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“For those regarded as warriors, when engaged in combat the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion.  Kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be Lord God, or Buddha himself.  This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat.” – Kill Bill (Vol. 1)

Yeah, a great movie.  Also describes my freshman year at high school.  If you replace samurai swords with fish sticks.

I was playing a game the other day – a silly app that The Mrs. had downloaded onto a tablet.  It has (I kid you not) small children driving tanks and planes and what not while you attempt to destroy them with poison gas and bombs.  I’m not sure what the name of the game is, but I think it really should be called “War Criminal®.”  Anyway, there are several modes you can play it on, and one of them is “single life.”  Rather than “single life” being a video game about an old, sad, single bachelor eating over a sink, it refers to the number of lives the game gives you before it’s over.  Generally you start with the dozen or so lives like we humans all have, by switching to this mode the game makes you live just in a single life.  And when you’re done?  You’re done.

What I noticed when I played the game in “single life” mode was that I died much earlier than I normally lost the first of my dozen or so lives.  By playing conservatively to try to save that single life, I had actually played much worse than I normally do.  Maybe there’s a lesson in there?

Yeah, there is.

A colleague at work recently purchased a new car – the car of his dreams.  A car he keeps . . . in his garage.  He won’t take it out to drive.  Don’t get me wrong – I understand the idea of engaging in things you enjoy only sparingly to keep them special, but in this case – he just likes the car so much that he doesn’t want to risk anything happening to it.

Tracy Goss wrote a book called “The Last Word on Power.”  When I first saw the book, the title put me off.  I thought it was a book about how to get power – sort of like Machiavelli for the modern cubicle-dweller set.   But then a boss took me aside, “No, John, the book is about getting power over yourself.”  He’d actually gone to one of Ms. Goss’ training courses.  Said it was pretty powerful – powerful enough that an executive there had broken down realizing what a mess he’d made of his life.  Yikes!

He took me through the book.  It’s good – maybe I’ll review this 25 year old book sometime in the near future, but right now you can buy it at the link above.  I get no compensation if you do (or don’t) as of the time of writing this post – but that may change.  And it’s not likely that you’ll break down into a puddle reading it.

Anyhow.

Goss writes about samurai – and why they were awesome.  The swords, right?  Or the hair?  Or the armor?  Or the ability to turn into smoke and fly like a bat?  No, that’s ninja-vampires, not samurai.  I always get them confused.  Ninja-vampires are the ones that look like raccoons, right?  Maybe not . . . .

The real samurai (not my ninja-vampire-raccoon thing) were especially effective as fighters simply because they didn’t care if they lived or died.  They would prefer to live, but if they could die a really glorious and Tarantino-esque death, that might even be better and more honorable than living.  When the samurai went into battle, they were awesome precisely because they didn’t care.  Oh, and the swords, and the years and years of arduous and intense physical training.  But without the attitude, they would have just been a group of robed acrobats with cool swords who ran like sissies anytime they cut their own finger and saw blood.

From the time when the French Foreign Legion showed up on your newsstand every week, between manning remote outposts facing sudden death . . . .

Goss continues with her military metaphors – bringing up the French Foreign Legion.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Foreign Legion, it is open to foreign soldiers joining – even today, 75% of the soldiers in the Foreign Legion are not French (all officers are French).  The Foreign Legion is world renowned for its bravery.  One reason?  Traditionally the men who have joined the Foreign Legion have given up their home nationality, their history, and, in some cases, even abandoned their name as they joined to avoid angry fathers, husbands, or juries.

Here’s Frank Sinatra in his Foreign Legion outfit, along with his son, future president Bill Clinton.

How amazing was the Foreign Legion?  In Mexico in 1863, the Foreign Legion became legends (from Wikipedia® – edited to remove parts of the autism):

A company led by Captain Jean Danjou, numbering 62 Legionnaires and 3 Legion officers, was escorting a convoy to the besieged city of Puebla when it was attacked and besieged by three thousand Mexican loyalists.  The Legion detachment made a stand in the Hacienda de la Trinidad – a farm near the village of Camarón (JOHN WILDER NOTE:  I THINK THIS MEANS SHRIMP).  When only six survivors remained, out of ammunition, a bayonet assault was launched in which three of the six were killed. The remaining three wounded men were brought before the Mexican commander Colonel Milan, who allowed them to return to the French lines as an honor guard for the body of Captain Danjou. The captain had a wooden hand, which was later returned to the Legion and is now kept in a case in the Legion Museum, and paraded annually. It is the Foreign Legion’s most precious relic.

So, 90% of your men – dead.  Surrounded by 3,000 Mexicans.  What do you do?  Fix bayonets and charge.  All six of you.

When I was a freshman in college, Caller ID hadn’t been invented.  We called the local bowling alley:

Juvenile Us:  “Do you have 12 pound balls?”

Bowling Alley Dude:  “Yes.”

Juvenile Us:  “Then how do you walk.”

Bowling Alley Dude:  “I don’t.  I strut.”

Yes.  This really happened.

This is his hand, along with some drawings of the event.  Totally tough dudes, and they still have the hand – it’s not lost in a desk drawer or a moving box like it would be if it were in my house.

And even though the six Foreign Legion guys didn’t work in a bowling alley, they could certainly strut – they had displayed amazing, bowling-ball-sized bravery.  How?

Surrounded by 3,000 Mexicans – they attacked.  They knew that they were dead.  They were living on borrowed time.  So they did the only thing they could – they made the most out of every last second.

We tossed it out.  As soon as it started the blackmail notes.  Which were not written in English, but were written in mouse blood.

We have an awful, awful cat.  It started out as an inside cat, but was such a mess (evil in more than the usual cat way) that it became an outside cat.  One night The Mrs. and I pulled up in the Wildermobile®.  We saw our awful, awful cat outside.  It had a mouse.  The mouse was totally alive.  The cat was torturing it – allowing it to think that maybe, just maybe, it would live.

The cat had the mouse between both of its front paws – the mouse was on its back.  Evil Cat moved its paws away.  Rather than run, this mouse jumped up and bit the cat on the nose – hanging on until the cat managed to shake it off.  I hate most mice, but I really love that one mouse.

The mouse didn’t get away.

But you’re not a samurai facing other samurai.  Or a member of the French Foreign Legion facing insurmountable odds at an isolated desert outpost.  Or my friend at work who won’t take his dream car out on the road (and, I’ve given him crap about that, so I’m not tattling on him on the internet).

Yup, best decision ever.

I’ve tried to make this point before – and I’ll keep doing it – we don’t have much time on Earth, but we act like we have forever if we’re only careful enough.  And being too careful . . . it ensures that we achieve far less than we are capable of.  Yes, charging 3,000 Mexicans with your five best friends is a sure way to die.

But half of those Legionnaires did live.  And they lived a life of glory – they ran at the guns and lived.  They didn’t shy away from destiny – and an entire nation – not their nation – reveres them to this day.

I often make this point, and during future posts will probably make it again:  We are all living on borrowed time.  Each second on this planet is one less second we’ll have in the future.  Don’t wish your life away.  Don’t settle for spending time with your nose in an iPhone® MyFace© feed.  When we amuse ourselves with our media, we are using time we could have been achieving . . . amusing ourselves.

Thankfully, we all have kitties so we don’t have to worry about our impending doom or the lack of achievement in our lives (warning – has one use of the “f” word):

“Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this?  This is my boomstick!  The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington.  S-Mart’s top of the line.  You can find this in the sporting goods department.  That’s right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five.  It’s got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger.  That’s right.  Shop smart.  Shop S-Mart.  You got that?” – Army of Darkness

Yes, these are the grooviest underwear in the world.  And yes, I wear them all the time.

The world truly is a web – it’s very interconnected in ways that are obvious (snowy airports slow down planes and mess up your travel plans due to Cleveland.  Cleveland!) to less obvious (gold drops in price during a stock market crash because all asset classes are impacted) to obscure and sometimes counterintuitive ways (a drop in men’s underwear sales indicates a huge drop in discretionary spending and a commensurate rise in skidmarks).

When I was younger, it seemed like the economy was tied to regions – the south might be doing well while the west was in an economic slump.  One time we had a family stop in our driveway to ask for a cup of flour so they could make gravy at a campfire as they drove from some backwater southern state to California.  Pa Wilder got them a cup of flour and some other things, canned goods and such – the little girls in the back of that beat-up car looked very small as their parents struggled to find an opportunity that would give them a future.  (Yes, that image has always haunted me – I’ll never know how that story turned out.)

More recently, the national economy of the US has acted more like a single unit and less like a group of regions.  Part of the explanation for “why” is banking.  The world we live in now of large banks crossing state borders is relatively new.  Banks, previously, had been firewalled and your account wasn’t with CitiFargo®, it was with a specific bank building in a specific town.  One time I had to cash a check in a major metropolitan area (I was quite young).  I tried to cash it at a bank with the same “name” – but it turned out that unless I went to the “main” bank the check was written to, I could not cash the check (for whatever reason I needed cash, not a check).

So, instead of hundreds of banks acting independently, we’ve created a small number of ever larger banks (the top three banks in the United States have over $6.5 trillion in capital – more capital than the next twelve in size have, and almost as much money as the US government spends on cream cheese each year) and these very large banks operate nationwide.  So, rather than having your loan denied by the local banker, an algorithm in a computer in a databank in New York denies your loan.  I’m kidding.  If you’re breathing, you can get a loan.  Take as much as you want.  We’ve got your children, too, right?

Now the economy, and the loans, move more as a unit.  Other pressures creating the web include the increasing specialization and centralization of manufacturing across the globe.  Today, more goods are manufactured farther away from their final use point than at any point in history, increasing the economic connections across the world – over 50,000 (not a typo) factories closed in the first decade of this century in the United States.

Those global trade connections create immense wealth as trade flows across the world, but they also create a significant risk that’s never existed before – the idea that economic activity in China could devastate the United States, or vice versa.  It may sound far-fetched, but the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy coupled with food aid programs plus ethanol’s mandated use as a gasoline additive led to the Arab Spring and the current civil war in Syria.

Huh?

Yeah.

The Federal Reserve, in order to stimulate the economy of the United States, dumped massive amounts of money from helicopters.  Just kidding.  They gave it to their friends.  Anyway, this massive dump, known as Quantitative Easing, caused the prices of food to go up everywhere in the world, especially in the Middle East.  And food aid programs (along with geography) actually lower the number of people engaged in farming.  How is that?  Well, if you farm and do really well in Egypt, you have to compete with free grain dumped in Africa.  How do you compete against free?  You don’t.  But since the United States started mandating that ethanol be added to gasoline, it’s lowered the amount of food available.  Why?  Because the only way to make ethanol is to use stuff we could either eat or feed to some nice fat cow to make steaks.

It sucks to be Egyptian.  It sucks more to be Egyptian when the prices of food go out of sight.  The result of hungry, angry people?  Rebellion, revolution.  It’s ongoing in Syria.  And it’s certain that over 500,000 people have died in the various conflicts after the “Arab Spring,” which was brought about . . . due to economic policy, “free” food, and food turned into car fuel.

Pulling at one bit of yarn in the sweater will end up unravelling the whole sweater – it’s all made of the same yarn.  The global economy is similarly connected.  And in order to make it more profitable, we’ve made it more efficient.  Efficiency is good, right?  Sure!  The factory goes from one shift to three, and produces almost three times as much stuff if it goes 24 hours per day.  But by doing that, if we lose that factory, we’ve lost three times as much production as if we’d done it inefficiently.  A natural consequence of efficiency is higher profits.  A side effect of efficiency is higher overall risk – the system is working at nearly full capacity, so the loss of any significant component places the system in deficit.  There’s a shortage somewhere if the system runs into trouble.

That explains why the two Gulf Wars brought about huge price increases in oil – the system had to raise prices to allocate the oil to the most important (or richest) users and the world oil production system simply does not have “instant” capacity that can be added – the lag between supply and demand is measured in years.  The price of oil acted as a retardant on the rest of the economy – a friction.  Like a tax, it raised the price of everything that required energy to produce and ship – in short, all material goods were impacted, but nice sunsets were still free.  Businesses that lived at the margin of profitability disappeared.  Men’s underwear sales went down – yes, this is literally the last thing that gets purchased in tough times – no matter how bad, you can always wear the underwear another week (skidmarks and all).

But failed businesses don’t pay a paycheck.  And newly unemployed people don’t eat out (or buy underwear) – even McDonalds® sales plummeted during the last big recession.  And so McDonalds© doesn’t hire people.  Those people don’t go to eat out, either.  It’s failure.  But it’s a failure that leads from one failure to the next, like dominos knocking each other over – something nerds call “cascading failure.”

How bad was the last recession?  Certain sales in basic chemical precursors . . . stopped.  Credit dried up – why would you lend to someone who might be going bankrupt?

Here are some actual examples that I was aware of during the 2008-2011 collapse . . .

• At some point – sulfuric acid production in the United States . . . stopped. Sulfuric acid is known as the “king of chemicals” because so many, many things depend upon it, like The Mrs.’ glass eye or her prosthetic leg.  I know one producer of sulfur stopped producing for over a month.  Why?  No one would buy sulfur – at any price.
• Rail cars stopped being useful. On my 18 mile drive to work, I passed by (mainly) open line railroad.  There were a few miles of siding (siding is the place where they switch cars).  I noticed that the siding began to fill up.  And it filled up further.  Pretty soon there were miles (literally miles) of railroad cars sitting – not moving.  Not moving any product.

What happened?  We ended up putting 480 volts through the heart of the American economy with borrowed money and jumpstarting Frankenstein back to life.  I’m not sure that we can do that again.  The debts are higher.  The excesses are greater.  The PEZ™ supply is at a 20 year low.

Thankfully, they still ship ammo by mail.  And I’ve got some really great underwear that will probably last for a long time.  Does your underwear have chainsaws, shotguns, skulls and “groovy” on it?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

“You won’t Iose the house. Everybody has three mortgages nowadays.” – Ghostbusters

This is a picture of The Boy, circa a long time ago.  His head no longer looks like a plastic fern after about seventy plastic . . . fern surgeries.

Pretty soon after I started dating The Mrs., things started to get serious.  As such, I sat her down and had a meeting.

(FOR NEW READERS:  The Mrs. is either my wife, or a very advanced schizophrenic construction who has given birth to two children like something out of Bladerunner or Total Recall or Man in the High Castle but they’re not really my children but maybe tiny robots who are programmed to kill me if I ever recognize they are robots.  Did I just make a huge mistake??)

John Wilder:  “I need to tell you a couple of things.  Sit down.”

The Mrs. To Be sat down.

John Wilder:  “The first thing is that I chew tobacco.”  (I don’t anymore.)

The Mrs. To Be:  “Okay.”  Not really surprised.

John Wilder:  “The other thing is that, besides being tall, blonde, muscular and eminently desirable to all women throughout the Northern and Southern hemispheres (but strangely repellent to those in one particular tiny town in South Dakota – I think it may be something bad in the water there), I am horribly in debt.  Outside of the mortgage, I have tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt.  And tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt.”

The Mrs. To Be:  “Whew – I thought you were going to tell me you’d been in prison.”

Thankfully she had a low bar.  And that she wasn’t from that town in South Dakota.

Where did I get the debt?  The old fashioned way – a little bit at a time, then all at once.

• The student loan debt came from college. And college really did get me a great job – one where I had huge opportunity very early in my career.  Thankfully I had about 20 years that I could keep paying on that.  Because everyone wants a debt they can count on for decades.  Right?
• Then there was credit card debt. Nearly enough for a new Corvette®.  Most of the credit card debt had been used to finance my divorce.  If there is ever anything worth paying 18% interest on, it’s a divorce.  I may not have a Corvette™, but I also don’t have my ex-wife.  How many Corvettes© is not having her around worth?  All of them.
• Oh, and I owed on the house – that really didn’t count, since I’d been in it long enough to have enough equity in the house to balance out the amount I owed. I could dump the house if I needed to.  And there was no need to park a Corvette© in the garage.

A month before we were married, The Mrs. and I also bought our first car together.  It was a brand new car.  When The Mrs.’ old car gave up the ghost, we bought a brand new truck.

We could afford it, right?  It was only $600 a month!  Oh, wait, plus insurance.

In retrospect, it was those cars that made me hate debt and analyze every precept I had about money.  Pop Wilder had always purchased new cars.  Pop Wilder was successful.  I came up with the idea that Pop Wilder was successful, and thus successful people always bought new cars.

Going into debt on those two new cars was the mistake that made me re-evaluate my assumption.  (Hint – I was horribly wrong, and I go into my car-related idiocy and the rules I learned in detail at this LINK).  For the record – I was spending about $6,400 a year in cars before I stopped buying new cars.  Afterward?  My average spend on cars is $1,800 per year since then.  And zero money went to interest payments.  Because I paid with cash.

The debt became oppressive.  We were scrimping every month, and getting by on as little money as possible each week.  Steak?  Only when on sale.  Otherwise?  Burger.  Or tuna.  Or beans.  Or sometimes just mac and cheese . . . .

Thankfully, The Mrs. wrecked the truck while going to get me fried chicken four years later.  I took that money (not from the chicken, from the insurance payout on the truck) and paid off the car with The Mrs.’ blood.  I never did get chicken that day.

One problem down.

We also did a complete refinance of the house.  Since there was equity, we used that money to pay off most (but not all) of our credit card debt.  Did I mention that divorces are expensive because they’re worth it?

We scrimped.  We saved.  We had strict limits on Christmas spending.

And finally, four years after we decided that debt sucked, I wrote the last check to pay off the last credit card debt I’ve ever had.  A decade later, I’d sent my last student loan payment in.

Some of the lessons I’ve learned:

• You can’t afford a new car. I can’t afford a new car.  New cars are for suckers.  If you want a new car, come to my house with the money that you’d spend on one.  I’ll buy you a used car, and burn the rest of your cash for a nice bonfire.  After we used some of it to buy beer.
• Student loan debt is good, if used for a degree that gives you money. Anthropology?  Art?  French literature?  Medieval midget hammer fighting studies?  No good.  Engineering?  Finance?  Accounting?  Probably good.  Hint:  if the degree has “studies” in the title, it is scam for Marxists to take your money and buy themselves nice things.  If it doesn’t require calculus?  It’s not college, it’s high school with beer.  Downside of student loans?  You have to either pay them off or die for them to go away.  Bankruptcy is an option, but student loan debt survives bankruptcy.  That sounds like a scam, too.  If your degree was good, banks would invest in it . . . . Let’s face it:  student loans are like Star Wars® – they keep coming back even when you don’t want it and you have to live with them.
• Credit card debt is awful. The interest rates are high enough that Henry VIII would have executed you for trying to charge them, though admittedly that’s a pretty low bar, since snoring too loudly could have had Henry sign the death warrant.  Use only in a last resort.   Like a divorce.  Or a really cool sale on PEZ® dispensers.

So, the question is simple.  “How did it turn out?”

I don’t have a new car.  I haven’t had one since Clinton was president.  Maybe when Chelsea is president I’ll get a new car.

My student loan debt is paid off.  I had the option to pay it off, but when the next “Payment Due” date was December 21, 2012 showed up, I decided I’d not pay it.  Why?  If the Mayan® calendar was right, I’d want to die owing them the money.  (Spoiler alert:  The World Did Not End in 2012)

I haven’t paid interest to a credit card company since my children have been alive.  Or do I have children?  Or are they robots?  If they’re robots . . . they suck at cleaning their rooms.  I hope Elon Musk will make better robot children.

Horace Tabor:  “Wait a minute, you can’t buy a woman for money!”
Mad Jack Duncan:  “You just try and get one without it.”

– Paint Your Wagon

 

Flowers for Mother’s Day.  2006 or so.  See, I’m a romantic.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It’s Wealthy Wednesday here at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise, so let’s look at Money.  And Love.

Are money and love connected?  Intimately connected, though they don’t text each other as much as FBI agents do.  (Seriously – 50,000 texts to a mistress using the company phone?  They’d burn you or I alive as a lesson to the surviving employees before they fired us.)

But money is related to love – married couples are four times (4!) wealthier than their unmarried compatriots.  Actually, each of the married partners has twice what they would have had if they were single, but there are two of them, so, four times.  Why?

• Stable – If you’re married, you have an emotional backstop and cheerleader. If you’re single, you have a starter cat on your way to becoming a cat lady.
• Multiple Income Streams – Although both of you might not be working – both of you can work if necessary. That makes working through a family economic crisis easier.
• Economy of Scale – Two can’t live as cheaply as one. But it doesn’t cost twice as much for a married couple.
• Accountability – You’ve got someone to help you make better choices – like not going to the bar on Tuesday night. And Wednesday night.  And Thursday night . . . .
• Healthier, and Happier (but Fatter) – Married couples are consistently healthier and happier than their unmarried counterparts. This translates into better wages and greater productivity at work – and more money.
• Responsibility – You’re working not only for yourself, but others depend on you. You’d better do your best.

So, yes, being married matters.  But you have to choose wisely:  divorced folks are actually worse off than never-married folks from a financial perspective.  Wilder Love Advice #1:  If you get married, stay married.

How did I learn that wonderful advice?  I broke it.  I got a divorce, way long into the distant past.  Why?  I assure you the reasons were pretty good.

As Henny Youngman asked:  “Why are divorces so expensive?”

“They’re worth it.”

But divorces are expensive:

1. Lawyers are expensive. They have to buy BMWs and pay for their mistresses and their own divorces.
2. Alimony, which is a medical procedure where the wallet is extracted through the nose.
3. Cost of splitting stuff – like household goods. Now you need two irons.  And two coffee makers.  And two Holy Grails.
4. Child care goes up. You’re both working now, so someone has to watch the children.
5. Child support costs bunches. And, ironically, is often not even spent on the child . . . .

If my calculations are right, (they were done some time ago) my divorce cost me over $250,000 in 2017 dollars.  Not all of that money went to my ex-wife – a lot of it was interest on money I had to borrow to pay her off.  If I had put that money into the stock market instead?  It would be worth about $650,000 right now.  So, yeah, divorce is pricey.

But worth it.

Besides not getting married, how do you avoid divorce?  I think the best answer involves retired automotive executive Lee Iacocca.  Iacocca was famous for being the brains behind the original Mustang® from Ford™.  When Chrysler Motor Company© was nearly bankrupt, they hired Iacocca to come run the place as CEO.

This is Lee Iacocca – who never had tapioca in Topeka (at least as far as I know).  But the man sure knew his burgers . . . and his love of burgers can teach you about . . . love.  (photo Public Domain)

Back then, being the CEO of a major company came with perks – Chrysler had a chef hired just to cook for the CEO.  Like lunch.  A guy whose job it was to cook for one person.  So on his first day, Iacocca’s assistant asked him what he wanted for lunch – Iacocca replied, whatever, get me a hamburger.

Iacocca was at his desk, looking over some numbers when the burger came back.  He absently took a bite of the burger and then stopped.  The burger was amazing.

The burger was the best burger he had ever had.  Ever.

He dropped everything.  “I need to talk to the chef.”

They introduced Lee to the chef – “Chef, this is the best burger I’ve ever had.  What did you do?”

The chef got a thick, marbled ribeye out of the refrigerator, and ground it up.

Chef:  “First you start with the right meat.”  And that’s the secret with marriage – marry a ribeye.  Start with the right meat.

After my first marriage I knew what I didn’t want.  And if you don’t know exactly what you want, at least knowing what you don’t want gives a direction.  The night I met The Mrs. (at that time she was The Miss), I actually interviewed her (LINK) to verify that none of the things that had plagued my previous relationship would surface in her particular bag of insanity.  She passed.  And yes, I really did use evil interviewing techniques the night we met.

Let’s say you suck at interviewing.  How do you avoid a divorce?

• Start with a ribeye of a partner.
• If you’re looking for a girl – she shouldn’t have had many sexual partners. More than a few and divorce is in the air on day one.  There is, however, no correlation with large numbers of sexual partners and guys being a divorce risk.  Who says it’s bad to be a guy?  We even get to die first!
• If they’ve lived with a bunch of people, or even one or two?
• If their parents are divorced?
• If their values are significantly different?
• Ideal age for a bride?
• Used to be: Piercings, tattoos, and strangely colored hair?    Now in 2018?  Still risky.
• Liberals get divorces much more frequently than conservatives.
• If you smoke and they don’t?
• If they smoke and you don’t?
• The smoking thing? Replace it with drinking.  If you drink, she should drink.
• Be Catholic. Very low divorce rate, also wine on Sunday.
• Be a college graduate. Marry a college graduate.  Low divorce rates and better insults during arguments.
• Make more than $50,000. Money problems tear up a relationship.  Actually “Lack of money problems” is a better description.
• Don’t be knocked up. Easier if you’re a dude.
• Don’t have a daughter as child number one. Dunno why – higher divorce rate.

On this St. Valentine’s Day you can even follow my routine:  I’ll get home, ask what’s for dinner, complain that it has onions in it, and then grab The Mrs. and look deeply into her eyes.  I’d give her chocolates, flowers and a card.  Except I’m not 12.  I’ll lean my lips in, brushing her ear with them as I tell her, barely above a husky whisper,

“You have produced an adequate wealth effect in my life.”

I’m all romantic like that.

“I prefer Kipling. ‘The female of the species is more deadly than the male.’” – Clue

So, yeah, I drove by this one time.  Didn’t stop. 

Ahhhh, Kipling.

Kipling won the Nobel™ Prize© in literature back when it meant something, i.e., before the Nobel® committee discovered the internet, started spending time on Facebook®, stopped reading entirely and, remembering on a Thursday they were still supposed to give some award away related to something called “literature”, awarded one to Bob Dylan thinking he might bring some primo weed to Stockholm if he won.  Instead?  Bobby didn’t show up at all, and sent them a crappy recording describing a book report that a teacher would flunk a freshman for (really) instead of a lecture.

And no weed for the committee.

Can a Nobel® Physics™ Prize© be too far out for the guy who did the special effects for Star Wars™?  At least that guy ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm, no more, either.

Seriously.  Bob Dylan?  For literature?

Anyhow, back to Kipling.  He wrote poems that were amazing in the rhythm, word choice, and thoughts behind the poem.  I’ve previously mentioned “If” – which has for decades been one of my favorites – that post is here (LINK).

Another favorite of mine is the following one, The Gods of The Copybook Headings.  It was written in the aftermath of World War One, which was particularly devastating for both England, generally, and Kipling, personally.  The title refers to books that school children used to practice penmanship by copying the same sentences again.  And again.  And again.  The phrases that they used were typically based on Bible verses or other generally accepted moral aphorisms.

The Gods of The Copybook Headings

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Kipling was weary.  He’d seen that when people varied from accepted wisdom and morality, the results were . . . horrifying.  The idea was simple:  the experiences and accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of civilized human experience might (just maybe!) have something to say to us, here, now and today.  Well, his today was 1919, which isn’t really our today.  Everything is different now, right?

Peterson refers to Christian morality (and the Bible in general) as an emergent phenomenon.  It is worth far more than the sum of its parts – it has been distilled and the relatively simple parts produce an amazingly complex outcome – here’s a link to my post that included that (LINK).  With Christianity, it’s a measure of its complexity that it eventually produced the conditions required for the birth of science and the freedoms that eventually sprang from the Reformation.  It’s an irony that Christianity gave birth to the very society that could look at Christianity critically – and it could ask the hard questions about itself – because of itself.

Kipling gives an innate understanding of what Glubb would later begin to quantify (LINK).  Kipling also seems prescient in exactly the places our moral failings would begin to falter – from the general populace disarmament that led to the biggest slaughters in all of history to our greed that led to multiple stock market bubbles . . . and the associated collapses.

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Rudyard spoke of the dangers of collectivism, even before the full horrors of the Soviet Union and communism appeared, costing at least seventy million lives.  Yet even now, after the complete and demonstrated failure of collectivism, we’re pretty sure Venezuela will be paradise.  Did I say Venezuela?  I meant California.  What, California now leads the United States in poverty?  Hmmm.  Hang on, I’ll get back to you.  Just must be the wrong people putting it in practice.  It certainly can’t be that greed for the wealth of others produces nothing but pain and sorrow.  Covet not . . . hmmm.

Kipling even nailed that in failed collectivist states that beyond the moral and economic destruction of the country, even money itself would be degraded to the point of uselessness.  To double it up?  Kipling knew that we would delude ourselves to believe that collectivism was worth trying again.  And again.

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

I think that Sin must test pretty poorly in market research – “Seems like it’s pretty judgmental, Alex?”  But I think Sin is there for a reason.  Sinning is bad.  It can be seen that the morality of a dual parent household is unmistakable in its superiority statistically.  It’s really not even close when it comes to outcomes for children.

And marriage is hard.  Very hard.  It’s much easier just . . . having random sex.  And not having marriage.  And not having kids.  And the very end of a civilization, since without the morality that gave birth to it, it can no longer produce the intellectual capital, the wealth, and the free society that allows people to make moral choices.

It doesn’t produce enough strong men.

Thankfully, the chaos that emerges produces strong men that make hard choices.  But it’s a pretty rough ride.  Well it has been.

I’m reliably informed by the Gods of The Market . . . that it’s different this time.

“The Fester Addams Offshore Retirement Fund?” – The Addams Family (1991)

When I retire, I just want to travel by plane when I want to.  A plane like this one.  That I own a fleet of.

I was at work the other day and a friend sent an Instant Message to me over the company system.  The message was as curious and enigmatic as an Easter Island statue:

“How much is enough?”

I responded.

“78 years.”

That’s what I thought the average life expectancy was.  I’d been intending to wear out all of the parts before the warranty expired, but in doing a bit of research, if you’ve lived as long as I have, the average life expectancy goes up to 81.  Meh.

78 is probably enough.  If I can’t finish binge-watching Breaking Bad on Netflix® by then, well, it’s on me.

A bit later we talked on the phone, and I got clarification – it turns out the question was really:

“How much money does a couple need each month to retire on?”

My friend’s working answer was $10,000 a month for the bare necessities.  $120,000 a year – cash, which would be equivalent to a job paying $180,000 before taxes.  A year.

I laughed.  “That’s insane!”

Is it?

I checked my own retirement spreadsheet – my model assumes that I’d spend ~$7,000 a month if I retired now (and I don’t have the money to do that, yet) rising to $8,500 a month by the time I’m sixty five.

All of a sudden, my friend’s ballpark number didn’t seem so large, after all.

Then my friend shared the family budget:

Property taxes:  $2,500/month.  Yeah.  They live in a pretty cool house, in a pretty high tax state.

Electricity:  $600/month.  Yup.  It’s hot there.

Natural Gas:  $50/month.  Seems legit.

Cable/Internet/Phone:  $350/month.  A big bundle, but you’ve got to get the Food Network® after you retire.

Car Insurance:  $250.  This seems low – they have kids and live in a major metropolitan area that looks like the Indy 500 most days.

Monthly Expenses:  $3,000 each for the Husband and Wife.

Add it up?  Pretty close to $10,000.

What do they have?  Heck, I have NO idea.  Again, they’re doing great, and in no hurry to retire.

It used to be that a financial planner would have said that you could pull out 6% of your stash of cash each year.  If you were 65.  I’m not sure, but I’m betting that none of them are saying that now.  Especially in your fifties.  Perhaps 3% or 4%?

Starting Amount	%  Drawn
$           4,000,000	3%
$           3,000,000	4%
$           2,400,000	5%
$           2,000,000	6%

The lower the amount that you draw down, the less risk you are taking.  Me?  If I was in my fifties and wanted to be sure that I was going to have $10,000 a year until I died?  I’d want at least $3,000,000, and $4,000,000 would be nicer – remember, this has to last you for at least thirty years, and the longer you live, the greater the chance of significant risks, like those that hit Rome (LINK) or stupidity like the Dutch over flowers (LINK).

What has inflation done in 30 years?  $10,000 today would be worth roughly $5,000 in 1988 dollars.  And medicine, something you’ll be needing more of as you grow older has been especially prone to inflation.  Especially medicine that keeps older folks alive.  And as I’ve said before (LINK), we are soon due for a reckoning in medical costs.  My plan is to force my cells to evolve through sheer willpower to create all the drugs a doctor would have given me.

My budget varies, and is a lot more detailed.  That $3,000 has to pay for maintenance, painting, new cars, homeowner’s insurance, clothing, cell phones, food, mowers, PEZ®, vacations, eyebrow rings, good wine, everything.  Oh, and health insurance.  And medicine.  And Christmas gifts.  And ammunition.

After reviewing their number and their proposed lifestyle, I guess I have to unlaugh.  It seems legit.

It seems . . . prudent.

And it also seems very much in their power to get there (easily).

Sure, they could move away from their great neighborhood in the big city they live in, but why?

Now, I’ll note that this is more than three times the average household income of $59,000 a year.  But my friends are very much above average in every way – they’re smart, they have great jobs that they love, they’re raising kids you’d be proud to call your own, and they’re nice.  You would like them.  I mean, you might not like them as much as you like me, but there really only can be on John Wilder.  Okay, there are at least a dozen others.  But we all know I’m the only one for you.

Anyhow, these are great people.  But, they’re also frugal – they do buy nice stuff (they have better taste than I do) – but they don’t waste anything.  They’re responsible with their income and resources.  But they don’t want to be a burden on society or their children as they age.  They’re prepping against the Iron Triangle (LINK) of retirement – Time, Money and Lifestyle.

Time:  They’re young, and healthy.  They’ll probably retire whenever they want in their fifties.  They’ll have a longer retirement than most, but as you have seen, they’ll be ready for it.

Money:  They’re in great jobs that require smart, trained people with advanced degrees.  People like them are in demand, and they work in strong sectors (LINK) of the economy.  Low probability they’re be replaced by A.I. (LINK).  They’re doing well.  (Yay, them!)

 

Lifestyle:  They could probably retire right now if they were willing to retire to Sedan, Kansas (LINK).  They could still eat steak whenever they wanted and they and their kids would never have any real need that couldn’t be met.  They’re not choosing the Mr. Money Mustache or Early Retirement Extreme path (LINK).

 

But why should they?  Again, they’re working jobs they love.  And if they retired, they’d probably start a side business that would garner more money than IBM® in a year or two.  If they keep working at their current jobs into their fifties?  Yup, no worries.  Ever.

The above describes about seven or eight married couples that I’m friends with.  They’ve got great talent.  They’re smart.  They studied hard for an undergrad degree in an elite field at a tough school, then got grad credentials (most of them, but not all) and then burned decades of 60+ hour stressful weeks and have succeeded.  They married a single spouse and then stayed married.

Is that what they call lucky in 2018?  Hmmmm.

How come everybody I know who did all those things . . . is doing great?

Also, I’ll leave retirement alone for a while.  Probably.

This is not financial advice.  Really.  I’m a blogger.  I’m not a licensed therapist, doctor, lawyer, oregano peeler, shrimp boat owner, or financial adviser.  Talk to a pro.  Or a psychic.  Or your TV.  Or Miss Cleo.  I really don’t care.  It’s your money.

“Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

 

Pictured:  Science.  Not pictured:  Stubborn Old Italians.

In December I put together notes about a story that I’d read online that rubbed me the wrong way.  It was about stubborn people.  Specifically, the headline said, “Stubborn People Live Longer:  Here’s Why.”  I read the story.  Some science-y folks studied a small (relatively) remote village in Italy.  They picked 29 participants between the ages of 90-101.  Then they picked family members that were between the ages of 51-75.

They picked people that lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and the ravaged Italy after World War II and found out . . . shockingly, that they were stubborn?

They then picked people who grew up in a post-war renaissance, rebuilding, and rebirth and found out they were not as mentally healthy as people who had been toughened in some of the most horrific conditions of the 20^th century?  Where literally every day of their lives was better than any day of 1944?

I’m shocked.  (okay, I’m not)

And to further confound this “study” when you pick a small town in Italy, you simply have to deal with the fact that . . . these people are more closely related than you’d see in New York City.  When I drive around Smalltown, in northeast Midwesteria, I see can see family resemblances everywhere.  When you see the names on the plaques in the high school lobby for the team that won it all in 1954, you see . . . the grandparents of kids The Boy and Pugsley go to school with today.

The Italians may all share characteristics and genetics of some stubborn old dude who kept making Italian women pregnant up until he was 99 while Leonardo DaVinci was still fingerpainting.

And any statistician will tell you that 29 participants isn’t enough to tell you . . . anything.

So, we have a questionable study that gets rolled out by a “journalist” who needs to pop something into the paper so they can feed their kids.  They and 20 other 24 year old kids get assigned the “write a science filler piece about old Italians.”  Since the only science they know was taught to them on the Disney® Channel (there is no science requirement to be a journalist, folks) they poke at the scientific study like Ukrainian Mall Lawyers attempting to fix a broken printer, hoping their clumsy fumbling fingers mash into something so the pretty words come out again so they can go back home to Nadia, who is boiling potatoes and smells faintly of vodka and used to repair tanks at Ukraine Tank Manufacturing Plant Number 342.

So, they pick what words they understand, and attempt to educate us all . . .

Don’t get me wrong – there are some really, really smart journalists.  And some have dedicated themselves to covering science and do a great job.

But not many, because science is really hard.

How hard is it?  To plumb the depths of the structure of the sub-atomic world we build machines miles long, some stretching the diameter of the Earth.

And biology and behavioral science is also hard.  I read once (way back a long time ago, in a book, on paper) about a scientist who was studying mice in mazes.  Mizes?  Anyway, this scientist looked not at the mice, but at the experiment itself.  How could the mice cheat?  Well, they could look up and see the light position for guidance, so he made the light diffuse and uniform over the maze.  They could sense the table wasn’t level, so he leveled the table.  They could hear noise from nearby offices and laboratories, so he soundproofed the room.  They could even feel vibration from the building’s heating system, so he had to dampen the table.  All to get one maze to be “fair” so the mice couldn’t cheat.  As I recall, he did this in the 1920’s or 1930’s.  After he published?  People promptly ignored him and this wonderful research.

Bad science has shown up in lots of places, and journalists with bad stories have helped it along:

• Then: Eggs will kill you!  Now:  Eggs are the perfect food.
• Then: Fat will kill you!  Now:  Plenty of place in a healthy diet for fat.
• Then: Eat high carbs!  Like PopTarts®!  Now:  Carbs are death.
• Then: High fructose corn syrup is the same as sugar!  Now:  No, it’s not even close.

I heard about this company in Great Britain that was going to, wait for it, transplant poop from one person to another for a fee.  Because it happened to this one lady and she lost a lot of weight.  Hey, a journalist wrote about it – it must be awesome!

Yeah.  Great science.  It may turn out to be founded in reality, but I’m expecting more Ukrainian Mall Lawyers . . . poking at the copier this time.

But I’m skeptical.  Which is . . . another word for stubborn?

“When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you in the eye and he asks you if you’ve paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that:

‘Have you paid your dues, Jack?’

‘Yes sir, the check is in the mail.’” – Big Trouble in Little China

The Boy, testing the Manned Maneuvering Unit simulator at NASA. He did not get hired, but that’s okay, NASA doesn’t have rockets anymore. 

It’s the end of 2017, so here are some ideas to get you out of a rut in the health and well-being portion of the open-book test we call life.  Remember, it’s okay to cheat off of your neighbor to get the right answer but you don’t want to hurry . . . the test is life . . . so, calculators and pencils ready!

1. Play Your Game

One thing that we often forget is . . . it’s your game.  Your rules.

What do I mean by that?

Define it your game by having cooler stuff than your friends?  Sure.  And take the consequences – consequences that can include lots of debt, long hours, a spouse that has to work so you can have an awesome pickup and boat rather than be home when the kids come home from work.  And, if you’re unlucky, all that work to pay all that debt will allow you to see your kids every other weekend while a new guy lives in your old house.

Or live in New York.  That’s a cool place, right?  I see this in stories all the time – how it’s too expensive to live in New York, or San Francisco . . . but . . . why do you have to live there?  There are dozens of places across the world where you can live like a king (or queen!) for the rent on a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

So, having stuff cooler than the stuff your friends have might not be the best solution.

What are the alternatives?  Well, you could live to have money (which is not at all the same as having stuff) but it can have the same sort of consequences.

My choice?  A balance:  meaningful work, finding ways to help other people grow, and having sufficient financial reserves that I’m not at risk for most life events.

Choosing your own balance is key to removing stress.

2. Remember, Life Isn’t A Race To Get To The End First

I had a great boss one time who, facing a 45 day period of intense work said, “I hate to wish my life away, but I’m looking forward to finishing this.”

Wow.  Such wise words.  Even a bad day is one that is your day.  And, most times (not always) I’ve found that there are good parts of even the worst day.  Don’t wish your life away, no matter how easy that might seem.  Savor the bad days for the good things that happened during them, and for the good things that will eventually come from those bad days (LINK).

3. Get Some Sleep

I made a pretty intense effort to increase the amount of sleep I was getting this summer (LINK).  And the effort paid off – I ended up increasing my sleep by over an hour a day, which was very significant.  My mood improved, my energy improved, and life was better.  It seems that sufficient sleep plays a huge part in my overall health.

If you’re not getting six or seven hours of sleep a night AND you’re tired and feeling low on energy, I’d suggest tracking your sleep at night.  Most people can go one night with lesser amounts of sleep, but by the third day where you only get four hours of sleep a night?  I start to drag.  After a week?  It starts to impact even more – mood, outlook, everything.  Crazy thing?  I can cure it all by going to sleep.

4. Make Something/Fix Something Frequently

This is a health post, not a home improvement show!  What gives?

There is a feeling of competence, of satisfaction that comes from making something with your hands, of extending the life of an object through working it. The sheer time and thought processes involved pull you away from your day to day concerns, and give you multiple opportunities to solve problem after problem.

The problems are important in that you solve them.  The completed object is less important than the process of completing it.  When I was a kid I used to make models – and there was no feeling better than having built a model that looked great.

Oddly, some people get scared even to try to fix something that’s broken – what’s the worst that can happen?  It’s broken.  One time I tried to fix a car stereo.  It started received television audio from the local television.  I was listening to Gilligan’s Island® on my stereo.

Until it broke the next day.  But it was cool for the day it worked like that . . . .

5. Write Something

This blog serves several purposes.  One is for you.  One is for my kids.  The biggest beneficiary of the blog?  Me.

When I work to write and construct something that I like, well, I get a similar (but different) satisfaction to fixing the light in the hall, or building an elevated bed for Pugsley (his desk fits underneath).  It’s mental.  So do I blog for you?  Sure.  But mainly for me.

6. Understand What You’re Playing For

To play the game, there has to be a reason.  Why do you keep getting up in the morning?  Would you do your job if you weren’t paid to do it?  My post on this is here (LINK), and remains one of my most popular.

7. Keep Moving

I’ve watched folks as they get older.  I once saw a 90 year old man run (and skip as he ran) to his garden.  He lived another five years.  His life was full as long as he kept moving.  Other observations were that once older folks became bedridden, it generally wasn’t long.  I’m not sure if it’s motivation or if it’s cardiovascular.  Keep moving if you want to live.  Say that in a Schwarzenegger voice for extra motivation . . . “Keep moving if you want to live!  We’ve got to get to the choppa!”

8. Prayer/Gratitude/Meditation

Studies show that people are happier (and healthier) if they engage in prayer each day.  Similar effects are shown with those expressing gratitude and those meditating.  Keep in mind meditation may have side effects . . . (LINK)

I think these might work through different methods, with gratitude especially focusing thoughts on how fortunate a person is, rather than on how rough life is.

Something tells me prayer works on an entirely different basis . . .

9. Have a Routine, Not A Rut

This ties back to wishing your life away.  How often do we see that a week has turned into a month or longer without any change to our lives, to ourselves?

This is a routine taking charge of our lives.  Up at 6am.  Off to work.  Work until 5.  Home at 6pm.  Bed by 11pm.  Up at 6am.  Repeat.  Recharge on Saturday and Sunday.  When you’re feeling better on Sunday night?  Prepare to start again.

Without a routine, I don’t exercise.  I don’t go to bed before 3am.  I end up pushing back writing this blog until it’s way late while watching Russian documentaries dubbed by the British about the Soviets fighting the Germans during WWII.  (Spoiler:  The Soviets win.)

So I need a routine.  But I also have to keep that routine from turning into an excuse to have lived twenty meaningless weeks of life.  I don’t have enough weeks of life to live twenty of them without meaning, without positive change (LINK).

And neither do you.

10. Experiment To Find Out What Works

Find Things That Make You Excited . . . Do Them

A life without excitement sucks.  A life without fun sucks.  Find the things that give you energy, and do them – just enough to keep you energized.  A pleasure repeated too often becomes a punishment . . . .

 

We will all eventually finish the test, but the good news is you get to grade your own performance.  How did you do?  Did you help other people on the way?  Did you make a difference?  Have you paid your dues?

Yes sir, the check is in the mail . . .