Category: Wealth

The Six Steps to Excellence, One of Which Involves Me Being a Huge Jerk (for a small fee)

“I’m Bill S. Preston, Esquire.”  “And I’m Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan.” – Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

excellent

Be excellent to each other.  Oh, and party on, dudes.

Why do you want to get better?

The better you are, the more you can do.  The more you can do, the more lives you touch.  This provides more life satisfaction – the idea that you’re good at something is one facet of meaning.  And if you’re good at the right things, it also means more money.

Let’s look at Amazon©.  Jeff Bezos was a huge help in writing this post tonight.  I got the following from Amazon®:

  • Ink for pen that I took notes with.
  • Notecards that I put my notes on.
  • Laptop that I wrote the post on.
  • Extra charger for the laptop because the dog eated the first one.

Let’s look at Microsoft©:  Bill Gates and Paul Allen were the founders and leaders of the company that made:

  • The operating system on my laptop.
  • Microsoft® Word™, which I wrote this post on.

Together these three men during their lives have touched massive numbers of people.  Oh, wait, that was Harvey Weinstein.  But when you create a business that legitimately touches people’s lives and fulfills their desires?  Yeah.  You’re going to get money in addition to the satisfaction of sending notecards to a guy who ordered them on his couch at midnight.

bezos

When Bezos goes grocery shopping, Bezos goes grocery shopping.

I know that there are reasons to be concerned about both companies, but that’s not this post.  The principle remains that the economic way to make money is to make people happy.  And the only way you can do that is if you’re excellent.  The more excellent?  The more money.  And it’s Wilder Wealthy Wednesday . . . so . . .

So how do you get better?

Step 1 –Study.  And Do.  And Study.

I’m not sure which one comes first.  And it doesn’t matter.  Sometimes I read a book about a subject before trying it.  I’m sure that The Boy would have preferred I just jumped into diaper changing, but reading the book only took two hours.  Man he could yell.

Sometimes I try something without reading about it.  Say, programming an infinite loop into the school’s mainframe that caused it to store zeros until its memory overflowed – this actually happened.  You should have seen the printout.  Good times.

Practice and study are critical.  Practice without study is just action.  Study without practice is just academic.  You have do both together to make meaningful progress.

Is study limited to books?  No.  Studying the results of your actions is studying.  I study the results of my blog:

  • Which posts are most popular? (Ones where I use the word “booger”.)
  • Which method of writing brought the best quality post? (English, rather than a language I made up myself, regardless of how musical it sounds when I throat sing a translation of Poker Face.)
  • Is blocking out the post on notecards better than writing it out on loose paper? (Yes.  Better still?  Bake it into a clay tablet.)
  • Is Ben Affleck better in The Accountant® than he is in Justice League™? (Yes.)
  • Am I getting tired of listening to Ben Affleck as I write these posts? (Yes.)

Step 2 –Get Feedback.  Honest Feedback.  (Or, better living through jerkishness)

Honesty is hard to find.  Unless you know a horrible person like me.  Let’s go into the wayback machine to when I was in college.  I may have written this story before, but follow along anyway – this will be a better version.

I was a sophomore in the Humanities Honors program.  It was like the regular classes, but you got a B instead of an A for the same quality work.  Part of the rather chaotic curriculum was giving speeches.  I can’t remember the topic, but the speeches were long.  Really long.  Twelve minutes to fifteen minutes long.

One student got up to give a speech.  I’ll call her Sandra.

She was nervous.  Horribly nervous.  The speech was halting, and punctuated with “uh” throughout.  At the seven minute mark of the speech I started counting the “uh” content of the speech while I timed it.  Every time she said “uh”, I put a hash mark on a piece of paper.  As she continued speaking, I kept putting hash marks on the paper in front of me.

At the end of the speech, I tallied up the number of times she said “uh”.  It was in the hundreds.  Really a huge number.  I then divided by the number of minutes I’d been counting them.

I have no idea why the instructors went around the room to ask for critiques from the students, but they did.  Most people said, “good speech” or some vaguely worded praise.

Not me.

“You said ‘uh’ 221 times in the last seven and a half minutes of your presentation.  That’s 29 times a minute.  That made it really hard to listen to.”

The room went silent.  If a stare was dangerous, Sandra’s eyes would have been coveted as a weapon of mass destruction by nation states that use handfuls of brightly colored tissue paper instead of actual money.  I think the United States developed a “hate stare” weapon during the 1960’s, only to shelve it due to the Geneva Convention banning its use as a war crime.

Anyway, it was that kind of stare.  Ever make a woman really, really, really mad at you?  That stare.

The next person then gave a vague “good speech” comment.

Fast forward a month.  It was the next time for a presentation.  Sandra got up to speak.

And it was amazing.  Eloquent.  Perfectly pronounced, not a single “uh” to be found.  Not one.  It was certainly the best speech that day.  During the speech, when her eyes looked up from the podium, they looked directly at me.  They were not happy eyes.

Once again, the professors turned to the students for critique.  My turn.  “That may have been the best speech I’ve heard this year.  Great job, Sandra.”

Not a bit of emotion crossed her face.  But her eyes said, “I hope you are nibbled to death by flaming diseased miniature poodles in hell again and again and I want you to have to watch Ben Affleck movies while they eat you.”  That was oddly specific.  But, hey, she was on a roll.

I’m sure she hates me to this day.  But she’s better because of me – I changed her life.

Real friends give real feedback.  And at least at my house, we’re pretty honest.  Do a good job?  Praise is coming in.  Whine and make a sound like a coyote in a blender?  It’s gonna be a long day for you as we mock you.  But it’s universal.  It’s meant in love, and a requirement of feedback is trust.  My kids know I’m on their side even when I’m being critical.

Did I have that bond of trust with Sandra?  Not so much.  But don’t let anyone tell you that hate isn’t a performance enhancing drug.

The poet Robert Burns said it best:  “O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!”  But based on the typing?  He was drunk.

Seek honest feedback.  And treat it earnestly – it’s a gift, or a “giftie.”  Or I can provide the feedback for a small fee.  For a larger fee, you can hate me.  For an even larger fee I’ll watch a Ben Affleck movie with you while you hate me.

Step 3 –Get Better Each Time.  A Lot at First, A Little Later On.  (As proven by a graph on a sketchy blog.)

The Mrs. mocked me when I bought little notecards that were graph ruled.

“When would you ever need to use those?”

Well, tonight:

graph

See the pretty graph?  I did it myself, bet you can’t tell!  And, see, I DID SO have a use for those notecards!

This is an S-Curve.  An S-Curve is a particular curve that describes several natural phenomena.  It’s also known as the “Logistics Curve.”  Here I’ve applied it to learning.

Several studies have suggested (not that I necessarily take them as gospel) that it takes ten years or 10,000 hours of constant study, practice and effort to become world class at something.  That’s reasonable.  I mean, not reasonable, that seems like an unreasonable amount of work.  Maybe realistic is a better word.

But Pareto taught us the 80/20 rule:  80% of the work is normally done by 20% of the workers.  80% of a need words in a foreign language is learned in 20% of time required to master the language.

And that’s the good news:  in two years (or less) you can get to an 80% competence level.  And that’s good enough for most people.  “Meh” is most of what we really need in our daily lives.

But the last 20% is where greatness is.  Yes, you’re not going to get world class recognition if you don’t have at least some talent.  Unless you’re Ben Affleck.

Now the fine print:  this world class thing does not apply to the talentless or stupid or physically unable.  You’ll just never get there unless you have some basic ability in what you’re doing.

But beware:  talent can be your enemy.  I’ve seen some talented kid wrestlers start out winning early on, say “state champ” at age six.  But they’ve got a great move, say a headlock.  Headlocks are like Sesame Street®.  They work great on kids, but are ineffective, no matter how well they are done when you hit high school.  So the “state champ” who had a talent for headlocks . . . now can’t win a match.  They never had to work to learn to be fully competent in wrestling.  And Marcus Aurelius used wrestling as a metaphor, so that makes me smart.

bill-ted

Remember, the core tenant of Buddhism is “babes are excellent.”

Step 4 –Experiment.  Each Moment Is A New One.

I was listening to the radio one night and an odd guest said one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard.  “An infinite possibility lies between one word and the next.  That space, that pause gives you the ability to change the future with your words.  The space between the words is infinite.  Own it.”

Okay, he didn’t really say that.  But he did say something that made me think that.  Each time I write is an experiment.  An opportunity with infinite possibility.  So I try new things.  I even try things that didn’t work in the past.  Maybe I just sucked.  Maybe the audience was distracted by shiny things that day.

Every experiment is like that space between the words – filled with infinite possibility.

And don’t be focused on victory today.  Like that six year old state wrestling champ, victory now is probably not as important as victory later.  Sometimes focusing on victory now robs your ability to be daring and experiment, and because World Emperor or something later.

I’ve learned more from times I’ve lost than times I’ve won.  Seek to push yourself to failure.

Experiment.

Step 5 –Experts.  Find Them.  There are Smarter and More Experienced People Than You.

We’re spoiled by YouTube.  If I want to learn to lay tile, I can find video after video teaching me how.  This dispersed knowledge and these teachers can help you get to 80% competence more quickly than ever.  You can learn everything from floor tiling to making cookies to forging a sword to rifle shooting to melting aluminum cans into aluminum ingots in your back yard, although that’s probably not legal in California.

abraham lincoln

Lincoln was also a wrestler.  I’m sensing a theme here . . .

But learning from these experts requires humility.  And humility requires courage.  The best advice I ever gave a new employee is in this story:

John Wilder:  “So, did you get [that thing] done?”

New Graduate Employee:  “Well, you see that I was working on trying to . . .”

I held up my hand.  “Stop right there.  What rank did you graduate in high school, top of your class?”

NGE:  “Yes.”

John Wilder:  “And in college, you were near the top, right?”

NGE:  “Yes.”

I gestured up and down the hallway.  “Every one of your coworkers was best in their high school class.  Every one of them was near the top of their college class.  Each of them is smart.  Some of them are smarter than you.  When you were in elementary school, they always asked you the questions, because you knew the answers, right?”

He nodded.

“You’re not expected to know the answers here, you’re expected to be honest, work hard, and learn.  You’re smart, so you can do those things quickly.  My boss?  He’s smarter than me.  And I graduated at the top of my class.  The crazy thing is, when he doesn’t know something, he asks people to explain it.  No hesitation.  So when I ask you a yes or no question . . . answer yes or no.  Don’t tell me a story.  Answer the question.  And for heaven’s sake, if you don’t know something?  Ask.”

Best advice I ever gave, outside of never engaging in a land war in Asia.  Why do they never listen?

Step 6 –Never Give In, Never Give In, Never, Never, Never . . . (Unless You Should)

Giving up on the excellence graph is easy.  Working for years is hard.  Even worse?  Working for years at something you don’t like that you’ll never be good at.  I’d love to give you some sort of meter that told you which was which, but that’s life – you have to figure it out.  But see Step 5 – you can ask.

Again:  for most things in life, a “Meh” competence level of 80% mastery is awesome.

why not both

Morpheus would have been awesome in Bill and Ted!  Oh, wait . . . maybe Bill and Ted is the prequel to The Matrix?

So, that’s it.  Follow these six steps and you can be excellent.

Parting thought:  Ryan Holiday (link) wrote that passion is about you.  Purpose is about a mission that’s bigger than you – and that’s a reason to drive and strive for excellence.  So, have purpose, not passion.

But passion is forged in competence.  If you get better, it breeds passion.  And if you can have your passion and purpose?  Why not both?

The 13 Keys to College Success. Beer Bongs Suspiciously Absent.

“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.  Mr. Hoover, president of Delta house?  1.6; four C’s and an F.  A fine example you set!  Daniel Simpson Day . . . has no grade point average.  All courses incomplete. Mr. Blutarsky.  Zero.  Point.  Zero.” – Animal House

college2

Meet my freshman adviser, Mr. Morpheus.

Here is my advice to a new college student, or even one currently in college if they’re slow.  Hey, roomies, if they’re currently passed out on the floor of their bedroom after one too many $1 Zombies® at Applebees™, you can write the following post on their face in Sharpie® for them.  Don’t worry, they’ll thank you later.

Sage Wilder Advice Number One:  College is an investment.

And not like a lame “investment as a metaphor” – college is an actual, real investment of your time and somebody’s money.

College costs a lot, tens of thousands of dollars a year, plus the cost is going up every year.  The primary reason costs go up is that colleges are a great machine that turns the maximum amount that you can borrow for college into debt, a hangover, and twenty extra pounds of weight where you used to have a waist, all while giving you fancy coffee and climbing walls.  Why those things?  It’s well known that Socrates did no teaching until after he’d had his caffeine and a good climb.

The other cost of college is your time.  During the four or five years you spend chasing sorority girls studying hard for a degree, you could be out working, making money.  The time spent at college has this second cost – the income you give up – embedded in it.

So how do you make money?

Well, depends on your degree.  If you’re getting a degree that’s not directly tied to a career, often you emerge from college well suited to be a retail clerk.  Oops!  You were qualified for that before you went to school.  Hmm.

Degrees matter.  Science.  Engineering.  Accounting.  Finance.  Economics.  Computers.  Construction Management.

Those are good.  They pay well, and there are often more jobs than graduates.

Sociology.  Anything with “Studies” in the target.  Exercise Science.  Music.  Art History.  Anthropology (over 12,000 grads, 700 jobs).  Art.

These are a waste of your time and effort, if you expect to work in those fields and/or be able to afford to eat anything more than ramen.

Average return also depends on what school you go to.  Not as much, but there really is a difference in the job offer you’ll get if you go to Northern Southwestern State Community College versus, say, Harvard.  Ahhh, good old NSWSCC, no one can hold a candle to you!  The school does matter, both to employers and to the quality of connections you make, but more on that below.  If you’re more likely to impress an employer with your school?  Yeah, you’re more likely to get a job offer.

What’s the net cost?  This varies greatly by school.  Every school has a list price – what they’re saying they’re going to charge you.  But after scholarships and other discounts, what will you really pay?  This hits to the cost side of the equation.  Combined with the lower income during the college years, this is the cost your degree must pay back.

And it has to pay this back not with your total income, but the difference in what you would have made if you never graduated college.  And we all know that no one could ever make fortunes like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg if you don’t finish college.  What?  Gates and Zuckerberg were dropouts? Hmm.  Well, could it be that college graduates would be more successful . . . even if they didn’t graduate?

That’s the difficulty – you can’t live your life 15 times and measure which way you would be more successful.  But college has free beer and climbing walls, so, it’s got that going for it.

Sage Wilder Advice Number Two:  GPA is probably important.

When I was doing college recruiting, we specifically recruited for graduates from a window – too high a GPA?  We were pretty concerned that they might be, umm, not real humans, but that was a very long time ago.  Grade inflation has taken the average grade at Harvard to an “A”.  Yes.  The average grade is an “A”.  So if you don’t have a great GPA?  You’re below average.

But the second part is we can use GPA as a real estimate of what you’ve learned.  So, study!  Spend the hours, learn the material.  Get together with friends to study.  Have smart friends.  Get examples of old tests, and study those.  By my junior year at school, I was studying an average of eighty hours for a test in my harder subjects.  For one, I spent over 120 hours studying for the final.  I was thrilled when I got a ‘B’.  There were about two A’s given for about 150 students.  So, I was thrilled with my ‘B.’  Especially since I dropped that class the first time I took it.

Yes.  Drop classes if your grade is like one of those “fail” videos on YouTube.  Oh, wait.  Those fail videos took the name from the grade.  Yes.  Drop the class.  Go again next time.  Avoid YouTube.  Seriously.

college

And the best way to a good GPA?  Go to class.  I had one class that was just . . . so very early.  On the occasions I went, I actually learned lots of stuff that was helpful and showed up on the test.  But going to class was . . . so early.  So I didn’t.

I passed.  Barely.  And I was thrilled about it.  Easier method?  Actually go to class.

Sage Wilder Advice Number Three:  It really is who you know.

Successful people hang out with successful people.  Make connections at college.  When you graduate, you should know 100% of the top 10% smartest people in your major.  Also?  Know the rich people.  They might not be the best students, but I have never gotten a job from a poor person.  Meet them.  Don’t be fake or lie, but don’t miss the chance to hang with the son or daughter of a billionaire.  One major mechanism of moving social classes is, well, being useful to a billionaire’s kid.  His dad will set you up.  Or, better yet?  Marry one.

I had one friend who went to college and married an heiress who was worth over a billion dollars.  Nah, just kidding.  It didn’t work out, so he dumped her.  And, yes, that’s a true story.

But almost every job I ever got was from someone I knew who liked me.  So know those people.

Sage Wilder Advice Number Four:  Avoid debt.  Avoid debt.  Avoid debt.

Debt is horrible.  Student loan debt is the worst.  With a car loan, a home loan?  Declare bankruptcy and you can walk away.  How do you get rid of student loan debt?  Die.  Bankruptcy won’t do it.  I wrote about it here (College Funding, Value and Grade Inflation: Should Your Kid Go? Should You Pay?).

Even with an awesome job, college debt is a killer, and you don’t even have a crappy used car to show for it.

The best strategy?  Have someone else pay.  Get a scholarship.  Have your parents pay or help.  The Reserve Officer Training Corps?  Yeah, you can get the Army, Navy, or Air Force to pay for your college.  And all you owe them is one weekend a month, and two weeks a year.  Not a bad deal for tens of thousands of dollars in tuition.

Sage Wilder Advice Number Five:  Nobody cares.

Instructors and professors don’t care about you.  The school doesn’t care about you.  Your friends?  They might care about you, but as soon as you’re off campus if you flunk out?  Yeah, that door is closed.

It’s not meant to be a demotivator.  You were raised and told you were a super special precious snowflake of a human.  But the reality is that if you’re “one in a million” that there are 7,200 people just like you on Earth.  And if you flunk out?  The college doesn’t care.  The world doesn’t care.  Your mom and dad will care.   But don’t get mad at the situation – the situation doesn’t care.

Your roommate might care.  But he or she might be happy you’ve headed to other locations.  Privacy so they can play their progressive jazz harmonica at 2:24am!

Sage Wilder Advice Number Six:  Activities are a yes.

Join clubs.  Join sororities.  Join professional organizations.  Do all of those things.

I was in a car reviewing résumés from my alma mater while on a recruiting trip.  The leader of the recruiting team, a graduate of the same school as me, asked about a particular candidate.

“What clubs was he in?”

I listed them.

“What offices did he hold?”

“Um, none.”

“So, a member, member, member.  Pass.  We’re looking for leaders.”

This was the guy who hired me.  So, if you’re in a club?  Do more than be a member.  Lead.  Bring cookies or beer.  Do something.

Heck, that might be great advice for life:  don’t be a non-player character.

Sage Wilder Advice Number Seven:  Manners.

You’ll be surprised how often you’ll be expected to have a tie.  So, have one.  Or whatever fancy things girls wear.  Dresses?  Pantsuits?  Whatever.  Have at least one of those with you on day one at school.

Also:  drink slowly.  You’re not used to alcohol.

Don’t eat like a pig.  Your mom taught you better than that.  Use your knife and fork properly and KEEP YOUR ELBOWS OFF THE TABLE.

And don’t try to eat a hot dog in one bite.  It might nearly cause you to choke to death.  Not that I’d know.

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Sage Wilder Advice Number Eight:  Relationships.

Get married later.  Like after you have a job and some money.  But have lots of relationships.  Go to parties.  After you’re done studying and your homework is done, unless you’re going with your billionaire girlfriend.  Also?  Don’t leave any evidence on YouTube.

Sage Wilder Advice Number Nine:  Have a “Plan B.”

Your high school boy/girlfriend will dump you.  Your plans for Friday will change.  Life in college is the most tumultuous period of your life.  Ride the wave.  You will not have the same major on day one as on day 300.  Your ideas will evolve.  Wonderful!

Sage Wilder Advice Number Ten:  Discipline.

Be disciplined in sleep, study, exercise.  College will try to pull all of your routines away.  Maintain them even though you’ll see a lot more nudity than ever before in your life.  Odd nudity.  Weird nudity.  Party nudity.  Covered in 7-11 nacho cheese nudity.  But keep your discipline.

Sage Wilder Advice Number Eleven:  Go all in.

When Cortez or Obama or whoever it was that conquered the Aztecs landed on the beach, he burned the boats.  That way his sailors had no way out.  They had to be committed to the conquest.  Thus, they peacefully slaughtered thousands of Aztecs until they converted them all to Scientology.  I think.

But the point remains:  If you’re in college, you’re in.  All in.  Go for it.

Sage Wilder Advice Number Twelve:  Is it for you?

The narrative is simple:  do well in high school, go to college, get a good job, work 40 years, retire and die.

Okay, we’re all going to die.  But what if . . . you could get a good job after high school without college?

You can.

My neighbor is a lineman.  That means he knowingly works with high voltage lines to fix them when they’re broken.  This is a big deal after hurricanes – these are the guys that bring Netflix® back.  And they make good cash.

So do plumbers.  And guys that fix air conditioning.  And guys that suck septic systems.  All of those people make pretty decent money, at least around here.  And they don’t have to worry about office politics, or showering.

I had one youth I worked with in Scouting.  He wanted one of the careers above.  My basic reaction was to tell him – “Go to college.”  I would have been wrong.  He has three job offers.  He’ll be making $80k a year before an engineer his age will.

Good for him.

Sage Wilder Advice Number Thirteen:  Enjoy.

Life is like a bodybuilding elf.  It’s short and hard.  So?  Enjoy yourself.  But understand that your choices at 18 might impact your ability to be a billionaire when you’re 30.  Or 50.

Unless you married the billionaire heiress.  You did do that, didn’t you?

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” – Herbert Stein

“Something’s the matter.  Something sinister and something grotesque.  And what’s worse is that it’s going on right here under my very nose.” – Blackadder Goes Forth 

ben stein

It’s amazing that one very short role was so iconic it cemented Ben Stein’s Hollywood career – he’s now known as Economics Lecturer to the Stars.  He taught Miley Cyrus everything she knows about pole-dancing while nearly nude and its impacts on global trade due to dynamic trade imbalances in an information-driven economy. 

Ben Stein is an odd person.  Lawyer.  Economic commentator.  Writer.  Actor.  Inventor of the phonograph.   But his father Herbert Stein was pretty spiffy, too.  Herbert was an economist who headed up the Council of Economic Advisors for President Nixon and President Ford.

But that isn’t interesting.  Or at least interesting to anyone not named “Stein.”

However, in 1976 he said something very interesting:

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

So silly, so obvious.  So profound.

But what can’t go on forever?

Well, in the big scheme, almost everything.  The Universe even has an expiration date.  Unless there is are some pretty significant physical laws to the contrary that we have yet to find, all indications are that the Universe will keep expanding for a very long time.  Like, for all of time.  Forever.  The Universe has moved on from the hot, incandescent birth where even light couldn’t exist to the relatively short period of now where we have stars and planets and Amazon® Echoes™ and such.

Eventually, because the Universe is continuing to expand, the galaxies will move so far apart that we won’t be able to see other galaxies at all.  At somewhere around 100,000,000,000,000 years from now on February 13, late in the afternoon, the last star visible from the Milky Way® will burn out.  That’s okay.  The Sun will only last another 7,500,000,000 years or so.  And the Earth will be gone billions of years before that.  And that sucks, because I keep all my stuff here.

Eventually, even black holes evaporate.  And under some theories even protons, the building blocks of everything we think of as matter, might decay.  This proton decay would render normal matter obsolete.  The implications of this are stunning.  Making even a rudimentary PEZ™ dispensers would be impossible unless you made it out of pure ultra-dense neutronium, and even Amazon can’t ship a PEZ© dispenser that weighs 100 billion tons for free, even if you do have Prime®.

And at that point?  It’s all gone.  Nothing left but a very thin, diffuse mist of subatomic particles existing at a very cold temperature, where no more thermodynamic reactions are possible – known romantically as the Heat Death of the Universe.  It’s like the Universe was the shower, and all the hot water was gone because your kids are incapable of taking a shower of less than an hour’s duration.

roboginsburg

Ginsburg is never gonna carpool with anybody but Sotomayor again.

So everything has an end, with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton’s twin needs for political power and chardonnay.  Oh, and maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has been rumored to have uploaded her consciousness to a small robot that she fashioned out of an old Sony® laptop and a Roomba© vacuum cleaner.  Okay, to be honest, I started the Ginsburg rumor, because it would be really amazing if all of the members of the SCOTUS did that.  I therefore declare personal ownership of the concept of RoboJudge©, including animation rights, but I would be willing to trade the Mongolian comic book rights for a beer right about now . . . .

Speaking of Heat Death, I found the following graph at RStreet.org (LINK):

Real-DJIA-46-to-18

Ohhhh, pretty bumps!  If this was a roller coaster, what would happen next?

I actually drew this graph out on paper (back to the 2006 Dow levels) on a really slow work day one winter when I worked in Fairbanks, calculating what the Dow-Jones Industrial Average would be if it were in constant dollars.  I even used data on the Consumer Price Index, and did all the math, and sacrificed a chicken, which is required in economics to make sure the results are right.  Anyway, what’s interesting to me is that this graph shows the result of asset prices in a “forever low” interest rate environment.

I never, ever, would have guessed that this would have been the outcome of the Fed’s policy of printing money like a toddler drools to cover the massive spending and deficits of everyone who’s been president this century.  I would have guessed that we would have had massive inflation, and an economy that would make the socialist paradise of Venezuela feel happy that they could stand in line for two days to get the free half cup of sawdust to eat.

Instead, we have Netflix®, a soaring asset base, and tacos on Tuesday.

I think I missed two things:

In a unipolar world, where we have the biggest and most intimidating armed forces the world has ever seen, everybody feels safe to use a dollar.  It doesn’t make sense, but neither does the popularity of Twilight®.  How intimidating are our armed forces?  So intimidating that literally no power on Earth would ever consider taking us on in a conventional war.  We’ve spent so much money on awesome military stuff that we’ve made World War II tactics impossible to use on us.  So people around the world use dollars.  It’s the next iteration of the Golden Rule:  He who has the gold, makes the rules.  And he who has the gun, has the gold.  Just ask governments that tried to sell oil in their own currencies – I won’t use real names, let’s just call them Kuamar Mhadafy and Haddam Sussein.

This soaks up a lot of cash. Piles of it.  And, better yet?  Everyone in the world is willing to sell us actual physical stuff in exchange for electronic transfer of codes that say they have dollars.  We don’t even have to print new dollars anymore!

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Oh, and I’m sorry to have mentioned Twilight.  If it helps, at least it’s not 50 Shades of Grey.

The other thing I missed is that banks just sat on huge deposits of cash to make their depleted balance sheets look better.  They could just deposit the money at the Fed.  I think we all agree that this was a better idea than just lending $2.7 million to absolutely anyone who wanted a house, even if “anyone” was a 12 year old buzzed on Pixie Sticks™ and the house was a cardboard box in the alley behind an all-night waffle and pizza restaurant.

But keeping that sort of balance is hard.  Eventually the money starts to leak back into the economy – Chinese folks purchase Vancouver from the Canadians. Then the Canadians get excited because they can take their maple-syrup covered hands and spend the recycled American dollars on comic books and pantyhose from the United States.  End result?  Those dollars leak back.

And into stocks.  And other assets.  Some observers have said that, in addition to the high prices on the stock market, we also have a bubble in absolutely everything.  But back to the stock market:

So, given that we’re at historically high valuations for a stock market . . . is it real?  Can it sustain this high level?

Bueller, Bueller, anyone?

The Search for Meaning Might Drain Your Bank Account

“They haven’t said much about the meaning of life yet.” – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

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So, is the meaning of life having a super sweet car like this?  If so, would having a Bat Cave be like double extra meaning?  If so, count me in!

One tragedy of our current culture is lower amounts of social interaction leading to meaning.

So what do I mean by meaning?

Meaning is significance.  Meaning is working on something important.  Meaning implies actions that change the world for the better, or at least change someone’s life for the better.  Ideally, this work is something that you are uniquely suited to do and that you’re good at, but those things aren’t absolutely necessary.  The idea is that you have some way that you can actively change the world for the better.  And you don’t have to paint the world to make it better, because the world is really big, and it would take a very long time to paint it, kind of like my house exterior, which, at last count, has taken me 10 years to paint, mainly because I haven’t started yet.

But meaning takes time.  And it takes persistence.  And sometimes it takes money.

Those things can be difficult, especially if you’re lazy like me.

So where can you get meaning?

  • Your job. A job is a good and admirable place to find meaning, and ideally yours is such a place.  But it probably isn’t.  Some people, like those at the IRS, actually have a job that implies they will make others angry with no real discernible benefit to society.  How about being a prison guard?  Tough duty.  And how many jobs are, well, just plain BS?  If you have one of those or aspire to one of those, you’re in luck!  There’s an entire web page dedicated to generating job titles for you!  (LINK)  Chances are better than even that your job is just that – a job.  It’s a job that people pay you to keep doing rather than a saintly crusade to save the planet.  Hey, at least you get paid, right?
  • Your family. This is a great place to get meaning.  But if you’re a dad like me, your main job is to produce independent and tough children who view the world as a challenge that they want to beat.  It’s like you light a bottle rocket and then . . . off it goes.  After you’ve done lit the fuse, well, it’s gone.  And it doesn’t need you anymore – it has a purpose and a path.  I apologize to anyone who really desires to make dependent children who are needy basket cases, but that’s not the way we roll at Casa Wilder.  So, by definition, my children need me less each and every day.

What are the alternatives if you don’t get meaning at work, and need more than family can provide?

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In the United States we used to take part in civic organizations to do meaningful work, or at least drink and smoke cigarettes, pipes and cigars while we pretended to do meaningful work.  Or smoke and talk drunkenly about the meaningful work that we really, really intended to do.  But those civic organizations really did accomplish a lot – from scholarships to the foundation of hospitals and clinics to funding zoos and draining swamps to get rid of disease-carrying mosquitoes.  And our forefathers accomplished all of that with a hacking cough and a buzz on.

Sadly, one last civic organization I attended spent more effort complaining about other members of the organization that weren’t there than it did changing the world.  And they didn’t even drink.  I don’t go to meetings anymore, though I did suggest beer would be good at the meetings.  If we’re not going to do something to help humanity, at least we should drink, right?  I don’t smoke, but I’d be willing to learn, if it helped.  Alas, this sober and smoke-free organization does little to change the world.

As a nation, our civic participation is down overall – the book Bowling Alone recounts how membership in groups that meaningfully participate at the local level of communities is . . . down.  Rotary.  Lions.  Boy Scouts.  Knights of Columbus.

It even reaches from structured clubs to bowling leagues.  Bowling leagues?  Well, the author used that data to show that social interaction was down across the board.  The overall number of bowlers is up, but the number of participants in bowling leagues is down.  We’re bowling, but we’re only bowling with people we already know.  We’re not using any sort of social energy to meet other people and forge new friendships and relationships that strengthen the civic core.  But at least you can drink and bowl.

If I was a cynic, I’d say the system was designed to do decrease civic participation – if we’re not actively making our community better ourselves, well, we can leave it for government to do.  Government likes this a whole lot.  Things that used to done by ordinary citizens in the community, say, being on the volunteer fire department, can now be replaced by professional firefighters who get paid.  Government wins both ways – the fire department employees like to get paid and vote for the people that pay them, and government has assumed another duty that it must tax for.  A win-win!

Unless you’re the guy paying taxes.

Regardless of why civic participation is down, it is down.  The reasons might form a future post.  And that removes a very significant opportunity to be, well, significant.  Thankfully there are other outlets.  Me?  I write this blog.  I know it’s seen by nearly every person on the planet right now.  Okay, okay, it’s not.  But traffic is heading that way.  At current growth trends in the year 2371 everyone on Earth will be doing nothing but reading my blog six hours a day.  Which is as it should be.  Then I will be officially meaningful.

However, there are other outlets besides writing that are preferred by other people:

Gaming.  I think I’ve told this story before on the blog, but keep in mind, when I originally wrote it I was getting about 1/10th the traffic I’m getting now.  So, if you’ve heard this story before, pretend you haven’t, because I’m going to tell it even better this time:

In the 1990’s, I remember watching the HBO™ series Dream On.  In this series, a newly single guy in New York had numerous adventures.  Since it was on HBO®, many of the adventures involved scantily clad females.  Or completely naked females.  But I turned away from the set and read my Bible during those naughty, naughty scenes.  Thank heavens the VCR was recording.

The main character had an office job in New York.  He also had a secretary, Toby.  She was written as a nearly worthless secretary with an attitude.  In one particular episode, she does nothing but play a video game on her work computer.  You could do that before the Internet and the IT department tracked every keystroke.

The game involved a supermarket.  Toby started the episode as a stock boy in the game.  Then she worked her way up to bag boy a few scenes later.  Then, cashier.  Then a few scenes later?  Produce manager.

Finally, at the very end of the episode, she yelled:

“I DID IT!”

“I’m the MANAGER!”

“Of a supermarket . . . that doesn’t exist . . . .”

With each phrase, her emotions changed.  At first, joy in achievement!  Secondly, a questioning voice . . . a manager.  Finally, her voice got very small.  She realized her accomplishment was really no accomplishment.  It lacked meaning.

If you like games, if you like escaping in them, that’s fine, more power to you.  But remember, they’re not really a substitute for actual achievement.  Plus, this is Wealthy Wednesday – how much money do you want to spend on games, anyway?  And how much time do you want to spend on them?  Yeah, I know, I spent two hours today.  But . . . umm, I’m sure I had a good reason.

Consumption.  Yes, this is Wealthy Wednesday, and as such we finally have to get around to this.

Consumption is used as a replacement for actual significance and achievement.  It’s even encouraged.  Why does it work?

Where else can you go, hunt for something, find it, and then get it.  It’s certain to work, every time.  You can’t fail.  Yet you get the opportunity to experience the flush of success, the dopamine rush from having found and purchased what you were looking for.  And if you bought it off the Internet, you get a second rush when the little brown box from Amazon shows up*.

That purchase gives the same feeling as accomplishing something that has actual meaning, and there’s none of the work and none of the uncertainty.  It almost doesn’t matter what the thing is.  It could be shoes.  It could be books.  It could be lightbulbs.  It could be PEZ® dispensers.  As long as it’s something that you can actually do, your brain can take this stimulus and turn it into a replacement for actual achievement.

And it has been culturally jammed into our heads – we’re not who we are, we are the sum total of what we own.  We are our car.  We are our house.  We are our slacks.  We are our PEZ® dispensers.  This consumption has replaced civic virtue.  It has replaced the Lions Club.  It has replaced the Rotary, the Kiwanis, and the Knights of Columbus, but unlike those groups, you can do it alone, at night, downstairs in your underwear, after a few beers.  At 2AM, feeling like you haven’t lived up to your potential in life?  If you’re tired of being the manager of a supermarket that doesn’t exist, well, perhaps you can check in at Amazon.com® to see what you can buy to fill the achievement and meaning-sized hole in your heart?

This post is about wealth – and the first requirement of being wealthy is that you don’t spend thousands of dollars on useless crap to replace meaning in your life.  Especially if you don’t have the cash to spend.  If you don’t have the cash to buy that new truck and you buy it anyway?  Now you have debt.  And the debt removes your peace of mind and you go in search of more meaning, so you buy the boat.  And you and your wife have to work for years of your life to pay for it all.

That’s okay, it’s not like you can become a slave to your own consumption based on your search of meaning, is it?

Nah.  I’m sure that doesn’t happen.

*I refuse to say how I learned this.

Computers and Privacy: Pick One.

“Ma’am, please calm down.  Your CD tray is not a cup holder.  I cannot help you clear your browser cache.  No, I’m not in India.” –Strongbad

privacy

You’d think they’d have learned about incognito browsing back in the Middle Ages.

I have no illusions of having any privacy when it comes to computers.  None.  The only computer that’s safe is one that has never been connected to the Internet.  And if that were the case, how would you then get all the cat pictures on the computer?

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Be true to your cat.  It will wait until you’re dead before eating you.  But it won’t wait too long.

The only safe computer is one that’s not connected to . . . anything.

Sound paranoid?

Check out this article on Bloomberg (THE BIG HACK).  I’m probably not paranoid enough.  And I’m certain you’re not paranoid enough.

That article is really long, but it shows, step by step, how the Chinese managed to put hardware on computers that specifically bypasses all of the security protocols.  If this hardware is on your computer?  The only reason that they haven’t blackmailed you is that you’re not worth it to them to have their technology exposed.  It’s amazing – the chip that they put on that allows this to happen is smaller than your Mom’s patience on a hot day when the air conditioner is out.  And they made it small enough so it doesn’t even show up on the board – they put it in between layers of fiber on the printed circuit board.

This chip allows them to have access to whatever they want to on the system or reprogram it on the fly.

So, no.  The Chinese won’t blackmail you because they’d rather keep listening to everything.  And I mean everything.  How many motherboards in the Pentagon were made in China?  Yeah.  It’s big.

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It could be worse.  It could be your wife.

But it’s not just the Chinese.  We’re doing it to ourselves, as well.  The National Security Agency has built a data center.  This data center has over 1.5 million square feet of storage, and will use 65 megawatts of electricity, and will use 1.7 million gallons of water a day for cooling.  It’s estimated that it will have storage of over a dozen exabytes (according to ZME Science, five exabytes is equivalent to all of the words spoken by human beings – ever) of storage.  If this sounds like Bill Gates’ guest house, well, you’re right.

But in this case this storage will be on real-time internet surveillance.  And as we’ve seen in the past, the NSA and the other three-letter agencies don’t really care about pesky things like the laws that prevent them from putting Americans under surveillance.  Nah.  That’s for amateurs.

This data center requires massive numbers of servers.  How many of them were made in China?

There is no privacy.  Our government might not even be able to keep its secrets . . . secret.  What chance do you have?

None.

The implications?

Imagine a Supreme Court nominee in the year 2050.  The nominee is 50 – and has spent almost their entire life online.  Imagine further . . . the browser history from when they were 14 showing up?  Sound silly?  It certainly isn’t – not after the last month’s bit of nonsense in the Senate.  I’m surprised they didn’t discuss fart jokes the nominee made in 1982.  Oh, wait, THEY DID.

Back to 2050:

“I see, Mr. Nominee, that in the year 2014, at the age of, what, 14?  At that age you seemed particularly fascinated with oil-covered girls wearing bikinis.  How can you defend that in light of our desperate oil shortage and the man-made global cooling?  And bikinis were outlawed several years ago as hate clothing, I must remind you.  Did 14 year old you have NO IDEA of the pain you would cause the future?  I respectfully ask the committee chair to put some more coal in the stove?  We have to get more precious CO2 into the air to hopefully warm our atmosphere.”

And there’s a further rumor (I have no idea if it’s true or not) that one particular Supreme Court Justice changed his vote on the constitutionality of Obamacare due to blackmail obtained from his electronic records.  A rumor, I must stress.  But not something I made up (Link) like that story of how Bret Kavanaugh and I broke into that ancient Egyptian site and found the Ark of the Covenant®.  Yeah, it was really the Arc of the Covenant™, which contained the geometry homework of Moses.privacy4

So, if you’re true to yourself, you’ll never go on a daytime talk show.

I became convinced that computers were fundamentally insecure due to Ben Franklin’s old adage:  “Three can keep a secret, if two are dead.”

Computers give their greatest value to us when we link them together.  The Internet is just that – linked computers, talking to each other, and sharing information.  And most of it is super important, too!  Like what the Kardashians did this week.  Or where Ben Affleck is at this current moment (and if he’s sober).  And how Russians have a campaign against Star Wars™.  Not the space-based missile defense.  The movie.

But all kidding aside, the networking of information systems has allowed amazing amounts of information to be shared across the world, allowing us to be more well informed.  Or, if you spend actual Internet time on the Kardashians, more entertained.  This communication has made our systems more efficient, and has allowed us to negotiate better, to learn new skills taught by people thousands of miles away.  But connectivity and value creation comes at a price.

The ways that computers can be compromised is amazingly large:

  • Hardware Exploits – As described above. This is fairly new.  Makes you wonder about how our fighter jets would perform if we ever went up against China?  Might just fall out of the sky?
  • Viruses – These won’t stop, and will get cleverer as time goes on, and more systematically destructive.
  • Day One Vulnerabilities – These are errors in the operating system that allow bad guys to get in to the system. They’re everywhere.
  • Backdoors – These are pre-programmed into operating systems so that folks like the (cough) NSA (cough) can get in anytime they want. They could likely watch me type this in real time.  But they can come on over and chat with me while I do it.  If they bring the beer.

I may be the last person who doesn’t pay bills online.  I also don’t bank online.  When my identity got compromised (The Lighter Side of Identity Theft) I actually signed up for Lifelock®.  The folks at Lifelock™, when I got compromised again, noted it was good.  Online banking was the source of a lot of tragedy that they’d seen.

So in a world where everything is offensive to someone, and everyone’s secrets aren’t really secret, how can we have a civil society?

Have no shame.  It seems to work for the Kardashians.

Opportunity – Like The Truth, It’s Out There

“This technology has been falling to Earth for centuries.  All it took was the right mind to use it properly.  Oh, the advances I’ve made from alien junk.  You have no idea, Doctor.  Broadband?  Roswell.” – Doctor Who

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Business Cat is ready for another adventure . . .

As I’ve made clear in previous posts, (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse, More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck, Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)) I think that our financial system is in trouble due to debt, currency debasement, and structural benefit issues with things like Medicare®.  In fact, I think that it’s mathematically certain that we’re going to have at least one more catastrophic dislocation (fast or slow), and my bet is that it occurs between 2024 and 2040.  Could it come sooner?  Sure, you stunning optimist!

However, none of that means that you can’t give yourself the means to be comfortable despite the decline.  And if I’m wrong about the decline – which I really hope is the case – then you’ll be in better shape.  I mean, round is a shape, right?

So, how do you make a bunch of cash so you can snort Cuban cigars, or do whatever it is the kids are doing with Tide® Pods™ while being flanked by surgically enhanced Instagram models?

Start by doing something.

Action leads to opportunity.  Inaction might help your video game scores and Cheeto® consumption, but to really create a situation where you’re going to have opportunity, you’re going to have to do something.

Living in a big city is great for creating opportunity.  But living in a big city also involves living in a big city.  And the last time I lived in a big city, it was Houston.  Houston was great – I met a guy who gave me baseball tickets.  Baseball tickets that were right behind President Bush’s (the first one) seats.

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Yeah, I took this picture.  How cool is that?

H.W. and Barb were there that night.  Then President Bush took us to his house and showed me the actual documents from Roswell while The Mrs. and Barb arm wrestled in the kitchen and then played some drinking/fighting game from Mexico that involved tequila, a bandana, and knives.  H.W. shared the big secret with me in his study over snifters of brandy:  turns out what they found at Roswell wasn’t aliens, it was just dolphins with spaceships off on a drunken joyride.  No biggie.

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The real cover up?  They had actually found Eleanor Roosevelt’s underthings.

Okay, the Roswell stuff I made up.  But I did get those tickets and President Bush was there that night.  And nobody in Podunk, East Midwestia is going to have tickets like that.  Big cities breed opportunity to build connections based upon the sheer concentration of people.  If you’re young and looking for opportunity?  Big cities are it.  Although my brother, who is also named John Wilder, did meet Bob Denver when he stopped for gas in a town of 1,500 people.  My brother was working at the station that day.  Said he was the nicest guy you’d ever meet, so, yeah, random meetings will happen.  But they’re the exception, not the rule.

If I were fixated on opportunity, yeah, I’d move to a big city.  But it’s not my cup of tea.

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Okay, this might be fake trivia . . .

When doing something:

Don’t quit your job, unless you already have a lot of money, or are certain your crazy scheme will work.  Or unless you have nothing to lose.  When Jeff Bezos quit to start Amazon.com, he had enough money and enough connections that he knew he could restart if Amazon failed.  But for every Bezos, there are tons of people like Davos Riggins.  Who is Davos Riggins?  I don’t know.  He didn’t do anything.

A minor bragging point – I found a name that returns zero hits on Google® on the second try.  Ha!  And apologies to Davos Riggins if you really exist.  But you have to admit you’ve squandered your potential.

Don’t borrow zillions of dollars to put your idea into practice, unless bankruptcy can’t hurt you.  And even if you win?  The debt will make your company less profitable.

What can you do to create opportunity in life?

Depends on you.  One of the things (not the only thing) I do is write.  Before this post, I’d written 229 posts comprising 316,000 words in the last 18 months.  Why?  I enjoy it.  Also why?  It’s doing something – it’s using the Internet to create possibilities that didn’t exist before.  And after 229 posts?  I still have dozens of sticky notes with topics that I want to write about – I have more topics than time.

But that’s my thing.

What about you?

  • Build something cool. Sell it at a flea market.  Or on EBay™ or Etsy®.
  • Start a company that to help people find PEZ® dispensers. Oh, that was how EBay© got its start.  This is a lie.  A sweet, beautiful lie (see comment below), but a lie nonetheless.  And now I owe doughnuts!
  • Start a social network that only allows communication via cat emoji – suggested name? Snapcat©.
  • Write a list of 100 things you’re good at.
  • Write a list of 100 things you like to do.
  • See how the lists overlap? I bet there’s opportunity there.
  • Go to conferences and meet new people.
  • Meet their friends, too. They know someone that can help you.
  • Learn from your losses.
  • Start again.

Regardless of the way the world is going, you can thrive.  You really can.  If you imagine the US economy as a swimming pool, each gallon of water in the 40,000 gallon pool would be worth $5 million dollars.  And that’s every year.  And it’s not counting all the pee in the pool from when you had your nephew over.

Would you miss one gallon out of 40,000?  No.  Nobody would.  And just like the pool, the economy doesn’t care.  Not even about the pee.

There’s room for you to be as successful as you want to be, if you’re willing to sacrifice your time and location and fail again and again.  And even when you win, you won’t be satisfied.  That’s the biggest gift yet – the quest.  If you’re good at it, if you like doing it, if you can make money at it, and if it changes the world?

That’s a start.

A good one.

Seven Deadly (Financial) Sins, Together For The FIRST TIME!

“Deserves got nothing to do with it.” – Unforgiven

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Actually not my favorite Clint Eastwood movie.  That would be Outlaw Josey Wales, or ANYTHING he did in the 1970’s.  But I do know my limitations . . . .

When it comes to my life, I’ve made mistakes, like convincing George W. Bush to attack Iraq.  I should have remembered – never get involved in a land war in Asia.  But those mistakes aren’t the ones we’re discussing today.  Today . . . we’re discussing the Seven Deadly Financial Sins, at least after I put on some spooky music to scare you into never sinning.  Oh, I did discuss the Actual Seven Deadly Sins, and you can read that post here (The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?).

We’ll start with the worst sin:

Debt

Is debt a sin or the result of sinning?  I’m not going to sit and argue it – these aren’t really sins you go to Actual Hell for anyway.  You just go to Financial Hell.  So, I’m calling Debt a sin.  And I’m calling it a result of sin.  It’s the “Y” of Sin – sometimes a vowel, sometimes not.

Debt is really, really bad for individuals.

Why?

With debt, you get what you want, now.  Like a brand new Corvette®, or a rare 1621 A.D. PEZ® dispenser originally whittled by Galileo while he was in prison for stealing cable television.   I’m sure that was the best deal I’ve ever made, only had to pay $500 for it!

But now you have the object of your desire.  And you have to pay for it.  That’s not a problem.  You only borrowed $50,000 for the Corvette™, right.  You’ll pay (for a seven year loan) about $680 a month at 4% interest.  Not bad!

But of that, your first payment will contain around $170 in interest, money that you’re paying the bank, every month.  $1,800 in interest in the first year.  The total interest you’d pay in this situation is $7,400 over the life of the loan.

Now let’s say you buy a house for the average price in the country, $200,000.  Your payment on a 30 year loan would be a little more than $1000 for principle and interest, with a whopping $750 of that being interest in the first month.  In the first year?  About $8,800 in interest payments alone.

Sure, you have a house and a car, but you’re paying nearly $1000 a MONTH just to borrow the money in the early parts of the loan.

How much income would be required to fund this?  Your tax rates will vary, but I’ll assume your tax rate leaves you with about 70% of your money after you’ve paid all of your taxes.

$17,000 in pre-tax income would be required . . . just for your interest payments.  Toss in the principle, the taxes and insurance?

$50,000 in pre-tax income to pay for taxes, insurance, and the full payments.  Some people work a whole week and don’t make that much money!

If you make the median family income of $59,000, you have the princely sum of $9,000 before taxes ($6,300 after taxes) a year to buy absolutely everything else in your life.

“Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage:   Pay cash or do without.  Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity.” – Robert A. Heinlein

Is there a place for debt?  Sure.  Businesses use it to expand.  Families use it to create a reason to divorce.  Or buy a really cool PEZ® dispenser.

The least bad debt?  Mortgage debt.

Worse?  Credit cards.

Worst?  Student loan debt or money you owe to mobsters.  But I repeat myself.

Have I sinned?  Yes, I have.  But that day in January of 2001 when I paid off my last non-mortgage debt except for student loans?

Priceless.  And marriage harmony went up 41.7% that day.

Fear

Had I continually invested all of my spare cash into the market, say in a nice S&P 500 fund?  The cash that’s sitting in the bank, gathering only a little interest?

I’d be retired today.  Smoking nice cigars and drinking good scotch.  With an airplane.  A cheap one, but an airplane.

Dang.

I’ve successfully predicted 11 of the last three recessions.  That may not be the most useful talent I have.  I will note that I at least come by it honestly.  One set of great-great-grandparents decided that they wanted to get out of Germany because they saw the increasing militarism in society and figured that war was coming, so they’d get out before it got bad.

They left Germany in 1880, 34 years before World War I and assimilated the heck out of themselves – one of them was Eisenhower’s grade school teacher – how American was that?

I’ve said before that being right too early is the same as being wrong, but in this case?  I have all of my cash.  And my great-great-grandparents avoided the mess that was post World War I Germany, where, I hear, the Internet was horrible.

Greed

Okay, I did play with some great stocks during the teens.  Several of them doubled within a month of me buying them.  And I kept riding some of them right into the ground.  I turned $20,000 into $40,000 into $5,000.  Which will be a great tax write off, when I finally sell it.  Will someone please cue the sound of a forehead repeatedly hitting a desk?

Waste

In a recent post, I mentioned that the most expensive food is the food you don’t eat.  I’ve done the math:  when we go out to eat at Taco Bell®, we spend around $40.  How much steak does $40 buy?  A lot.  How much steak gets wasted around the Casa Wilder?

Zero.

And we can’t eat steak every day.  I mean we could, but we can’t.  But when we have to throw out food, I feel horrible.  Maybe it was the way that Great Grandma McWilder would talk about how fortunate we were to NOT BE STARVING when I wasn’t finishing lunch.

And Great Grandma McWilder came through the Depression on the “nearly having to eat your shoes” side, so she knew how to put a guilt on you.  And waste was the sin that she preached against daily.  In her house, it if had any use?  She’d save it and use it.  Thankfully she didn’t die in her sleep and eat me (Sleep Deprivation, Health, Zombies, and B-Movies).

That would have been one big waste of an amazing blogger . . . .

Lust

I think the most evil word in the English language is “deserve.”

  • “You deserve a nice car.”
  • “You deserve health care that someone else pays for.”
  • “You deserve that stereo – you work so hard.”

When raising my kids, I wouldn’t allow them to use that word.  When you do, you create a foundation for your desire for an item, which in Actual Sin terms would be Lust.

Needs

Modern life has increased the level of needs that we have in an amazing fashion.  If you look at the following list:

  • Electricity
  • Internet
  • Phone Service
  • Mobile Phones
  • Natural Gas
  • Multiple Cars for a House
  • Cars
  • PEZ®
  • Air Conditioning
  • Netflix©
  • Facebook™
  • Faster Than Light Travel
  • Wireless Keyboards

None of those things were invented before last Thursday.

Okay, they were here last Thursday.  But how many on them didn’t exist before 1990?  Before 1950?  Before 1900?

These things aren’t needs.  They’re nice – some of them amazingly nice.  You can live amazingly well without them, as humanity did forever before 1900.

Reassess your needs** – not only of the services above, but of anything that doesn’t make your life better.  Half the games that are available on the smart phone are designed to sell you or sell something to you.  Either way?  You lose.  Except for Candy Crush®.  That’s just fun*.

*I have never played Candy Crush™.

**If you don’t want to have electricity and your wife disagrees, it would amuse me if you used me as a source.  It would NOT amuse me if she came to my house to complain.

Sloth

I’d write more about this . . . but I’m just not feeling it.

Just kidding.

Don’t ignore your money or financial situation if you’re lazy, like me.  I put in place systems so I wouldn’t forget to pay bills monthly.

It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you because, you know, we’re cool, right?

It’s a calendar.

Pay your bills on time.

Otherwise?

You get what you deserve, which will be penalties, fees, and interest.  You can use deserve in this case.  Because you deserve it.

Sinner.

Readers Write: Early Retirement, Health Care, Canada, and Averting A Ben Affleck Marathon

Ricky:  Boys, what is up with me getting shot with three darts, and it didn’t even affect me?  I must be like a superhero or something.

Julian:  Maybe you’ve got so much dope in your system, you’re immune, Rick.

– Trailer Park Boys

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See, your health care dollars are being spent on useless signs!  An outrage!

It’s always nice to get feedback about the column in a letter that doesn’t begin with an anatomical impossibility.  I mean, how would my head even have gotten in there in the first place?  And what does my mother have to do with anything?  But, I thought this would be a great chance to take a few excerpts from the letter and mix with other communications I’ve had to revisit the topics of early retirement and health care from last week (Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)).

Comments in quotes are from my friend.  Comments in [brackets] are from me.  Comments in purple are a figment of your imagination.  You should talk to someone or cut back on the recreational stuff.

“So, I laughed when I read this post yesterday.  I’ve been spinning off after reading the NY Times article on the FIRE movement and Mr. Money Mustache and others – and wondered if you knew about them… of course you did!”

Yes.  John Wilder knows everything that a mortal man can know, with the exception of how to properly mud and tape drywall.  That’s magician/wizard-level skill.

“Since I’m new to MMM [Mr. Money Mustache – link to him here-JW] and others in the FIRE [Financially Independent, Retiring Early] community I was curious and excited, and then realized that I’ve known versions of people like this since my youth [but] they just seemed like weirdos at my parent’s church who recycled aluminum foil from pot luck dinners, rode tandem bikes to church, the husband hired himself out as a handyman outside his day job, and rode his bike to job site with his old timey tool box, etc.  They seemed cheap, not enlightened, but it looks like they were on to something!”

If you’re going to be rich, a good thing to be is . . . invisibly rich.  No private plane.  No flashy cars.  Just the satisfaction of knowing that you actually own the ’04 Ford™ Taurus© in the driveway of the nice but modest house.  And this avoidance of spectacle also tends to reinforce the concept of not being a slave to your desires or needs for consumer products.  Except for drones – you need a drone – life is not worth living without a drone.

I recall living in Houston and sitting at the stoplight in my three year old Ford® that I got for $12,000 (cash) next to a $180,000 Mercedes® SLWhateverX, and thinking . . . mine is paid for.  I don’t know if theirs was (my bet is that it wasn’t) but I knew that mine was.  And that I got to live with the lack of stress associated with no payments on a car.  I felt this way when I was driving $2000 Chevy™ Lumina©, too.

“While many [Early Retirement folks] got their start in higher paying professions like software engineering or investment banking, and then consciously live on 30-40% or less of their income, it does seem like a movement geared to minimalist millennials with few obligations.  I can live on 60% of my pay without dipping into savings, but much less isn’t possible with obligations of a relatively cheap [Expensive Home Area] mortgage, frequent trips to [Home Area], living in a 65 year old house, and maxing out 401K contributions.”

Yes.  Agreed – at various stages of my life I’ve been down to my last $50 in the checking account – with a pretty hefty negative net worth.  And, yes, obligations cost money.  But almost all of the obligations we take on are (outside of death, child support, alimony, and taxes – but I repeat myself) voluntary servitude.  And it’s okay, as long as you realize that the servitude was entered into . . . voluntarily.  Unless there was tequila involved and she looked pretty after enough of it.  Thankfully, since 2005 or so, I’ve been on the other end of it (wealth, not tequila goggles), but in large part that was due to severing that voluntary servitude, either through paying down debt (student loans) or not getting into debt (new cars).

“[Specific Investment Stuff] Plus, I like what I do and where I live.  [More Specific Investment Stuff].”

This is the most important line in the letter.  If you love what you do, and like where you live, why would you even consider retiring early?  Financial independence is nice, but if you’re gonna keep working because you want to and can save a nice chunk of cash while fully funding a 401K, why bother hurrying it?

“[More Specific Investment Stuff and Personal Stuff] So how to build wealth when you still have obligations and don’t feel confident on putting your money to work in the market, or buying real estate in distant locations, etc.?”

Cash is a long term loser – but it sounds like you’re funding your 401K to nearly the max.  I’m not going to get into specific investment advice on the post (okay, ammunition, PEZ® and panty hose are always winners) but the first part of wealth is reduction in need.  Just like the most expensive food in the fridge is the food you throw out, the biggest wealth destroyer is stuff you don’t ever use.  Like that stupid drone.

And, as for wealth?  [Spoiler Alert] If we don’t fix health care, our financial system will implode (more below).  Oops.  Does that make me a Debbie Downer?  If so, do I have expanded restroom options?

“And then you hit the big nail on the head . . . “

Naturally.

“Health care.  Our system is a mess and many 30-somethings are choosing to go without coverage in order to save more.  That’s not an option at my age either, and I wonder how the FIRE folks living on the extreme cheap lifestyle will cope when they hit their 40’s and beyond as insurance rises beyond affordability.”

He ended with a note that certain countries seemed to like government-run health care.

To be as clear as I can be using the English language:  Like a Bush/Stalin lovechild, our hybridized system of health care combines the worst parts of rent-seeking crony capitalism and nanny-state big government socialism.

Let’s take the parts everyone likes:  Everyone must be treated at an emergency room regardless of ability to pay, government subsidies, and no pre-existing conditions.

Sure, everyone likes this!  Sounds compassionate (with other people’s money)!  Heck, if I were irresponsible, I’d like it, too.

But it sets up the system where emergency rooms are clogged with people with minor conditions because they can get free treatment.  It’s okay.  The people who actually pay bills to the hospitals can pay for them, too, right?  So, they pay for their care and the care of others.  But then they’re taxed so that they can pay for insurance for others.  And if there are no pre-existing conditions on health insurance, heck, don’t sign up until you get really sick or old, thus making insurance for people (like me) who have had it their entire lives amazingly expensive.  But it’s okay, the CIGNA health insurance company went from a high $20’s stock when Obamacare passed to a stock that is worth $200 today, a 600% to 700% increase.  Obamacare really stuck it to insurance companies.

No.  Insurance companies wrote Obamacare.  And don’t get me started on hospitals or prescription drug manufacturers.  While pretending to be a portion of the capitalist system, they really aren’t – they make use of government power to make rules that would be blatantly illegal for any other business.  Imagine a taking your car into the auto mechanic and getting a bill of $500 for a $5 belt.  Or a bill from a consulting mechanic who just walked by and asked if the car was doing okay.  And then drive off with the original problem not solved, and then bill your for your Taurus® giving birth to a Kia™, when everyone knows that a Taurus© identifies as male.

I don’t like socialism, but it appears we’ve socialized the responsibility while making the responsible pay with little to no benefit while corporate profits explode.

How does Canada do it?

In my YouTube® feed a video popped up about Canadian healthcare.  In it, a video pundit named Steven Crowder went to Canada and tried to obtain treatment (with his Canadian friend) for a variety of minor ailments.  No dice.  Hours waiting, and nada.  This is a similar story that I’d heard from others, so I thought I’d ask a friend who is Actually Canadian and eats nothing but back bacon while drinking Molson® and Moosehead™.

She loves their system.  Her mom had cancer, and got prompt treatments.  They even picked her mom up and dropped her off from her chemotherapy sessions.  And I hear if you’ve had a heart attack the system works very well.  And the care is good.

breakingcanada

This explains why the only good television from Canada is Trailer Park Boys.

But my friend also talked through the darker side that Crowder talked about – long waits – months for minor surgery like fixing a bum knee.  A full day to get a prescription for an ear infection.  Every system has a mechanism for rationing.  In a true capitalist system, it’s money.  In a socialist system, it’s something else.  In Canada?  Minor pain and time.  But like a year of minor pain – sort of like being forced to watch nothing but Ben Affleck movies for a solid year.

Are taxes higher?  Sure.  It isn’t a pure socialist system, and I haven’t dug into the darkest side, but socialized medicine eventually (as resources dwindle) becomes a game where resources are rationed more aggressively.  Except for the leaders – they still exempt for themselves the best of everything.

Canada’s system does have a safety valve – you can go to private clinics, too.  And pay cash to avoid the Affleckathon.

All of the above still sucks.  But it’s still better than the thing we have today.

But is there a capitalist solution?  Yeah.

I won’t go through the details, but Karl Denninger (LINK) has put together the “most” free-market alternative to our current system.  It doesn’t do like I would (letting folks die in the street is a big incentive to get insurance and drive costs down, plus it would mean much shorter lines at the checkout at WalMart®) but, would manage to save the financial system of the United States if implemented.  What would we lose?  High profits for insurance companies.  Huge numbers of bureaucrats.  High drug costs.  High insurance costs.

Do you lose exemptions for pre-existing conditions?  Yup.  But if you have insurance and have less than a 60 day lapse, those pre-existing conditions remain covered like they were in 2004.

It’s a good system, and necessary.  Because if we don’t fix healthcare?  It’s not gonna kill us.

It’s going to wreck the entire financial system of the United States, as I write about here (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck).

So, no biggie.

Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)

“But they make wonderful patients:  they have excellent health insurance and they never get better.” – Frasier

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Fairbanks Memorial – they didn’t charge extra for ice.

Although I’ve discussed Early Retirement before here (Frugality, Financial Samurai, Mr. Money Mustache, and Early Retirement Extreme) I thought that it would be good to revisit the topic, primarily because I have a spreadsheet.

What kind of spreadsheet?  A crystal ball spreadsheet, one that predicts the future, all the way until 2081 when the ice sheets have melted and the dinosaurs have returned.  I’ve maintained this spreadsheet since 2014 or so, and it’s been very accurate for predicting my net worth over the course of four years.  I used it to decide (once upon a time) whether or not to quit one job and move to another.  Spoiler:  I didn’t move jobs.

The real reason I didn’t change jobs was fairly simple:  the spreadsheet told me that within three years I would have enough money that if I decided to chuck it all and get a job as say, a school teacher for a few years, I could continue to live the dissolute lifestyle awash in PEZ®, long essays, and regret to which I had become accustomed with no changes.  But there is a faction that sees a more radical idea:  just retire early.  They even have an acronym for it:  FIRE – Financially Independent, Retiring Early.

One of the biggest advocates of that is still Mr. Money Mustache.  MMM as he is affectionately known to his “Mustachians” retired several years ago, and has been blogging about it since.  His blog is exceptionally popular (LINK).  One secret of MMM is that he, by choice, has created a lifestyle of voluntary low-spending, i.e., he’s cheap.  By cheap?  His family has only one car, which they rarely use.  Mainly he uses a bicycle to go where he needs to go.

This is a fascinating idea.  You gain financial independence not by having the biggest pile of cash, but by having the smallest pile of needs.

For example:

I have a stack of books that is literally over 12 feet (143 meters) tall of books that I’m planning to read.  They’re stacked up by my bedside.  They’re stacked up on a bookcase near the bathroom.  They’re stacked up on my dresser.  And I get several new ones every month to replace the ones I finish reading.  And this doesn’t account for my library, which houses a collection of thousands of titles on every subject from tanning a hide to hiding a tan.  When we moved from Alaska to Texas, the movers set a company record for number of boxes packed in one day AND amount of weight packed in one day.  Reason?  Books.

Mr. Money Mustache would (probably) say:  “Why are you spending money on books?  There’s a library not two miles from your house that has a decent collection, and if they don’t have the book you want they can get it through interlibrary loan.  You could even get your fat butt on your bike and go down there to get a book and lose some weight in the process.”

He’s just that kind of party-pooper, but that would also impact my love of gadgets and gizmos that, ultimately, aren’t worth the time and money that I spend on them . . . except the drone, which is really, really cool.  Everyone needs a drone, right?

But let’s look at the major categories of spending and consider them through the soup-stained Mustachian paradigm.  Each of these topics could be a blog post by itself (and some have) but we’ll skim them today:

Mortgage: 

Don’t have one.  You probably have more house than you need, which causes you to spend more on heating and cooling than you would need to if you had a house of human proportion.  Pay it off so you’re not paying interest to a bank and can keep the money yourself.  But you still have to pay taxes and I’d still suggest you have insurance on the place, since it protects you in several different ways, especially from certain lawsuits that could dig deeply into your cash.

Home Location: 

Why live in an area that causes you to have to spend a lot of money?  Why live in an area (if you’re still working) that causes you to drive lots of miles to a job, which eats up both money in commuting cost and your life in drive time?  I know!  Location!

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This was an awesome location.  Wonder why we sold it?  Oh, yeah, piles of money.

Cell Phones: 

Why have a big data “full everything” when you can have a phone that costs less than $40 a month that gives you some data as well as more talking than anyone actually does on a cell phone?  And the need for the newest iPhone©?  Probably not so much.

Satellite/Cable Television: 

We have satellite television, along with a DVR box that records television shows so we don’t have to spend time watching them.  But let’s look at television . . . do we need a subscription to DirecTV® and Netflix™?  The number of things that I watch on satellite is dwindling – Silicon Valley™, Game of Thrones©, Better Call Saul™, The Last Ship®, sure I watch those when they’re on.  But most of the year, they’re not on.  And I can get most things on Netflix™ or Amazon®.  Do I even need satellite or cable anymore?

Landline: 

When I was a kid and the phone rang, I’d jump off the couch, and run to the receiver to pick it up.  It was an event!  Now, in a day where communication follows you to every crevice of your life, when the phone rings, we rarely even pick it up unless the phone announces that it’s Grandma.  Wondering why we even have one . . . oh, yeah.  Grandma.  And the phone is free with the Internet.

Food: 

Food is big business.  And an even bigger scandal.  How much food do we buy that we end up never eating?  Since we have teenage boys in the house, the answer is “very little.”  It’s been my saying (for forever) that the most expensive food that you buy is food that you don’t eat.

The second-most expensive?  Restaurant food, especially fast food.  I can buy three pounds of delicious ribeye steak for about $30.  Dinner for our family at Taco Bell™ (remember that we have teenagers) costs about $40.  Full disclosure, I account for a chunk of that $40 myself, but steak is so much better than a Nachos Bell Grande®.  And I can buy six pounds of ribeye for $60.  And we can eat for several meals on that, versus one trip to a nice restaurant, which would cost about $120-$180, including tip.  I maintain that I can eat better food more cheaply if I prepare it at home myself.  And by myself, I mean (except for grilling) The Mrs.  And as for high-priced Internet meal kits?  Wal-Mart® is our meal kit.

Cars:  

Mr. Money Mustache suggests having one or zero of these.  And he has a huge financial point.  Cars depreciate, so they’re crappy investments.  Cars require taxes and licensing and insurance cost annually, so even if you own one, keeping it around so you can drive it costs you annually.  And my family has an “N+1” philosophy about cars, where “N” is the number of licensed drivers.  Why?  We drive used cars, and they need maintenance at a higher rate than brand-new cars.  So we have a spare.  If we were retired?  One car would probably be enough (assuming we didn’t have the teenage boys in the house).  And, yes, a car is required for the rural area that we live in – you really couldn’t bike your  ten year old kid to a wrestling tournament (in winter) that’s 100 miles away . . . so we’d need at least one car.

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I’m hoping this one is paid for.

Home Maintenance:

If you own a home, something will break.  At my house, that seems to happen weekly, and it’s more than me having my 19th nervous breakdown.  Some things get fixed when I get around to it, like when one Wilder child broke the bannister.  It sounds like I’m blaming the kid, but I’m really not – if the bannister had been put together correctly in the first place (or fixed better than I did when last I fixed it) then it wouldn’t have broken in the first place.  This bannister got broken, oh, six years ago.  It still swings loosely.  I’ve never even been close to being motivated enough to fix it.  But when the air conditioner pan rusted out and started leaking condensed water onto the bathroom carpet?  Yeah.  Fixed in 12 hours.

And I estimate that immediate repairs (not fixing the place up) that are required to make the place habitable are probably about 1% of the home value each year.  If you’re handy and can do it yourself?  So much the better.  When the hot tub “brain board” fried?  I consulted with a hot tub repair guy and swapped it out myself – saving about $200 in the process.  When the flame rollout sensor on the furnace went out in winter?

I paid to have that done, since the consequences of screwing that up involved mortality via explosion or asphyxiation if I screwed it up.  $25 part, $50 in labor, and fixed that afternoon.  My rule is:  if it doesn’t require real expertise and can’t kill anyone?  Sure, I’ll try that.  I’ve saved thousands by doing that – but I think (after putting two complete roofs on and fixing two others), I’m done roofing.  Enough roofing.

Medical Insurance:

Medical insurance is the biggest variable to deal with for anyone attempting to retire early.  I will say this gently:  the health care system in the United States is the most unholy mixture of the worst parts of socialism and near-monopoly capitalism on the planet Earth, and that’s the planet that has the Department of Motor Vehicles AND school cafeteria lunches.  How is it messed up?  On the socialist side:  A hospital is forced to treat anyone who shows up.  Anyone.  By definition, if you don’t have any money, all the hospital can do is send you bills and not take the money you don’t have.  So, your incentive?  To go to the emergency room whenever you get a sniffle, so everybody who has insurance can pay for you.

On the evil capitalist side?  Hospitals don’t have to let you know what they’re billing you, or why.  Your ability to even remotely influence your bill is nearly zero.  From Karl Denninger’s post on how to fix healthcare – emphasis in original (LINK):  “. . .  the practice of charging someone $100,000 for scorpion antivenom in Arizona when the same drug from the same company is $200 for the same quantity 40 miles to the south and across the Mexican border.”  Denninger’s post has a list of similar issues – and common sense solutions that we’ll never undertake.  Why?  Look at the stock prices of the drug companies and the insurance companies.  Who would want to mess that party up?

MMM discusses his vexation with insurance in a pretty good post here (LINK).  Since I’m working at a job and have crappy insurance from them, I’ve not scouted the market too much – but my last look at the market mirrors MMM’s.  But in addition to the horrible composition

But up until you are ready for Medicare (and until your spouse is, too, which is a consideration for me, having married a younger – but still legal in most states! – woman) you’ll have this risk.  Medical insurance costs are estimated to rise between 15% and 30% next year.  And 7% thereafter.  Said simply, medical costs can’t continue to increase at that rate.  And when something can’t continue?  It won’t.  The system will break.  Insurance companies will go bankrupt, as every body . . . walks away.  When people can’t pay for insurance, they won’t.

But if you’re retired, have insurance while you can until the system breaks.  After that?  The rules will change again.  This will happen even if you are working.

So what does it all mean?

Retiring early has risks, but, so does life.  One thing I’ve seen is we certainly don’t know what’s around the corner.  If you could retire early and found out later you had a terminal disease, wouldn’t it be great if you retired early?  No.  You’d still be dead.  Seriously.  Dead is dead.

Retire early only if you don’t find what you’re doing fun.  If you’re having a blast at work and it has meaning to you, keep doing it until you die.  Why retire from a dream job?

I mean, who else would watch Johnny Depp’s finances for him?  By the way, what’s the best way to clean the money after having a money bath?

Asking for a friend.

Scams and Cons at Any Age, Part II: The Canadian Menace

“Blame Canada.” – The South Park Movie

canadianscam

Please help stop the senseless slaughter of Canadians that voluntarily give their lives so your pancakes can be tasty!  I sent them $20 real dollars, not those Canadian ones.  Or . . . could this be a scam?

Last Wednesday we discussed scams that you’ll run into at different ages.  We made it from birth to age 22 and listed some of the scams that you’ll be exposed to (Scams and Cons at Any Age, Part I, as told by Admiral Ackbar).  Today we’ll keep going, and if you don’t find the information useful, I promise a full refund of all money that you’ve paid directly to me to read this blog (note to self:  when I edit this stuff into a book remember to edit that last sentence out).

Early Career:

You’ve graduated from college, or have opened a small but successful business, or you’re pursuing a trade like welding and you’re 24.  Life is wide open!  You’ve successfully avoided college debt through one way or another, or maybe you have a modest debt that you can repay without too much difficulty every month.

Let’s go get scammed!

The easiest way to get legally scammed is your choice of partner.  If you’re with a bad one, you’re going to end up paying for it for (potentially) decades.  If your spouse is particularly unemployable and you are really employable, some states (the Internet in 2018 says Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, and West Virginia) allow for lifetime alimony.  So, if you have the bad sense to marry a gold digger?  It will outlive the cat and could last as long as that herpes he or she brought home.

canadabirth

How birth works in Canada.  Since all children are socialist and owned by the government, it’s okay if you pick up several that aren’t yours to raise if you live in Canada.

Another way (men only) you can get scammed is through paternity.  Yes, you can be found legally liable to raise Some Other Dude’s Kid (SODK) if your blushing bride is a wanderin’ if you’re married when she gives birth and you claim the kid, or don’t object within some arbitrarily short period of time.  And lets’ face it, babies all sort of look the same, so the chances of you missing that deadline are pretty significant.  In the worst case scenario, you end up paying child support and alimony when your wife starts shacking up with the Some Other Dude.  Yeah, I don’t personally know anyone this happened to, but I’ve read about several cases.  And this is perfectly legal in every state.

Thank heaven you’re not French – they explicitly have outlawed paternity testing so it is illegal to check to make sure your mademoiselle hasn’t taken to the boudoir with some other Pierre.   But that’s okay, being a father is just a social construct, right?

canadianstowork

The easy way to get to work in Canada isn’t by mass transit, it’s by moose transit.

The next big scam is car purchasing.  I’ve written at length about my philosophy on car purchasing.  You can find some representative posts here plus results of my bad experiences.  Give them a read – they will save you thousands of dollars . . .

Repeat After Me: Never Buy a New Car (and other lessons for young adults)

“Wreck. Big wreck.” – Long, Sixteen Candles

Will you buy a Tesla™ 3?  You already have.

I’m gonna tell you about an accident, and I don’t wanna hear “act of God.” – Jack Burton, Big Trouble in Little China

Outside of bad relationships, I think new cars are the biggest scam that a young early career person faces.  What kind of a bargain is a vehicle that you drive off the lot that immediately becomes less valuable?

And if you’re reading this blog, the chances of you falling for a Nigerian-Prince level scam are nearly zero.  The writers of those scams specifically put misspellings into the emails so that smart people ignore them – the laughable quality and easy verification that the scam is a lie the point of the scam in the first place.  The last thing the scammers want is a smart person to deal with – the email itself is an IQ test.  Only the scammable need apply.

As it is, the “Nigerian-Prince” scam accounts for 48% of Nigeria’s gross domestic product.  And I hope you didn’t fall for that fact that I just made up on the spot – ha, I bet you believe that there’s an actual Nigeria now.  Ha!  But THEREZ GOOD newS, I have SUM OF $48 MILLION USD that UNKLE BRADLEE left in trust for me and YOU ONLIE NEED TO PROVIDEE your bank account routing information for me to wire it 2 u.

Middle to Late Career:

You’ve reached your peak earning potential.  You’ve been scammed a few times, like me, most of them completely legal versions.  For the most part, you’re either broke or you’ve grown wary of anything that sounds too good to be true, like Social Security or that George R. R. Martin will ever finish the Game of Thrones™ series (Actual Book Series Title:  An Infinitely Long Story Consisting of People Talking in Rooms Because I Can’t Figure Out How to End It Song of Fire and Ice®) before his heart finishes him or that there’s a new version of The Gong Show™.  There is, in fact, a new version of The Gong Show® and it is fabulous.  George R.R. Martin, however, appears to be doing absolutely anything but writing.  Maybe he could be a judge on The Gong Show©?

canadadictator

It seems as if Dr. Phil has been busy?  I like the new Canadian flag, a LOT!

Dating scams seem to hit this group a lot.  Why?  After being married, and now being single, scammers can target the richest age group with a pretty significant emotion:  love and longing.  I’ve read on the Internets about folks spending tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on their never met in person Internet lovers.  While some of these folks do get prosecuted, it’s pretty hard to convict them unless they’re fraudulent in a pretty flagrant manner, especially since the victim willingly sends the money, and, in some cases, tries to keep the relationship going even after the scam is exposed.  I guess true love can’t be stopped, even by borderline abusive behavior and financial fraud.  Now if the scammers are ugly . . . ?

Investment scams are also a big deal, but instead of love, they focus on greed.  A great example of this was Bernie Madoff, whose name alone shows that God has a sense of humor.  Really, you invested with a guy whose name sounds like “made off”?  Guess that explains why you dated Gina Cheatintramp in high school . . . .

But investment scams don’t have to be out and out lies and fraud – they can be more insidious.  Is your broker really working for you, or are they working to maximize their commissions?

I’d write a lot more here, but this post is already nearly at length.  Perhaps this will be a future post.  Or not.  It depends on if I think I can makes something SO BORING as fees and taxes on investment funds humorous.  Dunno.  Maybe if we represent the investment funds with swimsuit models?

Retired:

Fear is the major leverage point of scammers for older folks.  And I’ve seen it in person.  Pop Wilder became (as he grew older) grew correspondingly more fearful.

Why?  My opinion is that older folks have fewer options.  It’s not like they can decide:

“You know what?  Being old and retired sucks.  I’m going to leave it all and become an 89 year old lumberjack in Saskatchewan and start a Canadian rock band called Mötley Canüe and chase 19 year old Canadian girls.”

groupies

Pictured:  Canada.  Not Pictured:  Groupies.  I guess the concert would have gone better if we actually had instruments.  Or could sing.

So, Pop Wilder was complaining about expenses – that was his biggest complaint about retirement – his expenses went up and his income didn’t.  I was helping out financially (a little bit) and he explained that his prescription drug costs were astonishingly high.  At the time, the Internet bubble still hadn’t popped, so places like superprescriptions.com (I made this domain name up, so if you go there and are bombarded with advertisements for cheap, dodgy Chinese Viagra®, well, this is a post about getting scammed) were offering his prescription drugs for about 20% of the price as his local pharmacy.  I put together a list – his prescription bill would drop from $700 to about $150 a month.

He wouldn’t do it.  He was more afraid of changing (“what if they don’t talk to the medicine in a soothing voice each night like the local pharmacist does?”) than he was of losing $550 a month.

canda a eh

Imagine an alternate universe where everything is exactly the same, but Canada is spelled Cunudu.  I’d pay to live there.

But older people have another vulnerability:  the world has changed so much that their effective ignorance goes up daily – who can keep up with all of the change in the world?  And it’s started to hit me, too.  When I have a technical issue I just hand my laptop (or whatever gadget) off to The Boy or, increasingly, Pugsley, and they fix it, generally at lightning speed and with competence.  As an example of my reluctance to change technology, my phone is four years old, which might as well be a dinosaur (not a cool one, but one of the lumpy ones that lives in a swamp) compared to the newer phones on the market today.  So, I guess I’ve got a bit of that technophobic bug myself.  I even use my mobile phone for phone calls on occasion, which makes me super rare.

The only time I ever heard Pop Wilder drop the F-bomb was in conjunction with his computer:  “It doesn’t work.  It’s all f***ed up.”  The sheer frustration combined with the unexpected profanity has made this a go-to phrase for The Mrs. and I whenever some complicated thing in our house just refuses to work.

This was a regular occurrence for Pop Wilder.  I think he would (nearly monthly) take the huge, hulking tower (that the local PC people told him was the minimum system he needed to hook up to the Internet) back to their store.  They’d make some minor software changes to the Windows® settings that Pop Wilder had inadvertently messed up, and charge him $150 for dry cleaning his hard drive or lubricating his computer chip.  Every four months they’d change out some larger part for giggles.  After the computer worked again, they’d phone up Pop Wilder and he’d drive thirty miles to go and get it.  They both walked away happy.  Kinda.  Again, a scam, but a completely legal one.

Over all, I think the best advice is still this:  Be honest with yourself.  Be honest with the world.  It’s not a bullet proof way to avoid being cheated, but it’s pretty good.  But someone, somewhere, sometime is still gonna cheat you.  Legally.

I blame the Canadians.  It’s not like they’re really at fault, but they’ll still apologize.

Oh, still not a financial planner or investment dude or anything.  MAKE YOUR DECISIONS AT YOUR OWN RISK.  Really.