A Life Without Purpose Is A Life Without Direction
As the title of this blog states “It’s all about the money” I will discuss money and how it affects our every day life, and how to put it to the best use.
My primary goal is to pay for my son’s education without him taking out any student loans, but there is a lot more to the story than that. Everybody needs money to live day. We have to pay rent or a mortgage, we have to travel so more than likely we will need a car that also needs gas, insurance and regular maintenance.
We have to eat, need new clothes, have to heat our homes and buy everyday supplies to live. People like to travel and go on vacations, go out to restaurants with friends, perhaps have a hobby they enjoy, join a health club or do something else that they enjoy.
To do all these things, we need money. Either we work as an employee for a company, or perhaps we have our own business, which I think is a better choice, or we come from a wealthy family and inherited a fortune. I’m sorry to say I don’t belong to the last category, but one day my son will. The point is we need money to live.
I am unemployable and will never ever work for anyone else, so you might wonder what I do for a living. I have a fixed income I’ve worked hard for, but that is not enough for me to live an active and happy life so I day trade every day.
For the past twenty-five years, since the dawn of the Internet I’ve been trading. I am not rich and I still work on polishing up my trading skills every day; however I make money, am independent and free. I work out of my home, have no boss and I am hands on dad. I wake up very early every morning, work out at my gym five days a week, and before I trade for the day, I take my son to school every morning,
I’m from New Jersey and worked for a company that moved me to Los Angeles. After living in LA for five years I moved down to San Diego and lived there for ten years. I swore to myself that I would never get stuck in rush hour traffic ever again, and when I have children, I will be hands on, which I have become.
While living in San Diego I changed jobs and worked in the real estate business but I wasn’t very successful. In the summer of 1995 the Internet became available and as soon as I experienced it I knew that this was the wave of the future.
I had a computer and was publishing a quarterly newsletter, a few years earlier I published my first book which was business related, and while living in San Diego I published a cookbook with a friend as a fundraiser for a local library. That book was a success from day one.
In December 1995, as usual I was surfing the Internet late into the night. I came across a job opportunity to work overseas as a translator for the US government in Hungary. What I have not yet mentioned was that I speak fluent Hungarian, and I always dreamed of working in Hungary, but only if I was getting paid in dollars and not some other currency.
The first thing I did was call my sister and tell her about the opportunity I found online. After listening to what I had to say she asked me why I don’t go for it and respond, so I did. I emailed the writer of the article and went to bed not thinking anything else of it. This was Friday night.
The following morning at 9:00 AM I received a phone call from the company I emailed the night before. The person I spoke with shared information about the job, gave me a short interview over the phone and planned to have airline tickets waiting for me at the airport the following day. I left San Diego the following morning heading to Washington D.C.
I learned that the company was looking for translators to support the US military during the Bosnia Peacekeeping Mission. They needed Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Hungarian speaking translators that were US citizens (because everyone needed a security clearance). The staging area for the soldiers going into Bosnia was in Hungary, and that’s where we would work.
After an intensive interview, a physical exam and three days of meetings they hired me along with two other Hungarian Americans. There were about sixty plus Serbian, Bosnian and Croatians that hired but the three of us stuck out. One day in the barracks we were living in one of the Croatians yells out,” you see these three Hungarians. I realized who they are… they are “Goulash Brothers”, and from that day on that’s who we became. The Goulash Brothers and to this day we are proud of it.
I mention this short history because, as I wrote earlier I was unsuccessful in real estate and I needed the money, and this job solved my financial issues. When we got hired, everyone signed a one year contract and I believe they paid us $60,000 with food and lodging included and a 30 day vacation.
The one year contract turned into nine years. After nine months as a translator, I became the Deputy Site Manager, and towards the end of the mission I become the manager in charge and ran the operation in Hungary until the mission ended. I also spent a great amount of time in Bosnia and traveled all over Europe hiring translators for many military exercises in several countries.
During those nine years I got my finances in order, got out of debt, saved money and maxed out my retirement plan. As a manager I had my laptop and since I was in Hungary and the company headquarters was in Virginia most of our communications were online through email. E*TRADE came on the Internet, an online brokerage firm, and many individuals I knew were trading online so I also got involved. The Internet stocks were great until the market crashed and many people got burned.
One of my responsibilities as manager was to hire translators in different countries for military exercises. Many of them had to be a US citizen so what I created a website “Translator registry.com” (this is no longer active) with the help of my assistant manager and good friend Frankie. This in fact was one of my most successful websites I ever had, and I always had a surplus of people in different countries that were available when needed.
One of my managers back in Virginia did not like the website and told his superiors I was too getting too independent and entrepreneurial. I did not understand what the problem was since the website benefited the company. They told me that since I created it while working for the company it belonged to them. I disagreed with that and instead of handing it over I shut it down. That was another lesson I learned about people and human nature.
Yes, this experience changed my life, but the most valuable result of this job was the friendships I established. I became friends with many of my translators, and have made many friends in the military, and to this day I am still close and in contact with the other two Goulash Brothers.
This opportunity has changed each of our lives but it has been a lesson and experience in life those who took part will never forget. It started with the purpose of getting a job and earning enough money so I could get out of debt, but it became a lot more than that. It turned out to be a once in a lifetime experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.
The lesson I learned, was to never give up and pursue your dreams because everything is possible. I also believe this quote by Napoleon Hill to be true: “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, you can achieve.”” I can swear to this from personal experience.