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Get busy living or get busy dying

The first story today reminded me of a story I heard when I had started working.

I was working in the defense industry and it was my first time working in a SCIF, which stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It basically means your office is a big safe. You couldn’t bring in your cell phone, you had to enter a keypad to get in, and the area is locked down whenever someone isn’t inside.

Each day, one person is responsible for unlocking it. That same person is responsible for locking it up that night. If they’re not the last person, they pass it off to someone who is still there. In practice, the responsible person walks around the SCIF and calls out to see if anyone is still there. If they don’t hear anything, they just leave and lock up. It’s pretty simple… until it isn’t.

One particularly sad story was that someone had a heart attack on a Friday and fallen behind a bench. The “last” person walked around and called out to see if anyone was there… but heard no response. So they locked up for the weekend. They didn’t discover their co-worker until the next Monday.

The two lessons I took away from that were:

  • Don’t die at work,
  • Live a life where someone will look for you if you disappear for more than a day.

Retire Before Dead [Retired Before Dad] – “Early in my career, a coworker dropped dead in his cubicle one Tuesday morning. He was 60. That event changed the way I think about office work. He was good at his job, and he seemed to enjoy his role. But it certainly wasn’t his life’s passion. His death got me asking myself, what if I die before I can travel the world full-time again? Retirement suddenly became more urgent, even though I was only in my early thirties.”

The Financial Freedom Through Real Estate Conference is a conference put on by Dr. Peter Kim, of Passive Income M.D., and this year’s event is online and completely free. Last year’s event, which was much bigger, was held in Los Angeles and cost $800 so if you’ve had any interest in real estate as a path towards FI – you should register for this. It takes place from October 9 – 11 and once a talk is made available, you can watch it for the next 48 hours, then it’ll be taken down. (you can buy a lifetime pass sometime later)

How to Buy a Second Home that Pays for Itself [Good Financial Cents] – “Those who have the means to buy a second home are wise to take on mortgage debt in today’s low interest environment.”

Until tomorrow, Apexian!