To My Girls!

About 11 years ago I made a good friend. We both were in similar stages in life and had similar philosophies – basically we were out trying to have as much fun as possible. We had a lot of fun together and thankfully didn’t get in any real trouble. Unfortunately, part of choosing to live in Korea is dealing with the fact that many of your friends will leave Korea and you won’t get to play together anymore. This is another one of those cases. James moved back to the States, got married to his girlfriend (Hyun-Jung) and started climbing the corporate ladder. I am so happy for him, but I do miss hanging out. During these years he has had a cute daughter (Lauren) and I have had you two girls. James and his wife made it back over a few years ago but Lauren was too young to play. This time James couldn’t make it but Hyun-Jung and Lauren made it back over to Korea. All you girls finally got to play together. It is so cool to see you kids play together and to think about how James and I used to play together. The cycle of life is a wonderful thing.

Lauren if a very cool girl. When I first met her she didn’t want anything to do with me. She was very reserved and shy. I understand this because you girls are very similar. You are very cautious when you first meet people and you don’t like to talk to strangers. You especially hate it when strangers try to touch you. So, I was very comfortable with the way Lauren was reacting with me and I didn’t push anything. Finally, after she realized that I wasn’t a threat you warmed up and we had a lot of fun playing together. She is full of character and I know you girls would be great friends if she didn’t live so far away.

I was watching a segment on ABC News the other day about yard sales. The economy is terrible these days and it may be the worst economy since the Great Depression. Of course, people are scared, and they should be. All the years of living beyond their means is finally catching up with them. Life has a way of balancing things out and now the economy is saying that spending beyond one’s means can not go on forever.

Anyway, I was watching this segment and one woman looked around at all the stuff she was selling in her front yard and she said, “This is my life. I am selling my life.” Then she began to tear up. Girls don’t you ever get in this situation. You have to realize that your life is not your possessions. All the stuff you own is just stuff - It is not who you are. It is so pathetic that so many people have come to think that their possessions are who they are. They think that the cars they drive and the houses they live in are in some way who they are - It’s just stuff girls. I am not saying that you should not buy stuff, but realize that it is just crap you want or stuff that will make your life more comfortable or help you have fun – it is no more than that. Don’t live your life in an attempt to gain more stuff – that is a pretty shallow life. Also, remember that everything you buy cuts into your future financial comfort.  What do I mean by that? The easy way to explain it is this way – let’s say you bought a car for $30,000, how much does that car cost you. Well, first, it will probably cost you more than $30,000 because you will most likely take out a loan to pay for it. Then there are the opportunity costs. You should be able to make 10% interest on your investments so that is around $3,000 a year in investment income you are giving up. This is not even considering compounding that investment income. So, basically by buying that one car you are losing out on thousands of dollars a year in retirement income. Keep this in mind before you go out and buy things. I am not saying that you should never buy anything, I am just saying that you should always think about this before you finally make a purchase. This should mean that you don’t go out and buy new cars all the time or keep moving into bigger and bigger homes. That is a very shallow explanation as there are so many other facets to this way of thinking and living life. Having investment income gives you freedom – both in time and in the ability to make the best choices in your life. To me, the most important freedom it will give you is the ability to walk away from a job you don’t want to do. You won’t be trapped in a job due to a dependency on the paycheck. I will continue to educate you girls in these principals as you grow up so you will have the true freedom to have the life you want.

I thought this was a good time to write this post as it comes right after the Christmas shopping list post. Like I said, you don’t have to give up on buying things but just realize it is just stuff. All of the things we are thinking about buying you for Christmas also fit well within our investing plans.

I love you girls and am so happy that I get to help you build a better life. 

Here you go honey. Does this give you more ideas about what we could possibly get for the girls?

Hello Sudona,

I was a little concerned about you this year. Specifically, I was worried about your weight gain. You have always been a big eater and you had started sitting in a classroom all day so you weren’t getting the exercise you needed. So I realized that I was not teaching you very good habits and if I didn’t do something about it right away you would grow up to live an obese life. There is nothing wrong with obese people but living an obese life is not easy. You often don’t have the energy to do all the things you want to do. People ridicule you and this puts you through emotional trials you don’t need to go through. It also dramatically cuts down on your life expectancy.

My first step was to look at myself. I don’t believe in being the parent that tells their child not to do something but then goes out and does it himself. That is a big reason why I started exercising on a regular basis. This way I have some leverage to say that you can do it because I am doing it. I also started talking about eating habits and food choices. Again, I didn’t just tell you not to eat things, I changed my eating habits and the foods I ate and I knew this would help you make the correct choices. I also focused on talking to you about eating slowly so your body has time to get the food to your stomach and tell you that you are full. I also kept focusing on talking to you about eating only when you are hungry and to stop eating when you are not hungry anymore – not eating until you are full. All of these things were working very well. When I would ask you about where you wanted to eat you would choose healthy options and would tell me that you didn’t want to eat fast food. The final stage was to get you to exercise. This was the hardest hurdle to get over. I got you on the treadmill but you never really wanted to do it. You dreaded it and always had an excuse. I was feeling frustrated with this and I was trying to come up with some other way to help you get exercise. Luckily, your mother came up with the idea of attending a dance class. What a brilliant idea this was. This way you got exercise and had fun at the same time. On top of that you would get to spend time with your mom and this would help you guys have a closer relationship. And fortunately, the teacher praises you a lot and this makes you feel good and makes you want to do it more. You have been attending the dance class for about 2 months now and I can definitely see the shape of your body changing. I don’t think you are all the way to where you should be but you are building good habits which I hope you will have with you the rest of your life.

Here is a little bit of video of you in class. (Sudona in Dance Class)

My friends roommate was taking off on a trip a few weeks ago and I asked him where he was heading off to. He said he was on his way to Egypt to trek across the Sahara. He said it was part of the 4 desserts competition. I had heard about it before so I asked him for more details. He said the whole trip takes about 10 days but you don’t trek that whole time. The actual trek lasts 6 days and covers 250 Kilometers. It costs around 3’000 dollars. There are 4 main courses that are covered throughout the year and one bonus trek done in the Antarctica. But you can not do the Antarctica trip unless you have completed 2 of the regular ones first.

Right now my plan is to run a marathon next year (2009) and then to do the Gobi Dessert trek the following year (2010). I am really enjoying my new found health and the doors it has opened both mentally and physically to me.

You can click on the pictures to go and see the site where I got the pictures from.

Hi Sudona,

I made a post a little while back about your recent tests but I didn’t have the video edited at that to add it to the post. Here you will see us playing together as a family and you explain how your tests went. You can tell from the way you talked about them that you knew you didn’t do very well on the math test. Also, in this video we get to hear you Avya talk about how you split your lip by playing with the swing. Actually, you were just trying to copy your big sister. You had seen Sudona pushing the swing and catching it when it swings back. You thought this looked like fun, or maybe you just wanted to be like your big sister, so you tried the same thing. You were not able to catch the swing on its way back and it hit you in the lip.

Well the growing season has come to an end and I think your mom did a wonderful job. On a regular basis your mother added some of her home grow vegetables to our meal. On top of that she grew a bunch of pumpkins which we used in our restaurant. Thank you so much for your hard work Saena. I hope next year your mother gets you girls more involved in the garden.

There were more pumpkins starting to grow but the weather changed and that put an end to that.