including interviews with people who have uncommon knowledge that may be very useful to you. The first interview segment, unbelievably to me, is with American author . An amazing guy, world traveler, extraordinaire, and an excellent writer. You can go to to listen to that podcast. I highly recommend it if you ever think you will travel again, it may change the way you approach the whole idea of travel. More about the Mastering Monday series: there are many personal and communal aspects to living well. Thoughts that come to my mind are number one being as healthy as you can be. Number two, hobbies. What is it that we do for enjoyment that don’t revolve around work. Growing by giving. Number four, spiritual satisfaction. Number five, nurturing relationships. Number six, continuous education. And number seven, goal setting and personal progress. Now this list is really just a start and I would love to hear your thoughts on living well. You can email me at [email protected]. That’s Erik with a k, E-R-I-K, or you can post it onto Facebook at the Bowman Financial Strategies page, or simply give me a call. I’ve already been provided great ideas by my clients, friends, and readers of Mastering Monday – the first edition. So, your input is appreciated as I want to discuss ideas that you find relevant. So, let’s dig in to how you can master your Monday. Reading is fundamental. The earliest self-help guru of all time maybe Benjamin Franklin. I’m currently listening to his autobiography. The perspective he writes from is from himself to his son as he imparts his personal history and passions in writing. A few takeaways from the book include the fact that he apparently was quite a physical rockstar. Most depictions and representations of him are of him as an older gentleman and appearing a little bit more portly. However, just as he applied ongoing learning and turned it into action in his business and relational life, he also applied it to his health and well-being, with great success I might add. He was known to be an avid and competitive swimmer and to have uncanny fortitude to pursue his business goals late into the evening and rising before everybody else to start again. He was writing and learning on a continuous basis, and his skills and focus on continuous improvement are extraordinarily motivating. Another notable trait was that he drank no alcohol. His reasons were that it saved him money, as all of his peers were drinking and spending money on the alcohol, therefore he had more money than his peers to pursue his business endeavors. He also simply wanted to have a clear head for clear thinking. Now I’m not ever going to claim that I am not going to stop all drinking, but the idea of moderation is one we should all take to heart. Since the book is written in the dialect of the day, in his own words, it may not be the easiest audio book to listen to before you go to bed. I found myself having to concentrate on it to decipher some of the old English delivery. However, after a night or two I did find that my brain became more accustom to it and I was able to actually understand it much more comfortably. What’s in your mind? Many of the most successful people in the world share certain behaviors, and one of them is silent time meditation or praying. Depending on your world view, choose the one that is right for you. If Tony Robins, the , Steve Jobs, and can find time to do it, it may be worth investigating. The most common idea or thought the around this silent time, the way to do it would be to sit or lie down, eyes closed, breathing smoothly, and dwelling on a couple different things. The first one is to think about what you are grateful for. The second is to visualize a successful day. And the third, commit to making someone happy. When I think about these, to unpack them just a little bit, when you think about what you are grateful for I think it puts you in the mindset to realize that the things you are grateful for have to do with what others have done for you. The environment that you are lucky enough to be in. The things that help you enjoy your life, and when you focus on those things, it’s pretty hard to start your day on the wrong foot. And second, visualizing a successful day - I specifically recommend that as you do this, you not only visualize a successful day in general, but specifically, what are the one or two things that you must get done this day to have a successful day? And when it comes to actually taking action on those items, trying to get those done the very first thing before you do anything else. And the third, trying to make somebody happy. I think that you need to think specifically about a person, whether - the other day I thought very hard about my son Jacob who is eleven years old, and not that he was going through any particular hard time, but he just really came into my mind and I thought to myself - I pictured him with a smile on his face. What could I do to help his day be happier? And it made me happy to think about that and certainly my direction for the day was guided by that thought. I recommend doing this for just five minutes, maybe ten minutes, before you start your day and I think it can change your life. If you find that it is hard to find five minutes to do this, then you might need this more than you think. You should also do this, very important, before you open up any email, before you look at your phone, before you look at Facebook, before you read the news, do not let any of that information and noise interrupt your ability to think about those three topics. Controlling the first ten minutes of your day is a great way to set a good rhythm for the rest of your day. Now a way you can facilitate this - you can consider using a free app from Kevin Rose called Oak Mediation. You can find it on the app store, although there are a lot of apps with the word oak in it, so it is hard to find there. But you can go to . The app is very simple to use, provides guided breathing exercises and sleep programs. During the sleep program component, you can choose different types of sounds to help you get to sleep, to play in the background on a timer. So that is really what I like most about it. My wife and I use a Bluetooth speaker and put it on the bedside table. We like the sound of a soft rain or crackling fire in the background and we have found that it really does help us get to sleep. It gives you something else to focus on other than all those crazy thoughts that may be bouncing around inside your head. And it really does seem to help us sleep better as well. Food for thought. Well, as I just spoke about, I believe that managing alcohol intake is actually very important. And with my focus in general on trying to manage what goes into my gut, I am sticking primarily to red wine. There will always be exceptions, I’m not claiming I’m never going to have a beer, or whiskey, or vodka again, however as a general rule I do try and stay away from those going forward. And I have a glass of red wine maybe once a night or once every other night, and I just thought I would let you know of a red wine that I particularly like and I like it for a couple of reasons. First, the red wine’s name is Hot To Trot red blend and it is by . You can find it at almost any liquor store, the bottle costs around $7.99 so it’s definitely on the inexpensive side. I’ve been drinking the red blend since my mother-in-law recommended it to me over six years ago, so I want to thank my mom, she is my mother-in-law but I do call her mom. I want to thank her for that recommendation because we still drink it to this day. I like it because it’s smooth, it doesn’t have a strong bite, I haven’t found anybody to have a glass when they come over for dinner to our house who hasn’t said that they’ve enjoyed it. And the price just doesn’t change. It has been six years and the price is still $7.99. Sometimes it is $8.99, but it seems to bounce around within that one-dollar range. So very smooth, very drinkable, and their other wines are really good too. The chardonnay is fantastic. Well, that does it for the inaugural podcast of Mastering Monday’s. I hope you enjoyed it and got something useful out of it. If you have any ideas, please feel free to email me or give me a call and I will be glad to incorporate those ideas into the upcoming podcast series. Thanks very much, have a great day. /episode/index/show/bowmanfinancialstrategies/id/7595999

Uncommon Cents with Bowman Financial Strategies

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