And welcome to this episode of Talk of the Town, a favorite of ours. I say that fair amount, but this truly is. I get to periodically speak with Cecily Miller and Stuart Ikela, who are both prominent members of the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture, ACAC, and this is an ACAC update. So we are going to try and zip through an awful lot of material and I can count on Cecily and Stuart to deliver the goods for us. Let me get out of the way. First I'll say we like to take these opportunities where we're getting kind of a snapshot in time of you guys to look a little bit back and then at what we've got right in front of us right now and then even anticipate things coming up in the future. So I know that we could talk about the past for the whole half an hour if we wanted. But the Spruce Up Arlington campaign kind of has been an umbrella campaign that involves a bunch of different facets. So let's just talk about that and then we'll move into things that are going on currently and in the future. So tell us about how that went and what the different aspects of it were. Sure. Well, Spruce Up Arlington with the tag Get Your Sparkle On, it encourages the town to, you know, we would encourage the town to come together with the business sector and the arts and culture sector to activate some spaces that would allow the community to come together safely outdoors to enjoy entertainment, some solace from the pandemic. We engaged in public art and live arts. We rolled out some of the work that we've been doing in our busking program earlier to bring performers into some of the spaces like the parklets that the town provided, but to beautify them to, again, liven up our neighborhoods this summer. And Cecily did some terrific work, especially in the parklets. We can talk about the utility boxes a little bit, which people have seen crop up all over town. Well, one of the things that Allie Carter in the town's planning department did to help out local restaurants and cafes was create outdoor eating areas in parking spaces and these are the parklets. And they were basically large, orange plastic barriers. And so we were thinking, well, how can we make these look a little better? And the first one that we launched was with Adria Arch in Arlington Heights actually last fall. And then this summer, we partnered with the Audison Art Club and Art Teacher Polly Ford. And so middle school students made a fabulous public art installation in a parklet right on Broadway where they envisioned these giant animals. It was kind of the flora and fauna of Arlington, writ large. Then Tanya Griffin created dragons on the Medford Street parklet. Tanya loves dragons and there happens to be a lucky dragon restaurant there, so it felt appropriate.  And the final motif that she picked up on was the masks that wrestlers wear in Mexico because there's a wonderful taqueria there. So kind of reflected the site. We did another parklet with volunteers from the Girl Scout. It's a wonderful troupe of kids who did pollinators, they did bees and butterflies and beetles, ladybugs, and we put that in a parklet surrounding clay dreams. I thought that would be a great place to put kids' art since kids are working on art in that parklet. And finally, an artist named Cheryl Sorgh, who's actually based in Los Angeles, mailed us these wonderful pop art eyes, really bright colors and patterns that she builds up out of colored tape. And Lori Berenberg, one of our all-long-time volunteers, and I installed them on the parklet in front of Blue Ribbon Barbecue on Massav. So there was a series of these vibrant, friendly, fun parklets and we'd love to do more. Well, I got to tell you, you guys didn't get to those a moment too soon because, as you said, and we've spoken to Ali about this before, it was primarily a way to support local businesses and restaurants, of course, but the orange monstrosities were the best they could do initially just to delineate the space, obviously. But boy, were they ever in need of some beautification and this clearly did the trick. And if I could just underscore, the great thing about this project is it was a fundraiser for public art in a way, but it really gave the business community a chance to support. They were super supportive of this. We was really arts and culture and business helping, so we did this partnership with the Chamber of Commerce and we had the folks from Gales and so forth really participating in the planning of these and really enjoying them. So the same thing was with the utility boxes this year, businesses stepped up and started sponsoring them. It wasn't us applying for grants, it's everybody seeing the benefit of it. That's wonderful and I do think like some other things about the pandemic, the parklets are probably here to stay for a while. So again, we can look forward to future installations that again make these just lovely little spaces instead of just utilitarian as they began. Again, just with the caveat that we could obviously just keep talking about this stuff, I'm going to move us forward to the things that people can see around them right now. And just very recently, we had an event at the Fox Library that anybody who might have missed the event is going to be able to see what the public art on display there is for a long time to come. So just tell us a little bit about that, please. So this is part of a complicated project that we've been working on for some time now. There is an artist who's also a professor of graphic design at Northeastern, Tom Star, and he conceptualized, he conceived of a project to draw attention to climate change and its impact on the world around us by creating markers commemorating events imagined in our future. It's called Remembrance of Climate Futures. So could be something devastating, a high water mark during a flood, temperature, extreme heat temperature, an invasive species, an extinction event anytime in the next 50 years. And he's doing this project in a variety of towns in New England. Here in Arlington, we're doing the only model where it's youth led. So Rachel Oliveri and I worked together to recruit 12 interns from Arlington High School, and we met with them for eight weeks during the summer. They had guest speakers and they went to all kinds of commission meetings, volunteer activist meetings, interviewed people from sustainable Arlington, Zero Waste, the Mystic River Watershed Association, and many other community groups to find out what are the citizens of Arlington doing now to prepare for climate change? What do people see as the immediate and future challenges? We received funding from a wonderful organization, MAPC, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. And their goal is to get the word out about what can cities and towns do to be more resilient as we face these challenges. So the students could have focused on the kind of dire events that we can predict unfolding if we aren't able to take the kind of action we need to to get to carbon neutral. But an important part of their work was looking at how can we, how can we mitigate? How can we use green infrastructure to handle floodwater? They came up with ideas like painting roofs white all along Mass Avenue to reduce, to reflect heat and reduce the amount of heat absorbed on roofs. They came up with the idea of having a climate curriculum taught K through 12 so that students, young people can sort out misinformation and understand the science behind climate change and the social impact and environmental justice issues involved in climate change. They even came up with a pretty fanciful example of a knotweed café, the concept of eat the invaders. We have climate change, we'll weaken native species, invasives will become more prevalent. What can we do? Well, let's figure out how to eat knotweed and other, you know, other invasive species as a way of reducing them. So this is a project we'll culminate in small aluminum markers that will be placed around town in the spots where these events could happen. So at Spipond, at Thorndike Field, along the Mass Ave corridor in Monotomy Rocks Park, where the students imagined events unfolding. But in preparation for that, we did a week paste on the Fox Library that brought all of the markers into one spot for a temporary art installation so people can see all of the ideas that the students came up with. And what I'd like to do now is share a clip from an event that we had just a couple of days ago where the students spoke about the impact of their project and their hopes for action. So future is a funny word because it implies we won't have to face it. And a lot of people use the future when they're talking about climate change, but I don't feel like that's the way we should talk about climate change because it's our present. It's already here. So some of the markers over there have already happened. And I feel like that's a really important thing to realize about this project. It's like the temperature continues to rise with sea levels and storms. And we keep on looking back for the next landmark. The foggy, unforeseeable, no turning back, but we've already hit it. Climate change has already become irreversible and we have to live with that fact. The horrific events can happen and some will, but we can be here. We can listen and we can make a future possible by working together, by dismantling corruptive legislation and companies, only focused on money, and by taking actions ourselves in our own house. I'm not here because I know climate change will take things away from me. I'm here because I know when the bike path near Aylwhite is submerged, thousands of people will donate money and time to build a new elevated path. There's work for that. That word is resilience. When I look at that wall and I see something I don't like, I try not to think about what I'm losing. Instead, I think about the positive change those disturbances will produce because our community is resilient. I hope that we can all be resilient together. The project itself couldn't have been produced without the help of many groups and individuals. Their time and dedication made this project what it is today. Thank you. Just try to work with your local community. Not only wetlands, but public transportation. We've had those blue bikes and I'm glad to see people have been using those. Maybe we can try to get public transportation more accessible for others, make more areas pedestrian accessible. We want to see more of that. Other things we can do, I've seen a lot of people doing composting. We could try and have a town-wide composting site because one-fourth of our solid waste is food. That actually gets incinerated. We want to try reducing our carbon footprint. If that gets incinerated, well, we're not doing exactly that. If we could try composting, thank you. That was great. Wonderful to hear right from the students themselves, but also I was struck in just looking at all of the markers, as you mentioned, with that combination of them acknowledging a lot of the more dire, as you put it, events that can happen, but also combining and balancing that with things that we can do proactively and that hopefully folks their age and our age will spearhead going into the future. Yeah, and if I could just add one more thing, we all know climate change is going to impact the younger generation, and they've shown great leadership, not just with our program, but with school strikes, composting, reducing plastics. It was a very natural and organic concept to have them lead the way on this project. So Rachel and I could not be more proud of how hard these students worked and at how impressive their ideas are. So Arlington is really grateful to have such incredible ideas. And we will be blessed with the fruits of that for years and years and years to come, hopefully not flooded away at any point. Stuart, we also have a new artist in residence to welcome in for the year. We do. We have a wonderful artist, Chanel Thurville, who has been meeting with residents around town. We had a first kickoff event at reparations of business in Arlington Heights. And she has a really wonderful project envisioned for portraiture of Arlington citizens that comes out of an interactive interview process where she really works with the community. And along the way, we're creating a space for Arlington's black community to to find connection in a way where it can be very difficult to in town through art. So that's really wonderful. And Cecily planned this with Chanel. Do you want to share some of what's coming up? Yeah, I want to say that really we're doing this in close partnership with Jill Harvey, the town's director of diversity, equity and inclusion. I think she shared updates on this project too in her interviews with you. And it's been fantastic working with her on outreach and more than outreach. Really, we have a partnership planning every aspect of the project. But I thought in this case, it'd be nice to for folks to kind of virtually meet Chanel, brought a little three minute clip where she shares a little bit about herself. So maybe we can take a look at that. That would be great. Hi there, my name is Chanel Thurville. I'm a Haitian-American artist and educator. In the context of my artwork, it's good to know that both of these things are very important because they complement each other. In terms of my work as a visual artist, you can see some examples of what that looks like around me. Traditionally, I'm trained as a painter. I have my bachelor's in fine arts from Pace University. And I have my master's in art education from Mass College of Art and Design. So in terms of thinking about what I do as an artist visually, that tends to manifest in portraits. Some that are more traditionally painting base. Others that are more mixed media that include materials like yarn, fabrics, different kinds of paper and wood. And now I've started to venture into murals in addition to installations that I've made in partnership with a number of nonprofits that include schools, community centers, museums, colleges and universities across the box. As an educator, it's important that people feel seen in her through engaging with my work. The process for creating these things often involves some form of reflection, exchange of stories and capturing of reference images. Sometimes that reflection and the exchange of stories takes many forms that can include written responses, facilitated discussion with groups or one-on-one interviews where folks are prompted with things that make them think about their experiences, their identity, their interests and stuff that makes them unique. Between the exchange of stories and using my camera to photograph some reference images, I'm able to generate a likeness that embodies an extension of the presence of the individuals I'm depicting. As a person who values action led with intention, it's been a pleasure to begin my residency in Arlington in partnership with the Arlington Commission of Arts and Culture and the Division of Diversity and Inclusion. Thus far, in an effort to get to know the people of the neighborhood, I have done an artist talk that was open to the general public there. I participated in a group exhibition celebrating Black artists created by Cedric Douglas at 13 Forest Art Gallery. I've had a tour of Arlington, so I've been able to meet some of the local business owners and talk to residents about how they have felt living in Arlington. And most recently, I did a meet and greet specifically catered to the Black community in Arlington at a local business called Reparations, who prioritizes selling products related to Black hair care. With your support, you can continue to strengthen these relationships and make something beautiful. All right, well, thanks for that. That was definitely worthwhile. Zooming right along here. Stuart, you and I were talking before we went on air about the successful and almost viral expansion of a program that we have spoken about before on these very updates that go outdoors. Tell us what has been happening with that. Right, well, just very briefly, you might remember last year we had installed a couple of artist-decorated doors and strategic locations along the Man-A-Man bike path as part of a close regional exhibition and partnership with Lexington and Concord to encourage outdoor activity and safe enjoyment of public art. As a proof of concept, we worked collaboratively with three town visitor centers, three cultural districts, and so forth. Well, since then, the idea caught fire, as you said, virally. And this year, there are now art doors installations in towns all across Greater Boston, including neighboring Medford, Groton, Westford, Carlisle, Newton, and there are about half a dozen more coming online. We've expanded a number of new artist-decorated doors that we've commissioned here in Arlington. They're all up all around town. There's a new kind of digital way-finding map that shows the collaboration among the towns. You can travel to up to 10 different towns, 50 different artworks all connected in this way with more to come. Just this week, the Umbrella Art Center has partnered with Minuteman National Historical Park to install contemporary public art doors that are inspired by significant historical locations in the park. And that's really a common problem. Right, the Umbrella and the Minuteman Park is in Lexington, right? And one of those places is in Pippo? In Lexington, some in Lexington, some in Lincoln, some in Concord. The wonderful thing is that so many different communities are able to connect through art. And really kind of encourage inter-town tourism at a time when we need to visit our neighbors and support our neighbors and promote inter-town tourism. So that's a really great project that's coming online. And you can see it all over town in Arlington. And thanks to Lori Bodden of Art Links Arlington who coordinated the Arlington installations this year. Great. OK, well, that's a great kind of synopsis of what we can see around us at the moment, as you were both saying. Let's talk about what is coming up for folks. And I'm actually going to throw it to you guys and let you decide which are the things to highlight. Well, I'll say one thing about Chanel's project. In December, she'll be working on a video, an online kind of workshop. So people at home, we weren't really sure where we'd be with COVID in the winter months. But so in January and February and March, people will be invited to do portraits of their friends, family, neighbors and be thinking about a portrait not as necessarily a literal likeness. You don't have to know how to draw. You could put together some words. You could do a collage. You could take photos. Or you can try your hand at drawing or painting. But it's mainly an act of appreciation. Like, what is it about this person that brings you together? What are their qualities that you appreciate in terms of their generosity, their kindness, their courage? Could be any number of things. And one of the reasons I've asked Chanel to do this is in her own portraiture, those kinds of qualities come through. You feel like, I can tell this is a person I would want to cook with. I can tell this is a person I'd want to dance with. You really get a sense of the qualities and spirit of the people that she's portraying. So there are a lot of ways to do that. You don't necessarily have to do it the way Chanel does. But she's given a lot of thought to how you represent, how you distill, how you identify those qualities. So hopefully that will be something that people can do at home in these colder winter months and maybe share through social media. And you said that's gonna get going in December? She'll be making that video in December and then we'll have some kind of a nice celebration kickoff in January to make it available to the community. Yeah, I look forward to delving into that project more deeply in general with you, with Jill and with Chanel. So that's a promise for a future broadcast. But I know also, Stuart, you had mentioned about... Even before December, we've got a lot of art coming online. Exactly, and a cultural district that kind of encompasses a lot of that and that people can now have a self-guided tour for, I think, right? That's right. I mean, just in November, we've got a lot of packed programming. Obviously, Porch Fest is coming back, Open Studios in a different form this year from ACA. We're really supportive of that. Concurrent with that, there's going to be a new holiday pop-up market for artists in town that's being spearheaded by Art Links Arlington and will be in partnership with the Roast of Granola Cafe up in Arlington Heights. And yes, we have a major project coming out for the Arlington Cultural District. We have commissioned a new self-guided audio tour, a digital tour that was masterminded by Ed Gordon of Old Chua Mill. Very well researched, recorded with Loop Lab in Cambridge. That will be coming online at the same time for Porch Fest and for the holiday market. People will be able to really go and deep dive into all the sites of significance, some historical and some very contemporary here in the Cultural District. And let's just remind people, sorry for the interjection that the Open Studios and kind of Porch Fest redux that is happening that day all on November 13th, right? Yes, yes, that's right. Coming up pretty soon. I'm in town hall. So that's very exciting. That's great. So one of the things that I want to make sure that we hit on, because we have spent our time just, like I said, zooming through a number of the things that people can see that are the result of your labor and your collaborations with other groups, with artists in the area, et cetera. But I think that it needs to be said that the ACAC is also working behind the scenes on a lot of stuff and kind of providing the scaffolding for a lot of things. So let's take a minute and just recognize that work that you're doing as well. Thank you, yeah. I mean, that is part of our mission to create a sustainable environment where arts and culture can thrive. And so so much of the work, it's the work that's not seen on a stage. And some of that includes most recently we've been really investigating how to support artists who need live workspace. As we all know, it's getting harder and harder to find housing here, much less large work spaces. And so we're trying to work with the town to find ways to support artists there. We're also working very hard to conduct research for how some of the ARPA funding could trickle down to support just the small and medium sized businesses in town, but also the nonprofits. And the hard hit arts and culture sector. Many artists are out there, their schedules see small businesses themselves who have not had the opportunity to apply their trade throughout the pandemic and are also in need of relief. So these are some of the kind of infrastructure building activities we're undertaking now. Well, and as always, we have this extensive website and the purpose of that is to create one place that people can come to to see what's going on. So we have a calendar of events and really encourage everyone in the town who's producing events, an artist who's holding an exhibition in the library, a restaurant who's hosting a jazz series, go to put it to submit that to our calendar, artsarlington.org so that folks in the town residents can find out about what you're doing. So this is really a service. It's not just to promote what we do and our programs, it's for anything anyone is doing in the town to do with arts and culture and science as well. And it's a free resource for artists, businesses and audiences alike. It's great. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that website again because it is such a, you know, it's a nexus for finding out all the things that you need to, to enjoy either the art or, you know, some mixture of art and local commerce that you guys are involved in. Cecily, I'd like to ask you, let's take the last minutes that we have to have a last chance segment. So what is the last chance for people, you know, what are some of the things that there's a, we're getting to the last chance for people to see? Well, there are three large installations in the town that will be coming down in the next month or so. And that is Nilu Muchela's wonderful reflecting on our pandemic experience in Monotomy Rocks Park. There's still a couple of weeks to go and experience that sort of spiritual place for remembrance, reflection, healing. Leslie Wilcox's marvelous sculptures based on historic costumes that are wrapped around trees at the Jason Russell house. That will be coming down in mid-November. And Michelle Lougie's fantastic extended sculptural installation along the Minuteman Bikeway that so many people had a hand in creating probably will be coming down at the end of December. That was made to warn people to call attention to the environmental dangers of single-use plastic. And so we, it's been up for a year at this point. Yeah, we spoke about current artist in residence, Chanel Thurville. And, you know, why not wrap things up by mentioning previous work, Michelle Lougie, artist residence in the past, and then Nilu as well. So, great. Thank you guys a lot for being here and for being willing to speak so quickly about so much. Thank you so much for having us. It has been a pleasure. I have been speaking with Stuart Ikeda and Cecily Miller of the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture for this ACAC Update episode of Talk of the Town. I'm James Milan. Thank you guys again for being here. Thanks so much, James. And thank you as well. We'll see you next time.


This is State Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Guys, and we are back live here on the Prince of Investment. I'm your host, the Prince of Investing, Prince Dixie, live in the beautiful state of Hololulu, Hawaii. So as you guys can see already, this week is not today in particular, but this week it is going to be Veterans Day on this Thursday. So what I did today, I decided to bring in a very, very special guest. We got the author, Doug Norman, of The Military Guide to Financial Independence and Retirement. So we're going to be talking about retirement, financial literacy for all of our veterans out there across the world. His book is available on Amazon and all the other great places and stuff like that. But as always guys, I don't have a lot of time and I definitely know you guys don't have a lot of time, so let's get straight to it. So let's go ahead and welcome my guest today, Mr. Doug Norman. How are you doing today? Doing good, Prince. Good to be here. Thank you for having me. Good to be here. Okay, awesome, awesome. Now- There's quite a background there. Quite a background. Definitely, definitely. So you wrote this book called The Military Guide to Financial Independence and Retirement. Why did you think it was so important to educate veterans on financial literacy? Right, you know what it was like when you were starting out on active duty and all you knew was that you were getting more money as a young adult than you'd ever had in your life. That's true. And the next thing you knew is you had to get a hot car or the latest technology or a new cell phone or some kind of cool gear. And what really happens is that's when you should be saving your money for financial independence. But it's very difficult when you're just starting out in the military to remember how to do that. And so the book is designed to show you that you can save for financial independence even while you're in the military. You don't even need to go to 20 years or get a pension.  You can reach financial independence in less than a 20-year military career. And even if you just do one obligation in the military and then get out and be a veteran and move on in your civilian life and your bridge career, maybe the reserves or national guard, you can still reach financial independence in a very relatively short time. In my case, I retired in 2002. I've been retired for 15 years now. I'm financially independent and the whole process of saving for financial independence really ideally starts as soon as you get your first paycheck. And I know it takes a while for things to settle down. But within that first year or two of active duty, you should be able to start saving your money. Now, that's great what you said about how you did 20 years and, you know, you was a military officer and you retired now in 2002 and, you know, you're financially independent. That's very rare. You see veterans do to do 20 years and be financially independent. Yep. Now, you have so many investment vehicles out there, right?  You got mutual funds. You got ETFs. You got stocks, bonds, whatever the case may be, with someone out there, because a lot of us came in like myself, I was 18 years old, didn't have a clue about investing, right? That's right. So, hey, military people get, they earn a pension after they're 20 years, they do 20 years, but you go into a room on the enlisted side in boot camp, you go into a room and they just, they shout at you for about five minutes, you need to do this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, sign up for this or whatever the case may be, you sign up for it. Now you're in the TSP program. That's right. And you're guessing, hey, I, I, I guess that's it. So, that you went off and done this, how, what would be your advice? How would somebody would start? Maybe that E3, E4, E5 or E6 or 7, that's listening to this, what advice would you give to them? Well, I would advise people when you're in recruit training and they're yelling at you to sign up for the thrift savings plan, just do what they tell you to do. Don't ask, don't ask questions. Don't come to anybody's attention. Get out of there as soon as you can. Got it.  If you've invested in the thrift savings plan, as you probably did when you signed up, then you should look at how much money you're putting in the thrift savings plan. And everybody says, well, I don't have any money. I can't afford to save for financial independence. I can't afford to save for retirement. But everybody someday is going to be out of the military and the best time to start saving is the day you joined the military. The second best time to start saving, if you don't do that, is today. So, I tell people, go look at what you're spending. And the easiest way to understand your spending is to just track your spending. Whether you use a software or a smart phone or a pen and paper or a piece of computer software on your personal computer at home, whatever you do, track your spending. And after a couple of months of doing that, you'll figure out where your money is being spent well and where it's just being wasted. And it's very individual. It's very personal. Some people feel like they're wasting their money on eating out and dining out too much. Other people feel like they're wasting their money on drinking alcohol. Whatever it is, it's a personal choice. And after a couple of months of tracking your spending, you'll figure out what you've spent your money on and you'll say, well, I know where I'm wasting my money. And that's where the savings begins.  And from there, you start saving that money. And you'll soon get yourself out of debt.  And now you'll have extra money to send to the Thrift Savings Plan.  And I know it can be overwhelming. That the MyPay system says, do you want to do it in a Roth Thrift Savings Plan or in a traditional Thrift Savings Plan? Exactly. And we make it complicated. But when you're just starting out, the easy answer and the one that will have no troubles later on is to just pick the Roth Thrift Savings Plan. There's a number of tax reasons and you can talk to a financial advisor and get all the details or ask me offline after the show here. But the easy answer is the Roth Thrift Savings Plan. And once you do that, you should set your contribution as high as you feel comfortable with. Maybe that's 5% for some people. Others might be 15%. A few individuals might be able to set their contribution to 40%. I can say that the math of reaching financial independence says that if you are able to save 40% of all your money, of your gross pay, 40% for less than 20 years, maybe about 16, 17 years, you'll probably reach financial independence even without the pension. I got a couple questions that you said there. When you said, okay, I mean, when I was very first joining Thrift Savings Plan, you had a lot of people saying that it wasn't a Roth at the time. That's right. So a couple years, I want to say about 2008, 2009, or something like that. 2012. 2012, right? They came out with the Roth. So a lot of people say, well, you said, hey, you got some, I would recommend you go Roth.  Because a lot of people, a lot of sailors, a lot of Marines, Army that are serving across the globe and that have served.  You're like, I don't even know if I have traditional or Roth. Now what? What is the difference? Why would you recommend I get the Roth? I get this question all the time when I talk to people. There are people that don't even know if they signed up for the Thrift Savings Plan. You know, they blocked out all that trauma of recruit training and they just don't want to have a flashback. So the first thing we say is go find out if you're signed up for the Thrift Savings Plan and then you probably have to go figure out what your password is and have that sent to you or reset. Once you get that straightened out, then you're ready to look at the two. Military service members are lightly taxed. You earn money and you have a base pay, but you also get a lot of tax-free allowances. And the numbers are that about two-thirds of your pay of all your money that you get in the military is taxable, but about one-third is tax-free. And so you're lightly taxed already. And then when you fill out your tax return and send that off to the IRS, many junior enlisted and even junior officers have what's called the earned income tax credit or a child care tax credit or a number of other tax credits that are available to them. And if you take those tax credits, even though you may likely be taxed when you get to the end of the tax form, it'll tell you that you can apply some credits to your taxes that you owe to the federal government. And before you know it, your tax bill is very low, maybe just $100, maybe even zero. So if you're not paying any taxes, then you might as well put your money in somewhere where it's after tax where you don't have to pay tax and later on. So my advice when you're just starting out is pay your taxes now with the Roth Thrift Savings Plan, which are money in the Roth TSP, it's already had its taxes paid on it. And the nice thing about that is all the growth in that Roth Thrift Savings Plan account for the rest of your life is tax free. Wow. You won't pay any more taxes.  And I'm 100% in grins with you. I tell, you know, all of my junior people in supervising anybody that listens, I say to me it's a no-brainer because I feel most veterans will earn more later in their life. Absolutely. Then they will in the military because in the military, you know, you get so many tax breaks, you know, your housing allowance, you get all these different tax breaks that you may have. And most people, once they go into after the military life, they will have their pension and they usually find a start another career. Yep. And by the time, you know, I don't know, 20, 30 years from now, when it's time for you to withdraw that money, now you have to pay taxes on it. And that tax bracket, that could be, we don't know what the tax rate may be. So you're looking at it, you're saying, hey, if you're being tax-free now, take advantage of it, get into the Roth, and that your earnings will be taxed, tax-free, essentially. Very gladly. That's right. When you can pay the tax now and the lowest tax bracket you might ever be in for the rest of your life, that's what you should do. Now, there are other times, if you serve some time in the military and get out of the military and you're financially independent, or maybe you're living off your savings for a while, but you don't have any income. If there's a period in your life where your income is very low, then maybe it makes sense to pay your money and pay your taxes later. But that's very rare. Very few people get out of the military and start traveling the world and never spend any money. So I would advise people to start out with the Roth Thrift Savings Plan. Okay.  Exactly. Financial independence, is that a number? Like, how do I know, like, like, you know, this is the finish line, financial independence. How do I know, what is that? Like, what technically is that? People just want to know what to do. Exactly. How much do I need? How's it going to take? And I sympathize that. I'm not a certified financial planner. I don't have any fancy three-letter acronyms after my name. I don't have any financial training. I'm just a smart guy who figured this out with a lot of help from the Internet and a lot of other military people. That book is written with stories and advice from 50 other service members and their veterans and their families. And so we had a pretty good crowdsource book when we wrote that. And in there, you know that when you're financially independent, the first thing is, you don't have to work for money. You can. You don't have to. When you're financially independent, you have control over your time.  You can keep working if you want to do whatever career you're in, if you find it challenging and fulfilling, and keep doing it. Some people have no reason to ever stop working. Lawyers, doctors, university professors, some people in the military want to keep going right up until they're age 60 or 62. They have no reason to quit. If they're enjoying what they do, then they should keep on doing that.  You don't have to work for money. You could work for money. You could donate all the charity. You could spend your whole time surfing. You could travel the world. It's just whatever you want to do. And the very next question that comes up after I say that you're financially independent is people want to know, well, what are you going to do? I can fill that time up just fine. And that's what everybody else eventually learns to do. The other question is, what's the number? What do I need? How much is it going to be? And the answer is, it depends.  I hate hearing that comment from financial specialists, but that's the answer. The tripwire, the thing that makes you say, I might be financially independent, is when you have enough assets, savings and investments, things that you can convert to money, when you have enough assets that you have 25 times your annual spending, then you're probably financially independent. Now, I'm putting a whole bunch of weasel words in there and caveats and maybes and supposedlys in there, and that's because it's a tripwire. And the idea is that if you spend $40,000 a year, I've done this math already, if you spend $40,000 a year, then your 25 times your annual spending would be a million dollars. So many people spend about $40,000 a year. That works out to a little less than $4,000 a month. If that's your expenses, then you look at your annual expenses.  So if you could get your annual spending down to $25,000 a year, just a little over $2,000 a month, now the math means that you only need $625,000 of assets, of savings. And that's probably going to last you for 30 years. And when I say probably, I mean the opportunity, the chances that the odds are that it's going to be 80% maybe even higher that you'll get through 30 years. The reality is that the computer systems that simulate the stock market and the economy and all the other factors that go into this number that I just quoted, that study can't replicate everything that people do. It can't imitate human behavior like we do. So when I say 25 times your annual spending, what I mean is the computer studies show that is a very high probability of working out and it's a probability higher than 80%. And it's probably going to be 100%. It's like giving you a lottery ticket and telling you that 80 of these 10 lottery tickets are going to win the lottery and you're never going to need to play the lottery again. And so you're quickly going to use those lottery tickets and look at them and figure out how that works. You're not going to say, well, I need to work for another year or two to see if any of these lottery tickets pay off. So 25 times your annual spending and then you can really start digging into the numbers and figuring out if you really are financially independent. Okay. That's a good little calculation to figure it out. But guys, as always, we're going to take a quick break and after the break we're going to get into a little bit more of the TSP that, okay, you say put your money in the TSP but the TSP has so many different funds you don't know what to do. Okay. Mr. Norman, can you give me some more about that? But stay tuned. Stay locked in for more with the Prince of Investing right here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel, CEO of Think Tech Hawaii. For the first time Think Tech is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. Give thanks to Think Tech. That's the name of the campaign. It'll run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate what you can so that Think Tech can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming like mine. I've already made my donation and I look forward to yours. Please send in your tax-deductible contribution by going to this website, www.thanksforthinktech.cozvox.com. On behalf of the community enriched by Think Tech Hawaii's 30-plus weekly shows, thank you. Mahalo, sincere Mahalo for your generosity. I'm Jay Fidel. Aloha. Guys, and we're back live here on the Prince of Investment. I'm your host, the Prince of Investing, Prince Dax. As you guys who've already tuned in before, we're here with the author of The Military Guide to Financial Independence and Retirement. This is our Veterans' Day, Veterans Week special. And in the studio, I have the pleasure and the honor of having Mr. Doug Norman, the author of this book. And we're going deep into not, deep as we can for the show, right? We've got a limited amount of time. Limited amount of time. But we want to do, he spoke about it earlier where he said, hey, listen you, you have so many throwing your money into the TSP, adding your contributions and things like that. But one of the things he didn't mention is that when you put your money into the TSP, you have the G fund, the I fund, the C fund, the S fund, Lifecycle 20, Lifecycle 40, whatever the case may be. You did great if you already had the TSP. If you didn't choose one of those funds, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably in the G fund. Mr. Doug Nummer, what would you tell someone out there who is like, well, what should I invest in? Well, before we took that break, we got to the point where people figured out if they had a Thrift Savings Plan account and then they figured out if they had a password still and could log into it and this is very common and then figured out if they were actually contributing to the Thrift Savings Plan account from their MyPay account. So now you've got a faucet of money turned on and a stream of income is going in that Thrift Savings Plan and you're absolutely right. Inflation is very, very safe but because it's so safe it has such a low rate of return that it loses money to inflation just about every year. So the G fault is an easy answer if you're never going to look at the Thrift Savings Plan again but if you go your entire career and look at your G fund when your career is over you're going to be very unhappy at the low numbers you see there. What I advise people to do is invest in whatever their asset allocation is, whatever they're comfortable with in owning in the stock market or in bonds you've got this whole alphabet soup of things you can invest in in the Thrift Savings Plan and you listed some of them earlier the CEF, GEI and all the L funds and there's S fund too and it's hard to figure out what you want to invest in. The easiest thing to do would be to invest in an index fund like the stock market that's called the C fund and that mimics the standard and pours 500 index. If you want to get fancy and do more investing and do the entire stock market you could add some of the S fund that stands for small capitalization stocks or smaller stocks that aren't available. And then there's the I fund which stands for international stocks international funds which are nothing in the American stock market. Those are all stock funds. Some people don't feel comfortable with having an asset allocation that's very aggressive and by aggressive I mean volatile and by volatile I mean most years you'll make between 4 to 6% maybe you'll have a year or two or 8 or 10% you'll have an incredible year like this year has been for some people making 15 even 20% volatility. 2008. Right. Nobody complains about upward volatility but when it's negative then everybody's unhappy and negative volatility means that you might actually lose money in the stock market on paper. If you don't cash out then you haven't actually turned that paper loss into a loss of actual money but if you hold on to those shares they eventually will recover. And what we found out is over the long term if you can hang on to your asset allocation in the stock market for a long time and for most people a long time is 10 years you're going to put money in a thrift savings plan in stocks that you probably aren't going to touch for 10 years and that's what I mean about asset allocation you have to be comfortable with having some of the C funds some of the I funds some of the S fund and deciding what combination of those three is going to let you sleep at night. You can have all the cold hearted calculations you want all the financial logic you need to figure out your asset allocation but if you can't sleep at night or even worse then you're not going to be happy no matter how well the stock market does so you have to pick that asset allocation that works for you or to keep it even simpler let the thrift savings plan pick your asset allocation for you and that's the other acronym you're talking about the L funds L stands for life cycle and it's where you are in your life and where you are in your investing life and the L fund is a series of funds of different asset allocations from all the other funds in the thrift savings plan for example there's a fund that's going to mature after that called the L2030 fund those are the years that they are actually finished with their investments those are heavily into safer investments like bonds and some cash then there's the L2050 fund which you mentioned at the beginning and the L2050 fund is the most aggressive fund right now for the thrift savings plan and it's got mostly the CS and I funds as well as some of the other thrift savings plan funds so you pick an asset allocation that's comfortable for you you can mix and match the CNS and I funds and the whole point is to turn on the faucet to put the money into the thrift savings plan and to keep raising your contributions whenever you can but to just move about your business and not worry about the thrift savings plan every day you can drive yourself crazy but if you just put the money in there and keep on investing and save as much as you can for as long as you can you reach financial independence even if the stock market has a bad year or two okay now the thing about it that you made some great points when you got the C it's common stocks right pretty much the S&P 500 exactly then you have the I fund which is I for international and then they ask for small cap that's right and then you say hey you can go to the life cycle where it kind of does asset allocation for you and what it does is to say hey we're gonna depending on how aggressive you want to be then it becomes more conservative supposedly as time goes on to your target date now to someone out there you have the C fund you have the S&P 500 which is the top 500 companies in America now when we look at a lot of the top 500 companies in America wouldn't you say a lot of them are already international am I already diversified you're absolutely right you're absolutely right so some people may say hey if I had the C and the I am I overly invested into the international markets you could be it's all whether you're comfortable with international asset allocations and how comfortable equity asset allocation high stock asset allocation you could put all your money in the C fund if you wanted to in the Thrift Savings Plan that would give you some international exposure but if you wanted to add more then you could do that you could add an international fund now I have some money in my investments I can't invest in the Thrift Savings Plan anymore but I still have a Thrift Savings Plan account before I start withdrawing from it and you can leave that invested in the stock market invested in anything you want to invest in in the S funds so if you had the chance to do it all over again walking into the military that's right how would you asset allocate your TSP you was walking into the military I'd buy a really big pickup truck I would choose an asset allocation it was very aggressive and the reason I say that is because I do math I'm fairly comfortable with volatility and as an experienced investor I know I can handle it in the long term I guarantee you're going to be pretty busy you're probably not going to get laid off any time soon unless you really mess up with that with that income with that assured income then you know you're not going to have to save a lot of money for unemployment insurance for example or for having a layoff or losing your job instead you know you're probably going to be there for the next four or six or ten years whether you thought that was a good idea or not and because of that you can put your contribution into the Thrift at least 50% in the C fund and personally I'd go higher than that I'd go up as high as 80% in the C fund and then 10% in the small cap fund in the S fund and 10% in the I fund international fund now there have been times 2008 was one of them and 2009 was one of them where we went in even heavier with the S fund and the I fund and we just tried to stick to our asset allocation and so back then we were supposed to rebalance you heard that asset reallocation and stuff so in 2008 it took a downturn you invested more what happened was some things dropped more than others and so when the stock market was dropping like crazy we were putting more cash into the stock market and in some things that were dropping less than others you might actually take money out of one asset and put into another asset and it's hard to do I wish I would know about this today you know in 2008 when I came in I was rather young in my military career and I thought like wow just get out of the market and I didn't know you know what I know today to say hey this is the best time to buy this is when you need to be investing more aggressively in a downturn what I was thinking about was maybe I need to overdraw whatever the case may be but that's due to a lack of financial literacy so I applaud you for that because it's easier said than done to see let's say if no career launches a missile tomorrow and the market starts to collapse it's very hard to say oh it's the best time yes looking back on when you watch the charts you're like oh that's the perfect time to buy but we was on two wars we was in Iraq in Afghanistan we were gas prices at all time high you know we was going through an election we had all these things that were going on you had all these big banks that was closing down you're talking about Ford collapsing Bank of America so it's a very scary time in the financial industry now let's buy more shares right the stock market has a sale and everybody runs away screaming that's true now someone who's listening to this how did Doug Norman what was his steps to becoming financially independent after his military life well I did it during my military life and back in the 1980s and 1990s we were using stone tablets and mallets and chisels to figure out our investment asset allocation this was before the world wide web really got started there was not the motley fool there was not CNBC well it was on TV but it was just getting started a lot of the tools today just did not exist back in the 1980s and all my spouse and I knew to do was to save as much as we could and because we knew we were going to be employed for a while we knew that we could put that into the stock market into a high asset allocation of stocks equities and just keep doing that for the long term and so my advice today would be once you've tracked your spending and figured out what you're wasting money on and you start saving some money try to invest as much as you can in a thrift savings plan and I would say in a thrift savings plan do that and then just try to keep raising it when you enter the military you're used to a very low standard of living I remember my submarine days and being deployed and out there and all the little things I really needed to keep my life are much different than they were apparently today so you know where the dividing line is between being frugal and not wasting your money and having deprivation because you're deployed and you feel challenged and fulfilled at saving so save as much as you can feel challenged and fulfilled at taking care of your future but don't feel like you're not going out not spending any money not having any fun and once you are a reach in that savings level keep raising the amount of money you put in a thrift savings plan eventually you'll maximize the contributions the thrift savings plan and as high as you can get your savings rate for as long as you can we'll get you to financial independence and in my case it was that high savings rate that got us to financial independence by the time I retired from the military from 1982 to 2002 actually at the end of the 1990s we were pretty close to financial independence we made all the mistakes right we chased hut performance we chased funds with fees because they were really good funds and so you paid a fee just to invest and we paid extra expense ratios back in the old days we would commonly pay one to one and a half percent per year that's a lot compared to today anything over 0.25% today is a lot but back then we made all these mistakes we did all the things you're not supposed to do we were active investors and active funds we weren't just putting the money away in passive asset allocations and yet that savings rate that high savings rate overcame all of our other mistakes and that's what got us to financial independence and so the most important thing people can do is start today start saving you can figure out that threat savings plan later you can figure out your asset allocation as you go but the most important thing is to start saving start putting it back that's very good that you said that well we got Mr. Doug Norman is there anything you want to put out there and say to all the listeners and followers around the globe no you're everybody's welcome to read the book and the book is also available in over 100 libraries around the world both on military bases and out at local community public libraries all the proceeds from that book all the revenues that I make from my writing I donate that all to military friendly charities like Warrior Project Fisher House Foundation so once you read the book feel free to donate it to a library or pass it on to somebody who needs it the people that tend to spend money on the book and keep it are the ones that want to read the e-book version that e-book version is a lot easier to handle because you can search for keywords and highlight but you don't actually need to buy you got to see right here on the screen here you have the military guide to financial independence and retirement it's available on Amazon we got the host right here all of the proceeds go to a charity of military veterans this is our veterans edition and I hope that a lot of you guys will tune into this who you know yes we have military training and stuff like that but it's very rare you see someone who has done it who has went through and done it when he's mentioned those things when he started talking about I heard myself talking about things I didn't know but I'm glad I picked up on it but here you are exactly right here I am by reading books like this by learning by getting around you know some of the greatest investors of our time and picking the brain of Mr. Doug normally things like that because you know he has a little gray hair right here that helps a lot right that helps a lot you know that comes with a lot of wisdom people can find that on the internet the military guide it's all over here more importantly it's also on the website on the blog and people can find that on the internet that's themilitaryguide.com it's one of the top rank results for the keywords military personal finance or military oh that's you you do military yet you do the military guide the military guide yeah oh he has I thought you did military the military guide that's you I like for the site I founded the site and it's run by another person now I still write for the site I'm going to use the guy who's running the site is also an army service member he's just about to retire and he is also probably financial independent but he's an entrepreneur he loves what he does he's never going to stop and I take so much pleasure in watching him do things like start the financial conference that we were talking about earlier so he's a perfect example of what are you going to do all day and you're still challenged and fulfilled but look online look at the website ask me questions send me emails however you want to do it I can get in contact with again I'm all over the internet and I can even put my email address right there on a YouTube channel if you want when you put your show up you can see it right now they can listen to you right now NordsNords at gmail.com N-O-R-D-S N-O-R-D-S at gmail.com there you go Nords is a nickname an old X-O gave me okay a family friendly nickname got it Nords alright so there we go we got the military guide to financial independence and retirement and to all my comrades out there I want to say thank you guys for your service around the globe and around the world especially the bubbleheads out there on submarines across the globe keeping us safe and silent the silent service but thank you guys for tuning in as always each neighbor Tuesday we come into you guys live and wherever you get us don't forget to hit the like, subscribe, comment and share button don't forget to tune in again and until the next video podcast whatever you see me do crazy around the globe peace be safe I'm out and thank you


You may be wondering, why do I need to hear about communication or learn about communication? Isn't it all just common sense? Well, as the French philosopher Voltaire pointed out, common sense is not so common. Have you ever had a situation where there's been a miscommunication or a time when you and the other person just couldn't seem to get on the same page? No matter what your professional field or your personal circumstances, communication will undoubtedly be an important factor for success. And so for that reason, we're going to start our discussion by defining communication and narrowing down exactly what we mean when we say communication. What does that mean? So communication is the process of sending and receiving symbols to establish mutual understanding and shared meaning. So there's kind of a lot here and there's a lot of words and phrases. I want to break this down a little bit and take a look at each of the constituent parts. Let's start with the fact that communication is a process. There is a specific process that takes place and there's a whole other video of mine that you can check out if you want to learn more about that process. But there are specific elements that are always involved in the communication process. That doesn't mean it happens the same way every time. In fact, each one of those elements is actually a variable with all kinds of different possibilities within it. But there is a specific process. It starts with communicator A who has a message to send. That message goes through a channel. The channel is used to communicate with communicator B. Communicator B then offers feedback and then we also have noise and context that we throw in there. Those different elements make up the process of communication, but it is a very specific process that takes place and can be defined. So it is something that we can observe and take note of and adjust those different variables. Again, there's a whole other video on just the communication process. I encourage you to check it out. The link will be in the information down below. Communication is also about sending and receiving symbols, which is why when I just described it and when you watch that video on the communication process, you'll see that we call them communicator A and communicator B. And that's because traditionally they've been called the sender and receiver, but in fact both parties on both sides, whether it's one person or many people, are both sending and receiving at the same time. It's not just one or the other. This is a two-way process. We send and receive both as a part of the communication process. So it's the process of sending and receiving, and we are sending and receiving symbols, right? So we're sending and receiving symbols, but not like this, right? That's a different kind of symbol and spelled differently. I understand that. There's a little professor joke there. So we're sending and receiving symbols of all kinds. So for example, it may be words or it may be characters that we use, like arrows and the at symbol or the hashtag or whatever. These are all symbolic, right? They represent different things. And we'll get into that in a little more detail in another lecture as well, another video as well. But they are representative of something that the sender and receiver are trying to communicate. So we use symbols like words and characters and even nonverbal expressions to express ideas and express emotions and things, and they are representative of what we are trying to communicate. So we communicate using symbols. So communication is the process of sending and receiving symbols. For what purpose then? The purpose is to establish mutual understanding and shared meaning. Ultimately, that's what we're driving toward. We use these symbols to try and get on the same page. That's the whole idea is that we can be on the same page. It's the other person that they understand, would have an understanding of what it is we're trying to communicate. And that happens through shared meaning of these symbols. As we'll talk about again in another video, we're just laying a foundation here, but in another video we'll talk more about how language is symbolic and that kind of stuff. And it really comes down to shared meaning. But just for a quick example, if we looked at this gorgeous animal here, all of us would say in English we would call that a cow, right? It's a cow. It's a specific kind of cow. We could get into all that, the breeding and things, but it's a cow. And we spell cow C-O-W. And when we look at that, we don't say, hey, that's a fork or that's a barn or that's a car or whatever. We say that's a cow because that's what we've decided to call it as a society. In English, now they have different words for it. In different languages, of course, right? So we're just talking about English here, calling it a cow, but that's that shared meaning and mutual understanding of and illustrating the fact that language is symbolic, right? Why do we call it a cow? I don't know. Somebody decided that. And why do we spell it that way? Because somebody decided and that spread enough that it caught on. And so we have this mutual understanding. When somebody says cow or somebody writes the word C-O-W, uses those letters in a row, that this is what they mean, that this is what they're talking about. So we have that shared meaning and that gets us on the same page. If we're speaking the same language, it's a whole other topic, right? So overall, then, now we know that communication is the process of sending and receiving symbols to establish mutual understanding and shared meaning. There's a lot of different variables within this, a lot of different factors that we can adjust in ways that we can become a more competent communicator. And all of that are things we're going to explore in the rest of this video series on communication. And so, but just wanted to lay a foundation for what is it that we mean when we say communication and why it's important that we study this because we all have areas to improve in here. If you have questions about this definition of communication or what we mean by communication or anything along those lines, I would encourage you to email me. I would love to hear from you via email. In the meantime, I hope that you will begin to see communication as more than just common sense, but as a process that can be developed, can be learned and with a lot of variables in it that we can adjust to become more competent communicators.


Every year on the 4th Thursday in April, ITU, its member governments, NGOs, schools and tech companies all around the world reach out to girls to showcase the exciting potential of technology as a career choice. Girls in ICT Day is all about inspiring girls and young women to pursue STEM studies and to leverage the power of digital technologies to follow their dreams. In 2020, ITU will once again take its own Girls in ICT Day celebration on the road, this time to the Pacific, where we will be generously hosted by the government of Samoa. We'll be visiting local schools, organizing hands-on tech training sessions, leading discussions with academia and NGOs and partnering with local tech companies to give more than 200 girls an inspiring taste of what a career in technology can offer. So far, more than 11,000 Girls in ICT Day events have been held in over 170 countries. We hope you've already started to plan your own. ITU's Girls in ICT Day webpage offers lots of ideas for organizing a fun and inspiring Girls in ICT Day event, plus a host of visual collateral and other useful resources. So celebrate Girls in ICT Day with us on April 23rd, share photos and highlights of your event through our online mapping tool, and expand the horizons of the girls in your own community.


The federal government, in collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, has distributed farming inputs to farmers groups in Nassarara state. During the distribution, the state coordinator of the FGN IFAD Value Chain Development Program, UNICEF, said the gesture was aimed at boosting the capacities of farmers to enable them cultivate enough food for residents during the rainy season. Today we are distributing a total of 92 irrigation pumps, 40 solar-powered lapsack sprayer, 8 tri-cycles, 8 garry processing equipment, including grinding machine. This intervention is in progress of commitment to strengthening rice and cassava value chains as well as improving the livelihood of smallholder rice and cassava farmers on sustainable basis.  I have a lot of people around me and I pray that me living with disability, I am well confident to stand here to appreciate the VCDP for their support to me and I pray that more physical challenge will be encouraged to do like the way I am doing. My prayer today is that God will continue to strengthen the VCDP and the IFADs and every farmer that is seated here. Don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.