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Hiatus

OK wow it has been over two weeks since my last blog post. I think it is because of the feeling that when you don’t think you have something to post about, you don’t post. I’ve been reminded though, from others, that you should continue, carry on, that it is easy to fall out of a habit rather than create one. It is interesting that I am choosing to make blogging habit. I do realize that I’ve needed a change for a long time and maybe this is just a way for me to create change.

The podcasts that I’ve been listening to have been very motivational. I recommend if you have the time to listen to the madfientist’s podcasts. He interviews people who have become financially independent. A lot of them talk about how they have been living a life that they are enjoying. By being able to retire early, they have been able to pursue the things that make them happy in life. It isn’t to say that I’m necessarily hating life, or don’t love that I am alive. There are many aspects that I am aiming to change, anyone who has read my first couple of posts know this; there is my weight that I’m not happy with, the act of having to work being another. A guest on the podcast was talking about how even after you’ve reached FI, or financial independence, it is important continue being productive, but there are things that you will face that will make you happy, challenges that you’ll endure or overcome. Some of the happiest moments I have are when I am at work and I overcome a difficult challenge or meet a tight deadline. It makes me happy when I am able to contribute, I don’t think there would be anyway I could not be able to contribute. I wouldn’t be happy unless there was some way I could assist in life.

In one of my previous post I set out some goals for myself. I think that is another reason why I didn’t post. I did not complete my goals that I set out. Instead of focusing on those and giving up, however, I need to celebrate what I have done so far.

This week I set up my personal capital account. It is a neat tool that allows you see your net worth. It is a free service and of all the people I’ve listened to or have read regarding FI, a lot of people recommend using it. Doing so, however was really depressing. It is amazing seeing your net worth, or depressing. Net worth is supposed to be a measure of your monetary value, your assets minus your liability. When you take a look at it, and see that someone people said they have a net worth that makes them FI and I am nowhere near it. But, like I said, I am concentrating on the positives.

Another positive is that I’ve begun to increase my activity. All this week I’ve walked home from work. Per Bing maps it is only a 2.6 mile walk. A year ago I used to run this three times a week. But that was when I had much more cartilage in my knees haha. It even started pouring rain. This for me is a decision for me to start doing more exercise. I need to do more, move more, have a calorie deficit at the end of the day instead of a calorie surplus. Walking at least helps, it is better than just sitting on the bus. Sure there may be a better use of my time, but right now it is close to 60 in November so I should be happy that I am able to walk, but physically and weather wise.
Ok, let’s see if I can keep this up. We all know how tough it is to continue a habit, but anything to improve life is satisfying.

A little of my work, part 2

This is a continuation of my previous post about work. I had to model out what I did to create this model that I created to compare to another person’s model. So I wanted to post it mainly to see if anyone else was going through the same thing, creating a pricing model based on 3 different sources using SSRS and SSMS.

Here is my SSRS package, I like to over “title” my data flow tasks so that I can see what each is doing before actually opening it. I’ve seen, DTF Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, etc. where you don’t know what is happening unless you open the data flow task, which is a nightmare.

(I’m using photobucket for images, not sure it is the best tool).

This is the entire package. Not too complicated, just 9 data flow tasks.
The first step is to look for DRG (Diagnosis Related Group) discharges.

We wanted to look for encounters that were CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) codes, since these are billed as outpatient, and I needed the inpatient encounter, I had to split this into 2 steps to find the inpatient encounter

followed by

What I learned today is that there may be an easier way. After going through the above, as I was verifying the information, I made a discovery in which I may be able to get the CPT inpatient enoucnter easier. I think this upset me at first because It took me awhile to get to this point and then I found a better, faster way. It was kind of frustrating. I still need to verify that method and can post it later.

There are other steps involved to get to end report, but it is late on a Friday. I may have to make a part 3 ha!

Pivoting

I was hoping to continue my post from yesterday and explain more about my work. However, I was side tracked by actual work haha. So I am going to pivot from work and healthcare and move back to personal finance and financial independence, which, admittedly, has consumed a lot of my thinking lately.

Today a coworker asked me to go lunch. She and I have known each other for about 4 years, only at work. We both started about the same time, moved to the same team at the same time, and sat next to each other through training and while working together for a couple of years. We don’t really talk outside of work and we get together every now and then for lunch, like today.

After the initial small catch up talk, she asked what I’ve been doing lately. I couldn’t help but jump into the fact that I’ve been consumed with financial freedom, unshackling from work, and early retirement. At first she thought I was nuts, laughing it off but as I explained how others have done this I could see that she was more intrigued by it. I explained very briefly about how HSAs are like, to borrow GoCurryCracker’s terms, a super IRA, taking advantage of both tax free in, tax free out, tax deferred growth. I told her the story of the mad fientist taking advantage of Roth conversions. I told her about how the couple in GoCurryCracker spent a good year in Central America and are now trekking through Europe.

After lunch I went back to my desk and couldn’t wait to send her link after link of the podcasts and blogs I’ve been consuming. She actually did become excited about it, or at least rode my wave of excitement about it, and then I realized something. I realized that I have become really engulfed by what I’ve been reading. I’ve been dreaming of the day of leaving, constantly checking the market and my accounts and seeing where I can save and what I can do. This reminded me of something that I heard in one of the early podcasts. I am not sure where, maybe the Mad Fientist, maybe Mr. Money Mustache, but somewhere I remember someone saying, “Do not become obsessed with your money.”

Have I become obsessed? I think so. Like the society that we have become, I wanted instant gratification. I wanted to retire today. I want to be able to look at my accounts and think that I could live off what I make on that right now!

Alas, I cannot. I am not even close. I can take steps, I’ve been taking steps, but I need to breathe. I need to realize that this isn’t something that will happen soon. I mean, I think it is healthy to continually keep it in my mind, keep thinking of ways to cut spending, increase savings, but I haven’t made any plans or long term solutions. This is where I need to be, in order for me to convince my wife especially but we need to decide where we are going to go in life. I mean, who knows, she may actually enjoying working! (HA! I know that isn’t true.)

A little of my work

A little about my work and what I am doing. Our company has had a several systems of charge accounting and EHRs between the hospital and outpatient clinics. In order to offer a competitive bundle payment for an episode of care, I am being charged with finding the costs between the episode, be it in the hospital or outpatient, and find all the charges associated with this episode both from professional (outpatient) costs and hospital (inpatient) costs, along with any professional costs that would have occurred 60 days prior to episode admission and 90 days after episode discharge.

You would think this would, we are one system right? Consider the fact that we have one EHR for outpatient, Epic, and another for inpatient, Cerner, but yet a third that captures hospital charges. A coworker who has left the firm, has built a integrated system that connects these but it was painfully slow and carried extra “stuff” which made it not really feasible to use. I have worked with a director since he left to rebuilt this and have used it in some form to connect these three together.

It is difficult since these systems between inpatient and outpatient don’t really talk to each other. The parent companies don’t really play nice with each other either, and each blame the other. What is also interesting, is that there really isn’t a source of truth to it all. People have very good ideas about what the end results should be, which I find fascinating that people would have an idea without actually knowing since the data has not been able to be aligned (easily) before.

I’ve mentioned this before, I really like what I do and who I work for. I think though, it is the whole time thing. I mean, today I had a lot of things I wanted to do. I’m on day 6 of this blog and am enjoying doing this as well. I can’t carve out the time at work to write on this blog, but I do a lot of internet reading while I waiting for jobs to finish. It is also starting to get cold here in Chicago, which doesn’t help the fact that I want to move somewhere warm. Why is it that most people who find financial independence move to Latin America? Haha.

Progress

A couple of events have occurred today in regards to early retirement, it was actually pretty cool too because in both events I was able to articulate my thoughts in a smart manner.

The first was last night at dinner. My wife and I met with her sister and father and their respective significant others and the conversation turned into a taxes slash investment discussion. I was able to retell a story and answer subsequent questions about how I read about the Mad Fientist and his decision to make out his 401(k) and slowly transfer it into a Roth IRA, a concept called Roth IRA conversions. It is basically having 100% of pre-tax money investing in a traditional IRA, then dropping your income just enough to be able to convert this money into a Roth IRA. I’m going to assume people reading this have no idea what the difference is between the two and I am going to put it in a way over simplified manner.

In a Traditional IRA, you contribute money into an account before taxes are taking out (think 401(k) or 403(b)). This is 100% of your earning growing tax free. However, the kicker is that when you take your money out, you are taxed on the amount that you remove. In a Roth IRA, you put in money after it is has been taxed and it grows taxed but when you take the money out, you are not taxed on the money. If you do it the old fashion way you are basically gambling on whether the taxes will be higher now or later. Or if you think about it, in a traditional you are growing 100% of your earnings but in a Roth you may only be growing 80% – after it was taxed.

I suggest you read the Mad Fientist’s posts about this here.

The second event was not so successful. My company is undergoing open enrollment where we elect benefits for the next calendar year. Typically this is uneventful as I typically take the PPO option since it is best plan and my father always taught me you should skimp on healthcare. True, you should not skimp on healthcare. But with the ACA there has emerged something called the Health Savings Account. This is pre-taxed dollars going into an account typically run by a company which will grow at a tax free rate. The money you pull out of this account, if it follows a medical approved expense, is pulled out tax free! So you are basically putting in money tax free, letting it grow, then pulling it out tax free!

The conversation didn’t go too well though because my wife thinks I am putting in too much money away already. She gets upset at me when I remind her that our spending is getting out of control. She thinks I am crazy that we are already putting in a lot of money for a later date and we are making sacrifices now for it. She didn’t like it that I am asking her to make even more sacrifices. I get it, I mean I understand, it is a common thing to want to spend now instead of later for everyone. It isn’t like I’m making huge sacrifices now, I spend probably more than she does. But I am wanting to change that and I am needing to convince her to get on board! Hopefully soon. If anyone has any advice on how they went through this, I know there probably isn’t any magical words to say to actions to do and I want her on board 100% instead of side stepping her knowledge of what is going on!

So one win, one, maybe win?

Just start

I am on day 4 off this new venture and while I am very happy that I’ve actually blogged 4 days in a row, I’m not happy in that I had hoped this would get me started I’m the the original items I first posted about.

I’ve been listening to financial independence podcasts (the mad fientist) for a week straight now but have implemented any of the things he has recommended.

I’ve been reading blogs and workout schemas for over a month and have yet to sign up for a gym our begun to work out.

I’m in my masters program for health informatics but haven’t picked up articles or expanded my reading beyond required reading for health and informatics (besides the requirements for my job).

I was hoping that by starting this blog and focusing on those main three things, that it would get me to start at least. That it would get me more interested in learning more about how too accomplish those things that I would be spending my free time reading up on it. I had how that I would be explaining my struggles and how I over came those struggles on this blog to help others get through the same tough points. But that has not been the case!

I “just start”-ed this blog and now I need to”just start” doing more in order to get my blog rolling right? This week, I am going to accomplish the following, and keeping myself accountable for this:

Fill out the Financial Independence worksheet
Begin a work out plan and plan out the intake portion of the plan
Read and explain one article in regards to health or health informatics that is not related to my schooling or my work

Done and done. All I need to do is just start right?

Day 3 finding motivation

It amazes me where you find motivation at the time you are viewing it. This morning my wife came into the bedroom and got dressed quickly. I knew she wanted to go cheer on the marathon that was happening today but it was 8:30. I asked if she was leaving and she replied no but she was already pumped to go cheer on the runners.

We took a stop neat mile 15, more than half way to the finish line. I love watching her cheer on the runners, she is non stop energy as she tells how motivational they are or how great they are for taking on such a challenge. I look into this as motivation to look into others.

It really isn’t difficult to look at marathoners and understand what they are going through. They have been training for so long for this day, putting in the time to train for so many months to be joyous for this one day. This is where we should seek our motivation. Looking toward an end goal, working towards a goal, keeping the end goal inn your mind as it lurks closer and closer.

Financial independence has an end goal of death, as does healthy living. We need to make sure we keep these in mind instead of waiting until something occurs that will deter it.

So I started a blog…

It was actually kind of invigorating. As soon as I submitted it, a many things ran through my head. Why did I do this? Am I happy with my first blog post? Did I say too much or too little? Should I have picked a topic and ran with that instead. What if someone reads it?

What if some one reads this? Isn’t this the purpose of doing this? To get people to read this for some strange reason? I think it is the hope and dream of all bloggers who start to actually get people to read what you are writing correct? Right now, I don’t think anyone has read it so I am safe, or failing, there right?

Regardless, moving on. After I made that post yesterday I thought of something else that I may want to add in my blog. Writing about animals and pets. This is on my mind today because we just invested another $151 into our cat this morning at the vet. My wife and I have two cats and a one eyed dog. We found our first cat hiding in a bush. Since neither one of us were really cat people, we tried to give him to the humane society only to be told that they would more than likely euthanize him. Seven years later, I couldn’t image living without him. He wasn’t the one we took to the vet however.

Our other cat has been diagnosed with kidney disease. This has put a rather large divot in our savings and not really coincide with an early retirement plan. But he was near death and now you wouldn’t know that he was ever sick, if it wasn’t for the medicines and fluids that we have to give him daily.

Pet health is something that I’ve been thinking a lot lately. It is easy since I am involved in healthcare right now. Pet insurance is a joke. We need a PPACA for pets. Something to make it more reasonable since basically these are our kids!

Wow 43

I turned 43 yesterday. I went home and my wife asked if anyone at work knew. I told her no. I opened a great present from her and an even better card which matched me exactly. We went out to a nice dinner and had terrific food. I decided to start a blog.

That isn’t entirely accurate. I mean, I’ve been thinking of starting a blog for a long time now, but not really sure about what to write about. I’m passionate about a lot of things in life and still want to do a lot of things here on this planet. My main concern was what to write about. There are a number of things that I wanted to write about, and really wanted to write about all of them. I also didn’t think anyone would really care about what I wrote, since I kind of wanted it to be a personal blog. Then I happened on http://www.becomingminimalist.com/15-reasons-i-think-you-should-blog/ and just decided to go for it.

I think I am going to concentrate on 3 key things though. In no particular order:

Retirement – HA! Isn’t that something we’ve all wanted to do? I don’t think of retirement as the day where I stop working, I don’t think I will ever do that. I think of retirement as the day where I don’t have to work if I don’t want to. Meaning, really, doing what I want to do without having to do it. Again, let me reiterate, doing what I want to do! The one problem with this is that I kind of enjoy what I am doing now. I am an analytics architecture in a large academic research hospital. This leads to my second topic.
Healthcare and health informatics – Like I just said, I enjoy what I am doing now. I work with lots of healthcare data, with teams that are trying to improve healthcare and change the way healthcare is offered. I am not just a data pusher or report writer, I participate in the decision making and try to learn about what it takes to make sure changes can begin to form. I am lucky to have both clinical knowledge and practice along with being techy. I am a registered nurse, a title I am fortunate to have obtained and proud to have kept, and have worked as a programmer or developer for a great deal of my career. I’m also in the middle of obtaining a masters in Health Informatics.
Health and weight loss – The struggle that I know I am not alone. A recap of my weight: I’ve always been bigger than most in my age group, after college, I really ballooned up reaching 250 as my activity level decreased but my money increased where I could eat and drink. I went through a dramatic weight loss, eating virtually no carbs (except alcohol haha) and dropped down to 190. I met my wife at this point and was in school, which my weight crept back on by no fault of my wife (I need to make that clear!). At 43, I am weighing at 225 and need to start again (and again and again) in order to be able to live a more fulfilling life.

So there it is. The point of my blog. I really don’t know what to expect or really what my next blog post will be about or when! I am hoping to get started and get going.

First blog post

This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.