Jeff Nabers’ Self Directed IRA & Solo 401(k) Blog

I do a lot of things differently in an effort to enjoy my life. Sometimes I forget just how abnormal some of them are. This past week I co-instructed the IRA Association of America professional member enrollment course in Denver, CO. During a lunch conversation, one of our new members asked me what my secret is to accomplishing so much so rapidly. I half jokingly explained that I don’t watch TV. I guess this type of statement is more unbelievable than I had thought because a couple of hours later he still couldn’t believe it: “You really don’t watch any TV at all?”

“I don’t own a TV,” I explained. “I occasionally watch DVDs on my projector.”

I don’t watch TV for two reasons:

Mental & Physical Health - I believe that everything that goes into my body or mind becomes part of me. Turning on the TV means that I can choose to watch what’s available from a menu, but only if I also watch other things which I have no control over - commercials. Our thoughts create our reality. Having others’ thoughts shoved into my brain means letting other people create my reality.

Time - I want to enjoy my life. Every second is a decision. When I pit TV against snowboarding, snow skiing, wakeboarding, water skiing, bicycling, car racing, motorcycling, playing musical instruments, and traveling to new places… TV always loses. To afford some of these activities (more…)

If you travel a lot, or use more than one computer (ex. one at work plus one at home), then web based email is a much more efficient way of getting your messages.

Rather than have each computer have a separate email account, I suggest you either:

1. Use web based email as your only email, or
2. Have your actual email account(s) automatically forward a copy to a web based email service. Then set the web based email account to have the “replyto” address listed as the main, non-web email account.

#1 above means you will get your email all in the same place no matter what computer you’re on. #2 will mean that you still have everyone email you at your main email address, but you can also access that incoming mail from any computer using your webmail which gets a copy of all incoming email. Further, if you happen to send mail from the webmail account it will always send to the main email address (which still forwards a copy to the webmail) so that your contacts only notice one email address, which eliminates the would-be confusion of your contacts having more than one email address for you.

As far as webmail goes, I have found Google’s GMAIL to be the best. Yahoo has a nice clone of OUTLOOK EXPRESS, but it uses more complex coding that kind of bogs down a bit. (more…)