retirement by 2020 or bust

lately i've been looking at my finances to see if i could actually retire in 13 more years. it's possible, but it's going to take a lot of savings and investments doing okay and not losing money for me to make it.
that said, i've wasted a lot money and time in the last 3-4 years screwing around. thank god it's not too late.
as for my health, i've been playing tennis with friends 3-4 times a week for the last two months, so at least i'm keeping it up. my wife actually signed up with a gym last week, and is now going everyday so far.

funeral planning

Attending my friend's father-in-law funeral caused me to have some thoughts about my own. One thing for sure, I know I wanted to be cremated and have my family do to my ashes what they wish, as long as they don't flush it. As for flowers, I would like to direct donations to charities in lieu of flowers.
Of course, I also wonder who would show up at my funeral. It makes me think that I need to make more of an impact in my community than I'm doing currently. I don't think anyone would miss me except my family and close friends. I think that I have lived a rather self-centered life up to now. Hopefully, this will be a reminder that I need to impact the community/world I live in more than I do now. We'll see where this leads as time goes by.

getting in shape

I've some how managed to stay fairly active this last month. The weather has been great so I've been walking to lunch a few times. I've played tennis at least a couple of times a week. Went jogging a few times, and generally just been more active. The reason for this increased activity is two fold:
1. to get in better shape/health. and more importantly
2. so I can eat more.

I've always felt that it is better to not put on weight at all than to try to lose it once gained. Therefore, I've been eating less since I'm not very active. Because of that, my appetite/stomach has shrunk some. Last month, when I went out to dinner at Michael Mina's, I was stuffed, so stuffed that I still felt full by next morning. Not a good feeling. I like food too much to not be able to enjoy a full meal. That's when I decided that I need to start eating more to stretch my appetite/stomach back, and to offset it by being more active in general. Let's see how long I can keep this up, and not get out of shape. Because I'm pretty sure I can keep up the eating, it's the exercising that's worrying me. :)

new reality at 40s revisited

I talked about the new reality of 40s a few weeks ago, and now I'm dealing with some. A friend's father just passed away yesterday. I'll be dealing with stuff like this for the next 10 years if not longer.