Month: July 2019

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TheYoungRetireeBy33’s Miracle Morning – How to Supercharge Each Day!

Finally time to complete Part III of my Miracle Morning posts!

I hope you have received some value to this point from the first two posts! It’s now time to detail through my Miracle Morning! If you haven’t had a chance to read either of the first two posts, here they are!

Part I – How I Found The Miracle Morning

Part II – It Begins The Night Prior!

Now, time to get into the Miracle Morning! Your Miracle Morning should be tailored to what works best for you. I am going to detail what I have found to work well for me. This has evolved over the course of a year. I also recommend to keep things fresh and mix it up every once in a while.

Beginning of The Miracle Morning:

Before beginning my Miracle Morning, I wake up, drink a full glass of water followed by brushing my teeth. Here is a little trick to get your brain working early in the morning. Brush your teeth with the opposite hand. This helps kick in your motor functions early in the morning and gets your brain to think. A small tip I have learned 🙂 now we are ready.

Silence (5-10 minutes)

I start every morning with meditation. For this, I use an app called ‘Insight Timer’. There are many reasons I enjoy Insight Timer and there are also a lot of other apps that will do the same trick. I have found Insight Timer to work well as all the meditations are free. Insight Timer has meditations specific to jump starting your morning. Those are the ones I focus on. I try to keep to only listening to morning meditations that last 5-10 minutes. I will open the Insight Timer, prop up some pillows on the bed, begin the meditation, and try to quiet the mind. Quieting the mind has been the most challenging thing for me to do. My mind races throughout the entire day. I have found performing meditation in the morning has helped to focus my mind to begin each day. Not to painful to wake up and do nothing right? Okay, now for step two.

Affirmations (5-10 minutes)

What are affirmations you might wonder? I wondered the same thing before learning of the Miracle Morning. Everything that we say to ourselves out loud or in our thoughts can be an affirmation. There are many different types of affirmations. To make things simple for myself, I used the free affirmation sheet provided by Hal at http://www.tmmbook.com. Checkout his website and he will email you copies of exactly what I read.

Once you have the affirmation document, and read through it, this will make a little more sense. Affirmations have reinforced positive thoughts and actions for me. Now time for step three.

Visualization (5-10 minutes)

I won’t lie, this is one I still struggle with each morning. I don’t even remember what I did at the beginning of each morning when I started this practice. Now, I focus on thinking in three different aspects.

First Focus: Where do I want to be in 5 years with my personal relationships, finances, and mission?

Second Focus: What do I plan on doing the next month, 6 months, and year to help get to the 5 year vision?

Third Focus: What do I plan on doing today to help me get to the 5 year vision.

Now time for step four.

Reading (10-15 minutes)

The first logical thing most would ask is, “What should I read?” Facebook posts? IG? Twitter feed? NOOOO! The reading segment of my Miracle Morning consists of reading a book. The book will usually be focused around personal development or investing. These are what currently interest me, but I would recommend you to find what interests you. Step five…here we go.

Scribing (5-10 minutes)

Scribing, or journaling, is a very key practice to perform each morning. I use the ‘Five Minute Journal’ each morning and evening.

The ‘Five Minute Journal’ helps to focus my mindset for the beginning of the day. Each morning you will turn the journal to the next page and input the date at the top. The first thing you read in the journal is a thoughtful quote or a Challenge for the Week. Next, I write down three things I am grateful for that morning. This can be anything. The main focus of this is to get your mind thinking thoughts of gratefulness. I then write down three things that would make the day great. Again, the main focus of this being mindset. The last thing I write is one affirmation.

I recommend purchasing the ‘Five Minute Journal’ as it is a great guide. It also has a great end of night journal entry. If you have any questions about it, feel free to reach out. Now time for the last step of the process.

Exercise (5-10 minutes)

The last thing I end my Miracle Morning with is a little exercise. Hundreds of studies have proven the benefits of getting blood flowing to your brain. For that reason, I end my Miracle Morning with 5 minutes of exercise. I recently started doing something a little bit different. I will do push ups till I can’t do a another one (right now up to 50-55 in a row) and I will then jump up to do 60 jumping jacks. I have found this to help stress my body and get the heart rate up.

Not too bad right? Yes this is a lot to do each morning, but I recommend performing these tasks. I have found doing these to increase my productivity every day.

Ways To Supercharge Your Miracle Morning

Here are a few ways I have found to take it the extra step further if you want to challenge yourself even more:

  1. Finish your Miracle Morning by taking a cold shower. Yes, you read that right. A cold shower. Are you brave enough to try? Most aren’t. I have started doing this and it has been awesome.
  2. Outside of setting up my meditation though Insight Timer, cut the need to look at any electronic screen. Remove all technology if possible.
  3. Focus on quieting the mind. Don’t let your mind race through your Miracle Morning. This practice is designed to be a time of clarity. Stop focusing on what is to come of the day.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Start each morning by drinking a full glass of water and brushing your teeth with the opposite hand.
  2. Find what works best for you. The above detail is the order I perform my Miracle Morning. This is not the only way to do it. Change the order you do things if you feel like it would work better for you that way.
  3. Taking charge of the first hour of the day is one of the most critical pieces to setting yourself up for a successful day ahead.

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If You Stop Learning You Will Start Dying Inside

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything they learned in school – Albert Einstein.

Thoughtful quote from one of the greatest, Albert Einstein. Each time I read this quote, it makes me think something different.

I want to take this one in the direction of why continuous learning is so important in life. This was a concept two years ago I didn’t understand to the degree I wish. Two years ago I didn’t see a point of reading books or continuing to educate myself. I felt as if I had finished college and I would never want to continue to learn.

How You Once Were, Shouldn’t Shape What You Can Become

I despised reading. I despised the thought of sitting down to learn new things. I mean, why would I want to go back to learning after I was already done with college? Wasn’t that the point of college? Learn everything you need and go into the real world working your way up the corporate ladder.

I now have the mindset of wanting to continue to learn and develop myself every day. There are many ways to develop and learn. My favorite ways consist of consuming content in the form of books, podcasts and doing!

How My Mindset and Actions Have Evolved Over Time

In the last two years I have evolved my personal development to find what works best for me. This has consisted of replacing tunes while driving with personal finance/investing podcasts. Replacing watching tv reality shows with youtube interview programs like Impact Theory. Replacing my morning rush to work with a Miracle Morning routine that has me waking up excited for the day to come.

To me, the second you stop learning is the second you begin to lose the motivation and drive. Over the last year and a half I have consumed over 500 podcasts episodes, read over 30 personal development books and taken action on house hacking!

Every individual is different. You have to find which medium you best enjoy learning from. I am much more of a visual learner. Find what works best for you, but the main point is never stop learning! Even though you might have your degree doesn’t mean you should stop learning! Create goals that challenge your personal development and ability to continue learning.

Key Takeaways:

  • Never stop learning. Period.
  • Find the medium you enjoy learning from most. You are not going to be like other individuals. You are unique. Test different things out till you find what you enjoy.
  • Find others who you respect and want to be like in 5 years and begin consuming their content. I have gone down many rabbit holes from finding a content creator and brilliant mind. I recommend you do something similar.
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Getting Rid Of PMI – Part II

In a previous post I talked about how I planned to get rid of Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). Here is a quick recap of what I was planning.

I purchased the current home I house hack using a FHA 3.5% down payment. A downside of using a FHA loan is paying Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). Private mortgage insurance is an extra cost associated with the loan. This is a sunk cost you will never see again. Lenders charge this as an FHA loan is considered to be a higher risk loan. —–
My PMI payment, on a loan of $281,000, is $97 per month. Again, this is a sunk cost. Each month I am paying $97 that isn’t going towards my principal or interest payments. Knowing my home has appreciated since purchasing, I asked my lender if there were any options to get rid of PMI. One option my lender provided to get rid of PMI was to get an appraisal for my. The cost of the appraisal was $150.

What Appraisal Price I Needed
If the appraisal came back at $350,910 or higher, they would remove the PMI payment each month. That would equate to a 1.5 month payback.

Final Appraisal Results
Well, the results are in! My home appraised for $340,000. Unfortunately $10,910 short of the $350,910 needed to get rid of PMI. Not what I was hoping for, but if you don’t take action you will never know!

Determining Path Forward]

With all the information needed to make an informed decision, I see two options now.

Option 1: Do nothing. I thought I had a really good chance to get the appraisal number needed to get rid of PMI. Now that I have the official appraisal back, I can wait till I have naturally paid down an additional $11k in principal prior to going back and asking for the PMI to be removed.

$470 of the $1,777 mortgage payment currently goes down to principal. With that being said, it will take 23 months to pay an additional $11k in principal. I could wait till that time and then ask to get another appraisal. In the meantime, I can continue to monitor what my expected home value is. If anything drastic (for the better) happens, I could go back and potentially ask for another appraisal.

Option 2: My end goal is to have something pay back in less than 16 months. In this case, I could wait for 20 months, continue paying my normal $1,777 towards my mortgage and then pay an additional lump sum of $1,600 towards principal to get rid of PMI. At the same time of paying down the mortgage, I can monitor my home value to determine if it is worth taking another stab at calling my mortgage lender.

I think I am going to go with Option 2 for now. I am always open to feedback from anyone who might know of other options that might be available to me!

Key Takeaways

  • It is okay if you make a money move and it doesn’t pay off. The simple fact you made a calculated risk shows you are moving in the right direction.
  • Even when something doesn’t work out the way you had hoped, figure out the next best thing to do. Still create a long term plan
  • PMI sucks, but when you are house hacking, is it really that bad? 🙂