Book Review: Executricks

Posted by Robert on August 9, 2010

My thinking about retirement leads me to explore alternative visions to my preconceived notion. Maybe it’s possible to retire without quitting work. I have not read Timothy Ferris’ The 4 Hour Work Week, and I won’t, because the author strikes me as someone who takes himself too seriously. So I picked up Stanley Bing’s Executricks. I am told he has a similar message to Tim Ferris, but he is prepared to laugh at himself. I started skimming through it with every intention of immediately returning it to the library. By the time I realized it, I was on chapter 3.

The subtitle of the book is: How to Retire While You’re Still Working. With a tongue-in-cheek manner, Stanley Bing proceeds to illustrate spending company time and money on the good things in life. The reason, he suggests, is that retirement isn’t a dream come true. He presents two alternatives: either the poor schmuck works all his life and drops dead within six months of retirement, or who putters lonely through the last 30 years of life without the resources or network to really enjoy it. In this way, there is no longer a choice between being rich with time or being rich with money; the cunning executive can have it all.

“Retiring” while working requires control. You must use people to do your work for you, as much as possible. You can then use email and cell phones to delegate and communicate while living life outside the office. The author encourages the reader to legitimately expand unproductive time such as breakfast meetings and business lunches to replace tedious working hours. Then, using the expense account and sound business reasoning, travel for business with the goal of personal enjoyment. The irony is that you must work hard to develop the environment in which to hardly work.

The humour is obvious, but this fits into the category of “It’s funny because it’s true.” And it’s not possible to tell if he isn’t being honestly sociopathic at some level. At one point, he cites Machiavelli, with the suggestion that he was a fun-loving and pragmatic thinker. As an investor, I don’t want to ever think that people are abusing company resources in this way in companies that I own. Realistically, it’s accepted practice, and explains why I prefer to own small companies or family businesses.

The book ends on a serious note. Perhaps the inspiration for the entire book was a piece of advice the author received from his father-in-law, who made just enough by age 50 to be able to retire to a golf community in Florida. After 20 years, at age 70, he said to Stanley, “Never retire. Never.” The alternative to retiring while you work, that the author suggests, is philanthropy. In reality, tutoring, mentoring, volunteering, organizing and other forms of philanthropy are ways of working in retirement.

I am reminded of the admonition: “Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.” By age 45, will I really know what I want to do with the next 45 years of my life? Do I really want to limit my options? My answer is “No.” I want to continue working, so that I can maintain my social network and continue to benefit from more-than-adequate financial resources. I only want to have no debt and enough assets in the bank to be beholden to no one. Then I can be retired while working and truly enjoy the good things in life.

Out on a Limb

Posted by Tim Stobbs on August 6, 2010

I think I’m slowly driving my wife nuts.  Why?  Because I periodically go out on a limb and try something completely new with fairly regular frequency.  For example, this week I’ve started a little wine making experiment.  I’ve got a sour cherry tree in my backyard that I’ve picked clean and trying to make a mini batch of wine from the fruit.  Will it work?  I don’t have the slightest clue, but I certainly having fun trying.

Because of this tendency of going out on a limb we have managed to find some extra saving/income in our house including:

1. I’m cutting both my boys and my hair.  The kids were an easy step but doing my own was scary, but it worked out just fine.  Now I’m doing it all the time.
2. I started picking my own investments.  Given the huge MER costs associated with the average mutual fund it is actually fairly easy to beat them with a little planning and learning a bit about investing.
3. I’ve tried doing some canning (jam, salsa).  I learned that freezer jam is drop dead easy to do and started there.  Then the salsa was less scary to do once I found myself with most of the ingredients one fall.
4. Running for an elected office and winning.  I admit I was a little freaked out that a won, but after almost a year of being on the school board I rather enjoy the job.

Each time I will freely admit I was a little or a lot terrified of trying something new, but I did anyway.  Often I picked things that would have very small costs associated with them to try first.  If that works out I might then go with a larger or most costly project.  It also helps I’m ok with the odd failure since the majority of my experiments have worked out just fine.

Yet why do it?  Why do I go out on a limb all the time?  Because I think people need to do that to grow and the only way to do that if leave your comfort zone periodically to try something new.  Also I consider all of these a little bit of training for early retirement which will be the ultimate in leaving my comfort zone.

Leaving my day job career behind at 45 is just about the most uncomfortable thing I can think of to do.  I will leave behind all my co-workers, most of my professional contacts and basically be misunderstood by most people I know. I will be told I’m a slacker with no ambition or people will think I’m completely insane to give up a six figure job so I can write more.  Therefore in order to be emotionally ready for it I think I need to do some training now.  Thus my continuing plans to be out on a limb.

So how about you?  Do you go out on a limb a fair bit?  If so, what have you tried?  If not, how are you planning to be emotionally ready for your retirement?

Appearently I’m a Job Hopper

Posted by Tim Stobbs on August 5, 2010

I nearly fell out of my chair the other day when I was reading this article that suggested that a person should keep a job on average of five years to avoid looking like a job hopper which could reduce your chances of getting hired.  Pardon?  So in my ten year career I should have only had two jobs! Guess what I’ve had seven different jobs in that time frame and it has NEVER been mentioned in a single interview that it was a problem.  Heck with my last two jobs I only applied for one job and got it both times.

If you have read this blog for a while you would have noticed I have a thing against most rules of thumb as they can more often than not get you into hot water.  In this case I would a point out a few things the come into play when looking at a career history like:

1. Job Progression – Ok, so you had three jobs at one company in a two year period.  Yet if you were promoted into each job isn’t that good thing to demonstrate your employer liked you enough to promote you frequently?  I’ve been in a situation twice where I was promoted after six months.
2. Career Development – Is there an established pattern of increasing responsibility and educational improvement?  If so, you are likely going to be given some slack on taking on new challenges and developing yourself as long as you don’t do it like every four months.
3. Geographic Considerations – Did you move to take a job?  I think most people are willing to consider that wanting to move out a crappy location to a better one is a reasonable choice for a family.

Yet at the same time I do appreciate that frequent job changes (like under a year) can look bad on a resume if you aren’t careful.  In my mind I would be willing to discuss a isolated case of job hopping, but if you look like to change jobs every six months for the last four years.  That would be setting off alarm bells and impacting your hiring prospects.

So how about you?  How many jobs have you had over your career?  Please also include the length of your career.  I’m curious how many people would actually be within the 1 job per five year ‘rule’.