Comments on: The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: 400 By 40 Edition

By: Brown Thumb Mama

Brown Thumb Mama — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:50:10 +0000

What a great idea! My top goal is to be cubicle-free by 40. Everything else flows from that.

@Bill in Houston, We want to visit all 50 states too. In our version, we putter around in an RV and fill in the map on the back as we go. Get going on those last 14 states!

By: Bill in Houston

Bill in Houston — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:54:12 +0000

@ #4, Marsha:

He means a bucket list, or something similar. That’s the impression I get.

By: Bill in Houston

Bill in Houston — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:53:07 +0000

I am half tempted to do a 500 by 50 list. Now that I’m married there are a bunch of things I want to do with my wife. We’ve done some (buy a house, climb pyramids in a jungle, made wills), but there is so much else.

Some of the things will be petty, like learn how to make a joint cut, but some will be big, like visit all fifty states.

By the way, I turn 50 at the end of 2010 so I need to get cracking. I still have fourteen states to go, too.

By: Marsha

Marsha — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:40:33 +0000

“400 by 40″ list? What’s the purpose of making or keeping such a list? I can understand making daily or weekly lists – maybe even monthly lists. But when you start getting more than a dozen or so items on a list, it’s not a helpful tool – you’d have to put things into groups or sublists. It seems like it would take a huge amount of time to compile such a list and transform it into a workable reference tool. JMO. And I’m a list-maker.

By: Bill in Houston

Bill in Houston — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:36:30 +0000

Really? $770 a month?

My wife and I spend about $350 a month, and I’m including sundries like laundry detergent, Windex, bug spray, envelopes, and the like. Our grocery-only purchases last week were $48 and change. Of course we didn’t buy meat that week (we buy in bulk), but I can’t see our expenses topping $700 a month unless we had two perpetually hungry teenagers.

By: Pieces

Pieces — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:31:01 +0000

Thanks for the links. I especially appreciated the article about jobs without a college education. I have a son who will not succeed in college and I can use the encouragement that he can still have a fulfilling and successful career.

I also loved the post on priorities. I guess it means I need to clean the toilets first thing this morning. :)

By: b

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:26:37 +0000

“At most, 10% of the items on the list are solitary ones, and even some of those could easily become social.”

But why would you want them to? It seems like a poor idea to try to eliminate all of the solitary times in your life — times when you are able to commune with yourself. It is extremely hard to become aware of your true nature, goals, and desires when you are constantly in group settings.

I realize that you describe yourself as a shy person and that you try to push yourself to interact socially — and this is an admirable goal. However, moving to the opposite extreme — where everything must be a group activity (a group being more than one person) carries with it its own problems and dangers.

For example, for someone who reads as much as you seem to, it is curious that there would not be at least 40 books that you would love to read…