In the due course of history, a man is empowered with the capacity for life and liberty when he is financially beholden to neither men nor entities. These truths are self evident in their own right, that without freedom from debts and liabilities men are deprived in the profoundest of ways from pursuing that which would ensure their happiness and well being. It is hereto realized and understood the egregious deception by which principalities have sought to strip us of the very power that has been so rightly bestowed to us by our Divine Creator.

Acknowledging then the oppressive currents of those who have entrusted themselves to the cause of evil, I hereby declare my free and total financial independence, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence to utilize these newfound freedoms for the noble cause of truth, justice, and charity.

In other words, I paid off my school loan.

That concludes the triple play of payments I’ve been making to get myself completely out of debt, starting with my credit card (which went as high as $8,000), then my car loan, and finally my college loan, which had been a boil on my boom booms for 11 years.

It couldn’t have come at a better time either. The VERY day I made my last payment on my school loan, my job started a 6 month period where I have to work two days a month without getting paid, a concession my union made because they’re a bunch of spineless baboon heads that are only good to take my money so they can organize picnics I never get invited to.

But anyway, regardless of that temporary cut back, the world is my oyster now, and that my friend is truly a miracle. Not too long ago I was $20,000 or more in debt, and now it’s all but gone. This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous before our eyes. From here on out, I can just keep on saving until I build myself a decent nest egg and use that to go back to school for a masters, buy a new car, and/or put a down payment for a nice house in another state (some place very, very far away from New York). I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do by then, but one thing I do know is that I will NEVER, EVER (with the possible exception of a mortgage), go into debt again. The feeling of owing money to whomever was to me the worst feeling in the world, and I thank God for this tremendous gift of financial freedom, given to me on the 4th of July, of all days. From now on I will be the head, and not the tail, and I will lend to many nations, but I will not borrow thereof.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go collapse into bed for some well deserved rest, then get ready for muchos BBQ food, fireworks and good times.

Happy Independence Day!

Tags: car loan, college loan, credit card, debt, debts, financial, financial freedom, gift, God, independence, independence day, job, liberty, lord, money, world is my oyster
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I paid off my car loan!      

2 down, 1 to go!  I paid off my credit card last July, so all the remains now is my college loan, which at my current pace should be paid off this 4th of July, of all days. 

I learned a few things today too.  For one, withdrawing a few hundred bucks from an ATM machine is not quite as easy as you might think.  My tax return was finally deposited into my account yesterday, but the account that held my car loan was with a different bank, so I needed to deposit part of my tax return into that account so I could pay off my loan in its entirety.  I figured no problem though, I’ll just hit up the ATM for a few hundred and be on my way.

First I went to the local gas station where their ATM doesn’t give me lame surcharges.  I cheerily walked in, took out my card and…

“Out of Service.  Please come back another time.”

Of course…

So I went to a 7-11 and used the ATM there.

“Withdrawal request exceeds allotted funds.  Please try again.”

For the love of… ok, I’m sure by now you’re thinking why I didn’t just go to my bank directly and make the withdrawal there.  The bank was 20 miles away, and a trip there and back would lose me an hour at least.  By the time I got to the other bank holding my car loan it’d be closed, and I REALLY wanted to get this over with now.

So I took the maximum amount of cash the ATM could dish out, which was $400, then drove to another ATM.  This time I could only withdraw $100.  I withdrew that amount, then swiped my card again to make another withdrawal.

“We’re sorry, you have exceeded the daily limit of withdrawals that can be made.  Please try again tomorrow.”

Huh? 

I tried it again.

“We’re sorry, you have exceeded the daily limit of withdrawals that can be made.  Please try again tomorrow.”

I just stood there, trying to figure out what to do next.  I was still a $100 short, and I needed to find some other way to get it.  Ooooh I know, I’ll use my credit card!  I could pay the difference when I got home too.  Easy peachy!  So I swiped my credit card.

“Please enter your pin number.”

Pin number?  Oh crap.  I had forgotten what it was.  Let’s see, I think it was 1-2-3-4.

“Incorrect PIN number.  Please try again.”

@#$%^!!!

Ok, ok, let me think here, how else can I get cash without using the ATM… … …

Cashbacks!!

I quickly ran into another 7-11 and bought myself coffee.  Swiped my card at the register and waited for the cashback screen to show up:

“Cashback amount?”

I inputted $100, then waited, confident and enjoying my coffee.

“You may only withdraw a maximum of $10.”

Dude… why?

“Is everything alright, sir?”

“Could I like, get some money from your register?”

The cashier stood there wide-eyed.

“No no no, I mean the cashback here only goes up to, you know… uh,  I didn’t mean…, I’ll just take my coffee now.”  I quickly walked out.

Alright, what now…  I vaguely remembered being able to get more than $40 cashback from the supermarket, so I figured my best bet would be there.  I drove a few miles to a nice big honking supermarket and went inside.

Only one thing was going to make all this aggravation worth it.  Bagels!  I bought myself a few whole wheats and some cappy ham, then quickly went to the self check-out.  Swiped the card again, said a little prayer and inputted $100.

“Card Approved.”

YES!  Finally!  The machine started dispensing my $100… in 5 dollar bills, and of course, it had to be one of those nuclear powered cash dispensers where gobs of 5 dollar bills went flying out like a winning slot machine.  I frantically picked up the cash, counted it to make sure I had it all, then hauled heinie out of there.

At long last, after what had to be 5 or 6 stops (I lost count) of putting together the cash I needed, I stopped by my bank and proudly slapped down the money.

“I’d like to pay off my car loan please.”  I smiled broadly.

They gave me a receipt and that was it.  I got into my beautiful ride and took a deep breath.

“Finally, you’re all mine.”  I turned the ignition and sighed happily.

*click*

Ha, just kidding, it started up fine. 

I have to tell you though, during the drive home it seemed like the whole world was literally aiming at my car, almost as if they all knew it had just been paid off too.  Oy.

But finally, FINALLY, this headache was now over with, and with all that behind me my college loan was the only thing left that stood between me and becoming completely debt free.

I can’t wait! 

Tags: atm machine, bank, car loan, cash, cashback, college loan, credit card, debt, financial, independence, money, supermarket, tax return
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I love blogging, especially when it gives me the opportunity to read some of my old posts and have a good laugh at what a stupid moron I am.  Case in point: check out my new year’s eve post from a year ago:

Still, there’s something about the coming year that makes me think I may be in for something different this time. The number 8 is said to symbolize new beginnings, and man, after this awful stretch I’ve been in since the turn of the millennium, a new beginning sounds just like what the doctor ordered.

Here’s what I hope I’ll be able to accomplish in 2008:

1. Clear up my health problems and get strong again (vith ripplin’ mosscles to impress de vooomen.)
2. Generate a stable income of at least $1250 a month via my blog.
3. Get out of my dead end job and find a new career, whether it’s with another agency or by becoming self employed.
4. Move somewhere else, either out of state, or to nowhere in particular, depending on how successful I am in earning a living off the Internet.
5. Meet the girl of my dreams.

What in crap’s name was I smoking that day.

Yeah, I think it’s pretty much safe to say now that I have accomplished absolutely none of these things.  In fact a month later my health got even worse, starting with my hands suddenly going numb, then my right foot, then my tongue.  It was like somebody had poured Novocaine on parts of my body or something.  Weirdest, most unsettling feeling ever too.  Then flecks of blood would come out every time I blew my nose, and I started having weird breathing problems as well.  Then I had a neck cramp, where if I turned my head slightly to the left, I would shriek like a 6 year old girl in pain, and man, that cramp stuck around for several months before it finally went away.  Through it all I was always fatigued and completely without energy.  It really killed whatever aspirations I had for the year, and yet for whatever reason I refused to see a doctor.  I guess going through all that made me kind of give up on life in general, not to mention all the goals I had.

And then of course, the economy blew up in our faces and the Antichrist’s little mini-me won the election.  Great year, huh? 

So yeah, I’m very much glad that this sucky-mcducky suck-a-butt crapfest of a year is finally over.  But in spite of all the major setbacks I experienced, I have the oddest feeling that 2009 is going to be the year that 2008 wasn’t.  I’m finally planning to see a doctor in January to get myself tested every which way so I can find out what’s wrong with me, and force myself to get back on the path to being strong and healthy again.  I also have something in the works to bring myself the traffic I need so I can finally earn money through this blog, and I’m also on an accelerated repayment plan to pay off my car loan and college loan, making me completely debt free by July.  Once that happens I’ll be making plans to move as well.  Maybe it won’t be out of state, but at least it will be far, far away from the awful memories of this evil town.

And then of course, there’s the event that made me truly believe that the girl of my dreams was real, and that she will be there waiting for me once I decide to stop being such a weenie.

So… 2009 will have to be the year that I man up for real.  The world is after all in grave danger, and desperately needs a hero now more than ever.  I for one am just studly enough for the job, ready to ride on my Black Stallion to save the day and get the girl, all to the tune of INXS, but of course. 

Happy New Year!

Tags: aspirations, black stallion, blog, debt, election, failure, fatigue, girl of my dreams, health problems, hero, new beginnings, new year, number 8, resolutions, world
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I’ve been spending the weekend exploring ways to bring more traffic to my site, which took me into the brave new world of domains.  There’s an industry out there built on the notion that if you purchase enough old domains that once amassed a ton of backlinks and redirect these domains back to your website, it will give your site enough juice to bring in serious traffic.

The problem is, this whole domain business smacks of the stock market and gives me a bloody serious headache.  There are literally hundreds of thousands of domains that expire (or are about to expire) every day, and sometimes you have to bid on them if they’re in high demand.  Theoretically though, if you invest enough money into enough valuable domains, the dividends will make it worthwhile over the long run.  So say I spend $1,000 on domains.  If (and that’s a big IF) it brings in enough traffic that I end up making $500 a month in revenues as a result, I will have eventually gotten back what I invested after two months, and then some.

Here’s the thing though: every investment I have ever made in life has been a monumental failure with a capital F.  Whether it was school or life or internet projects or relationships or whatnot, whatever I have purported to do in life has always resulted in ultimate FAIL.

So with that kind of batting average, do I really want to spend thousands of dollars grabbing up all kinds of domain names in the hopes that they will collectively bring me the kind of traffic I’ve been looking for?

See, that would work for other people, but not for me.  Somehow, the laws of physics and economics all stop at my doorstep.  You ever seen the show Lost?  Well consider me the island.  Once you’re on my shores, you can just forget about everything you’ve ever thought you knew about how the universe worked, because it’s all been rendered moot here.  I am a walking wormhole of anomalies, a glitch in the system. 

That’s why I’m kind of hesitant in blowing thousands of bucks on this new experiment, especially when I’m so close to paying off my debts too.  I just want this blog to work out so badly, and the more I think about things and about finding another job or another career, the more I’d rather be out of the workforce altogether and be self-sufficient and self-employed, that way I can live anywhere and go anywhere.  I don’t want to be stuck at one job in one place forever and ever.  I need to MOVE, baby. 

So, I don’t know.  I think I’m just gonna leave this alone for now, and once all my debts have been squared off, I’ll come back to this and maybe think about making smaller investments instead of going all out, and see if it goes anywhere.  I’m just so sick and tired of my 5 visits a day traffic that I’m just chomping at the bit to get SOMETHING going.  Gaaaah. 

Tags: backlinks, blog, debt, domain, domain names, domains, experiment, FAIL, failure, internet, investment, job, life, money, traffic, website, workforce
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I only have one thing going for me right now: a steady plan to get myself completely out of debt by July 4th, 2009.  After that I’ll have a lot of wiggle room to move around and start searching for another job so I can move out of New York once and for all.

That is, if I can muster up the energy to do so, because right now it’s all I can do to even stay awake these days.  As much as I try to hope and believe a better future awaits me, I plunge so deeply in despair that I sometimes ask God to end my life.  I’m already past my prime and getting older, and with that there’s no prospect of finding a better career after having been in a dead end job for so many years.  Little to no chance of finding the girl of my dreams either, and healthwise I continue to get worse and worse.  I wonder if I don’t already have a cancer somewhere in my inwards that will soon put me out of my misery anyway.  Maybe that’s why I won’t see a doctor, so I can give it a chance to finish the job.  And of course with the coming economic holocaust and a government about to veer to the left of Stalin, it’s hard to find reasons to even stay alive anymore.

I can’t even blog because there is just nothing going on in my life right now, and the news just depresses me even more.  I guess I’m just in a really bad way right now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get out of it.  Sigh.

Tags: career, debt, depression, despair, dream, dreams, future, God, job, life, misery
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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So now that the sky is falling and the world is soon coming to an end, it seems my plan to pay off all my debts couldn’t have come at a better time.  Just a few more months and I will be back in black, so to speak. 

And I figured, what better way to celebrate the coming of Armageddon and my soon debt free existence than to give myself a much needed and overdue makeover?  After all, if I’m gonna go out, I might as well go out in style. 

This is where you, my beloved readers come in.  I’m going to need some advice and suggestions to complete my makeover here, and your much valued advice will most certainly be welcome.

So where do we begin?  Well it begins of course, with…
 

The Leather Jacket

 
Yep, there’s not a brother in creation who can lay claim to being the baddest of the badasses if he’s not donning a slab of weather beaten leather.  And I don’t mean the kind of leather sported by a 500 pound biker either:

Oh, HELL NO.

No, not quite.  I’m looking for a blazer type jacket that swings in the breeze as I walk in slow motion towards whatever epic battle I’m about to engage in with a gritty but determined look on my face.  Something like the following might be more appropos:

I'm kind of a big deal.

JCPenny’s never seem to have what I’m looking for though, and something like this I can’t chance ordering online because it’ll likely either be too short, too long, too tight, or too loose.  Something like this has to be perfect.  Oh, and something like this also has to have a big enough pouch to store all those women’s hearts I’ll be grabbing up when they see me looking all fine and whatnot.  So, suggestions?  Maybe an online store that will tailor make a jacket based on the measurements I give them?  Ponder over this some while I move on the the next item on my list:
 

The Watch

 
It’s kinda sad, but I haven’t been wearing a watch for years.  The last watch I wore was a titanium hunk of metal that was given to me as a graduation present from my folks after I finished college, my mother’s reasoning then being that I should have a gift that not even I could break.  She was wrong of course.  The thing gave up the ghost a few short years later, and my wrist still has that pasty white line around it where my watch used to be.  Here’s a tip by the way: just because a watch is made of titanium doesn’t mean it won’t break if you end up dropping it on the street the same day a dumpster truck passes through.

Anyway, the thing that held me back here from getting another watch was that I kind of liked my watches to be a bit.. well,  gadgetry.  You know, one that could tell me the weather, latest sports scores and what was currently showing in theaters.  So I ordered a watch from MSN Direct that looked like it had been lifted off of Dick Tracy’s dead body and thought I was once again the epitome of cool.  The watch would update with all kinds of nifty info and graphics via a radio signal.

The only problem was, I happened to be living in a dead zone 50 odd miles wide between the two areas where the watch could actually get a strong signal.  Needless to say I don’t think holding my watch out the car window as I desperately tried to balance between driving and using myself as a human antenna was quite what the designers had in mind.  Another downside was that the antenna was built into the wristband, and it was about as bendable as a block of steel.  While a lot of thought admittedly went into its design, comfort obviously wasn’t one of them.

So, what to do?  I still wanted a watch that was a bit gadgetry.  And man do they have gadgets watches aplenty.  They even have watches where you can upload videos or watch TV on as well!

Nothing says COOL like a watch that can get Rick-Rolled.

I might be going overboard with this though, especially since I have an online buddy who is convinced beyond measure that if I even think of wearing a monstrosity such as the video watch above, I will never get a girl, never, ever, ever, ever, amen and amen, for the love of all that is good and holy, please, do not sully the human race by wearing such a ridiculous contraption.

Well alrighty then. 

That still leaves the question of what brand and type I should get though.  Obviously I want a good, quality watch that will last, maybe solar powered, small and not bulky, black leather wrap, (to match my black leather jacket of course) built in compass, (I’m constantly getting lost so this is a must), and since I can’t get weather reports, I figure one that can read barometer levels would be a nice alternative instead.  Oh, and it has to light up.  I don’t mean the fuzzy wuzzy neon glow in the dark silliness either, I mean light up nice and bright so that a plane flying overhead could see it.  Seriously, I’m fed up with not being able read my watch because I’m running from the police and the dumpster I’m hiding in makes it too dark for me to tell the time.  It’s just uncivilized.

So, suggestions?    Moving on along in the meantime:
 

The Sunglasses

 
There arew few things in life I’m more finicky about choosing than sunglasses. They’re always too round, too ugly, too rickety, too bulky or too much or too little of some damned thing that I just end up hating it after a while.

With sunglasses this awesome, how could you not want me?

Bottom line though, the glasses have to be polarized.  When you can see clouds the way God probably sees them, then dude, those are the kind of glasses I want.  Only problem is, polarizing sunglasses are rarely mirrored or opaque enough so you can’t see the eyes.  And that just won’t do, especially when I’m checking out a super hot awesome babelicious babe’s umm… shoes.   It’s none of people’s business what I’m looking at anyway. 

I did see one brand that had polarized but completely opaque (none of that ugly brownish tint) at a Mall once, but I never got the name.  Once again, suggestions on brands I could check out are welcome. 
 

The Cellphone

 
I’m with Verizon, which as some of you Verizon users know likes to nickel and dime every bloody damned thing you do on your phone including using the built-in calculator.   Seriously, this is the one network where if you utilized every possible feature they offered you’d probably pay oh, about a grand a month or so for the pleasure.  And just to milk it further, let’s not pay a one time fee to download, say a ringtone.  Let’s offer a SUBSCRIPTION FEE instead where you have to subscribe to a ringtone you like on a $%^&ing monthly basis.  Dude, seriously.  Not cool.

And since I’m using a basic LG phone, it takes me about 10 minutes to dial in complete sentence when texting someone (including Twitter).  I could go Blackberry I guess, but let’s face it, we all know there’s only one solution here:

My hands are manlier.

I’ll have to jump ship and go with AT&T though, and from what I understand of their monthly plans, the costs can get steep ($80 or so for the whole works including unlimited text).   But a coworker let me try out the iPhone just for a minute and it was enough for me to fall in love.    Yep, I definitely wantie, especially when all the favorite apps I use have also been ported for the iPhone.  Heck even my webstats service ported an app for the iPhone.  Mobile blogging and twittering would get a whole lot more fun with an iPhone too, especially if I get caught in a Cat 5 hurricane and want to live blog the experience while sharp debris fly around me.

So for those of you who jumped from your former network to AT&T, was it a real pain?  I was told I can still keep my phone number from Verizon, but I’ll have to find out for sure.  One thing’s certain, I just can’t be a true badass now if I’m not carrying an iPhone. 
 

The MacBook

 
Villains use Windows.  The good guys use Macs.  There’s a reason for this, so who am I to break with tradition?  Besides, I need a machine that removes as many roadblocks as humanly possible between creating multimedia content and uploading it to my blog.  Do I wanna make a video?  Click click, done.  Do I want to create a podcast so y’all can swoon at the sound of my stud sounding voice?  Click click, done.  Photos, Music Composition?  No problem.  They really do make it that simple, at least from what I could tell when I played around with a MacBook for about two hours at Best Buy until they threw me out.  Microsoft?  I don’t know what these people are smoking, but Vista acts more like a virus sent by the Russians than an operating system.  Seriously, how hard can it be to make something as user intuitive and fun to play with like GarageBand?  I’d like to compose some bit of music and videos one of these days, but Microsoft, they like to leave that sort of thing up to third party developers who charge you $500 for the pleasure of installing their bloated craptastic software onto your system, which then proceeds to chew up your memory into bits, cause your hard drive to forget how to spin again and your video card to go blind from insanity.

When I say I want a pimped out notebook, this is not what I mean.

So, it’s settled that a MacBook is a must, especially if I’m going to be traveling a lot and living in dinky (but yet homely) apartments.  I’d love to get one secondhand, but from a cursory look on eBay they’re so high priced even secondhand that I’m probably better off getting it new.  Sad thing, this will probably be my biggest investment, and it’s not one I’m ready to make unless my blog earnings justify it.  So how can you guys help?  Well if you got one lying around, feel free to donate it to the brutha here.  It’s for a good cause.  Or, you could  link to my blog.  No, really.  Adding a link from your site can really do a lot to boost my standings in the search engines, and in return I’ll be happy to link you back.  Lincoln needs some link love, sugar.  

And finally:
 

The Motorbike

 
Yeah, you knew this was coming.  A badass without a bike?  It’s like Mozart without a piano.  Although, I might make an exception here only because I simply don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to go trudging around the country with both a SUV and a bike.  I could get a trailer I guess, but that tends to overly complicate things more than it should.  I already got a sweet ride, so is a bike really necessary?

Well yes.

It’s kinda like skydiving or bungee jumping, one of those things you do once in your lifetime, just to see what it’s like, at which point if you’ve managed to survive the experience you can then go around boasting about what a reckless badass you’ve been (though this is probably something I wouldn’t want my mother to know about.)

Plus, the chicks dig it, which is pretty much the only reason I’d think of getting one (and yet another reason why Mom is better off not knowing.)

Yes, I really am THIS awesome.

There’s crazy though, and then there’s suicidal.  While I’m down with crazy, I definitely wouldn’t get a bike with enough CCs that I could outrace an F-16 fighter jet.  A simple beginner’s bike with 250CCs will suit me just fine, thank you.  Bike enthusiasts will laugh at me, but most people won’t know the difference.  And besides, the chicks dig it.  Though truth be told, I really dug the Harley Fatboy that was used in the movie Terminator 2.  How cool would it be to have a bike you can effortlessly latch an oversized shotgun onto?

Get off my bike, Arnie.

Ok, on second thought, that might be just a bit too much (especially since the bike model Arnie rode on still retails for like $15,000 today.)

No, I think something a bit more sensible might be in order, such as the Kawasaki Ninja 250, which is touted as a great beginner’s bike and only retails for $3,000 or so.  Best thing about it of course is that it seats two. 

In case you haven't noticed by now, black is my thing.

On the off chance that anyone reading this is a bike enthusiast, happy to hear if you have any thoughts to add. 
 

Conclusion

 
That about wraps up all the ingredients needed to realize my lifelong dream of becoming a Super Righteous World Saving Badass.  Ahhh, I could see it now too: waltzing into a Dairy Queen somewhere in Smalltown, USA, taking my helmet off to reveal my studly, tousled, raven black hair, and ordering up the kind of drink only badasses would dare to order:

“Give me a milk…  CHOCOLATE.“

Dudes, who wouldn’t want me? 

Tags: Bike, black, black leather jacket, cell phone, debt, debts, fun, garageband, God, laptop, living, MacBook, makeover, mobile, motorbike, music, notebook, phone, Photos, podcast, stud, sunglasses, travel, verizon, Videos, watch, wishlist
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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