Category: Wealth

The Lighter Side of Identity Theft

“Truth is, identity theft isn’t hard. A number and an ID is all you need to drain a bank account and return some money to some very surprised retirees. But why stop there? As long as you’re stealing someone’s identity, why not use it to contact some known terrorist organizations on unsecured phone lines? Why not use it to threaten federal judges and insult the local drug cartel? Most fun I’ve had in Miami.” – Burn Notice

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Come and Take It was a Texan callback to Leonidas and his comment to the King of Persia.  Not an invitation to my bank account, weasels!

It was a Friday afternoon, and I’d just finished a business meeting about 250 miles from home.  As I got into my car for the drive home, literally as my butt hit the seat my phone rang.  It was an 800 number, so I have expected that it would be some sort of telemarketer selling off-brand Pez© knockoffs – the cheap stuff made by Elon Musk’s offplanet Martian robots (LINK).  I answered anyway.

Turns out it was my credit card company.  I only have two credit cards, pay ‘em off in full each month, and they’re issued by the same bank.  Why two credit cards?  That will become apparent shortly . . .

Bank Lady:  “Mr. Wilder, did you open an account with us on July 12?”

Since opening a credit card account is something I do, on average, every five years or so, I shook my head.

Since this isn’t the future, she just waited until I answered in actual words.  “No, I’m pretty sure I’d remember that.  Besides, I’m too busy digging in the blogging mine each night to take valuable minutes of my day to eat, or open a completely redundant credit card account.”

“Well, someone did.  And, Mr. Wilder, they have your birthdate.  And your Social Security Number.”

Great.  There’s another one of me out there – exactly like me, but with a goatee.  Oh, wait, no . . .

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I need a gold sash.  Does it matter if yours is on the left or right?

Name, birthdate, and Social Security Number are the trifecta for an identity thief.  Those were the Holy Grail of information.  With that information, anyone can open an account.  It wasn’t another person – it was a thief!

Me:  “How much did they charge?”

Bank Lady:  “This is weird – looks like nothing.  Only the annual fee.  We sent the card and it was returned to us.  I’ll cancel this account.”

Me:  “Where did they send the card?”

Bank Lady:  “Looks like Texas.”

Great.  Stupid hot summers, and now full of credit thieves.  Stupid Texas.

The Bank Lady (who was very nice) promised to send me information on the fraudulent account, along with an identity fraud kit.  She gave me the number for Experian©, which is one of the three credit rating agencies that lenders check with prior to issuing credit.  Experian®, she explained, would put out a fraud alert and let Transunion™ and Farkleknobber© (I forget the other stupid made up corporate name) know about the fraud.  Any new credit applications would have to be proceeded by a phone call to me prior to issuing credit.

And I wondered how I got hit?  I’ve tried very much to practice safe financial practices:

  • No online banking.
  • Shred all personal information and credit card offers before throwing away. Preferably treat like a witch and burn.  Bonus points if the credit card offers scream while burning.
  • Only share information with those that “need” it. I had to punch a Nun one time because she was too nosy.  My religion?  That’s “need to know.”
  • I wear latex gloves while in any bank. No reason.  It freaks them out, though.

I had dreaded this moment.  There is some portion of my personality that is works off of fear.  There is some part of your personality that works off of fear, too (LINK).  The oddest part of this fear coming true?

The dread was gone.  The identity theft had happened, and it was “go” time.  Let’s fix it!

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Me meeting evil me.  Or is it me meeting nice me?  Probably me meeting nice me.

My second call was to my bank.  I verified my account balances and wasn’t missing any money, though I did tell my banker about the time that over 10% of my net worth went missing from my account (LINK).

She laughed.  (And you will too – read the story).

I also asked her about account security.  Since she wouldn’t talk to me without a special code that was texted to me, that was nice.  Additionally, she said:

“I see that you don’t online bank, and you don’t have a debit card.  You should be good.”

Let that sink in.  My banker just pointed out that online banking and debit cards are huge potential security holes.

And they are.  I did some research, and it turns out if you online bank and get hacked?  You’re screwed.  This one gentleman had nearly $1,000,000 lifted from his accounts over the course of months because his laptop was hacked.  And debit cards?  That’s like walking around a pitbull pen in porkchop panties.  Not a good idea.

My last call was to LifeLock®.  I vaguely remember the CEO put his Social Security Number (457-55-5462) on billboards, on commercials, and everywhere.  I also remember that someone opened a fraudulent line of credit on the guy.  And I seem to recall hearing that the CEO went to the thief’s house and kicked his butt – I think it was a story I heard on the radio.  I can’t find any record of this online, but I like the concept:  “If someone messes with you, our CEO will go to his house and beat him with a broken pool cue.”  That’s one way to earn a consumer dollar!

Signing up with Lifelock© was easy, if somewhat like talking to a living, breathing infomercial.  Everything was an upsell:  “Did you know that a fetus can have his identity hacked in the womb by skilled psychics who can take the baby’s Social Security Number . . . before it’s born????”

I normally hate the hard sell, but this day I was okay with it.

So, I got the double-platinum bejeweled version of LifeLock®.  Normally I like to think about financial decisions before I make them, you know, let a bit of reason kick in so I make a sound decision.

This wasn’t rational thinking.  It was total, complete reflex action.  Doctor taps my knee with rubber hammer?  Knee jerks.  Robber takes personal information?  Wallet jerks.  I want the best plan, you know, the CEO ass-kicking plan.  Can LifeLock™ waterboard?  If so, I want to add that to the plan.

Can I get the “Wet Electrodes on the Nipples” plan?  Oh, yes, I’d pay double.

In retrospect, I did some looking online about LifeLock©.  It turns out that it’s pretty highly rated, but it’s also thought to be a bit overpriced.

What the heck does LifeLockâ„¢ do for you, anyway?

What LifeLock® does is send you alerts on people messing with your credit or other accounts.  Since I don’t online bank, LifeLock© can’t see my accounts, but I’ll check those regularly.  LifeLock® also offers a pretty professional team to help you after your Social Security Number has been popped naked into the world.  And, in theory, it will replace up to $1,000,000 in losses, but I’d bet $10 that they’ve never (or rarely) ponied up that money, since they have fine print and lawyers, and also due to laws that limit your losses due to identity fraud.   Mainly, banks have to take the hit, and since they have skin in the game they’ve developed algorithms that look for fraudulent accounts and purchase patterns.  And they’re effective.

A thief took my information.  Could they get more?  Yup.

At 6:50 AM Monday morning, my bank (credit card) texted me, asking if I’d made a purchase from an online store at 5AM for $300.  They’d declined the purchase.

Did I make the purchase?  No.

If there is anything that all Wilder family members are in agreement on?  5AM is the devil’s time.  We should sleep through that.  And, my bank probably noticed that.  And also noticed I don’t live within 750 miles of the state where they asked the stuff to be delivered.

So a thief has my Social Security Number, my birthday, my name AND my credit card number.  One of those I can change (credit card).  Actually, two if I decided I was transgender.  Then I could change my name, too.  But I would be an UGLY woman.  But I could be Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Has a ring to it?

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I have not been nor ever will be a geologist.  Just sayin’.

My bank politely asked me to call them.  When I did, they asked me if there were any purchases that I had to make today?

No.  I’m okay.

(THAT’S WHY I HAVE A SECOND CARD!  Two is one, and one is none.  Always have a backup on important stuff.  And I even carry emergency cash.  And a small parachute.  And a nosehair trimmer.)

The credit card number I’d had for nearly 14 years was cancelled.  A new one, with a new number, would be headed my way immediately, per my bank.

I’d gone through the data that LifeLock™ had provided.  LifeLock© also said my credit score was good, really good – 800, so any nonsense on my account had just barely started.

And it turns out this is fairly common.  11,000,000 people a year have to go through this.  So, statistically?  It’s not if, it’s when it hits you.  Sorry to be the voice of bad news.

But now I have to deal with other stuff.  Notify the IRS (there’s a number for that) and notify the Social Security Administration (there’s a number for that, too), because both of those are also conduits for fraudsters to mess with my life.  Somebody messing with my tax return, which in some years would buy a small country in South America (very small country, like an acre or so).  Somebody taking my Social Security (don’t want to get old and find out that somebody other than politicians has stolen my Social Security).

And it gets even more twisted – identity thieves are also stealing identities for getting prescription drugs.  And for having medical bills charged to other people.

And, honestly, I think that’s where my leak was.  I think an M.D. I went to hired a sticky fingered weasel that deserves to be nipple-electrocuted like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, since that’s one of the few places where I can see all the above information being in one place.

I’d pay extra if they let me be Gary Busey.  Not in the movie.  I’d pay extra just to be Gary Busey.

Note:  John Wilder has received no compensation for this post, or any of them, yet.  If LifeLock(R) offers me a big pot of money?  I’m on it.

 

 

Self Control, Soviet Tanks, and Stanford Marshmallows

“Any problem caused by a tank can be solved by a tank.” – Family Guy

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The featured image is geology.  Which is way cooler than what the class made it seem.  This is one I took in Alaska.

The first all-night study session I that I did involved studying for finals the first semester of my freshman year at college.  I do recall getting increasingly tired, and at 4AM I jumped in my car to buy, for the first (and last) time ever:  No-Doze®.  No-Doze™ was awful.  I felt jittery.  I felt my teeth moving around in my gums.  I felt my eyes moving around in their sockets.  It felt like there were bugs walking around on the inside of my skull.  Thankfully, I was distracted by actual pain in my stomach (due, I’m pretty sure) to the No-Doze©, which is what kept me awake.

I ended up doing fine in my tests, but can only recall that “Cops On Streets Detain Crime” (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian) and “Miss Pennie’s Panties” (Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene).   I think I’m missing a billion or so years of geologic history because there wasn’t a sufficiently naughty mnemonic involving underwear.

Oh, and I can also recall that No-Doze© is the work of the devil.

Looking back, it seems so simple.  A little effort each day would have paid off at finals.  Big time.  Study a subject (like geology – lots of memorizing) a little bit each day.  By the time finals rolled around?  With just a few minutes of study, I’d be ready to take the final, and do so on a full night’s sleep.

However, while study may payoff later, not studying always pays off now.  Present Me can have a beer, go to a movie, read a book, watch an episode of Twilight Zone®.  These are all better than studying geology.  Honestly, a dentist visit is more fun than studying geology, though it’s still probably easier to sleep through geology.

What has all of this got to do with Wealth?  It’s Wilder Wealthy Wednesday, so how does all of this tie in?

I’m glad I asked.

Everyone makes choices about how they spend their resources.  There are the needs of the Present, and those of the Future.  Example:  if retirement and putting The Boy and Pugsley through college weren’t issues?  I would own a tank.  You can buy them, you know.  (LINK)  Real tanks, sold by Eastern European arms merchants.  It sounds like Bruce Willis should be in this movie, right?  Oh, and I’d also own a swimming pool filled with Pez® that I would swim in like Scrooge McDuck™.

But I won’t.  I value Future Me enough to forego the fun of riding around the neighborhood in a fully functional WWII Soviet tank.

Barely.

And it’s mainly so The Boy and Pugsley can get jobs and not have to live in my basement and borrow my tank.  Future Me likes that Future.

This is also the way borrowing money works.  Present Me decides he wants something, like a house.   Present Me obligates Future Me for thirty years’ worth of mortgage payments.  Good deal.  Let’s pretend I don’t have the cash to buy what I want.

If that’s the case, I find someone who has cash, and trusts me enough that I’ll pay ‘em for the next thirty years.  For their trouble, they get, say 5%, of the unpaid balance each month as rent on their money.  They like that deal because they’ll have more money when it’s all done.  I like the deal, because I get the house now.

An economist would call the interest rate charged to me for borrowing the money a “discount” rate.  It’s the amount that the bank charges you so that they have a durable long-term investment that makes sense for them.  If you can’t afford to meet their discount rate?  The bank is required by Federal law to invest their reserves in Russian tanks and Pez®.

The discount rate in most cases is simply a numerical rating of your will power.  If you knew I was going to give you fifty dollars at the end of the month, how much would you give up to get it today?  Of you said, oh, five dollars, that means you are willing to give up 10% of the value . . . for one month.  That’s (we can quibble about this number, but we won’t for now) a huge premium, the equivalent of 314% annual interest.  If I could get a 10% monthly return, I’d retire . . . this afternoon.

So, our “discount” rate is really a numerical measure of our ability, our willpower, in delaying gratification.

Delayed gratification, it turns out, is a pretty significant human characteristic.

In the 1970’s, Stanford was known for several radical psychological experiments:

  • The Stanford Prison Experiment – A really creepy experiment where students dressed as guards and inmates and completely cost me my faith in Californians.
  • The Stanford Pizza Experiment – I think this was a 1970’s B-Movie. Adrienne Barbeau – don’t miss it!
  • The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment – The one that goes with this post.

In the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (SME), young children were given a marshmallow.  They could eat it now, or be given two marshmallows later.  I’m obviously simplifying this – they used cookies, too.

About a third of the children made it long enough to get the second treat.  Between this and a previous experiment, there were several primary correlations on just which kids would get the second treat.

  • The older kids were more likely to get the second marshmallow.
  • Intact family. If there was a dad in the house?    No dads around?  No second treat.

So what?  A lot, actually:

The longer a child could wait, the:

  • Better the expected SAT score,
  • More education the child would likely complete, and
  • The child would likely be skinnier.

Those are pretty positive, and pretty significant outcomes.  And, although there has been complaint about the study (small sample size, flawed methodology) since it matches my biases, I’ll assume it’s right.  (Hint:  this is how some journalists actually think, or rather, avoid thinking.)

Are there other examples of discount rates/willpower out there?  Sure.  We keep creating academics, and they have to look busy, so they keep writing papers for each other.  Thankfully Jesse Shapiro wrote one (LINK) just to prove a point in my blog.  Thanks, Jesse!

Shapiro looked at food stamp recipients.  He found that there was a 10% to 15% drop in calorie consumption from the start of the month when the EBT card was filled up to the end of the month.  Some people ate enough at the beginning that they had to skip meals at the end.  Additionally, it looked like the food that folks ate through the month also was . . . not as good.  The overall quality of the food consumed appeared to have dropped during the month as well.  Might there be other contributing factors to this?  Sure, but the data didn’t seem to indicate that was the case.  And that 10-15% discount rate is huge.  Over 300% annually (compounded).

So, why should you delay gratification?

  • When it’s clear that it’s good for you.
  • When there’s certainty to the payoff.
  • When the payoff is big enough to make Current You value it almost as much as Future You.

Most of the time we have enough real information to know if it’s good or not and how certain it is.  It’s that last bullet point:  making Current You care enough.  Why do people smoke?  Their Current You runs a big discount rate on the first two factors.  And maybe Future You just pisses Present You off?

One last thought on willpower.  Remember that study that showed intact families mattered?  Yeah.  If the Mom is impulsive enough to get preggers by a man she can’t have around, or if the man is impulsive enough to bolt?

Bad news for those kids.  Willpower and the ability to delay gratification is, like intelligence, highly inheritable.  Looks like it’s late nights and No-Doze® for the lot of them.

Elon Musk: The Man Who Sold Mars

“Actually, they theoretically can separate the hydrogen from the oxygen and process that into providing fuel for man’s space flights. Ostensibly, turning Mars into a giant gas station. So it’s a . . . yeah. We live in an amazing time.” – Breaking Bad

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The featured picture above the title is of the Saturn V.  It’s longer than a Harry Potter novel.  This picture shows the engines from the main stage of the Saturn V.  About 275,000 horsepower for all five engines, you can totally tell by the lens flare!  But it got over two miles per gallon of kerosene used (TRUE)!

This is the third and final part of Elon Musk Week® (sort of like Shark Week©, but with 100% less Discovery™ channel).  An annual feature?  Maybe!

Part 1 is here (LINK) where we take apart Tesla®, and Part 2 is here (LINK) where we understand Elon’s Matrix® plan.

I first read about Elon in (probably) 1977 or 1978.  Oh, sure, you’re saying, that would have made him six or seven years old, and at least a continent and two hemispheres away from me.  My only response is, “so what?”

When I was a kid, I lived fifteen miles from the town I went to school in.  My house was the farthest away on the school bus line, so I was the first to get on in the morning (7:15, every morning) and the last to get off (4:30, so I missed F-Troop).  I could stare out the big picture window and see the bus a mile away – Ma Wilder taught me it would be rude to keep the bus driver waiting – and out I would go to be there waiting when the big yellow bus pulled into my driveway.

For about two hours a day as the bus stopped to pick up and then let off children, I could either stare out at the mountain scenery, or I could drop with Johnny Rico and The Roughnecks into Klendathu.  Or I could visit Trantor, first with Hari Seldon, and then later with The Mule.  Or ride Sandworms on Arrakis with Paul Atreides.  Or be shocked at the mysteries when we Rendezvoused with Rama.  Or finish all the science fiction anthologies at the middle school library by the middle of my seventh grade year.

And reading wasn’t confined to just bus time.  There were only three channels of television available (no one ever counted PBS, unless Monty Python was on) an half the time nothing interesting was on.  So, if I had built all the model kits around (the usual condition – they didn’t last long) and it was too cold to go hiking or fishing, I always had a book ready to read.   And Ma Wilder said I had to go to bed, but she never said I had to go to sleep . . . my parents bought me a reading lamp that clipped on my headboard for my tenth birthday.

But I remember reading the Hugo®-winning “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” by Robert A. Heinlein fairly clearly – it wasn’t on a bus, but on the couch by a crackling fire on a cold (-20˚F) winter’s day.  And that’s when I met Elon Musk.

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(source, Wikimedia)

Delos David Harriman (better known as D.D. Harriman) is the billionaire who decides to go to the Moon.  Why?

He envisions a new economy – an opening of the Moon is the first step to opening the Solar System to humanity.  Rather than living in a world which with a fixed horizon, D.D. realizes that getting off this rock is the only possible positive future of humanity.  But getting there is possible, and only takes will.

To quote Harriman:

“In fact, the real engineering problems of space travel have been solved since World War II.  Conquering space has long been a matter of money and politics.”

Contrast with Musk:

“Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That’s pretty lame.”

And how was Harriman going to do it?

“I’ll hire the proper brain boys, give them everything they want, see to it they have all the money they can use.”

Contrast this with Musk:

“The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.”

And I could go on and on about the similarities but the one thing I know is this:

Musk read the same stuff I did when he grew up.

Musk knows D.D. Harriman.  Just like I did, Musk admired D.D. Harriman.  However, Musk has become D.D. Harriman.

And for that, my hat is off to him.  D.D. Harriman is much more important than Tony Stark®.

And Harriman was willing to do absolutely anything to open space to humanity, convinced it was too important to leave to governments and bureaucrats.  Harriman manipulated stock, forged fake space-diamonds, and extorted advertising dollars from soda companies.

Musk feels the same way.  Musk formed SpaceX™.  Musk got involved in Tesla®.  One is his passion, one (even though he believes in the mission) is there to fund his passion.  Make no mistake:  Musk has created more applied rocket engineering faster than any person in history except maybe Von Braun (though Bezos is giving him a run for his money and has super-cool biceps for an old man).

Why not NASA?  Isn’t it their job?

During the 1960’s, NASA had a mission.  It was going to get three guys to the Moon, by the end of the decade.  Lots of engineers worked lots of long hours and made it happen.  In July of 1969, NASA dropped the mic after “One Small Step” and walked off the stage.  Mission done!

Well, almost fifty years on from that date, and six of the twelve men who walked on the Moon are now dead.  During the middle?  NASA developed one (anemic) space launch system – The Space Shuttle, whose sole purpose appeared to be to construct the International Space Station.  Why construct it?  So the Shuttle had a place to go, silly.

And now we have no space launch systems available to us except through the Soviets, er, Russians, and . . . Elon’s SpaceX™, which currently plans to have a manned launch of its Dragon/Falcon taking place in early 2018.  The first manned Orion flight?  Maybe 2023.  Maybe.

Why is NASA so sick?

The original group they hired were engineers.  Their job?  Get into space, get onto the moon.  Then they fired most of them, but kept enough to send out a fairly constant stream of unmanned probes as well as lame manned space missions.  But during the 1970’s they also hired a lot of administrators.  And people who had no connection in any respect to a spacecraft, or science, or aeronautics.

Except for brief bursts of public interest when something worked really well (Viking and Voyager) or when something worked really poorly (Challenger and Columbia), NASA has reached an irrelevance in national policy.   NASA appears to only be important when it comes to funding large amounts of money to projects that take place in certain Congressional Districts in certain strategically important states.  In Houston they love NASA, or at least NASA dollars.  Efficiency?  Progress?  Why would you need those things?  Heck, we can have astronauts but not have spaceships!

These are the depths that NASA has fallen to showcase its technical bankruptcy:  it has a division called the “Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute.”  This division produced 5,000 braille books about the eclipse for the blind.

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These are the official shot glasses of the Manned Spaceflight Center.  At least it’s one way to blast off?

I am not opposed to a company doing this – I’m not even opposed to a government agency producing books in braille, especially those that aren’t available on audio.  But I am opposed to NASA doing it.  Why?

NASA’s mission is:

To pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research.

Nothing at all in there about getting blind people books about an eclipse.  Nothing close, so this is a symptom of a system that has gone beyond dysfunctional to trivial.  A dysfunctional system (or in this case, organization) just can’t get anything done.  A trivial organization works on everything.  It invents steps where none need be, make-work (like the books), bureaucracy (credentials for everyone!), and hurdles (did you file the right form?) until Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy is achieved:

From Jerry Pournelle himself:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers’ union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

I think that in NASA they actively look for jobs that they can do that are:

NASA could spend time and effort designing a new hypervelocity spaceplane, but that’s hard!  And someone could get hurt, and that would be bad publicity.  And we know that we as a society will only allow people to be put upon the equivalent of 2,000 tons of TNT (Saturn V) if it’s totally safe!  Otherwise, it’s an outrage!

So, faced between making a new launch system that might help get people into space OR putting together a braille book?  Let’s go with the book.  It’s A. Easy and B. Safe.

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These are the official flip flops of the Manned Spaceflight Center.  They look Safe, unless you blow out your flip flop and step on a pop top and cut your heel and have to cruise back home.  It’s okay, because there’s booze in the blender and you have the Official Manned Spaceflight Center shot glasses.

The only way to avoid the Iron Law and the A. Easy and B. Safe people is to have a personality that keeps focus on the goal.

And since NASA administrators don’t go in and fire everyone in NASA not involved in the mission, you can be certain that they’re fine with . . . whatever the heck it is that NASA is doing.

How is SpaceX® Different?

Elon Musk is a laser of focus on getting spacecraft into the air.  People at SpaceX® want to work long hours, and if you look at jobs on their website, it notes that long hours, working evenings and weekends are probably going to be a thing for you.  And, want to get fired?  Talk about part of your “mission” at SpaceX® being producing coloring books on planetary nebulae.

Sounds like old Harriman himself, “. . . sweet talk them into long hours – then stand back and watch them produce.”

Some Libertarians HATE Musk because of the government subsidies that have driven money to Tesla® and even SpaceX©.  I can understand that, especially if their goal is less government.  Heck, I’d like less government.  But even though Musk has to go through roundabout ways to get only a portion of NASA’s funding, he’s running circles around them on talent recruitment, technology development, and actual results.  We have a choice if want to really get into space.  Elon appears to be the only winning answer (unless Bezos is holding back on a few aces).

Musk could fly people in space tomorrow, if they’d let him.  NASA is six years out.  Six years out.

What does Musk plan to do in the next three?  Send a capsule (unmanned) to Mars.

I’d be surprised if Orion ever actually flies people.  NASA seems incapable of spaceflight, and, really incapable of anything more complicated than Twitter.  But if Orion ever flies, I imagine that in orbit the Orion astronauts will get to see Elon’s butt pressed firmly against the window of his Mars Transfer Ship (Red Dragon 11) as he gives them a full moon (pardon) as a parting gift as he heads to Mars.

It’s a long trip to Mars.  I imagine that Elon might take a book or two along with him for the trip.  Probably not “The Man Who Sold the Moon.”  But maybe Dune, or Starship Troopers.

What would D.D. Harriman read?

I’d like to think he’d bring my blog . . .

Hey, everyone (including you, Elon) you can subscribe, and it gets sent out directly when I hit the publish button.

Bill Gates, Bill Shatner, and Billionaires

“Yeah, that’s nothing. Peter would spend millions just to mildly annoy Gavin. These are billionaires, Richard. Annoying each other means more to them than we’ll make in a lifetime.” – Silicon Valley20170725_232152 (2)

So, I met William Shatner.  He wasn’t as thrilled as I was. I saw him sign this, for me.  It looked like he wanted to get to the Holiday Inn and soak his feet.

Part of great success is built by luck.

Yes, that’s a declarative sentence, and of course I know my old granddaddy Quintin Tarantino used to say, “The less a man makes declarative statements, the less apt he is to look foolish in retrospect,” but I’ll stick by this one.

One of my favorite stories is about an author who submitted his novel to about a zillion publishers, only to be turned down by all of them.  All of them.

He was working a crappy night job at a dry cleaner, and after the novel came back, in a fit of anger he threw it into the trash, right on top of last night’s dinner.  He had given up.  His wife, however, still had hope.  She picked the novel out of the trash.  She replaced the cover – the old one had gotten spaghetti sauce all over it – and she sent it in.

One more time.

The publisher loved it.  Soon a book contract.  Then a movie, “Carrie.”

Yeah, that was Stephen King.  How many Stephen Kings are there working that just never got a break?  That didn’t have Brian dePalma direct a masterful movie off of their work?  Hundreds?  Thousands?

Heck, I have my own magnum opus I wrote on construction paper about a robot that could kill all of humanity and then died.  Because . . .

Dang, that was the hard part.  Yes.  Because humanity was so strong!!!!!

But, that’s me, not Stephen King.

Stephen King can write fiction that millions want to see.  But he was lucky he married a woman who believed one more time than he did.  Unlike my Mom, who cried on the construction paper.  She told me she was happy, but I still think those weren’t happy tears.

Let’s switch gears . . . .

Pick anyone named Bill who is wildly successful, and I’ll point to the break that they had – the luck – that got them over the top.

I’m NOT saying that Bill Shatner isn’t a gift to the world, because clearly he is.  But he was the second person who sat at the helm of the Enterprise, not the first.  He had a stroke or two of luck in that one . . .  But I follow him on Twitter®, he doesn’t follow me. (Yet)

I’m NOT saying that Bill Gates isn’t brilliant as I write on Microsoft® Word™ on a Microsoft© Windows® operating system (though Microsoft® Explorer™ . . . really, Bill?) because Bill Gates is clearly brilliant.  I follow him on Twitter© – he doesn’t follow me.  (Yet)

There were thousands of people who competed with Gates.  But we should all be honest:  it took more than one lucky break for Gates to end up with enough money to buy up all of the Pez® in the world three times over:

  • Gates was born rich. Not mega-rich, but rich.  As we all know, that’s the best way to get rich (LINK).
  • Gates had access to computers at a private prep school when only NASA, MIT, and The Hair Club for Men had access to that kind of computing power.
  • He met lots of the “right people” at Harvard.
  • He was lucky enough to bring some of those “right people” to Microsoft®.
  • He had a lucky meeting with IBM®. They’d use his new DOS® software, because (laughing) WHO WANTS TO OWN SOFTWARE?  Look at this cool green screen!

Bill eventually won – he built a monolith of a cash-generating company from the ground up.  At the right moment in history, Mr. Gates either developed or found:

  • The Right Vision. As early as 1980, the vision was a computer on every desk, in every home, running Microsoft® software.  By 1998 geriatric grandfathers had them to get e-mail from distant family.  By 2002 they were getting e-mailed photos regularly.  By 2004 they were sending money to Nigerian Princes and sending out virus-encrusted email greeting cards to EVERYONE in their address book.
  • The Right Skills. Bill Gates developed a wide variety of skills beyond his programming chops – he developed team leadership skills, accounting and sales skills, and the skills to hire the best.
  • The Right Team. Windows 1.0 sucked.  So did Word 1.0.  So did Excel 1.0.  They were the WORST.  But the team did second and third versions that were so good, so strong, so well integrated that dominant products like “Lotus 1-2-3” and “WordPerfect” were smashed harder than an Amish girl at spring break in Cancun.
  • The Right Business Environment. The early vision of computers on each desk meant . . . they had to be usable.  They had to provide value.  They had to be something that people wanted to use.  By creating that software, by creating Windows 95™, Gates got rid of the old constraints of the IBM clone as a business machine, and brought it into the home, massively multiplying the user base in a single year.

Mr. Gates was always going to do well.  He had too many factors in his favor from day one, even without the family wealth and support.  That was like having a springboard.  With his intellect at that time and place?  No way Bill walks away with less than $100,000,000.  He was going to create something awesome no matter what.  But one of the largest and most profitable companies on Earth?

Nah.  That wasn’t a cinch.

Again, I’m not saying that these Captains of Industry (Gates, Musk, Jobs, Thiel, Bezos, Brin, Page) aren’t worthy.  They most clearly are.  (But do you think that Page gets mad that I put Brin first?)  Again, clearly, each of them would have been very successful without luck.  But luck has played a part in vaulting each of these men into the massive success that they now enjoy.  (I was tempted to throw “clearly” into that last sentence, but, I think you’ve gotten the point by now.  Clearly.)

So you should Get Lucky.

Good heavens!  There must have been a LOT of bad decisions in the 1980s.  Starting with this album cover.

But, you’re asking, “How, John Wilder, can I, like Loverboy®, Get Lucky©?”

Well, you’re in luck!  I have a fairly short list that I’ll expand at a future point, when the astrological signs are right:

  • Hard Work – There is no substitute for this. Okay, there is.  Massive piles of talent and luck.  And money.
  • Live in a Big City (A Rich One) – For heaven’s sake, if you’re not rich? Hang around rich people!  They have opportunity, and, most importantly, businesses you can learn to work with.  And . . . run.
  • Work In a Job Where The Money Is – There are rich cities and poor cities. And there are rich portions of the economy and poor ones.  Would you rather work at the place where they recycle used water bottles, or the place where they build underground secret bases for aspiring Bond villains?  (I’m looking at you, Elon Musk).
  • Expose Yourself At Your Best – Have you ever seen that show, Cops? It’s every person, ever, at their very worst day.  On film.  Honestly, we all have bad days.  And we all have things we’re bad at (hopefully the thing you’re bad at isn’t personal hygiene – and it wouldn’t be, since you read this blog – you must smell like roses and fresh bread, and that’s on a bad day!).   But when you get a chance and you’re with a billionaire?  Show him what you do best.  Unless what you do best is eat Pez®.  Focus on things you can do for the billionaire that make him even more money.
  • Believe You’re Lucky – Sounds crazy, right? No science behind it?  But if you believe you’re lucky you’ll see good things when others see only bad.  You’ll see opportunity when others only see stone walls.  And if you stare at the Sun long enough . . . WAIT . . . don’t do that.  But I’m not kidding – believing you’re lucky makes you lucky.  Me?  I’m the luckiest guy you’ve ever read, unless you’ve read something that Keanu Reeves wrote, because that man is golden (LINK).

In 2016, there were 540 billionaires living in the US.  If 35% of them inherited their great gobs of billionaire cash, that leaves 351 who did it themselves.  Yay, them!  That gives you a 0.000117% chance of being one.

By doing the things I’ve listed above?  If you’re really smart (like 140+ IQ, PLUS read this blog)?  That means you can force those odds several orders of magnitude closer to your own private island.    Maybe even to 0.01% of a shot at the Tres Commas (A Billion has Three Commas) club.

This much, much closer than you could ever become with a lottery ticket.  And, the good news?  You will certainly become a millionaire, you know, with the shameful two commas.

All of this is better than winning the lottery.  Certainly your biggest shame?  You’re only a millionaire.

But none of this will allow you to become as cool as Bill Shatner.  Because there can be Only One True Shatner!

RV Ownership for Fun and Profit

“What? Come on! Man, you’re smart. You made poison out of beans, yo. Look, we got, we got an entire lab right here. Alright? How about you pick some of these chemicals and mix up some rocket fuel? That way you could just send up a signal flare. Or you make some kind of robot to get us help, or a homing device, or build a new battery, or wait. No. What if we just take some stuff off of the RV and build it into something completely different? You know, like a like a dune buggy?” – Breaking Bad

overview

Our camp, as viewed by the disembodied spirit of Elvis.

“I can’t believe you did this,” The Boy was flat out surprised.

“Why not?”

“This . . . this is so not like you.”

“This” was buying a Recreational Vehicle (RV), specifically a travel trailer.  You have to be specific when you describe what exactly your RV is, since (upon checking the Internet) everything from a little red wagon to the Death Star© qualifies as someone’s RV.

And, I’ll admit it, when you have a guy that drives a 12 year old car (LINK) until it gets totaled (LINK) it would seem a bit out of character for him to buy what can only be considered a luxury item.  Or at least that’s what I thought of, when I thought of RVs.

The Mrs. and I had actually discussed purchasing an RV for the last 15 or so years.  At first it was a little pop-up camper that occupied our dreams.  When we moved to Alaska, we looked at several different campers and camper types, and were pretty close to offering some money for a little integrated camper with its own engine, etc., but I couldn’t quite get comfortable driving in the bush in Alaska where there were no cell phones with a camper that had 271,000 miles on it.  That’s just asking for Hollywood to make an “Into The Wild”-type movie starring your family and a grizzly bear that stalks you for 231 miles of your trek back to civilization while you have to fight it off with marshmallow roasting forks.

I like to think that they’d get Liam Neeson to play me.  If he works out and gets some bigger biceps.

Anyway, we put the idea of an RV on the back burner living in Texas, because the last thing you want to be is a Texan with an RV.  That’s like ALL Texans, and, since The Mrs. and I have never read Harry Potter, we figured why join the crowd now?

But I like camping, and after a few camping adventures that seem more like a horror movie to The Mrs. (Just a little farther, dear – you can stop throwing up whenever you get to the top!), she decided that she liked . . . showers.  And a bed.  And not throwing up on the trail.

But, to buy a camper seemed so frivolous.  And not that I don’t buy frivolous crap – I do.  Right now I’m wearing a 2016 Campaign t-shirt for The Flight of the Conchords (Jemaine & Brett 2016 – It’s Business Time).

It’s worth the watch – 3:55 minutes of New Zealand’s second most popular comedy-folk duo.

Anyway, it seems so frivolous, something that someone with LOTS of money would do.  It’s something that . . . rich people would do?  Or old retired people who wanted to drive a house around slowly so they could have their house be in different places.  Kind of like the Tardis, but with Social Security.

I started stalking Craigslist around where we live.  And, after getting a whole lot of free Styrofoam packing peanuts, I finally found two candidates.  I’d also looked at a dealer, but the brand new one he showed me had a table that was split open due to humidity.  Not a great selling point.  The one I liked best was an R-Pod.

An R-Pod was designed to be smaller.  We have a generic pickup, and a youth-skewed 4×4 SUV that The Mrs. likes to remind me is older than Pugsley.  Pugsley is 12.  She is not exaggerating.  It doesn’t have a cassette deck, but . . . close.  Both of these vehicles could pull the R-Pod, which weighs in at a whopping 2800 pounds, with a cargo capacity of at least another half-ton.  This is important, since we’d have two vehicles capable of pulling the beast around, since our 4×4 was capable of “only” pulling 5,000 pounds.

First lesson?  If I wanted to do this cheaply (and, Internet, you know I do!) I would have to buy something light, or I’d have to buy a trailer AND a car.

Again, we’d found two of these located two hours away in River City, Lower-Northern Midwestia.  We texted and, without hearing back, turned our pickup to go buy an RV.

Now, I’m not opposed to other people buying brand-new RVs.  If they didn’t, I wouldn’t have a pool of cheap used ones to pick from.  Make no mistake – an RV isn’t an asset.  All it does is either take you to the lake for fishing (or gold panning! (LINK)) or sit in a storage space.  It creates no income.  And every second it sits on the planet it depreciates, until it turns 50 and becomes either “classic” or “constructed entirely of prohibited components like lead and asbestos.”

An RV is not an investment.

So, on our way to River City someone returned my Craigslist email, and said they’d be there when we got there.

They were.  They were a nice couple who had bought the RV to go to musical concerts, but the wife couldn’t manage to get around the trailer.  I looked the trailer over, checked what I could figure out, and then, consulting Kelley’s Blue Book for RVs® (yes, this is a thing), made an offer of $1,000 less than the asking price.  Unbeknownst to me, The Mrs. had been talking to the Mrs. of the owner’s side, and, they’d had it on the market for some time and were just getting ready to lower the price.

So, while I felt like a wheeler-dealer, I probably pegged the number that they really wanted.  I wrote out a check, they wrote out a title, and we hooked OUR RV to the truck and headed back home.  It looked strange, since most RPods have decals that make them look all pretty.  In this case, the original owner (not the one we bought from) had painted over everything to advertise his traveling patent medicine show that he ran with Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.

I know, I know, but you have to give the 70’s some slack.  They’d just discovered polyester.

The Mrs. and I talked about what to do about our generic, white RV.  In general, we decided we should either paint it like the mystery machine or like the shuttle Galileo from TOS Star Trek.  In general, we both liked the way that we imagined the shuttle . . . . and we’ve gotta paint it . . . but can we bring our phasers?

Upon getting it home and hooking it up to power, I found that everything was functional, except the refrigerator and sensors that indicate the levels in the waste tanks and battery.  RV refrigerators are mind-numbingly expensive, since they are configured to run on propane, plug-in power, batteries, and hope.  They are apparently only made in Germany by small gnomes that live in the Harz Mountains.  I resigned myself to buy a cheap college dorm fridge (there was a plug in) and move on.  I went to work (mildy) brooding on this.  Primarily I was depressed because the nice man hadn’t told me the fridge was on the fritz.  I would have still bought it.

Most RV folks say the sensors are useless, and often stop working quickly.  Not a problem.

I decided to not make our new toy a source of sadness.  I buried any disappointment in a determination to fix it.

Pugsley had spent the night in the trailer.  The Mrs. had bet he’d get in the first night it was home, but he waited until the second night to make his move.

Upon returning home from work, I decided to check out other systems.

Nothing electrical worked.  Nothing, except the air conditioning, microwave . . . . hmmm.

It was hot, I was sweating, and I began to check various components.  I suppressed the burning desire to choke Pugsley.  I really reasoned that he was only a bystander – and honestly, the fact that everything was broken was really encouraging.

I know, that sounds weird.  But when one thing breaks?  Yeah, that thing is generally broken.  When it all breaks?  That means your mind can generally fix it if you think smart enough, or have a great deal of experience really screwing things up.  Me?  I have a great running history of not giving up when I should (LINK).

After a bit of investigation, I found that two main fuses were blown.  I sent The Boy to buy new ones.  During his absence, I flipped the battery terminals on the brand new battery the previous owner had installed.  The Boy arrives.  I pop in the fuses.

Everything works.  Everything.  Including the German Ice Machine!  Even the sensors that tell me how much onboard poop we have!

So, in best Star Trek® fashion?  REVERSE THE POLARITY AND EVERYTHING WORKS!!!!

picard polarity

The previous owner had flopped the terminals on the battery.  Now I had a flawlessly working system.  Yay!  And, unlike constructing tire chains by hand, this didn’t take sixteen hours to noodle through.

During this time, I remembered that the previous owner had stressed I should look at the wheel bearings.  For those of you that may not be aware, a wheel spins.  But the trailer does not.  The contact part for the spinny-part to meet the non-spinny-part is the wheel bearing.  It’s essentially a bunch of greased up balls (no jokes here) that allow everything to spin around without getting hot or grinding the nice metal into a pile of hot, combusting metal dust.

vulcan stand up

On side had a great place to inject grease into the bearing, which is what we used to do when Nixon was president (or so I’m told).  Now most cars have sealed bearings that would last to Jupiter and back, but in the 1960’s (I’m told) you had to grease stuff all the time or else you’d die when the wheels flew off of your Model T at 22 miles per hour.

My crappy $500 trailer has sealed bearings.  Not this trailer.  Nope.  It has bearings that must be greased.  So I greased the ditch-side (think about it) bearing.  There’s a small dust cap that covers the grease Zerk.  The grease Zerk is the fitting that allows grease to be pumped on a one-way journey to the bearing, and is named for . . . Austrian engineer Otto U. Zerk.  I know it sounds like a joke.  It’s not.  It should be.  It’s not.  Otto.  U.  Zerk.

Anyway – one side done, new grease covering all the nice bearing parts.

Next side . . . where’s the Zerk?  Where’s the cap that holds the grease in?

I pulled the Zerk off the other side – Otto’s THREADED Zerk!!! – and put it on the other wheel.  And pumped in a LOT of grease.  And resolved on our trip to gold country that I’d pump grease into that wheel every hundred miles.  (Spoiler, that seemed to work.)

Things I never really thought about:

  1. It takes a LOT of gas to pull even a small trailer. I thought that perhaps if I had one much larger that I’d need to pull a small refinery behind me to supply me with gasoline.
  2. Even a slight uphill was devastating to our progress. Speeding?  Uphill?  Ha!  Never, never, never going to happen.
  3. What I could normally do at the Real Speed Limit (normal speed limit +5 miles per hour) I now had to do at my Maximum Thermodynamic Speed Limit – which was often normal speed limit -5 miles per hour, sometimes -20 miles per hour.
  4. It matters how you load a trailer. For the first 90 miles, whenever I approached 55 miles per hour, the trailer would start to sway from side to side like a break-dancing backup singer during a seizure.  When I stopped to fill the Wildermobile with gas the first time I looked up “Trailer Sway” on the Internets.  It turns out you simply have to put most of the weight forward so that there’s more weight on the hitch.  I moved a bunch of things forward, and it worked like to stop the sway.
  5. I’m not comfortable running a consumer engine at 5000 RPM for 12 hours. I let it back down to 3000 RPM just so I didn’t wreck the family’s hearing.  Mine is already shot.  Thank you very much, Iron Maiden.

But it worked.  We even had one offer at a gas station (while we were on our way) to buy the trailer from us for what we paid for it.  Nope.

The issue we had that concerned me the most was the trailer breaking.  Apparently all travel trailers have electric brakes.  These brakes interact with the braking system on the vehicle pulling the trailer and have the trailer brakes slow the trailer at a (similar) rate to the pulling vehicle.  Why?

Because if not, the trailer would be pushing the pulling vehicle as it tried to stop.  Worst case, it would keep going during an emergency stop (Newton’s Second Law – A fully loaded travel trailer in motion without brakes will keep going even when you’ve decided that stopping might be in your best interest.)

What concerned me were the mountain passes in gold country.  They’re steep.  And, while going up would certainly be slow, I wanted going down to be at something less than the speed of sound and not resemble CW McCall’s Wolf Creek Pass.

For these brakes to work, however, an electric controller has to be installed.  While I am pretty sure I could install one okay, I’m not going to settle for pretty sure when it comes to preserving my pretty face, unless I want them to pick my remains up off the highway with a stick and a spoon.  I farmed it out.  But halfway to the mountains, it wasn’t working – showing a code that it had short circuited.

Well, when we stopped to buy a new fuse because Pugsley had plugged a Cray2200 supercomputer into the power outlet.  While stopped, I looked a bit closer, traced the wires from the battery back, and found one of the crimped connections that the mechanic had installed had worked its way loose.  Ten seconds later?  Electric brakes back in business.

We got the camper to gold country, and then, well, camped.  In a never-before-happened event, the family decided to extend the vacation for an additional day.

Here is my personal review of the camper:

Sunday Night:  Omigosh.  We’re here after 70 hours of driving today.  And now?  We have to set it up.  In the dark.  Without waking other campers. Three occupants. Only I will pee in camper restroom, and only when no one around.  Camper cold, windows left open by Pugsley.  Found the next day.  Closed windows.

Monday Night:  Everyone now fine with peeing in the camper – bathroom walk way too long at 40˚F.  Camper way too hot.  Four of us.  I open the windows.

Tuesday Night:  Four of us.  Firefly.  The Mrs. closes the windows, causing me to have a dream that I live in Houston again.  Aaaaargh!

Wednesday Night:  Four of us.  Lots more Firefly.  Slept great all nights.  Too many stupid little dogs with stupid hot dog breath.

JayneNVera

Thursday Night:  Going to stay in it overnight at some nameless city, but we had the “great rush home” which was unanimously approved by the Family Subcommittee on Travel Hours.  Sometimes it’s better to sleep in your “other” own bed.  Plus I get to wake the neighbors by trying to back the trailer into my driveway at 3AM.

Once I bought the trailer, I now notice that there are trailers . . . everywhere.  There are trailers parked out in front of houses where the trailer would CLEARLY be a better place to live than the home it’s in front of.  I’m not sure I understand how you can afford a $20,000 or $30,000 RV when you clearly make less than $50,000; but then again, I don’t understand fashion.

I read that since they look like a home that interest a trailer loan is tax deductible?  DO NOT use me as a source, unless you’d like to spend a long time in prison for “Using Internet Blogs As Tax Advice.”

My big financial advice on campers – don’t buy one if you can’t do or pay for:

  • Maintenance: It’s like owning an additional home.  There are electrical systems, plumbing, and structural systems.  The first night I got it, it attracted ants from five counties away.
  • Tow Vehicle: No, your Prius™ (LINK) won’t pull one.  If you don’t have a good tow vehicle and need one, can you afford the trailer?
  • Gasoline: You will have to use more gasoline than you ever have, since Elon Musk hasn’t invented an electric trailer puller.  He will, I have no doubt, but it’ll be on Mars.

Economics?  Cheapest vacation we’ve taken in years (except for the whole “buying the trailer” thing).  Didn’t buy restaurant food except twice.  Didn’t spend much on attractions.  And we saw things like this:

This is a video I took.  Felt like Francis Ford Coppola shooting Apocaforest Now.  That’s our trailer at the end.

I did the economics, and it will likely pay out in four or so years, which is better than most investments do.  I may bore you with them at a future time.  But you’re not Vulcans® so you might not like math jokes.

We are planning on using it for many vacations where we’d normally use hotels, so you’ll hear more about it soon.

Dorothy said there’s nowhere like home.  And it’s not home, but it’s like home.  So, I guess there is somewhere like home, and it’s on wheels.  The Boy and Pugsley and The Mrs. rated it the best vacation except for one where we went to Alaska on spring break (yes, we really did this, and maybe I’ll post about it sometime).

So, verdict?  It was wonderful.  It was economical.  It was peaceful (LINK).  I learned about gold panning (LINK).

The Mrs. and They Boy are painting it right now to resemble a Shuttlecraft® from Original™ Star Trek©.  Will keep you posted.

Gold Panning, Little Dogs, and Opportunity

“Ever prospected? Ever hit pay dirt? I’ve dug for gold, silver, lead, mercury. I’ve dug more holes than a whole regiment of gophers. I ain’t never dug a decent day’s wages yet.” – Bite the Bullet

pic 9

How can you not find the river???

Mankind has been chasing gold forever (Gold, Relativity, Black Holes, Niburu, and Warren Buffett).  Probably the most iconic image associated with prospectors is the gold pan.  Oh, and the whiskey.  But gold panning has been documented to exist at least since the Romans did it, and gold panning exists across cultures – the Japanese gold pan is called the Yuri-ita, and gets much better mileage than one made in Detroit.

The Boy, Pugsley and I headed towards a small river, intent on prospecting.  The Mrs. came with us, intent on trout fishing.

This, of course, is where the trouble started.  I had fished this river as a young boy, but it had been many presidents since I had hiked down there, since the only reason that I had gone fishing was for the adventure.  I had never had, not one time, even one fish bite on any lure or worm or fly I’d ever put in the water.  Half the time I went fishing with my friend, C.R. (you would use initials too if your first name was Clyde) we’d end up just playing in the ice cold river.  Because?  Because we were 11.

As I said, I’d hiked down there dozens, if not hundreds of times, that had been long ago.  The walk to the river started as a nice walk along a sage brush plain.  Then there was steep gravel drop off – as steep as a gravel slope could be.  As an 11 year old, I’d have half jumped down the slope.  Now?  Not so much.  Plus there was the factor of the gear we were carrying:

  • Two five gallon pails
  • Shovel
  • Pick
  • Metal detector
  • Sluice box (only about 36” long, and more about this later)
  • Waders for The Boy and Pugsley
  • Gold pans
  • Snuffer bottle (sucks up itsy bitsy pieces of gold)
  • Lunch
  • Fishing pole
  • Folding chair
  • Two small dogs on leads
  • Bug spray
  • Sunscreen
  • A drone (that’s what took I took the pictures on)

So, we were carrying nearly everything we own.  But the drone allowed me to take videos like this:

The Mrs. was carrying her folding chair, fishing pole, and previously listed two idiot dogs.  The dogs, relatively unused to being on leashes, would constantly attempt to kill The Mrs. as she walked down the steep gravel slope by wrapping the leashes around each other and her legs.  As we stepped into the thick forest, it got worse, since now, in addition to trying to kill The Mrs., the dogs now had the option of trying to kill themselves by wrapping their leashes around trees.

To top it off, the smaller of the two dogs had to be carried over some of the fallen timber, being, apparently afraid in its dog brain of falling down a cliff on the other side of the dead tree.  To top it off, there had been record snowpack, so areas that had never been wet when I was a child were swampy.

Everyone who has a wife recognizes “that” tone, when they’ve nearly reached the end of their rope, and the emotion will be jumping out full force.  “That” tone showed up.

“Okay, everybody put the stuff down.  I’ll go ahead and find the easiest way.”

I dropped the things I was carrying and headed toward the forest, and, I hoped, the river.

I could hear the river, and started that way.  I wove around trees and over fallen trees, and through at least one (small) swamp.  Right next to the river, however, I was faced with a relatively impenetrable wall of willows.  I could have made it through, but would have needed a machete.

So, falling the wall of willows, I made my way back around and found . . . the steep gravel slope.  I had come in a full circle.  Fortunately, I found both the way to the river, and an easy way for our stupid, frightened dog to walk.  The big plus?  An easy path back out for when we left.  And right there was the fishing hole I hadn’t seen since the Soviets were a thing.

The Boy, Pugsley and I got to work.  We used the metal detector in the water (it’s waterproof) and then The Boy and I began to dig up the area.

Now, I had panned for gold before, but only in a half-hearted way.  This time?  I wanted to get serious and really understand it.

The gold pan kit that I’d bought (LINK) came with a screen that we used to get rid of the bigger rocks.  I figured that if we started getting gold nuggets the size of my fist that I might be able to recognize them, and screening out the bigger rocks allowed us to fill the bucket with smaller material so we could go to step two . . . the sluice box.

A sluice box is a device that uses the current from the flowing river to wash most of the smaller material away.  The idea is that gold is quite heavy, and will fall down in the water faster than the surrounding soil and will get caught in the carpet, riffles, and parts of the sluice box.  A good picture of the sluice box we used is here (LINK).

After you wash the sluice box, then it’s time to pan.

And one thing I will say – the biggest mistake I made was being too gentle with my initial panning.  Again, gold is heavy.  Gold is ten times denser than sand.  It is four times denser than magnetite sand (also called “black sand”), which is what is left over after you’ve panned out the regular sand, and are getting to the point where you’ve eliminated most of the material.  And you won’t just swish the magnetite out of the bottom of your five gallon pail – it, like gold, drops out fast.

So, as we panned, we got down to the black sand, and I’d use the snuffer bottle (it came with the gold pans) to pick out the very, very small flecks of gold – nearly gold dust – that would appear in the bottom of the pan.

I still have about five pounds of black sand to go through to find all the gold dust – I imagine that by the time I’ve gotten through it we’ll have gotten $10 or $20 worth of gold, which is the product of three people working eight hours.

Pretty quickly I realized that gold panning was like life and opportunity.

  1. If you don’t pan, you won’t get any gold. This is true of opportunity.  You might have a wonderful idea for a novel.  You might have a great business idea.  If you don’t get up and get going?  You’ll never know.
  2. The more material we processed, the more black sand, and thus, the more gold we’d get. If we had stopped after the first bucket, we’d only have had 1/6 of the gold.  And opportunity is like that – the harder you work, the more opportunity you’ll have in life.
  3. Most of the gold is very, very small. Most opportunities are small.
  4. There’s gold everywhere, but in most of those places it’s not worth getting because it’s too diffuse. There’s 20 million tons of gold in the world’s oceans, but only a 13 billionths of a gram in each liter.  Nuggets are rare everywhere.  Most huge opportunities are rare, too.  That doesn’t mean that you should stop looking, but you should look in the right places (LINK).
  5. The better I get at panning, the more gold I’ll find. The better I get at reviewing places that might hold opportunity, the more of them I’ll find.
  6. More experience will tell me what’s worth panning, and what I should ignore. Many opportunities (most!) aren’t worth your time.  Experience tells you which ones to focus on.
  7. Most people who strike it rich in gold spend every bit of what they found . . . looking for more gold. I’ve seen this in life, too.  How many people look for that same set of conditions to arrive again and again and fail as the moment has past?
  8. Everything goes better with big, heavy equipment.   Huge pumps!  Water cannons!  Now we’re talking!  If you have a business with tax lawyers and accountants and experts?  The size of the opportunity you can jump on increases.

Oh, and The Mrs. and her fishing?  A nice trout hit her lure on her second cast.  But she didn’t get that one reeled in.  But still that was a better fishing day than any I’d ever had there, but I did get another insight on life, and got to play in the rivers of my youth one more time.

Fortunately, my fishing streak is still unbroken!

Risk of Sudden Wealth . . . Over Rated? Are you Nic Cage, or Keanu Reeves?

“What’s in the bag? A shark or something?” – Nic Cage, The Wicker Man

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How I imagine Elon Musk hunts for ducks.

In panning for gold, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I found a whole bunch, all at once.  My mind wanders.  All the beef jerky I could wear.  All the Lear® Jets I could eat.  I’d be fine, right?

Well, it seems like there are a pair of psychologists (Joan DiFuria and Stephen Goldbart, LINK) who described “Sudden Wealth Syndrome.”  They describe the following symptoms (my comments in parenthesis):

  • Anxiety/Panic Attacks (Try the Panic Attack from not being able to pay your Pez© dealer, I assure you they don’t take kindly to folks who can’t pay for the sugar)
  • Worries About Money (Hmmm, this seems a bit forced?)
  • Worries About Stock Market Volatility (Elon Musk probably doesn’t lose much sleep in his orbital habitat)
  • Insomnia (I can see millions of dollars keeping me awake all night – especially since I’d be partying in Elon’s orbital habitat)
  • Irritable Mood (Yes, I can see being irritable because I was too flush with cash, and I get mad because my pancakes are too fluffy)
  • Guilt About Having Money (This is real – otherwise explain why every Hollywood actor wants ME to pay more in taxes)
  • Identity Confusion (Once I found a twenty dollar bill, and became convinced I was Luke Skywalker© – but in truth, I was 12)
  • Fear of Loss of Control (The idea of being without a mortgage should make us all shake with fear)
  • Paranoia (Are you threatening me?)
  • Depression (I’m so sad, I can’t count as high as my money, no matter how long I live!)

From that description, it sounds like winning sucks, eh?  I assure you that, in the choice between having money and not having money, I MUCH prefer having money, and as a business model, catering to very, very wealthy people with neurosis is probably very profitable.  I like the way those guys think!

But let’s put this in context.  Think about the behavior of the typical twenty-something starlet or rock star that’s rolling in cash?  They tend to make a lot of poor choices, primarily because nothing in their experience has prepared them for the sudden onset of cash.  By contrast, many of the folks who do really well with money at an early age (Think Bill Gates and Paul Allen) had a really well-to-do upbringing.  Not rock star rich, but they were going to exclusive private schools.  They’d been taught how to deal with money early on, and, likely never had to worry much about not having it.

But let’s pick on Nicolas Cage.  Why?  Face/Off is probably reason enough.  Really?  Swapping faces with John Travolta?  That’s the movie plot?  I won’t pick on Shia Lebeouf because that’s like a velociraptor picking on a kitten.

Nic Cage (he told me he didn’t mind me calling him that when I imagined talking to him) made millions as an actor.  He could have done that if they only paid him a dollar a movie, but he made much more, at least $20 per movie.  Again, he made millions.  $150,000,000.  Yes.  ONE HUNDRED FIFTY MILLION dollars.  American dollars, not fake ones like they print in Canada.

He spent it all.  ALL OF IT.

On what?

  • An $8 million dollar castle in England. He spent millions fixing it up.  Never spent a night there.
  • An island.
  • Four yachts. At the same time.
  • A pair of rare albino king cobras.

Let’s face it, the man had a whole small country plus a navy (yes, four boats is more than in all of Canada) plus king cobras.  I’m not sure why he didn’t get three albino king cobras, but, he settled for two.

Seriously – was Nic Cage trying to live exactly like the bad guy in an Austin Powers movie?  No, I think that there’s something missing, plus nobody can figure out how to tell a guy not to blow all of his money on shiny things.

From observation, I do think that sudden wealth, or worse, sudden wealth and fame is not really good for you.  I think that it can greatly distort the sense of self.  Bill Murray said that everyone is a jerk (not exactly the word he used, but you get the idea) for the first year after they become rich and famous.  He then followed up with the observation that some people never snap out of it.

And, from the way that stars handle fame, it looks like many of them fall into DiFuria and Goldbart’s Sudden Wealth Syndrome.  They’ve got money but the feelings that they have wrapped up around the money give them a lot of guilt.  Some, however, seem a bit more grounded:

It has been reported that Reeves gave approximately US$80 million of his US$114 million earnings of The Matrix sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, to the special effects and makeup staff. – Wikipedia

That seems a bit more grounded.  Warren Buffett lives in a house that (per the Intertubes) is worth $652,000.  I’m pretty sure it’s paid for, since Warren is worth $76.7 billion dollars.  That also seems pretty stable, since he bought it in 1958.

Lottery winners also seem to have a problem.  The first problem they have is the inability to do math.  Now, if there’s a tax that I like, it’s a tax on folks who can’t do math.  But the general saw is that some sort of karma hits the lottery winners, and makes them miserable.  And those stories are the big ones in the news.  But the reality?  85% of winners keep going to work (based on one study I saw) and most of those (60%) were still working at the same place they were before they won the lottery.

It seems that we almost want to hear the tragedy, because it suits our sense of fairness – this poor person who didn’t know math lucked out, but, boy, karma got ‘em in the end.  Nah.  Most of them seem to do just fine – more like Warren Buffett, less like Nic Cage.

Me, if someone bought me a lottery ticket that one, or I hit a pocket of gold worth $150,000,000?  An 8,500 pound (that’s about 17 kilograms) pocket of gold?

I’m headed to the Musk’s space habitat.  Beer’s on me.

Gold, Relativity, Black Holes, Niburu, and Warren Buffett

Fry, when you downloaded her without my permission, you stole my image, and in the end, that’s all I really have. That and the largest gold nugget in the world, one mile in diameter. – Futurama

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Golden Heart . . . sounds like a Bond villian?

I apologize for missing posts last week – I was totes on vacation, however, I’ve got a zillion new posts that I’m working on that will (in a week or two) all fit together into the story of our trip.  Here’s the first:

Gold is weird.  Really weird.

Gold can only be explained through the use of the Theory of Relativity.  Yup, it’s true.  Most metals are silvery, since they consist of lots of free electrons flowing around metallic atomic nuclei.  They shine and reflect all colors.

Not gold.

Due to the density of the gold nucleus, the closest electrons have to move at half the speed of light, increasing their mass by 20%.  But electrons weigh less than a Toyota Prius in the car dealership that is an atom of gold, so they don’t add much to the weight.  But the density pulls the out electrons slightly inward. This slight change causes gold to shift from absorbing ultraviolet light to absorbing blue light. This absorption of blue light leaves the relativistic reflection of the rest of the colors . . . that particular hue we call gold.  A nice summary of gold color and relativity is here (LINK).

Even weirder is that there is considerable debate over how gold is even formed in our Universe.  It used to be thought that gold was formed, like all elements heavier than hydrogen, in the core of a star and the splooshed out into the universe when the star (if it was big enough) exploded at the end of its useful life (hint: if we all did this Social Security might be more solvent, but no one would qualify because they’d have exploded).  But after crunching the numbers, or shaking the voodoo stick at the physics god, or whatever, it became clear that exploding stars didn’t allow for very much (if any) gold creation.  They needed another answer.  That answer?

Even weirder.

When a star explodes, if it’s the right size, it leaves a core of a neutron star behind.  The material from a neutron star is so dense (not stupid, but really, really, heavy) that the normal atomic structure has collapsed and all of the atomic nuclei are stuck to each other like a swimming pool filled with hot dogs.  No water.  Just hot dogs.  The resulting stuff that the star is made of is so dense that it doesn’t make sense to anyone, just like a swimming pool filled with hot dogs.  A teaspoonful (of neutron star, not hot dogs) weighs a billion tons.  I’ll just say it’s really, really heavy.

When two of these neutron stars (or maybe a neutron star and a black hole) merge, it’s thought that the mind-numbingly large amounts and density of energy might account for the majority of the formation of gold.  A rather long (but well written, surprisingly since it’s from The Atlantic) article on that is here (LINK).

Gold also doesn’t have any stable isotopes (an isotope is when the number of neutrons in the nucleus varies from the “basic” atomic configuration).  Hydrogen does, but, not gold.

Gold also never tarnishes.  Silver tarnishes. Iron rusts.  Gold stays as gold.  Oxygen need not apply

Other weird gold facts:

  1. Half of all the gold ever mined came from one small area in South Africa (like sixty miles by forty miles).
  2. There’s enough gold at the Earth’s core to cover the planet in gold about 18 inches deep.
  3. The gold we have on the surface is thought to have come from meteors whomping the Earth. Otherwise it would have sunk to the core when the planet was molten.
  4. Eros, the asteroid, is thought to be about 3% metal, containing about 20 billion tons of gold.
  5. People like lists of things.

Mankind has obsessed over gold for millennia.  King Tut’s tomb had over a ton and a half of gold in it.  Most (85%?) of the gold ever mined is still in use in some place or another today.  Your wedding ring might have been made from the gold mined in 4000 B.C.

This obsession has led to the most fantastic tales:

  1. Leprechauns – Always after me lucky charms, eh? Leprechauns are hard to spell, and also appear to have the upper hand in pots of gold.  Apparently, finding a leprechaun is like getting married to Mel Gibson – catch one and you get a pot full of money.
  2. Cibola and El Dorado – In the Americas when the Spanish Conquistadores came to town, the natives quickly realized that they wanted gold. So a good idea?  Send them to another town that was MADE of gold, and get ‘em out of your town.  It seemed to work pretty well, and eliminated a LOT of stupid Spaniards from the Americas.
  3. Jason and the Golden Fleece – A really old story out of Greece, where Jason had to find a ram’s skin with hair made of gold. This may refer to the miners of the day using sheep fleece to catch small bits of gold that they mined and used water to separate.  Or it might be a metaphor for health care funding.
  4. Dead Sea Scrolls – ~$1 billion in gold hidden in Israel with instructions that no one understands because they can’t translate the words describing where everything is hidden, and some of the words that can be read (“near the place where David and Jerry camped that one time”) aren’t all that helpful.
  5. Lost Inca Gold – When Pizarro decided to kidnap the Incan king, he set the ransom at a room full of gold. Apparently, he got bored and decided to just kill the king instead of waiting for the treasure to show up, liking murder more than a ROOM FULL OF GOLD.  The Incans decided to not pay the ransom, and either put it in a cave, or dumped it in a lake.  People regularly fail to return from the Amazon while still looking for this treasure.
  6. Annunaki.  See below.

Okay, this one is my favorite:

The Annunaki are a race of aliens who came down to Earth from the planet Niburu, which is on a highly elliptical orbit, and crosses the Earth’s orbit every 3,600 years.  The Annunaki genetically enhanced humanity so . . . (drumroll) that humans could dig for gold for the Annunaki.  Thus, they created Adam and Eve for the purposes of mining, and engineered into their (our) minds a love of gold so intense that we’d collect gold for them while they were on the far part of their orbit.

Why did the Annunaki need the gold? So they could swim in it like a happy miser?  No.  Their planet, Niburu, need the gold to keep the planet warm as it zooms back out into space.  It would almost seem easier to move to a planet (like Earth?) where they didn’t have to genetically enslave an entire species to get gold for them.  Or mine an asteroid.  But, no, just like a Bond villain, they had to do things the hard way.   Here is a LINK to a site that has more information on this theory.  And there are others.

This theory (in my opinion) is like the WWE of history.  Great info, fun to watch, but don’t get it mixed up in any way with reality.

So, gold fascinates.  And several times in my lifetime, it would have been an absolutely killer investment.  However, I recently watched a video where Warren Buffett suggested that all of the gold available to us today would be able to be put into a cube 67 feet on each side.  (There are some estimates that it’s a lot more than that, but let’s use Mr. Buffett’s numbers.  He seems to understand numbers pretty well.)

Buffett noted:  He could have that gold, valued at $7,000,000,000,000 (that’s seven TRILLION dollars) or he could buy ALL the farmland in the United States, plus seven or so Exxons.  He made the point (quite well, I thought) that the gold was a static thing, but the farms produce things every year.  Exxon produces wealth for society every year.  He’d much rather have a productive asset rather than a commodity that just sat there in a giant, relativistic cube.

Me?  I think either one of them sounds pretty good.  That’s why we decided to go to gold country, and become prospectors (for a few days).  More on that soon . . .

How People Get Rich, and How To Do Well At Work

“My last job was at a Taco Bell Express. Then they became a full Taco Bell and I just couldn’t keep up.” – The Office

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Pugsley before his first day at his new job in the salt mine.  

About 47.6% of the American economy consists of books that purport to tell you how to get rich.  (The other 52.4%?  Equal shares of pictures of naked ladies and Pez®.)  But how did the rich folks get rich?  Let’s make the assumption that you’re not going to be James Bond Enemy Island Secret Volcano Space Program Rich, since Elon Musk seems to have that market cornered . . . let’s still ask the question, how do people get rich?

  1. Inheriting it is the old fashioned way to do it. 30-40% of the Forbes 400 richest Americans . . . inherited it.  You never really hear this part of the story, because the story “Baby Billionaire Born” is not nearly as compelling as “Unsung genius invents an app to get a cab driver to come by your house and trim your nosehair with your iPhone.”  An astonishing 60% of American household wealth is inherited.  So, unless you’ve got great-aunt Grunelda leaving you a stash of cash, this isn’t in your wheelhouse.  For reference, we Wilders have little inherited wealth, but are willing to learn what it’s like for science if you want to cut us in on your will.
  2. Investments and Real Estate – 127 billionaires got their third comma from FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate), which we talked about before (LINK). In 2013, per evonomics.com, the ever-hated top 1% made 21% of the US income, which I’m sure they were pretty fond of, since that’s out punching your weight by 20 times!  But the big driver to their wealth?  Gains from their investments.  In 2013, they raked in 35% of the business gains (things like dividends, interest payments, stock price gains, and real estate, etc.).  Really, the big drivers were stock and real estate.  So, if you’re not born with cash, this seems to be the most reliable way to get buckets of it.
  3. Tech, Media, and Energy, combined to create 123 billionaires. Now don’t cry too much for this bunch being in third place, since it includes folks like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison.  (I refuse to add Zuckerberg because he’s such a tool.)  It’s pretty cool that these folks managed to make bank by changing forever the way we use computers (Gates), purchase stuff (Bezos), and, well, whatever the hell Ellison does that allows him to own Hawaii.

As we’ve discussed before, a job is less preferable than owning a business, where you have other people working to make money for you, but it is possible to get into a pretty good position with a job.  This isn’t the last post where we’ll discuss this, because most people have jobs, don’t own businesses, and aren’t blessed (yet) with a really cool investment portfolio.

So, how can you maximize your income as an employee?  Here are my first ten (not my top ten, just the first ones):

  1. Do something valuable that requires you to think. College is a stupid idea for many people.  Honestly, lots of people going to college really don’t belong there – it’s just like four more years of high school for them.  Since employers can’t (by law) give IQ tests, they use college as a rough screen for IQ.  They want smart-ish workers (not TOO smart, mind you) and they use a college degree for a screen for that as well as the ability to defer pleasure now for a payout later.  Unless you’re going to get a degree that is required for the field, like science, engineering, law, medicine, accounting, finance, and teaching – I would think twice about college, especially if you choose a major like anthropology.  Seriously, fast food workers make more money than anthropology professors.  Smelly teen age fast food workers.  Also avoid: sociology, anything ending in “studies”, communications (The Mrs. has that one), recreational studies, art, classics, public administration, exercise physiology, media management, music therapy, etc., etc.  These are “degrees” made up by universities to extract the maximum student loan value from you.
  2. Pick the right industry. Pick an industry where there’s huge oceans of cash swimming around.  I’ve listed them up above – finance, real estate, energy, technology.  Pick one of those.  It’s still not easy to get rich there, but there is a TON of money floating around in those businesses.  Teaching?  Not so much.  Regardless of how much fun you have doing it, if you can’t support your family, that is going to suck your energy out like a cat eating a banana.  Find something that you can do that pays well, and do that thing.  Not many engineers (for instance) end up as really rich dudes.  That’s fine – the median engineer does well, but often doesn’t get to the top slot.  There were a LOT more guys with business degrees than engineering degrees, and you’re only seeing the ones that were good AND lucky that get to the top.  You’ve got to be good, but you’ve also got to be lucky (which will have its own future post).
  3. Work harder than the next guy – and be a closer. The only reason to watch Glengarry Glen Ross is the scene where Alec Baldwin, in no uncertain terms, illustrates that you have to work hard, and also have to show actual results.  I’ve linked to it below.  Be warned – the language and content are R-rated, so if you’re squeamish about naughty words and crude concepts, skip it, but this seven minute scene he’s in got him a nomination for best supporting actor.  Seven minutes.  Really, working hard is important because it sets the stage for results, but results must  (Note:  a recent study showed that bosses only care about how much time you’re in the office, and think if you’re there a lot, you’re working hard.  Guess they never heard about goofing off?)  Are results the only thing that matters?  No.  But they matter A LOT.
  4. Don’t scare your boss. If you work hard and are smart and are getting great results, you should be setting yourself up for amazing success, right?    You might be one step away from being fired.  Bosses are people, too, and most of them don’t want to be eclipsed by an employee, namely, you.  If you’re reading this blog, there is a good chance that, besides being handsome and bullet-proof, you’re smarter than your boss.  With a good boss, that’s okay – he (or she) wants to teach you and allow you to grow.  With an insecure boss?  Oh, my.  With an insecure boss who doesn’t have skills?  Competence is a death warrant, or at least a quick ride to a pink slip.  If you have a scared boss?  Act stupid.  Give them bread crumbs to come to a good decision, and then allow them to take the credit.  Most importantly?  Align your incentives so if your boss makes you look bad, it is a reflection on their leadership.  Sometimes none of this will work.  Look for a new job or a new position in the company, but be prepared to exit involuntarily.  Insecure people are horrible (more on this in a future post).  One other note?  At some point you will have a really horrible boss.  Deal with it.
  5. Stay off of lists. HR has a list of people who, say, didn’t do training.  Who showed up late to work.  Who go one too many times to Facebook on the company Internet.  Who call a radio station 3400 times in a month attempting to be caller nine with the phrase that pays (this actually happened to someone I knew).  These lists might be petty lists, with “insignificant” actions or behaviors on them, but your very presence on the list turns you into your boss’s enemy, because you just became someone he has to defend to HR.  A boss, even a good one, will only go to that well so many times.
  6. Be flexible. No, not like a gymnast.  For your boss, your job description is only the barest suggestion.  If he or she asks you to learn to translate ancient Babylonian tablets instead of your job, which is generally being an accounting clerk, TRANSLATE THE TABLETS.  A job isn’t an argument, and if you make it one, you become . . . another pain to your boss.
  7. Be firm when your principles are involved. Even if means your job.  When I was doing an internship in college, the boss asked me to do something I knew to be technically illegal (like a real “go to federal prison” felony).  I told him no, I couldn’t do that.  He was on the road, and called, yelling at me to do the illegal thing.  I went to his boss (VP), and told him about the illegal action, and explained why it was a felony.  The VP made one minor comment, but was in agreement with my boss.  I told my professor (that I was taking a business organization class from) about the situation, and asked what he thought I should do.  He told me, “Well, it looks like you already quit.”  I thought about it, and, yeah, I had quit, but I was the only one at work who didn’t recognize it.  I turned in my notice the next day.  They weren’t surprised.  Don’t be a felon.  Don’t compromise your basic beliefs for a job – that’ll tear you up inside more than having a Chihuahua with needle-sharp teeth surgically implanted next to your spleen.
  8. Be a solution, not a problem. I have a rule with people who work for me – don’t come to me with a problem.  Come to me with a problem and two or three suggested solutions.  Most of the time I take one of their solutions.  Some people?
  9. Be nice. Those people you’re working with?  They talk to your boss, too.  And if you’re nice to people?  Good karma accumulates.
  10. Be on time. Just do this.  Being late shows a lack of respect for whatever you’re late to.

So, unless one of you is gonna write me in on your will, and die soon, I’ve gotta go to work tomorrow.  And follow my own advice.  But I’m still saving up for that private volcano island.  Right now I think I can afford a small rock outcropping off the coast of that Pacific island inhabited by cannibals that kill and eat anyone who stops nearby (this is a real place).  But, hey, it’s a start.

This blog is not financial advice, yadda-yadda-yadda-yadda.  Be responsible for yourself.

(Reminder – LOTS of naughty language.)

Kiyosaki and Sources Of Wealth

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your khakis.” – Fight ClubDSC02988

Someone’s Rich Dad?  Yeah, no marble sculptures of Poor Dad.  The Romans took “Got Your Nose” seriously.

I think that Robert Kiyosaki wants you to be rich.  I’m certain he wants you to think that he’s on your side, and he’s also spent a lot of time and effort doing presentations long after I would have retired to my private island off the coast of Antarctica (I like it cold) with my laser penguins.  Kiyosaki has made a metric ton of quarters selling the concepts in his Rich Dad/Poor Dad series of books (Amazon LINK) through both the books and personal consulting (rumor has it personal coaching can cost $45,000, and those are real American dollars, not fake Canadian metric currency).

Kiyosaki’s story is that his natural father was “Poor Dad.”  I’m assuming this book was NOT originally released on Father’s Day.

Poor Dad was very smart, and had a Ph.D. and worked in high government posts, but had a worldview that didn’t set Robert up for financial success.  By contrast, “Rich Dad,” a mentor and friend, explained how getting to financial freedom and wealth really worked.

Kiyosaki breaks the ways that people make money into four categories:

  1. Being an employee. This is most of us, and society works to perpetuate this role.  What is an employee?  One who works for a salary (or hourly wages) and benefits.  We live with a misconception that being an employee carries with it a degree of security, even if it’s less security today than it was in, say, 1970.  If you work for the government, however, it’s more likely that you’ll get malaria from a married vampire bat than get fired. (really)

Being an employee is generally based in . . . fear.  And the ultimate fear that employees have is . . . termination.  The threat of being fired, for many, is a direct threat to the core of who and what they are.

Being fired brings with it:

  1. Reduction in Resources – Most jobs pay enough to keep you coming back, but only a very few offer sufficient extra income to build real wealth. To the astonishingly high 78% of Americans that sometimes or always live paycheck to paycheck, the threat of job loss is especially dire.  It doesn’t help that we, as consumers often increase our individual spending so that it matches our income.  But, I’ve posted about that before (LINK).
  2. Loss of Status – Many men (especially) think of themselves AS their job. When you think about it, this makes sense.  The first question you ask a working-age man that you’ve just met is “What do you do?”  This establishes him the social hierarchy.  Society really does define a man by his work.  Time at work can represent half of your waking time.  In 2015, I spent 48% of my waking time at work or commuting to work, meaning I interacted more with co-workers than I did with my family that year.  Status drives many important hormones, and, for men, stress and job loss actually cause testosterone levels to plummet.
  3. Loss of Purpose – I’ve discussed before (LINK) that purpose is necessary for a real life, and it’s necessary to have a big one. Given the hours and time spent at work, it’s inevitable that work can become our purpose.  When you lose that purpose, you’re set adrift until you find a new one.

In a sense, the employer/employee relationship is a kinda like an “on speaking terms” hostage situation.  They have a job that represents status, purpose, and life-giving resources.  You have all of your time, effort, and passion to trade for that job.  Kiyosaki thinks that’s a bad trade.  But he could buy his own island.

  1. Small Business Ownership is the second income generator that Kiyosaki talks about. And, if possible, it comes off even worse than being an employee.  Being a small business owner entails all of the work of being and employee, plus lots more risk.  His reasoning is that employees at least have the business to fall back on if they have a bad day, week, or year.  Kiyosaki defines a small business as a business where, if you take a day off, the business cannot go.  You’re the spark, the fuel supply, and the tires.  Essentially, you become the whole car.  Or Taco Truck.
  2. Business Owner, which Kiyosaki defines as someone who hires employees (smart ones!) to work for him (or her). Kiyosaki feels that small businesses can’t compete at all against these larger entities, since he can hire great legal, accounting, and HR people and small businesses have to do all of that themselves, generally not very well.  Given that the business has support staff in place, the business owner can focus on the business itself.  The owner can also take a day or a week off and the business will continue to function and generate wealth.  Kiyosaki likes this, since money invested into the business makes more money.  And Kiyosaki breaks with many financial advisors here – debt is just fine in his book as long as the debt is generating more revenue than it costs.  This is his formula for building personal wealth, as well as freeing up time to do . . . whatever it is you want to do.
  3. Investing is the end stage for Kiyosaki. Investing allows for all of the time freedom, plus financial freedom.  All of the wealth you could want.  Kiyosaki would NOT classify your house as one of your investments – it doesn’t generate revenue, and you have to pay for it, so it’s a liability.  Investments generate income.  Oh, and risk?

“Investing is less risky than being an employee.  Skilled investors are in control of their investments, employees are controlled by a boss.”

Furthermore, Kiyosaki makes this Zen-like statement:  “ . . . you do NOT (emphasis in original) invest with money!  You invest with your mind!”  In other words?  Find the deal and the money will show up.

As I said, this is a different way to look at life – a different lens.  I’ll easily admit that my life since I was 22 has been focused on being a great employee.  At some point, it seems I need to have better investments, but note that Kiyosaki says . . . “Skilled investors,” but, alas, tonight I learned that my Pez® collection is not an investment because it generates no revenue.

Thoughts?