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Arizona Lou kiteboarding in San Carlos, Mexico; 1.6 minute video with Christian Canese on the camera

Arizona Lou Kiteboarder

Smart Stuff


What We Tell You Young People

People wonder how we can afford to go on four-month kiteboarding trips. In a nut shell, we economize, do some planning and did a few smart things when we were younger.

What we tell you young people (and almost every kiteboarder is younger than us) is:

  1. Without exception live on less than you make. That means absolutely no debt of any kind
  2. Do some planning and investing
  3. Retired life will be good to you, and so will life in general.

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Favorite talk show hosts

Surround yourself with good quality people who match your standards and goals. Listen to people who know more than you do. That is why our favorite radio talk show hosts are:

Bob Brinker's Basic Rules of Investing

  1. Pay yourself first - invest at least 10% what you make
  2. Work toward owning your own home - Don't borrow against it!
  3. Deversify your investments to spread your risks
  4. Have a long-term mindset for your investments: 10, 15, 20 years
  5. Include inflation-protected securities (a recent development)
  6. Take advantage of no load, exchange-traded and index funds
  7. Eliminate emotion from your investing decisions
  8. Stay away from the sharks who will tell you anything to get your money
  9. Educate yourself with Bob's recommended reading list

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Online Resources

Budget charts Budget help to get you organized - easy, mostly automatic, free and highly recommended!
            Mint.com             Our Excel Spreadsheet Budget

  Symbol Excellent summary of reputable low-cost investment funds

  Symbol Vanguard Star Fund: Good balance of investments; $1000 minimum to open

  Symbol Schwab Total Stock Market Index Fund - $100 min. to open; VERY low expenses

  Symbol Fidelity Four-in-One Index Fund: Excellent balance of funds; $10,000 minimum to open

  Symbol T. Rowe Price: Adjusting Allocation Fund: adjusts as you approach retirement; $2500 minimum to open ($1000 for IRA)

  Image of Calculator Graphical Investment Calculator, Monthly Contributions
  Image of Calculator Graphical Investment Calculator, Yearly Contributions
  Image of Calculator Basic Investment Calculator
  Image of Calculator Financial Calculators with definitions for just about anything under the sun
  Image of Calculator HSH.COM has excellent calculators and information for mortgages


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Suggested Ratios, recommended for a non-stressful life.

  • Your monthly housing (rent/mortgage, taxes & insurance) should not be over 25% of your monthly income
  • The total of all your student loans should not exceed your anticipated earnings for your first year out of college.
  • You should invest 10-15% of your income for retirement
  • The expense ratio for your investments (annual expenses) should be well below one half of one percent (.50%).
  • You will lose over half of the money you have invested for retirement with just a 2% higher yearly expense ratio (2.25% vs .25%), which amounts to about $1 million with 50 years of regular investing (see the financial calculators above.
  • There should be zero fee for investing your money (no load)
  • There should be zero fee for withdrawing your investment money. Do check the tax implications.
  • WEALTH RATIOS WILL GO HERE - PAW
  • WEALTH RATIOS WILL GO HERE - UAW
  • To qualify for financial assistance for college, each year a student is expected to spend 20% of their resources and their parents, 5% of their resources on college expenses (as of July, 2009), so in most cases, it is better for parents to NOT save college money in an account owned by the child.
  • The value of all your vehicles (cars, SUVs, ATVs, boats etc) should not be over half your annual income.
  • The most expensive way to have a car is to lease it.
  • Repair your car if the repair cost is less than 50% to 100% of the car's value.
  • Most insurance companies total your car if repairs are expected to exceed 80% of its value.
  • At the end of a vehicle lease the dealer can expect to get 20% of the vehicle's trade-in value (check kbb.com). This figure is a good place to start negotiations with the dealer when buying the car at the end of the lease. Note: leasing is the most expensive way to have a car.
  • If your annual premiums for comprehensive and collision auto insurance exceed one tenth of the value of the car you should drop those coverages. You can check out the value of your car at Edmunds, Kelly Blue Book or N.A.D.A.
  • Eighty percent of millionaires drive used cars.
  • Repair a major appliance if the repair would cost less than 50% of a replacement.
  • Each third of your FICO score is based on 1) Paying bills on time, 2) credit utilization and 3) length of credit history.

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    FICO Scores are important in today's world whether we like it or not. Along with your social media sites, FICO is checked by:
  • most insurance companies to help determine home, auto, fire & liability premiums
  • many employers before hiring
  • most banks before opening checking or other accounts
  • Mortge licencing bureaus to jerk the licence of mortgage lenders if their FICO score goes down
  • your prospective clients/customers
  • companies considering doing business with you
  • many apartments and landlords before renting to prospective tenants
    FICO (Fair Issac Corporation) tries to keep it a big secret as to how they calculate a person's FICO score, but here is pretty much how it is determined:
  • 30% on if bills are paid on time. Recently they revised this to include utilities and rent.
  • 30% on the age of credit (older accounts improve your FICO score)
  • 30% on credit utilization (the percent of your total available credit you are using)
    • using 50% or more of your available credit demolishes your FICO score
    • using 30% or less of your available credit improves your FICO score
    • using 10% or less of your available credit can make you golden if you keep the other things in line
  • being an authorized user on someone else's credit card account can effect your FICO score
  • bounced checks will hurt your FICO score
Your FICO (which ranges from 300 to 850) is the only credit score that you should get if you want to see the real deal. Many other companies will happily charge you for their concocted credit scores but the FICO is what the lenders and the real world use.

Credit Reports: Your Credit Report is available for free once a year from each of the three credit reporting agencies. The ONLY legitimate source is annualcreditreport.com. Others will rip you off even when they say it is free.


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Bargains to stretch your dollar further

Thrift Stores are fun to browse, awesome and an amazing way to save mucho mula.

Zenni Optical - Single vision prescription glasses under $10, including frames. We got all the coatings, photosensitive tents and progressive lenses at an amazing price.


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Retiring

Collecting SS (Social Security)

In spite of what the Social Security Administration might tell you, unless you are in financial straits you do not want to start collecting SS early unless you intend to die young. If you wait until you're 70 instead of 62, your monthly SS check will be about 70% higher. It would take you about eight years to make up what you lost at the lower rate, between ages 62 and 70. The rest of your life it would be gravy, as they say.

We started taking our SS at about 62 at the recommendation of our SS adviser (BIG MISTAKE). Now it would cost us about $80k to pay back what we have received so far in order to reapply for retirement at age 70 and get the higher rate. Since we do not have the 80 grand laying around, we'll probably just stick tight and spend the rest of our life kiteboarding and with the puny SS payments. Hind sight is always 20/20! (The above information was current as of 2010)


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Health and Fitness

Diet: is an important part of being healthy both on the road and at home. Our Menu includes six meals, all nutritionally identical. When we feel like it, we substitute kinds of vegetables, fruits and nuts. Included in our PDF menu image are totals, percentages and averages for protein, carbs, fat and calories. Units for the serving size (Amt) are listed in the right column. As you can see, 26% of the calories come from good fat and we get .9 g of protein per pound of our 140 lb bodyweight. This is considered a high protein diet at 2600 total calories per day. If we need to gain or lose weight, we simply change the amounts by 20%. Here is a good Calories Per Day Calculator to see what you need, considering your height, weight, age and activity level. Look on our Weight Management page for information we found helpful and interesting.
     We always take our nuts with us. As you may have noticed in Our Menu, raw, unsalted nuts are an important part of our diet, as they contain the good fat and can add taste and texture to a meal. If we have time, we prefer to roast them (no oil or salt) for even more flavor. Our Nuts Spreadsheet includes roasting times and temperatures, plus nut-shopping information.

Working out at a gym on a regular basis has been part of our lifestyle for years. It is amazing what the right amount of the right exercise of the right intensity can benefit a person. Be sure to start small, build gradually be patient, keep going and get help and advice when you need it. Speaking of advice, here is the workout we developed. If you do not understand something on it, ask me or just guess. You may come up with some creative things that will fit your needs better.

Shoulder exercises are important after our rotator cuff surgery. We faithfully perform external rotation resistance exercises. On our trips we use a length of surgical tubing obtained at the Union Hills Ace Hardware Store. An excellent, but pricey resource for shoulder health is the 7-Minute-Rotator-Cuff-Solution by Jerry Robinson and Joseph Horrigan. After reading this, you'll know what causes shoulder problems, how to treat them and how to prevent them.

Compression etc.: The best we've found for kiteboarding bumps, bruises and sprains is the Mueller Wonder Wrap. With its Velcro, it stays on in the water for compression while kiteboarding. It is also good for holding ice packs and heat packs in place in the evening after a day of pushing your limits. In addition, it takes up little space, which is important for us and our Van Life.

Lifestyle and Aging study with identical twins; included smoking, alcohol, stress and sun.


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Miscellaneous

Arizona Lou's Big Pie Theory applies to almost every area of business. Instead of spending our energy fighting over our share of the pie, we could be working together to increase the size of the pie. As the pie grows each will get more pie. In the case of kiteboarding shops, we need to get word to people who have not yet heard of the sport.
- Dave Ramsey said, Greedy poor people and guilty rich people... propagate... one man's success directly causes another's failure. Therefore, the only way for me to get more money is to take it away from someone else. What a crock!
- Danial Lapin said, "The more wealth that people around me create, the more I shall benefit, too."

  Symbol Prepare for emergencies and disasters easily and effectively in 25 categories and five languages with 72hours.org

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