RickAstley

My main goal is to stay the course.

- Continue putting as much towards retirement and HSA
- Maintain employment
- Increase emergency fund to 8 - 12 months living expenses

What I would like to do, but not really important:
- Purchase land for recreation
- Dip my toes further into my taxable investments that I've not really touched in 5 years.
- Leverage a financial advisor or some professional advice to evaluate my family's current financial health and help with short-term and long-term goals.

My wife and I had our third child in 2025. Life is moving so fast, I'm prioritizing the stay the course aspect until I get my feet back underneath me.

I have an Old Timer folding knife that I've used for as long as I can remember to gut, skin and debone a deer. I'll use it to split the sternum. Just find some of the softer spots to cut and use two hands and a bit of muscle to do the splitting job.

Against the odds we ended up seeing two does. With about 30 minutes left I told my son it was prime time. He dropped his toys, grabbed his grunt call and started ripping them again. Two minutes later a deer walked out and I nearly shite my pants. We watched the doe before she spotted us and ran away.

Then my son asked if he could grunt some more. At this point I was all in with him. Sure enough another doe walked out with about 15 minutes of legal light left. We watched her until it was dark and then we left.

You're about to get swindled out of your life savings to some kid in Nigeria

Snuck out for the last 2 hours this evening. Pleasant afternoon at 63 degrees. I'm hunting on top of a steep ridge overlooking an assortment of logging roads that intersect here. The noise just carries through here.

I'm both excited and nervous about shooting one here. If you don't drop it and it slips down a ridge, it'll be a miserable drag.

My grocery store already has the Little Debbies valentine's display out. All of the Christmas cakes were gone. Only a few dozen gingerbread men and nutty buddies remained. I claimed three boxes of the nutty buddies to wallow over the next few weeks (probably days).

quote:

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how do you find the time?

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You have to make the time. I think making the time and carving out a routine are the best bets to starting the habit. The third component is picking material that you are genuinely interested in versus a book that bores you to death. Combine those three factors and you'll be off and running.

I'm on track to finish 8.5 books this year, which is not my goal of 9, but better than nothing. I get a weekly update from my phone and iPad telling me the amount of usage each week that I used the device. For example, I might've averaged 2 hours a days on the devices last week and maybe 25% of it was text messaging and phone calls. It's hard to read if you allow yourself to constantly fall into the TV/social media trap. I could've easily exceeded my 9 book goal if I laid off the devices.

I don't have any other advice outside of what I shared at the beginning. I really did a poor job of consistently reading before having kids. Now I have 3 young kids and somehow manage to read more books on an annual basis than before. I think a lot of this is we are on such a routine in my household and I am more willing to put the device down and make the time than before. There is also that bit of motivation of you would rather have your kid see you reading a book than staring at a phone.

Good luck out there. No hunting here today for me. Of course the cell cameras have pictures of legal bucks coming in right now during daylight. I've filled my freezer mostly full this week. Going to dial back to mainly squirrels and hopefully a nice buck or a late season doe.

I've got a deer down. I thought it was a doe but turns out it's a button buck.

Hunting a food plot hoping for anything to walk out. Remington model 700 .30-06. I spooked about 6 deer out of this field walking out from another spot two nights ago. I'm sure those 6 deer are having a party tonight in the field I was hunting in then.

On my second hunt for the year. Sitting on a food plot and have seen several doves and squirrels. My BIL and I each got a deer on Saturday and the cell cameras have gone quiet since then. Weather is great. 55 degrees with a slight breeze. Hunting with a Remington .30-06.