Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
“No, John Wilder, I said I want to make less thank I’m worth,” said my friend, who I will call Spock.
I was surprised. I took it as an axiom, a truthticle (John Wilder Definition: A quantum truth particle), that the old adage was right – you want to get paid what you’re worth.
Spock continued, “Yeah, if I’m worth what I’m paid, I’m not a bargain. If I’m worth more than I’m paid? That’s the guy you keep around – he makes you money.”
And Spock was right, his argument as logical as his Vulcan blood is green.
If I go to work and don’t create more value than the amount I’m paid, unless I work at the Department of Motor Vehicles in the Customer Hostility Division, I’m going to get fired. This isn’t a moral judgement, it’s just that companies can’t survive hauling around with comatose employees that don’t make it money.
To put it simply: If I don’t make (much) more money for the company than they pay me? They’ll find a way to make sure I work for the competition. And if someone (or a cool robot) can do the job for less than they’re paying me? I’m probably going to be doing a lot more blogging in all the free time that I’ll have. I will have been Terminated.
Not killed, though at one company I worked at:
HR told the story of a gentleman that worked there who was fired. The HR Personbot2000™ told them that they were going to be terminated. Having been a recent transplant (with correspondingly iffy English skills) from a country where the voters regularly re-elected the dictator with a 99.9% majority, the employee panicked, and barricaded himself in his office. The standoff lasted until the Personbot2000® got another employee to translate to the fired employee that he wasn’t going to be killed, he just didn’t have a job there anymore.
No one in the world has been happier to find out he was “only” fired.
I digress.
One way to make sure that you’re creating value is to be where the value is created. I know that sounds circular, but understand that more than just working hard is required to create value. Another example:
I was living in Alaska, and loving it. I had a great job, loved the weather, friends, and the family loved the place. One day the phone at work rang. It was an old boss. Come to Houston, he said. He wanted me to work on a project that would impact the lives of (literally) millions of consumers, and be the biggest project of my life so far. We didn’t want to move, really, but the opportunity to work in the hottest (at the time) sector of the economy on a huge project was too much to turn down. Plus it was hard to breathe with all the money they were forcing down my throat. So we went.
In this instance, a small team was working on an investment of billions of dollars. The revenue per employee was massive. The team worked unconscionably long hours for years to put the project together and bring it to completion. I can count multiple days where my savings to the company was over a million dollars. And multiple days where I had to ignore huge problems to go work on even bigger problems.
Creating value was easy in such a target-rich environment, as was working 14 hour days and not exercising. But the food was awesome and the houses were cheap because Houston is as hot as the surface of the Sun.
In the end? The projects were finished. And me, too. I moved on to another economic sector, but my big lesson was: If you want to find an easy way create value, go to where the big money is changing hands.
Makes logical sense, as Spock might have said . . .
Another short post – the notes for the second half of this post will show up in Monday’s post, since they are broader in nature, and provide a better understanding of the workings of the world economy and didn’t really fit well with the above stuff. But enough shop talk . . .
My heart attack didn’t kill me, so why act like it did? See, Tim, it was the Roman philosopher Seneca who said “if we let things terrify us, then life is not worth living.” – Home Improvement
There is nothing that says “I’m never giving up” like a stop sign duct taped to a lamp post.
Back in 2011, I was reading Italian chemistry professor Ugo Bardi’s blog (LINK) and was struck by his quoting of the dead Roman, Seneca, who wrote that “increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” I know it sounds like he’s writing about Adam Sandler’s acting career, but in reality, Seneca’s talking about everything, and it struck me as a universally applicable truth:
Everything that can be built, is built relatively slowly fighting entropy all the way.
And when it’s built?
The greater the effort, the higher it has risen, the faster it falls.
This is especially true when it comes to organizations – large companies that have been in business for decades close up in an afternoon. Sears was founded in 1893, 114 years ago. It became larger and larger over time until in the 1980’s it encompassed not only its department store business (the last remaining bits today) but also the Discover Card, Allstate Insurance, Land’s End, among other brands.
Today? It’s (possibly) worth less than a handful of magic beans. Nearly certainly by 2020 Sears will be just an answer to a trivia question.
And if you look at life, you see the same pattern again and again, that progress in your own life is built up only slowly, mainly over the course of years. And losing it? It’s a precarious balance, and (sadly) in the end all of our Jenga™ blocks fall down.
That was one of Seneca’s other lessons – you absolutely know that your blocks are going to fall over, and, most importantly, the blocks don’t care. There will be a time when you will lose. A business venture might fail, a book might not end well, or a blog post might be much shorter than you’d usually expect (this is foreshadowing).
In my personal life, I’ve seen this happen again and again – when I was first out of college and working for a big company, I put in 80 hour weeks for nine months to build a project – the biggest that company had ever built up to that time. They bulldozed it fifteen years later – and I assure you it was done in a month and a half – it came down a lot quicker than it went up.
After I got my Master’s I put all the notes, all the disks, and everything associated with my thesis in the fireplace. It was May, but I still put a match to it, willing to pay for the air conditioning just to give my academic career a Viking funeral. It was over. The months of research, the months of writing, all up in a matter of 20 minutes.
But, perhaps, Seneca might have been a bit wrong. He spent his life building his ideas. And we’re still talking about them today. Perhaps there is a force that defies entropy – that can withstand ages.
“In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!” – The Simpsons
The Boy during a Primal phase. Â Brains are Primal, right?
What does a diet do? There are thousands (if not millions) of different diet books in print, each with a new diet, and they appear nearly hourly. Diet books, perhaps, due to sheer number density, might form an information black hole that sucks in all other books. Even Dilbert (LINK). Then I would be sad.
The purpose of a diet should be twofold – to produce optimal nutrition at a healthy weight. And make no mistake, those shiftless British (LINK) have done a study of British medical records and determined that . . . it sucks for your health to be overweight. Being fit and fat? Probably (according to the Portuguese guy I accosted on the street while yelling about these results in a threatening monotone) a pretty little lie we tell ourselves.
Out of this vast galaxy of diets, I’m picking out five for further discussion and follow up with a description of what thermodynamics says about them. I pick these because they seem to be the main pattern of diets today:
Vegetarian/Vegan: No one actually does this, but there are millions of people professing to like tofu instead of ribeye, and wanting you to have a meat-substitute brisket in the smoker. And a vegan? They will change any discussion that’s occurring in order to bring up the fact that they’re a vegan.
John Wilder: “I hear that there might be life on Mars.â€
Vegan: “I hope it’s a vegetable, because I’m a vegan.â€
It is my prediction that veganism/vegetarianism will catch on like wildfire when rare filet mignon and bratwurst are declared vegetables. Sweet, meaty, fatty vegetables.
Oh, and turkeys! Turkey bacon, turkey burgers, turkey cheese, turkey sour cream, and turkey mint julips. Everything that’s come in about this diet indicates that it’s wrong on every possible level, including being responsible for Angela Merkel’s haircut.
2-0-1-7 tomorrow, out of time, so tonight we’re going to eat like it’s 10,099.
BC.
Primal: A lot like Paleo, but recognizes the central role of coffee to my central nervous system. Additionally, in comparison to Paleo, it’s more of a complete lifestyle, including exercising and having relationships like a Neolithic tribal dude.
The Primal diet is a lot like the Paleo diet, but you can have dairy, coffee, some potato, coffee, beans are okay-ish, coffee, and wisely chosen dietary supplements. Did I mention coffee is okay?
The definitive website for Primal is here. (This is also the definitive post.)
Atkins® (or “ketoâ€): Nuke the carbs from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure. Lifestyle? Who cares.  THE. CARBS. 20 grams or less of carbohydrates in some phases of the diet. Bonus? Eat all the bacon. And drink all the coffee.
How does a diet work to help attain or maintain a healthy weight?
First: What’s a Calorie?
In nutrition, a Calorie is a measure of the chemical energy stored in food. It has a specific scientific definition as being “the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by 1ËšCentigrade.â€Â So, if you weighed 750 kilograms (more than 1,500 pounds), you just have to walk into a fridge and reduce your body temperature by one degree, and when you warm yourself up, presto, a cheeseburger vanishes from your thigh!
In reality, there’s enough thermal energy in 10 plain chocolate M&M’s® to raise a big cup of coffee from room temperature to a pleasantly hot 130˚F. When I tried this experiment at home, the coffee stayed cold, but got chocolatey after a day or so.  Then moldy. Then The Mrs. yelled at The Boy and blamed him for the mess. Whew! It’s great having folks who’ll take the fall for a fiver.
The way they determine the Calorie content of your food is (I’m not making this up) by burning it in a really sensitive oven and measuring how much heat it gives off.
But your body doesn’t spontaneously combust, no matter how many pancakes you eat, so I’m thinking that the body may have a tiny lit furnace someplace south of your stomach, except for Pugsley, since sometimes he smells like burning tires.
So, food is used differently than that, as I started to discuss in a previous (LINK) post.
One rule of thermodynamics (thermo, from the Greek, meaning “a class in college†and dynamics, also from the Greek, meaning “that came from Hellâ€) is that you lose efficiency every time you convert energy from one form to another. In the conversion of food from chemical energy to useful human energy, fat (as in yum!) and carbohydrates (as in sugar, also, yum!) are about the same, requiring about 5% to 15% of the energy consumed to digest and use. In the world outside of squishy human bodies, that’s exceptional! A human body is 85% efficient when running on Ding-Dongs®. A car is only 20% efficient when running on gasoline. You’re super efficient!
That’s also why you’re fat. I’m willing to bet the human body developed a craving for sugar and fat because it was so efficiently converted to “keeping you alive†that when you could expect to find very little food, you were drawn to the best stuff.
When you convert protein (also yum, as in the rest of the steak!) to energy, the pathway is much less efficient, converting 65% of the energy to useful activities, like typing and drinking scotch. Still this is three times better than a typical gasoline powered car.
Like Justin Beiber, sugar has a much darker side – it spikes insulin output, which is required to get sugar into cells so it can get to work.  But insulin is also the hormone that, in abundance, tells your body, “Hey, back up the truck with all the energy you can’t use right now. We’ll just turn it into fat.â€
A recent JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association, or Jamaican Ancestral Music Annual, I forget which) article says that people on ultra-low carbohydrate diets burn 100-300 more Calories per day than those same people on other diets.
I think Dr. Atkins just dropped his microphone and walked off the stage.
My conclusion is this:Â The Paleo and Primal diets both restrict carbohydrates very effectively, but not as well as the Atkins diet, which is as single minded as a puppy on a pork roast in elimination of carbohydrates.
A potential optimum? Use Akins to get to a healthy weight, then transition to Primal as a lifestyle. Atkins is the journey, but Primal is the habit, and, of course, the lovely, lovely coffee.
Comments? Your mileage?
Reminder: JOHN WILDER IS NOT A DOCTOR. Consult yours before following the patently absurd advice offered above.
“Since when did AI Stand for artificial insanity?” – Andromeda
A machine for making Pez! Â Or the back side of an Airline Departure board. Â I forget.
The Middle Class Apocalypse is Coming! The Middle Class Apocalypse is Coming!
Today is Wealthy Wednesday, so this post is about Wealth, and the future patterns associated with wealth and work based on the trends we can all see today. On Monday, the Weekly Wisdom post talked about significance and the importance of work, and that post is here.
I’ll give you the TL;DR version – Work is important for health and well-being. A great job has certain attributes that tie to the significance of the work, which lead directly to health and well-being. Humans were made to work. We actually like working when it makes a difference, when we make a difference to the world.
But what about that Apocalypse thing you mentioned up above? It seems like that just might be important?
The economy is changing now at the most rapid pace, well, ever. What we’ve seen over the past few years has been an economic recovery that’s been rough, especially for the middle class. Most jobs that have been created appear to not be as good, not pay as much as the ones that have disappeared.
This trend is not over. It’s actually just starting.
And, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens®, it has all happened before, though Han Solo didn’t die the first time they blew up the Death Star. Or the second time. Third time was the charm.
Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threatened by automation flung their wooden shoes called sabots into the machines to stop them.
Hence the word sabotage. – Star Trek, The Undiscovered Country
Not the last use of Sabotage in Star Trek
The Last Time We Were Here
The industrial revolution was an extraordinary dislocation among the working class in the Western world. Extraordinary advances in power (steam engines) and mechanical devices (looms, tools) made standardized manufacturing of a consistent product on a grand scale possible. Spoiler alert! In the long run, this led to much greater prosperity and a constantly rising standard of living that created the greatest wealth machine in the history of mankind – Europe and the USA.
But along the way? Lots of people were displaced. If you were a knitter, you now no longer need knit knickers neatly, because a machine was massively manufacturing many muumuus. To put it gently, you no longer had a knitting job. Take your needles and shove off. And the machine is better at knitting than you. And you suck at running knitting machines because you have ADHD.
Being faced with this type of situation, the average person in at the time reacted calmly and happily watched as the trade or craft that they had engaged in their entire lives was extinguished like M&Ms® at a Weight Watcher® relapse? No. Inspired by (potentially fictional) leader Ned Ludd (the origin of the term “Ludditeâ€) they rioted. They raided the countryside, molested the cattle, and inspired really bad art:
Via Wikipedia – This image is in the public domain in the United States.Â
Oh, my! When I go down in history, I’d like to have a much better picture of me, not one where I’m wearing a polka-dotted Muumuu while my gigantic form looms over my tiny minions as the Alamo burns in the background. And what AM I wearing on my head. Is that a beaver??
I guess it’s an understatement to say that the change was difficult, but it did lead to mass producing important things, like nails, sewing machines, scarves, and, eventually, Pez®.
And it led, finally, to the creation of the middle class. The factories had to have managers. Engineers. Equipment manufacturers. HR. Accountants. Payroll clerks . . . and these factories finally allowed the concentrated application of experience and knowledge to the problems of industry. Some owners of factories became extraordinarily wealthy. Some geniuses, like Lord Kelvin? He basically invented thermodynamics and spent his summers on his massive yacht wandering around the Mediterranean with the Kardashians. Not the ancestors of the Kardashians, but the same ones we see on magazines all of the time. I am convinced that the Kardashians are:
Evil, and
Immortal.
But I digress. The middle class is stunningly important to economic and governmental stability. It’s a place for middling to high IQ people to go and strive, to go and find meaning in their work and in creating civic organizations and clubs and golf. All that brainpower tends to go toward helping people in all of society get wealthier over time, and makes society better as they get wealthier – a truly virtuous cycle.
If they weren’t doing this?
Well, if smart, capable people aren’t doing great stuff to make society better? They get all Emo and Occupy.
Imagine if Rage Against The Machine actually had a job down at Dad’s hardware store? Would they be singing barbershop quartet instead?
Michael Lewis has written several books, like Liar’s Poker and Moneyball. He’s talented. But his first degree was in Art History. Admittedly it was from Princeton, but it was . . . ART . . . HISTORY. He ended up being a bond trader after getting a degree in economics from the London School of Economics before landing the bond trading gig, but, really, these sorts of opportunities don’t exist for current liberal arts grads. And, like Ned Ludd, current liberal arts majors all dress up in polka-dotted muumuus and put a beaver in their dreadlocks and protest.
They’re protesting against a global labor market. They might have the best degree that you can get, but legal aides are now competing against actual lawyers (and smart ones, too) in India who’ll do 250 hours of legal and case research for some pita bread and half of a Coke®. The first part of this wave of globalization was the outsourcing of labor that went into manufacturing. For the last 15-20 years mid-level engineering and legal research has joined the globalization push. It’s had the effect of making the world more average, and if you’re talking pay, I assure you that you don’t want to work for the world’s average wage, which for some types of work is a cot and a promise not to play any music by Bob Segar®. If you’re bad? You have to listen to “Turn the Page.†Again and again.
And that’s the big kahuna. The large enchilada. The massive Pez®. Global low wages, procedural jobs that kill the soul? Those are nothing compared to Artificialish Intelligence.
(According to Google, I, John Wilder, am the one who has coined this term! Huzzah, me!)
If you count the sheer number of accountants and tax preparers that have lost work due to TurboTax®? Yeah, lots, and TurboTax™ probably does a better job than many tax preparers, with a lower error rate. This trend of Artificialish Intelligence destroying jobs is not new.
Ever feel like your job is to pass the butter? And it’s actually not at all required to add too much intelligence to most of our devices. Who needs an automatic vacuum or smart cell phone that has a mood?
I’m not sure of the new jobs that will be created due to the changes I’ve noted above, but I do have suggestions if you’re starting out in your career that might help . . .
Be born rich.
Be a friend to billionaires.
Really, the jobs that are very hard to automate or turn global are things that have a barrier, like the following categories:
Government Jobs. The barrier is pretty obvious to this one – Congressmen don’t have to go home to their constituents and explain that they’ve outsourced the Department of Commerce to Uzbekistan.
Distance Barriers. Some things have to be done locally – most construction, plumbing, tree services, and these are jobs that will be a bit harder to automate, though they will change significantly.
Regulatory Barriers. Plumber, Electrician, Pharmacist, Doctor, Lawyer . . . each of these have barriers that are require credentials and licensing. I would add Teacher to this list, but distance learning won’t be kind to that profession after a decade or so.
Extreme Knowledge. It can be done, being a specialist in a very narrow field.
Be a Creator. You can’t outsource a Steve Jobs from Sebastopol, nor a Bill Gates from Bratislava. Nor a Scott Adams from Albania. These are unique talents due to their ability to create. Can everyone be a Creator?  But the good news is that there are still Government Jobs!
I have only a limited understanding of what the world of work will look like in twenty years, but the changes will be very drastic, and I’ll be posting more about this in the future. In the past, if you were making copper pots by hand, when the machine took your job and started pressing them out of sheet copper, you had no real way to see that a world of thermodynamics, engineering, and advanced wealthy complex society could form out that stupid job-stealing machine.
But you could see the beaver clearly. That’s why you kept it in your hair.
“We’re put on this earth to do a job. And each of us gets the time we get to do it. And when this life is over and you stand in front of the Lord . . . well, you try tellin’ him it was all some Frenchman’s joke.” – Fargo (Series)
The Boy on his day job, attacking dragons, lions, and the French. He’s pretty good with that, since we haven’t seen any of those around here recently.
Nothing has a greater influence on the well-being of a man than the work he does and how significant it is. Studies have shown that doing good, significant work increases testosterone levels, decreases anxiety, decreases depression, and increases the likelihood of developing super powers, like fingernails that grow on command, or advanced control of nostril hair. I’m just kidding – decreased anxiety, how ludicrous!
I know you’re thinking, “John Wilder, how can you make such an outrageous claim!” but I assure you, thousands of scientists have been working for decades just to prove me right. Oh, and Gallup, Incorporated® did an actual study that proved exactly what I’m saying.
Their study came out in the book, First Break All The Rules. You can buy it (and I do recommend this book) here . (Full disclosure, at some point I might get around to monetizing these links, but as of the date of this posting, not yet.)
The authors, Buckingham and Coffman (like many business book authors) manage to pack a decent five pages worth of material into the current edition’s 368 pages. Also, other folks (consultants) glom on to it with, I’m sure, tests, powerpoints, websites, charts, and four day training courses in Orlando in the off season, complete with a coffee bar and a buffet lunch with an added spousal event where the spouses go and tour Epcot, get to take a photo with Walt Disney’s frozen corpse, and drink mojitos all day long.
But back to the book . . .
The book is based on 1.5+ million hours of interviews with over 80,000 managers over the span of years. Gallup then looked at which of these businesses were highly productive and profitable, and, rather than come up with a theory, just looked at what the data said about these high-performing organizations. What came out of it were 12 questions that determined employee engagement. Crazy idea – if employees are engaged at work, the place gets profitable?
What sort of sorcery is this?
Here are the 12 questions, and it’s important to note that they are in order. The first question matters more than question 12. I know that there are those of you who say all questions should be equal, and they are. Some are just more equal than others.
Do I know what is expected of me at work? This one is top of the list.
I’ve had managers who give you a desk and say, go do it. What is “it”? Nope, the only thing you see is a contrail as they head away from your desk at nearly lightspeed. Then you’re left guessing at what “it” is. This turns work into an eternal game of “warmer”/”colder”, assuming that your boss even gives you that kind of feedback.
I’ve also had bosses who say – “go fix the thing – I don’t care what you do, just don’t break the law or spend more than $10,000,000.” Those are actually really clear expectations. I like bosses like that. And they like me.
Do I have the material and equipment to do my work right?
If you know that you’re in charge of the Canadian space program (Is it called CASA?) and they expect you to create a manned space expedition to Mars within ten years, eh, you certainly have clear expectations. But if they only give you two dog teams, some moosehides, and the retired Mounties from Saskatchewan, well, you’re going to be as frustrated and conflicted as a vegan poodle in a butcher shop.
Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
I can recall finishing a project (it took 45 straight 12 to 16 hour days) and watching as the last piece went into place. What I did in those 45 days was what I do best – and it was wonderful, and I was in the zone. I saved my company tens of millions of dollars.
But I’ve also been in the job where I was tasked with correctly folding up manufacturing drawings. Yay! More folding! But, within two months I was doing research for the company (and, accidently recreated Soviet research into the perfect railroad tie). It got better.
However, there are places where you’ll never get to do what you do best. Imagine Seth Rogan teaching physics to high school students? Yeah, that probably isn’t where he’d be best used, unless the class was really titled: “The Physics of Marijuana, Dude.” At some point, if the company can’t use what you do best, you’ve gotta hit the rip cord and bail out of there (the preceding does not constitute parachuting advice nor parachute training).
These first three form a triad – they speak to having clear purpose, tools, talent and using them all to create value. This is food for the soul of the deepest level. If you have these three elements at work, you are happy at work, and generally also happy at home.
The other elements are also important, but decrease in importance as we go:
In the last seven days, have I received praise or recognition for good work?
Most of us are people (technically The Boy isn’t, since he is an android sent from the future to destroy the popularity of Justin Beiber by bombarding Beiber’s brain with dank Twitter memes) and people like to have their good points brought up. Funny, huh?
Does my supervisor or someone at work care about me as a person?
Ditto. I like to work with people that want me to keep breathing. It’s nice when you walk in and have a cup of coffee with a coworker and they genuinely pretend to being interested in my boring life. Your mileage may vary, but still not as important as doing important work well, though it can be a partial substitute if your employer is slowly eating your soul.
Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
I think that no matter our age, we all want to improve, do better, and want the advice of people we respect to help us grow, because those are people that can become our mentors. Not Mentos™. Mentors. They are different things, though both can be minty.
At work, do my opinions count?
I’m sorry – I wasn’t listening? Did you say something?
Does the mission or purpose of my company make me feel that my job is important?
Let’s pretend that all the questions above this are answered with YES! In that case, you’re probably happy, unless your job requires you to grind kittens into Kitten Chow™.
That’s how it’s made, right?
Are my coworkers committed to quality work?
If the people you work with do bad work, goof off, or are in some other way not contributing, I know you don’t like it, because if you’re reading this, you’re smarter and have great character and probably don’t need deodorant because your body gives off a faint scent of sandlewood whenever you sweat. But if your coworkers are trolls from the reject pile that do work like poo flinging monkeys? Yeah, takes a bit out of your pride of doing work.
On the plus side? You’d think you’d get a good performance review, unless your boss is threatened by you and your genius and natural sandlewood smell. Then you’ll get a review that says you don’t fling enough poo.
An aside at an appropriate place: Pugsley just told me, “For a writer, you’re a pretty good typist.” Thanks, pal.
Is it just me, or did anyone else ever assemble an Ikea bookcase and end up with a functional hovercraft?
Oops – big digression. Having a friend at work makes you want to stay there. Duh.
In the last six months, has someone talked to me about my progress?
Getting toward the end (keep in mind, less important as we go down) – this is a variation on point 6 – the concept that humans want to be more effective and to have someone they respect tell them how well they’re doing. Honestly, that’s what we want – someone to tell us how awesome we are. It is a rare person who wants actual truth.
And, as a manager, after a long time doing it? I gave ‘em both barrels in annual reviews. Full on truth. But HR was getting none of that truth – HR exists to justify why you fire employees and reduce their benefits to those of a typical Botswanan goatherd, so when you ding an employee on a review, they start circling like high school students around a dank meme.
Don’t give them that dank meme! (Also, would someone please tell me what a dank meme is?)
Urban Dictionary says:
“Dank Memes” is an ironic expression used to mock online viral media and in-jokes that have exhausted their comedic value to the point of being trite or cliché. In this context, the word “dank,” originally coined as a term for high quality marijuana, is satirically used as a synonym for “cool.”
So, now you know.
In the last year, have I had the opportunity to work and grow?
As a set of questions for leaders to gauge the environment they create? Priceless. These 12 questions are wonderful in that respect. Every leader should strive to create an environment where they get the most out of their employees, not only because it benefits the business, it also benefits the employee.
Whew.
I have at least two more topics that are directly related to this, and I’m over 1900 words on this post right now.
Okay. I give up.
This is my first unanticipated two or more part post. In the near future? IQ and the workplace of the future. Not that this will be an important topic to anyone. Or, really, everyone.
Okay, really, it is everyone who will be impacted by this, we’re on to a trend that will determine all of future life for humans in Western civilization for at least the next 80 years. But that’s too scary to think about right now.
So now? I’m just going to make my fingernails grow like crazy!
“Dad, before you blame the dryer, have you ever considered stepping on the bathroom scale?” – Frasier
Pugsley, after a particularly bad binge a decade or so ago . . .
One of the things that I do to keep myself motivated while exercising is to watch Youtube videos about people who’ve done amazing things. I do this while I climb endless stairs to nowhere at the gym while the sweat runs down me like money through a government agency.
Now, keep in mind, there’s a component of survivor bias associated with these videos. I have yet to see a video put together by someone who said:
“I started this diet at 245 pounds, and finished at 260 pounds plus now Nutrasystem® owns my spleen and just sold it to a Chinese billionaire to pay for all of the food I ate – I’m an utter failure. Oh, and my wife left me for Mickey Rourke.”
No, those videos don’t get made. And is it just me that I think that Mickey Rourke might smell like dried leather and day-old potato salad? Unrefrigerated potato salad.
So, I watch these videos. At ten weeks in, sometimes motivation is about as high as a Baptist teetotaler on temperance Tuesday, especially after having climbed over nine vertical miles. A quote from one of the videos struck me – it was Penn Jillette (I’ve talked about him earlier, here) talking about his weight loss. And his comment wasn’t the point he was trying to make, it was just an aside: “I don’t know how much I weighed. No one weighs themselves at their heaviest.” This really made me pay attention. And think. Wow. That is a really profound truth.
Why is that so profound?
My theory is that our brains create reality distortion fields that allow us to ignore certain things, or mark them as insignificant. Then it hit me. I can ignore or get used to the way I might look in a mirror, but I cannot ignore the actual weight shown on the scale. I can’t hide from it, I can’t explain it away.
The second data point was that Penn posted his weight to his friends as he, quite single mindedly, proceeded to lose the weight equivalent of a fifth grader. Penn posts to his friends, I post to Batman.
I wrestled when I was in high school, and one of the rituals was weighing in. To be able to compete, you have to be at or under the weight that you’re planning on wrestling at. They weighed us in on a balance scale, like you used to see in the doctor’s office. If the weights balanced, you passed. One of the junior varsity wrestlers (I’ll call him “Steve,” because his name is “Steve”) was just barely over on the weight, as close as I’d ever seen. One of the other wrestlers noticed that Steve was chewing gum (helps you spit, so you can lose weight that way, too).
“Hey, Steve, take out your gum.” Steve took out his gum and stepped back on the scale. With the gum still in his hand.
Some kind soul convinced Steve that perhaps the gum weighed just as much in his hand as in his mouth, and he threw it away . . . and made weight.
Numbers on a scale can’t be cheated. They’re objective. They’re real. And saying “The extra weight is really muscle” only works if you’re Vin Diesel. Or Chad Kerosene.
My weight is a fact, and as a fact, it’s the number one way to destroy the pretty little lies that my brain cooks up to tell me everything’s fine the way it is. John Wilder’s Brain: “You don’t want to be hungry. You don’t want to work hard. You like pie.” Mostly true. I rather enjoy working hard, but really do like pie.
Eliminating Variation
I’ve tried to pick a day and time to minimize fluctuations and also the opportunity for me to tell myself more lies. In past weight loss iterations, I’ve picked the low weight of the week, and just recorded that in my spreadsheet, but now, I’m all about first thing Friday morning.
I’ve noticed the following things make my weight vary. By vary, of course, I mean be higher:
Carb Intake. I’ve noticed that the amount of carbohydrates that I eat impact how much I weigh. I’m certain that ties back directly to the amount of water my body can get rid of if I’m not trying to digest carbohydrates.
Work Outs. If I’ve not been able to work out, again, there’s a lot of water that remains in the system.
Recent Food Intake. Duh.
Phase of the Moon. Sometimes you step up on the scale and . . . huh? How did that happen? This (for me) is a pleasant surprise about half the time.
And how are things going? Pretty well. I’ve (consciously) varied from diet and exercise during Spring Break (wooo, party!) and for Pugsley’s birthday party. That really points out the impact of carbs on my system. They have no real positive effect, and I find my energy, motivation, and even mood are better when I’ve been avoiding carbs. As part of a systems approach (more on that soon!) carbs are something I’m leaving out.
Every Thursday, I have the folks at the gym take a picture. I’m planning on having The Boy stitch them together to a time-lapse when I’m where I want to be. As it is, the improvement is noticeable. And it has to be.
I’m thinking that Mickey Rourke is sniffing around The Mrs.
“I’m quite good at spending money, but a lifetime of outrageous wealth hasn’t taught me much about managing it.” – Game of Thrones
I need a better picture for this, but I give up. Here’s a dolphin.
I was talking with a friend the other day about personal finances, and we were discussing how we were both in pretty good financial shape, but we were (yet) in very different places.
Most of my money is ludicrously liquid, in fact, when I grab a quarter, it turns into a wet, squishy mess. But by liquid, I really mean that have the ability to use it, right now, right here for anything from purchasing a prodigious plethora of Pez® and pantyhose to just letting it sit and rot. Mainly my money has just been sitting and rotting slowly due to inflation.
As I’ve discussed before, most of my time (day and night, sometimes) had been spent out of the house actually earning the money, and I’d given very little thought to actively managing it and the best way to do that. I’ve missed some great deals, but I’ve also missed plenty of bad ones, like that Shetland pony farm. Never could get those seeds to sprout.
My friend, however, has a great financial structure going forward, but he’s fairly illiquid – he can’t really touch vast chunks of that money, in some cases he can’t touch it for 20 years into the future, or it would require severe penalties (like losing a kidney, or paying massive taxes – but I repeat myself) in order to get at it. I think his setup has him set up far better than me, 20 years from now.
In the conversation we were having, I came up with the epiphany – our money has different shape. Shape, like a fine pair of pantyhose, has two sides. Money shape has at least two – liquidity and risk.
Liquidity
Liquidity is when your money is available. The greater the liquidity, the more available your asset is. So, if I have $10 in my hand, I can use it immediately if I so chose. Or I can do like government and just light fire to it and watch the pretty flames. But let’s look at liquidity from liquid to solid of assets we own.
Money
Cash – As above. You can do anything you want with it. Well, most things. It can’t help you go faster than the speed of light.
Checking Accounts/(Debit Cards) – Either way, the money is immediately and totally available, as long as you have money in your account or have recently paid your credit card bill. Many places still checks, which are becoming an obscure throwback to another age when men could actually sign their name. I pay bills with checks. I have never owned a debit card, but I hear they go great with fish.
(Credit Card would go here if Credit Cards were an asset – they’re not, they’re a loan)
Things – Some things are almost as good as cash, but they’re not cash. Silver coins, gold bars, Pez®. This could go nearly anywhere, depending upon the thing, the time of the day, and the tide. Beanie Babies® probably are about as liquid as land near a former Soviet nuclear/biological warfare testing site. Sorry if you thought those would pay for college.
Stocks/Bonds – These are pretty liquid, it will still take a day or two to get a check and get paid.
Savings Account – Different than checking – they can hold your deposit for a period of time if they want to after you ask for it, generally no more than 30 days. It’s actually a loan to the bank. Do you really trust those guys?
401k/IRA – The money is yours, but you get hit with a huge penalty for breaking that piggy bank, takes weeks to get a check. I think it’s just a plan for you to save your money and put it all in the same place so the government can find it easily and use it to buy Carmex™.
Home – Generally takes more than a month to sell/close. Might take a year. Might take longer.
Land – See above, but . . . location, location, location.
401K/IRA (no penalty) – Become 59 and ½ years old. So, if you’re 59.49999, pretty liquid. But easy to calculate how much time until you are liquid.
Pension – Get it at a predetermined age, generally 65.
Social Security – Can start drawing early, but you get less over time. If you die early, that’s a good deal. Wait, did I just really type that?
My issue is that I’ve been living too far up the liquidity tree. I’ve been serially under-invested, and have been for years. As I mentioned above, another dimension to money is risk of loss:
Cash – 100% risk of loss. Inflation, over time will destroy cash purchasing power. It’s the way that government keeps promises – it taxes those who save and are responsible!
Gold/Silver/Pez® – Only lost if you don’t know where you buried it, but values may vary greatly even during a year.
Stock Market – Inflation adjusted, it’s probably one of the best defenses against the tide of inflation. Individual stocks are much more risky than index funds, but have the potential for much greater gain. Probably the best long term choice, but I hate to buy now, when the market is at an all-time high.
House – Even if it blows up, you still own the crater. If only there were a market for craters.
Pension – Generally, these are horribly underfunded. Good luck, especially if you’re a California government employee!
Social Security – I’ve always felt that I’d never get any money back on this scheme. Still betting that.
The impacts of the shape of your money are significant. I have more choices now than my friend, and unless I do a good job managing those choices, I’ll have many fewer as I get older. The nice part of this, however, is the choices are mine, and I’ll live with the outcomes.
Now, to invest in an S&P index fund? Or maybe horde Pez® for the apocalypse?
It’s very unusual for Michael not to show up to work. My guess, he’s either deeply depressed or an icicle has snapped off his roof and impaled his brain. Â – The Office
The Boy, praising the giant stone head which holds the entirety of the Internet, at an undisclosed location in Texas.
“The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.†– Someone Dead, Probably a Roman
You have to be there to win.
You can’t achieve, or even focus, if not present. I’ll not define achievement or focus, you can probably figure out what I mean by those, but I will speak a bit about being present.
Being present is having your focus here, right in the place that you are at, and now, as in focusing on the present moment. It implies both locality and attention.  If you are truly 100% present, generally there is nothing wrong with the world, no worries.  You are where you are, doing what you’re doing.
It’s been my experience that right now, at this moment in time, there are very few things that concern me or bother me to the point that it pulls away my attention.  The sun is shining, Pugsley is mowing the lawn with the push mower, The Boy is concocting a new app that combines AirBNB and Twitter (BedWitter) so you pay for your room rental with witty comments, The Mrs. is doing some work on a novel, and the pork chops are marinating on the counter prior to their encounter with the grill tonight.
So, in this moment in time, as Rainbow talks about a Man on the Silver Mountain (it’s a song), I sit and type in utter peace – I’m stuck here in the present, fully focused on the moment, and at this point in time, there’s nothing wrong in the world.  Well, my beer might be low, but I know where another one is.
The content on the Internet is evolving, and its sole purpose is to pull in more and more of your attention.  Why?  That’s what funds it.  It’s been that way for a while – media is funded by that which grabs your attention – good ratings=high attention and that results in more products like that. But the Internet has allowed measurements that are to the millisecond – how long has your attention been taken, what did you buy later, what did you click on? The technology exists today to understand who you are through a fairly small number of clicks, even on a browser you’ve never been on, and to understand what drives you are as an individual. Maybe even better than you do.
What are the apps that do this very well?
You know them, and many of you interact with them daily:
Google – The big dog – probably knows what you’re going to search after a character or two. I was shocked to find out (in 2005) that a search on my work computer gave a different list than on my home computer.  Now, 12 years later?  I imagine each individual gets tailored results, by device and location. Thankfully they’re not evil, right?
Youtube – I’m listening to music on it right now as I type this. And it picks the next song, so when I get in a writing haze, really focused on the work, seven songs that I love can blend seamlessly into the background, without me noticing. And I get different Youtube content suggestions on my phone, because I listen differently on it.
Facebook – I’ll admit that this is an application that I’m not on, and it’s one I never really got. The Mrs. got on to promote her book, but I don’t think she uses it all that much. But, boy, when I say I don’t Facebook I get funny looks. It’s like I’m not exactly human, some sort of pre-technology throwback. I figure if my friends want to talk, they’ll call.
Reddit – Been there, but it’s not even weekly that I visit. Good concept.
Twitter – This is one that seems to be the real wave of the future, but people can’t figure out how to make money owning Twitter – it’s like owning that kiosk where everyone puts up random notices. It would be way better real estate if you could get the hippys out.
What drives your behavior?
I hate to tell you, but the Internet is driven by your brain, specifically your amygdala. Your amygdala is where your strong emotions come from, and the internet is evolved to stroke those emotions to get you to take action based upon what your amygdala wants:
Sex – This goes beyond porn sites, but also includes the sidebar ads on the sites you visit with girls in bikinis with a headline “You won’t believe what happened to the cast of Malcolm in the Middle!†It’s a primary psychological driver, and (really) has resulted in some of the most significant technological advancements in information technology, like streaming video. You like YouTube? Shake a porn star’s hand (but wear a glove, really).
Outrage – OMG! What did Trump do?  OMG!  Did you see what Obama did? These sorts of stories are intended to drive you into an emotional frenzy, based upon something you care about. Its stories like Cecil the lion that feed this side of the Internet, creating a frenzy that burns itself out when the new frenzy appears. Just think about what Jimmy Kimmel is crying about this week, and you have a good idea what the latest frenzy is. This outrage feeds your amygdala, and, let’s face it, sometimes you just want to fight. (Hint: that’s your amygdala.) The internet drives you (along with other people that think like you) straight to the fire so you can pour gasoline on it.
Trivia – The shear amount of information that exists on the Internet is enough to keep you swimming in it for hours if you let the current drag you away. Ever look up “Dogs†on Wikipedia and end up in an engrossing article about 17th century French bottle manufacturing techniques? Yeah, me too.
Fear – Hacking at your brain – see the adds that say “here are the three things your doctor doesn’t know about the CANCER THAT IS EATING YOUR BRAIN RIGHT NOW†alongside a picture of a forearm that has hair on it.  Feeding your brain.
Envy – Facebook is awesome at this one – your friends don’t show you pictures of the monthly bills for that new Porsche®, but they sure do post pictures of the car. When living in Houston, I would be sitting at a stoplight and see a beautiful Mercedes pull up next to the Wildercar. I tried to pull up a statistic about the number of new Mercedes that were bought with a loan. I can’t find it now, so I’ll make it up – 87% of Mercedes purchased are bought by someone with less than a million net worth and they owe money on it.
Desire – Envy’s brother. See a nice bauble on Amazon? You’ve lived your entire life without it. But now it’s your precious, and you’re its Gollum. Hint: avoid hobbits – it won’t end well.
So, essentially the internet has evolved to focus all of your presence and attention on the seven deadly sins. And this is what we’re teaching the vast artificial intelligence that we’re creating. And we’re feeding it with our behaviors and attention constantly.
It also dulls our sense of wonder. On the Internet, you can see the best and most extreme of everything, all at your fingertips. So, seeing a guy jump off a 25’ cliff into a pool of water below? Yawn, but on the Internet, you’re staring at a little square screen that is where you are giving precious minutes of your life, but it’s so distracting!
Don’t get me wrong, the Internet is a truly amazing servant. It provides great venues for learning, specific fact finding, this blog, comparison and quality shopping, this blog, low cost instant communication, this blog, real time storm warnings, this blog, long distance work collaboration and, of course, this blog.
On a recent vacation we stopped for breakfast at a Denny’s® (little known fact: La Quinta is Spanish for “Next to Denny’sâ€) and had to wait about five minutes. As I scanned the crowd of other potential pancake patrons, I noticed that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM (including parents) was head down in a phone. Not a single person was legitimately present.
After noting the Wilder fam following into a similar pattern, I decreed a ban on cell phones at dinner. They stayed home or we weren’t going to go out to eat. Pop ‘em on the table, folks. Likewise, at home, at dinner – nope.
Although I would dearly love for the family to take their phones into the hot tub, they leave them out. So, dinner, hot tubbing, board games, patio days (going outside and just hanging on the patio all day) and cooking barbeque are all times where we have miniature Internet breaks. The result I’ve seen is those are the closest and most genuine moments that we have as a family. We’re genuinely happier when we cut out Zuckerberg and Brin.
But right now I just have to see what Chelsea Clinton said to Trump on Twitter®!
Chime in below on how you rule your brain in a world of distraction  . . .
Now, ironically, in astronomy, the word “revolution” means “a celestial object that comes full circle.” Did you know that? Which, if you think about it, is pretty funny, considering here on earth it means change. – Fargo (Series)
Change sometimes comes best from the barrel of an anti-aircraft gun. (That’s The Boy, some time ago, as he weighs 190 pounds now (that’s 431 stone or 650kg).
In my experience, people are sticky. No, not the “haven’t showered in two days in 105F weather and I just ate a runny ice cream cone and have no paper towel” sticky, but the “not going to change my habit” sticky. Habits are sticky things, especially the ones that are bad for you.
Like tobacco. Mmmmm.
It has been my experience that people experience lasting change for two (and only two) reasons:
Extreme Emotional Impact – An extreme emotional event is one directly related to the behavior that results in change. And I mean extreme, not, “it’s snowing outside – I think I’ll lose 10 pounds.”
Somebody Else Really Thinks You Should Change – This always works. Wait . . . this never works.
I guess that leaves one (and only one) reason that people change – Extreme Emotional Impact.
I have done a quick Google® search and have determined that most people who write about change on the internet and say that they have coached change, have probably never left their mother’s basement and interacted with another human being. Some of their answers are awful. A sampling of their “Reasons People Change’:
“They Have Learned” – No, sorry, as much as I like learning, it’s about as effective at changing habits as a newborn baby otter is effective at changing the oil in a 1980 Fiat Spider (hint, it’s an Italian car – you don’t change the oil, you just replace the oil that leaked out).
“They Have Suffered” – Good heavens, we have all suffered for years with the Kardashians. No change noted. Suffering does not equal change, not even spare change.
“Tired of the Same Thing” – I ate the same hot ham and cheese sandwich for four years of high school. Well, not the same sandwich, it was a different sandwich, but it was the same kind of sandwich every day. Change potential? For me, not high.
“Want To” – The worst one so far. Everyone wants to change something. Most of us never make any significant changes. I “Want To” start a billion-dollar business. Change based on “Want To” starts in . . . never.
There are more, dozens, and some are high-school term paper bad. A couple of people, however, got close to the right answer (John Maxwell, Steve Aichison) but they used way too many words and are not nearly as cool as me.
In my years of watching and being a people, I have seen zero (nada, zilch, none, empty set) people have a significant change without emotion being the driver. And by change, I don’t include changes that violate basic laws of physics, like pretending an amputated uvula is still attached. I still miss my uvula, which I lost in a tragic ukulele accident at Camp Oconda back in ’03 while camping there with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
There must be an equivalence and proportionality between the emotion and the change being sought – a stubbed toe will not give enough emotional energy so you can heal your relationship between you and your cheese-eating sister. A death threat is not generally required to get someone to turn off the lights as they leave a room (with the exception of Pugsley, who seems to like all the lights on).
Two years ago, a friend of mine didn’t show up for work. A bit later, I heard that his boss had gone to see him in the hospital. I saw him about two months later – he had lost about 30% of his body weight, and he wasn’t all that chubby to start with. Turns out he’d had a heart attack, a triple bypass, and had taken the doctor very seriously when he said lose weight or die. My friend lost the weight, and has kept it off.
Even with an emotional event, another necessary ingredient is that you have to have a reason to change. Doesn’t have to be a great reason, but you have to have a reason. If my friend hated his life? Meh, another cheeseburger, please.
The significant change I’m personally most proud of came in January of 2012. I decided I was done with tobacco, and was worried (based on looking at my gums) that I was doing real long term damage, like deadly, to myself. (My dentist says it all looks mahvelous now, so, not an issue.)
It was emotional for me, and I decided I was going to quit. Despite not liking my tobacco use, The Mrs. had never once asked me to quit. In reality, that would have had the opposite effect, BECAUSE MY SOCKS CAN STAY ON THE FLOOR! But I announced my intentions, and quit a day later. Five years ago.
Do I miss tobacco? (EVERY SINGLE DAY. EVERY MINUTE. I LOVE IT.)
Maybe a little.
I love the smell of it. I love the taste of it. I love the feel of it. If anyone ever tells me, “John Wilder, you have six months to live,” I am going to buy 500 gallons of it and fill my hot tub with it and bathe in the tobacco until I twitch like a poisoned cockroach. I didn’t say it’s good for me.
But I don’t do that now. I had my emo-moment (or is that an emo-momo?) one night when I really pondered if I was killing myself quickly, and decided to stop.
Emotion mixed with purpose, and it was over. I’m done. It’s a powerful combination.
“Well, you know, I’ve been lying about my income for a few years; I figured I could afford a fake house in the Hamptons.”-Seinfeld
Our old Alaska home. Photo by The Boy.
Houses are both an economic and emotional topic. As a half-human cyborg travelling back in time from the year 2000, I tend to focus on the economic side of the equation, however I realize fully that there are a huge number of emotions (like happy, or sleepy, or caffeine) tied up in a house.
A house can also be a home. And a home is for living in, for entertaining, for loving in, for building memories, for first steps, for raising children. It’s also where I keep my pants, and that is fairly emotional for me, too.
The process of home-buying is built entirely around emotions. The agent taking you around to view properties will have the emotional antennae of a cocker-spaniel with daddy issues, attempting to understand what you like, and, if they’re good, they’ll swap around the listings to show you the one that they think you’ll like the most as the last one on a long day. It’s happened to me. It’s effective. For the most part, you’re tired at the end of the day, and you don’t even blink when the realtor tells you about the repeated haunting of the house by the soul-stealing-infant-snatching ghost. Honestly, you can always get another infant, right?
When selling, though, the realtor puts on an entirely different hat. It looks a lot like the Pope’s, but it’s orange.
A list of things we’ve been told:
No odd objects. Where did you even get a Battlestar Galactica helmet? Do the lights work and everything? (Apparently the buyer can’t imagine their things in the house if yours are too striking or unusual, like that coffin we keep in the corner with Uncle Drago’s skeleton.)
The smell of freshly baked cookies should permeate your house. If you grill a burger? It should smell like a cookie.
Move your, um, things out. We can then stage it with things that normal people might own.
There’s also a huge amount of emotion based on the selling price of a house. I’ve seen (and when I was younger, I was guilty of) being emotionally tied to the value of the house. The value of the house was a reflection of my value! How dare you say you don’t like the color? I painted that!
Also guilty of? Emotion in negotiation. True story, I once negotiated back and forth so often that the realtors (both of them!) pitched in to close the difference. At the end we were arguing back and forth over 0.25% of the price.
Also guilty of? Mixing emotion in with the inspection report. The Home Inspection is the rite of passage for a home whereby an inspector tries to make the current homeowner’s head explode by picking out every tiny possible thing wrong with a house and then whining about it. I mean, what’s wrong with exposed copper wiring in the children’s playroom? They love the way it makes their arms vibrate when they grab it.
I know that emotion is important to those of you who had that chip implanted at the factory. But, really, in the longer term economics is more important.
In my opinion, the most important aspects of home ownership are:
Affordability/Tax Deduction – When I moved to Houston, I was talking on the phone to the nice lady at the mortgage company, and she said I qualified for a loan that was eight times my salary. The payment alone would have been enough to keep President Trump in hair product for a month. Me: “Why would you even offer me that, there’s no way I could ever repay you?” Her: “I have to tell you that you qualify for it. They make me.” More about this topic follows.
Insurability – Let’s pretend you buy a house. Can you even get insurance? Check with your company – they have a list of houses that they won’t insure based on previous experience and claims at the house. It’s a downside of the data-driven world, but your mortgage company (unless you’re buying outright) will demand you have insurance, lest they unleash a cauldron of lawyers to play Justin Bieber songs outside your window all night long until you are insured.
Cost of Upgrades/Code Compliance/Upkeep – Over time, these items add a lot to the cost of home ownership, not to mention the amount of personal time you have to spend polishing the Great Orb in the back room, and making sure that the bare wires in the children’s playroom are where they can reach them.
Cost of Commute/Time – If you have a job, where your house is determines how long it takes you to get to work, unless you’re a witch and can teleport. Commuting costs time and money, and detracts from your ability to spend time with your family though, with some families, that might be a plus. A little more on this follows.
Resale/Future Value – I know I put this kind of low, but this is my list – yours will likely vary. My actual results are below.
Cost of Private Schools/Time – We’ve always bought homes where we didn’t have to worry about this – the public schools have been adequate, and in small-town America, most are pretty good. Our worst schools? Houston area.
Storage Costs – If you buy too small of a place, this might be a thing. Hard not to buy an adequately sized place where we live.
Item 1. In the list above is where it is because, for me, it’s been the most important. You can have an awesome place that you can’t afford, and that wrecks your life, since the insurance and taxes are consuming so much of your income.
Home Number
1
2
2A
3
4
5
Home Cost as a % of Gross Income
22%
17%
20%
17%
14%
5%
Return (Annual) on Sale
16%
3.4%
11%
0%
N/A
Home 2A was a refinance, home 5 is our current home.
Affordability
My experience on home price to income:
Home 1: Too expensive, very little money left over. The cheapest home on the list, but also my lowest income. Bought at just the right time, but wasted the equity on Pez®
Home 2: Next house. Even at 17%, the house was too expensive, but primarily because other debt loads were too high.
Home 2A: Same house, just refinanced to buy more Pez®. Got rid of car payments, so very livable.
Home 4: Debt level okay. Also a help? We still had no car payments.
Home 5: Next to no income spent on the house. Plenty of money for Pez™!
Cost of Commute/Time
Home Number
1
2
3
4
5
Commute Time Minutes
20
20
10
30
20
Commute Cost (at $0.35/mile)
$14
$12
$6
$14
$14
Meh. Not a lot of difference there, though I will say the 10 mile commute was awesome, and sometimes I biked to work. In Alaska. Yeah, it was awesome.
Resale
As you can see, I’ve never lost money on a house transaction. House 4 was our most expensive house to date, and I had to sell it in the middle of the real estate crisis. It’s at a zero instead of a negative (it should be about a 20% loss) but when I took a job with that company, one of the conditions on the job offer was that, if they moved me, I would, at minimum, be kept whole on the house. Nice work, and it was an easy negotiation that took the form of one question, followed by a “sure, we can do that.”
It’s likely that whenever we sell our current house, it’ll be at a loss. We bought it at a time when the market was (locally) pretty hot, but those days are likely gone. It’s okay, because at my current equity and payment, it’s really not a strain.
What would have been a killer for me would have been living in a house that was too expensive and unaffordable. Based on the above, I’d peg that as a total home payment (including taxes and insurance) of less than 1.4% of your annual income. Above that, and I think (depending on your debt structure and payments) that is enough that ever purchase has to come under extreme scrutiny. And it gets tough, and life is much less fun. So, I’d go for a less expensive house, even if it means living with the soul-stealing-infant-snatching ghost. At least it does dishes more frequently than Pugsley or The Boy.
The Boy on his day job, attacking dragons, lions, and the French. He’s pretty good with that, since we haven’t seen any of those around here recently.
