Paris 2013: In the Land of Wine and Cheese

Greetings from Paris! For almost a week, Kim and I have been exploring the city from an apartment near the Sentier metro stop. Every day, we walk down Rue Montorgueil, a bustling pedestrian thoroughfare filled with produce stands and fish shops and boulangeries. With all the people packed into cafés, it feels very much like Rue Cler (where Kris and I stayed in 2010), but with more average Parisians. And at night, if we mistakenly take the next street over, we can see sex shops and streetwalkers. Quite the contrast!

We’re actually very pleased with our apartment. It’s small but functional, and the location is perfect.

Kimberly, preparing to climb 667 steps to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower

When I was here three years ago, we spent a lot of time exploring the famous landmarks of Paris: the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and so on. Kim and I have done some of that. We actually climbed the Eiffel Tower, for instance (something I didn’t do last time), and we made a quick tour of the Louvre (with an epic journey to locate the Dutch masters). But mostly we’ve done a lot of walking — and we’ve eaten a lot of wine and cheese.

Note: Kim had shoulder surgery three weeks before we left for this trip, which is a mixed blessing. We wouldn’t have been able to take so much time together to explore Paris and — eventually — London and Oslo if she weren’t required to take eight weeks off work. But the sore and healing shoulder is also a liability. It limits the things we can do. And on our way back from climbing the Eiffel Tower, she stumbled at the top of the stairs from the subway. She managed to not land on her shoulder, but she was still sore for days after.

Taking in the art at the Louvre

On most of my past trips, I’ve had a fairly clear agenda: I’ve known where I wanted to go and what I wanted to see. But when Nick and I traveled to Turkey last September, I had a hell of a lot of fun by not planning things. We sketched in where and when we wanted to be, but for the most part we just made things up as we went along. Because Kim and I both like to “go with the flow”, we decided to do the same sort of thing on this trip (with the notable exception of Norway, which is very planned).

Browsing the streets of Paris

As a result, we’ve spent our days in Paris just wandering the streets. When we find something that looks interesting, we stop to take a look. Some days we set out with a destination in mind, but we don’t always reach it. Yesterday, for instance, I wanted to visit the Orangerie (a museum of impressionist art) and the Arc de Triomphe. We didn’t do either. We stopped outside Notre Dame to sit in the sun, and then wandered again into the Latin Quarter where we fumbled our way through the alleys of shops and cafés. We stopped for crepes. We looked in shop windows. We bought a painting.

A small boy makes a donation to a Dixieland band playing in the Latin Quarter

Eventually we crossed the Seine to Champs-Élysées. We stopped on a side street for a glass of wine, and I was startled to realize that we’d managed to find the exact same restaurant where Kris and I had a miserable meal of lousy steaks three years ago. (The wine that Kim and I had this time wasn’t much better.)

A common sight on this trip: Me with my camera

In the evening, we celebrated my birthday with a delicious meal at Le Patio Provençal, a restaurant recommended to me by Nomadic Matt.

We had a great day today, too. We booked a wine and cheese tasting at O Chateau. As we’ve done so many times since arriving here last Thursday, we consumed a ton of wine and cheese.

Our hostess, Charlotte, served us five wines and five cheeses. The pairings were fantastic, especially the last two. For the record, we got to try:

A champagne (brut chardonnay) with brie.
A saumur (chenin blanc) with Sainte Maure de Touraine.
A brouilly/beaujolais (gamay) with Tome d’Auvergne.
A haut médoc/bourdeaux (cab/merlot blend) with Comté.
A monbazillac (semillon/sauv blanc) with Roquefort.

You’ll notice that I’ve listed the wines a couple of different ways. That’s because French wine is classified different than American wine. In the U.S., our wines are sold by grape varietal. We buy a cabernet sauvignon or a merlot or a chardonnay, for instance. That’s not how the French buy wines. They buy based on region: Bordeaux or Champagne or Beaujolais. (Actually, they buy by subregion or terroir.) The French feel that the place the grapes are grown has as much impact on the quality of the wine as the grapes themselves.

Anyhow, we had a lot of wine and cheese for lunch today.

Our cheeses today at O Chateau

Actually, I’m beginning to believe that Parisians are fueled by just three “nutrients”: wine, cheese, and bread. For the past week, that’s what I have been fueled by.

The day we arrived, we picked up some bread and goat cheese to eat for our breakfasts. A couple of times, we’ve eaten at Au Rocher de Cancale, where I’ve had wine and cheese. I’ve had wine and cheese for nearly every meal, as a matter of fact. You might think that after a week, the wine would be catching up with me, but it’s not the case. The cheese, on the other hand, is causing problems.

Thankfully, we’ll soon be moving on to lands where cheese is less plentiful. On Thursday morning, we’ll take a train across the English Channel, rent a car in London, and then gradually make our way north to Edinburgh. Maybe we’ll see Stonehenge or stop in Bath or catch a soccer match in Liverpool. We’re not sure. And you know what? We don’t care. We’re having a lot of fun just making things up as we go along.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for dinner. I think maybe I’ll have some wine and cheese…

Meet Me in Ecuador in September

It’s no secret that I’ve made a lot of changes to my life over the past few years. I’ve made so many changes, in fact, that sometimes I feel like I’m somebody completely different. That’s not a bad thing. The challenge now is to s-l-o-w down, to enjoy the life I’ve worked so hard to create.

Often when I talk to people, they ask how I managed to make so many changes in such a short period of time. There are two key elements to this:

First, I decided to be completely honest and true to myself — and to others. Instead of doing what I thought others wanted me to do, I did what I wanted.

Second, I faced my fears and acted in spite of them. This is tied directly to the first point. In order to be true to yourself, you’ve got to confront the things that frighten you most.

For a while now, I’ve been prepping to start writing my second book. It’ll be a book about personal finance, but I hope to take a different approach than most money books. But there’s a nagging doubt at the back of my mind; part of me wonders if I shouldn’t write some sort of self-help/motivational book first.

To test the waters, I’ve begun thinking and writing more about psychology. And — to challenge one of my biggest fears — I’ve been speaking on the subject, too.

At last summer’s World Domination Summit, I spoke for 40 minutes on the art of personal transformation.

My talk about personal transformation from World Domination Summit 2012

At this summer’s World Domination Summit, I’ll be joining my friend Leo Babauta from Zen Habits to present a workshop on how to build confidence and destroy fear.

But I think the talk that excites me most is the one I’ll give later this year in Ecuador. Just after Labor Day, I’ll be joining three other folks to host a retreat outside Quito, Ecuador. We’ll welcome 25 people for a week of learning and laughter.

We’re billing this as a one-week chautauqua on freedom, wealth, and happiness. Here’s how the official website describes the event:

Please join J.D. Roth, Mr. Money Mustache, Jim Collins, and Cheryl Reed, each of whom have succeeded in designing their own lives of personal freedom. Through presentations, one-on-one sessions, and group discussions, they will share their knowledge and tools for how you can do the same.

Join us in Ecuador, one of the most bio-diverse countries in the world. You will stay at the award winning Arasha Rainforest Resort and Spa, considered a hot spot because of its virgin forest and biodiversity. It is here, on the equator, where you will design your plan to live a passionate life and take the steps to financial freedom.

My presentation will touch on personal finance, but it’ll really be an extension of the topic I’m talking about WDS. All of us have grand dreams and big ideas, but all too often we lack the courage to see them through. Plus, there’s Real Life. With family and friends and work and other obligations, who has the time to make dreams come true?

As we get older, we find we’re trapped by the desires and expectations of others. We feel locked into a life we no longer love. I plan to help participants explore how to build confidence and destroy fear. We’ll talk about how find freedom in an unfree world, about how to choose the road less traveled.

Most of all, we’ll explore the idea that it’s not only acceptable but absolutely
vital to put yourself and your interests first in life.

Plus, like each of the other presenters, I’ll be meeting one-on-one with attendees during the week.

I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical about our ability to fill this retreat. I needn’t have been. We opened registration ten days ago, and already nineteen people have paid. Only six spots remain.

I’d love it if some of you were able to attend. If you’re free from the 7th to 14th of September and would like to spend a week learning about life while lounging in subtropical Ecuador, register now to join us. (And if you’ve got extra time and want to join me on a trip to the Galapagos, let me know. I’m doing this by myself after the end of the retreat, but I’d be happy to share the tour info with you so that you can join me.)

Am I scared about being one of the presenters at this chautauqua? Hell yes. But that’s the point. And past experience has taught me that by facing and overcoming my fears, I’ll be a better man.

Coffee Addict

Though I’ve long denied it, those who know me well tell me I’m a picky eater. It used to drive Kris crazy. When I started dating Kim, I told her I’d eat almost anything. It didn’t take her long to see that what I meant was I’d eat almost anything other than beer, coffee, mushrooms, and cruciferous vegetables.

Over the past year, I’ve made a conscious effort to face some of my food fears, and to overcome them. For instance, last May I started drinking beer, and now I actually enjoy it. (Beer is food, right?) I’ve also discovered the joys of kale and brussels sprouts. But perhaps my favorite new find is coffee. I started drinking coffee in August — tentatively at first — and am now a coffee addict.

I think the key to my conversion was starting with the good stuff. I was buying a bag of Stumptown Coffee for my brother’s birthday, and the barista offered me a free cup. I declined at first, but he was insistent. “Do you like tea?” he asked. I do. “Then try this coffee,” he said, serving me a cup brewed from Ethiopian beans. I was surprised to find I actually enjoyed it. Over the next few weeks, I tasted Kim’s coffee whenever she had it. Gradually my coffee aversion faded. In fact, I came to crave the stuff.

Now quality coffee is one of my favorite parts of the day. Every morning, I roll out of bed and go to the kitchen, where I pour about two ounces of grounds into my Chemex beaker. I boil a kettle of water, which I then pour over the grounds to produce several cups of awesomeness.

The trouble, of course, is that quality coffee is expensive. Some of it is crazy expensive. Stumptown has some great roasts that cost $30 per pound. Yikes. The local organic grocery has some good blends, but they still costs about a buck an ounce. That works out to roughly $2 per day to feed our coffee habit.

Note: Because I like to try new coffee, I just signed up for the subscription coffee service from BrewPony, which promises to supply quality Portland coffee on a monthly basis. Sounds like fun to me!

Kim is frugal by nature, and she hates how much we spend on coffee. But she also hates the cheap stuff. It’s a dilemma. But she’s come up with a way to tackle the problem: She wants to buy green coffee beans and roast them herself. There’s a place near my condo that offers classes in coffee roasting, and I think we’re going to take one. Who knows? Maybe in a few months, we’ll be enjoying great coffee that we’ve roasted ourselves — and saving money in the process.

To be honest, all I care about is that the caffeine continues to flow.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need another cup of joe…

Postscript: The next food fear I’ll face? Mushrooms. I hate mushrooms. Kim loves them. To give her a treat (and to give myself the best possible introduction to these vile fungi), we’ll soon have dinner at The Joel Palmer House, a local restaurant that specializes in mushrooms.

Ask the Readers: Finding Personal Health Insurance?

Today, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to use this blog as a means to do research for a forthcoming article for Entrepreneur magazine.

Your Money

I’ve been writing the monthly “Your Money” column for Entrepreneur for 2-1/2 years now, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a chance for me to hone in subjects with laser-like focus. If you’ve read my stuff at Get Rich Slowly, some of the articles might be familiar. But I also get to cover new topics (like building a team of financial advisors).

The column is also fun because it’s a vastly different process than the one I’m used to. With blogging, there’s almost instant gratification. For instance, I’m writing this piece at 8:12 on a Thursday morning. It’ll be finished and online in about ten minutes. Nobody else will review it; I’ll just post it and let readers respond. Which you will. I’ll have feedback in half an hour.

With the magazine, however, there’s a long turnaround. My current article, for instance, is on peer-to-peer lending. I started doing research for that piece in early October, at the end of my trip to Turkey. I submitted the piece in early November. My editor polished the piece, it went to print, and it finally found its way online at the end of February. There’s one comment on the article. This article about that article may get dozens of comments.

So, as I say, it’s a different beast.

Anyhow, this is all a tangent. The real reason I’m writing today is to recruit your help for the article that will appear in the June issue of the magazine. I’m writing about how to find health insurance when you’re on your own.

Personal Health Insurance

There are a lot of perks to being an entrepreneur. When you work for yourself, you control your destiny: you pursue a project of passion while setting your own hours and working without a boss. But there are drawbacks too. Sure, you set your own hours, but you’re often working far more than you ever imagined. Many entrepreneurs are lonely, too, spending most of their days in isolation. And let’s not forget medical insurance!

In fact, I’d argue that medical insurance is currently one of the biggest barriers to entry for would-be entrepreneurs. I have several friends who are ready to leave their jobs to start their own businesses, but they can’t. They can’t afford the more than $1000 per month in medical insurance for their families.

Here’s a direct quote I jotted down from one friend last week:

If it weren’t for health insurance, people would be free to do so many things. My husband is tied to his job because we can’t afford to be without coverage. Even with health insurance, we pay a shitload of money for medical costs.

For many families, health insurance costs as much as housing.

In my own case, I’ve had to make some tough choices. When I was married, I was covered under Kris’s health insurance. I took it for granted. Now that I’m on my own, I carry an individual policy with a high deductible. That protects me from catastrophic crises (like a car crash), but I pay out of pocket for routine care. And I’m discovering that even routine care can cost a fortune.

Last week, for instance, I visited my allergist to discuss my rampant hay fever. The half-hour office visit cost me $250.50. The two-minute “surgery” to send a fiber-optic cable through my sinus passages cost $530. And the nasal spray the doctor prescribed to fight my symptoms cost $138.32 for fifteen doses. All told, I spent nearly $1000 to get temporary relief from my tree allergy. Next time, I’ll probably choose to suffer.

Or maybe it’s time to change my policy. I pay $144 a month, but I receive almost nothing in return. Maybe I need to bite the bullet, to pay $300 a month (or more) but have comfort in the knowledge that it won’t cost me $1000 every time I need to get allergy relief.

Share Your Story

So, here’s how you can help me. Do you pay for your own health insurance? Have you in the past? What sorts of advice can you offer other folks who need to do the same thing? If you’re willing to share your story (or to help others find affordable options), leave a comment on this article. And if you’re willing to let me chat with you for my article, be sure you use your real email address when commenting so that I can contact you.

I think there are a lot of folks out there who struggle with affordable health insurance, and this is a chance for us to help them. Let’s do it!

Note: Past GRS articles on this subject include Hunting for Health Insurance (which chronicles my search for health insurance last spring) and Health Insurance Options for the Self-Employed.

The Relationship Between Gratitude, Abundance, and Acquisition

My last post on combatting clutter brought a lot of interesting comments and several great suggestions. For instance:

Liz wrote: “We keep a large plastic tote in our living room and we drop items that are to be donated inside. Once the tote is full, we take the contents to Goodwill.” Great idea!

DH (who has been reading my blogs for years) suggested coping with clutter is a mental exercise: “[Becoming] highly organized and clutter-free or whatever…will never fully shield us from that underlying level of anxiety you speak of, JD. That’s just a myth that sells books and blogs. The key to dealing with the underlying anxiety is to transform the material of the mind first.” Commenters Moom and Lucille agreed.

Andrew shared a William Morris quote: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Dennis hit upon something I’ve learned over the past few years: “Invest in quality items. The few possessions I do own are of very high quality and will ultimately last many years with proper care.” KSR agreed.

And Mrs. Money Mustache provided a tip that I’ve been trying to put into place here at my new home: “Everything must have its place. If every object in your house has a place where it lives, then clutter is virtually gone.” Yes, indeed, this is true.

Perhaps the most insightful comment, however, came by email. After nearly a year together, Kim knows me pretty well. She noted — not for the first time — that my problem isn’t clutter. It’s acquisition. She wrote:

What I’ve witnessed is what I would call an aquisition problem. I’ve been very proud and impressed with your ability to let go of “stuff”, but you still bring home little things constantly, and I would say more often than pretty much any one I’ve ever been around.

You know what? She’s right. What’s more, this is merely one symptom of a deeper problem in my life. As my therapist noted in December, I operate from a scarcity mindset. Many of my decisions are predicated on the premise that I won’t have enough: not enough food, not enough stuff, not enough love. As a result, I’ve tended toward hoarding (ever since I was a boy). And of course, this leads to a compulsion to acquire stuff.

For the most part, I’ve managed to shake this scarcity mindset with regards to relationships. I’ve shifted to an abundance mindset instead. Maybe it’s time to make the same shift in other aspects of my life. Hell, forget “maybe”. It is time that I made this shift.

Early this morning, I had a long chat with my friend Jodi Ettenberg, who’s near the end of a sojourn in Vietnam. Among other things, we talked about attitude and gratitude. We took turns sharing how lucky we feel, how grateful we are for the lives we lead. She may not have a lot of money, but she’s been able to travel the world for the past five years, eating and exploring and interacting with people. I, on the other hand, have a lovely home, a fantastic girlfriend, and work I love. We’re grateful for our lives of abundance.

As I ran errands this afternoon, I thought about the relationship between gratitude and abundance. For a long time, I hated the world “abundance”. I associated it with the myth of the law of attraction. But over the past few weeks, I’ve come to realize that there really is such a thing as an abundance mindset, and it’s very much tied to the ability to be grateful for what you have. As I pondered gratitude and abundance, I had an epiphany.

If an attitude of gratitude can change the way I view relationships with people, then maybe it can shift how I view my relationship with stuff. The next time I feel compelled to buy something — a candle snuffer, a drink muddler, a floor lamp — I need to take a moment to be grateful for the things I already have. I suspect that by doing so, I just might be able to put an end to my problem with ~~clutter~~ acquiring things.

It worked today, anyhow. One of the errands on my list was a trip to Costco. I need batteries, and I want lots of other stuff. But while waiting at the DMV, I took a few moments to think about all of the good things I have, and to ask if I really needed to go to Costco. The answer, unsurprisingly, was no. I stopped by the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few necessities, but today at least I was able to keep from bringing more stuff into my home.

Combatting Clutter

For years, I’ve been fighting a battle with stuff.

To me, there are two types of stuff. On a basic level, all of the things you own make up the stuff in your life. But you need some of these things. You need bedding and toiletries and dishes and cleaning supplies. The battle I’ve been fighting is with the stuff beyond the basics — all of the toys and gadgets and souvenirs and decorations and miscellaneous possessions that fill up my space and life. This is the stuff that’s been driving me crazy.

I first realized I had a problem with stuff when I began to travel about five years ago. I’m a light packer. When I travel, I take little with me. I’m able to survive with what I can lug around in a single carry-on suitcase. Living with only few things for several weeks can be liberating, and when I return home I’m often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things I own.

In recent years, I’ve slowly been shedding my stuff. I’ve purged thousands of books. I’ve donated much of my wardrobe to charity. When Kris and I divorced, I intentionally took as little as possible with me.

All the same, my recent move to a new place reinforced that I still have a lot of stuff. Maybe not as much as most people, but more than I want. I have boxes of books and comics. I have stacks of CDs and DVDs. And I still have too many wires and gadgets. So, as I’ve unpacked over the past three weeks, I’ve done my best to thin things as I go.

But I need some stuff. And there’s other stuff that I want. Kim and I have been drafting an ongoing list of stuff I ought to acquire in order to make this place more livable. Here’s the real-life, honest-to-goodness list of stuff I want right now:

wireless speakers for the television
a candle snuffer
a wine rack
a drink muddler
a larger cocktail shaker
a citrus juicer
a mop and a bucket
a fire extinguisher
a floor lamp

Now obviously some of this stuff is useful and important. Without a mop and a bucket, my floors are going to get filthy. But a candle snuffer? Is that a needful thing? Or is it really, truly just stuff? Where do I draw the line?

I don’t yet know where to draw the line, but I’m beginning to get an idea.

Just the other day, for the first time in my adult life, every room in my house was clean and tidy. All of my stuff was put away. It felt awesome. My physical environment was free of clutter, and that made it so that my mental environment was free of clutter. It helped to reduce the underlying level of anxiety that I’ve come to realize is always present in my life.

I’ve decided that one of my goals will be to maintain this sense of inner calm by being certain that my home always has an outer calm. I want things to be neat and tidy. But in order to accomplish this, I can only have so much stuff. It can’t be pouring out of the closets and cupboards, overflowing onto desks and counters and tables and chairs.

I’ve also re-committed to pursuing quality. While sorting through the things I own, I realized that I have a lot of cheap crap (purchased in an effort to be “frugal”). Sometimes cheap crap is good. If I’m not going to use an item much, there’s no sense paying top dollar for it. However, for the things I use often, it makes sense for me to take the time to find the best solution, to pay a little more to get the best experience.

In short, I want to own fewer things, but I want the things I own to be of better quality.

I suspect I’ll be waging this war on stuff until the day I die. I don’t know of many people who ever win it. (The few I do know who seem to have won the war on stuff have done so through drastic measures. Tammy and Logan, for instance, won the war by moving into a tiny house. I applaud their victory, but that’s not something I’m willing to do for myself.)

I’m curious: How many of you feel like you’re fighting a war on stuff? How many of you are constantly wrestling with physical (and mental) clutter? What techniques have you found to help you fight the battle? What does not work? And do any of you feel like you’ve actually achieved a lasting victory?