Hi! If you're new here, welcome - I'm Steve, the author of brip blap! Take a look at my about page and check out a few posts. If you like what you read (and I hope you do!), please sign up for my RSS feed or sign up to get posts by email by clicking here. Send me an email directly - I would love to hear from you. Thanks for visiting!

Note: I asked my wife, Bubelah, to write a guest post on any topic she wanted. She chose to write about winter holiday traditions from her childhood, so a little bit of background is in order. She was born and raised in Tashkent in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic of the former Soviet Union. Until the Soviet Union dissolved (when she was 13) she lived in a Soviet Republic as a third generation Russian immigrant. In Russian (and for the most part Soviet) tradition, New Year’s Eve is far more significant than Christmas or Hanukah or any other winter celebration. New Year’s Eve is a huge family celebration and in some senses is hard for Westerners to understand - for Americans, imagine the 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas all rolled into one day. It is extremely significant! So here is her take on the holiday!

My husband Steve asked me to write a guest post for his blog. I decided to write about winter holidays and traditions, the way it was done in my family. I am not going to write about how to save on holiday gift purchases. This topic has been covered more than enough. And it’s not about how to make money either. It’s about holiday joy and the traditions that are part of a happy and balanced life.

The holidays are approaching and for everybody it means different things. Now that we have our own little family I am constantly thinking of what traditions to incorporate into our holiday celebration. For Steve and his family, Christmas is a big holiday but not from a religious point. For me and my family the New Year celebration is a big deal. This is my favorite holiday of all.

When I was growing up we had almost the same routine every year - not that it was intentionally established, it just happened like that. My parents would buy a big fir tree that we, the children, got to decorate. Nothing sets the mood like the smell of a fresh tree. My mother would buy oranges and tangerines for a big treat because they were hard to get in winter.

I do not remember that we ever worried about buying or making presents for the New Year. We just never did it in my family, although my parents would always bring home small cute packages of treats for me and my sister. My parents’ employer provided them with presents for their children for a small nominal fee, and in that little cute bag we would find edible treats like holiday cookies, chocolate candies and such. We used to put them under the tree and eat our treats slowly..well, it least it was the idea. It never worked with me, but my sister had good discipline.

In America, children go to a big mall to see Santa Claus and they stand in a long line and wait for their turn to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what they want. We, however, didn’t have malls. We had community clubs or theaters where you could go for free or for a nominal fee to see Father Frost (Ded Moroz) and his granddaughter Snegurochka. There was always a small performance and children gathered in a big circle around the Tree singing and dancing. This is what our parents arranged for us to do every December leading up to the New Year.

The New Year’s Eve feast was a big production. We would cook enough food to last us probably up to two weeks after the holiday. The idea was that your New Year’s table should be full and abundant to invite an abundant year into your lives. Special dishes were thoughtfully prepared with advanced planning involved, dishes that we wouldn’t have normally have eaten during the year. After all, the New Year’s Celebration was not some ordinary holiday.

New Year’s Eve was always considered a family celebration. That is why we spent it home or in going back and forth between our house and my grandmother’s, who lived next door. Sometimes if it snowed, we’d go out with sleighs and play in the snow. There would be a lot of neighbors outside doing the same thing. It would make our New Year’s celebration extra special.

Our big table that we set out on December 31 would not been folded for at least a week because the celebrations kept going on. There was always somebody who dropped by to wish us Happy New Year, be it a neighbor, family or friends. Of course we would invite them to the table to eat and drink champagne to toast the New Year, and that is what I liked about it the most, even after so much preparation leading up to the big culmination - there was no sudden stop to it.

This is what makes me sad about Christmas in America. It always feels that come December 26th, everything suddenly drops. All the anticipation and planning for the holiday for a whole month abruptly ends and you start seeing “SALE” signs everywhere.

Well, this is how my holiday celebration used to be, and this is how we are still doing it in America. I am thinking of making my own family holiday traditions. I do associate winter holidays with cold weather and snow. I cannot possibly go to the Caribbean to celebrate the New Year. It’s just something I grew up with.

Happy New Year to All. May the Year of 2008 bring you much Love, Health and Great Returns on your Investments!

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It’s been a slow weekend, with the whole family feeling a bit under the weather. We did make it for an ultrasound on Friday and found out we will be having a baby girl, which will be fun for Little Buddy. I spent Friday night and half of Saturday on my own with Little Buddy since my wife was doing things with her family. There’s nothing that makes you care less for doing “stuff” than hanging out with a toddler, for two reasons: 1, they are interested and excited about even the most minor things (oo! a bird!), and 2, they wear you out!

The big sports story of the weekend? Vinny Testaverde, one of my all-time favorites, announces his retirement. Oh, and the Patriots went undefeated in the regular season or something. I still don’t understand why the Giants left their starters in for the whole game since winning or losing affected nothing about their playoff seeding. Anyway, I am braced for a week of Bostoniacs crowing about their Pats. My response? Go Colts!

On to the links:

Text of Steve Jobs’ Commencement address (2005)

• This isn’t really your typical blog roundup link, but I thought it was a nice piece by Steve Jobs. I dislike Apple for a variety of reasons, but I admire this guy. He spectacularly flamed out of Apple and has triumphantly returned and done even better in his second go-round there. This is his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 - nothing unusual, but an uplifting piece.
  

Change Your Tree » Blog Archive » Your Life Sucks Because You Expect It To Suck (and 10 Ways to Improve It Right Now)

• A few nice thoughts. The title is quite true - your expectation of sucking causes the sucking in many ways.
  

Year-end roundup: Most loved and most hated posts of 2007 » Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

• A good roundup of the year’s best at The Brazen Careerist, one of my favorite blogs. Penelope recently got fired from Yahoo Finance, which she discusses at length here. For someone who has done so many different things in her career, I doubt she’ll have much trouble landing on her feet almost immediately. She has a great book out, a popular blog and a startup in the works, so I doubt she’s going to miss Yahoo in the long run. I doubt she will miss the trolls in the comments there! You need a thick skin to write for Yahoo. Good luck Penelope!
  

Fecundity: How (not) to deal with pregnant people at Christmas…or really at any time.

• Fecundity has a few good tips on the care and handling of the femalus pregnantus. I don’t disagree with a one of them, having been through this once before. Being pregnant is tough, so anything the male of the species (or non-pregnant females) can do to lighten the load is a good thing!
  

Entrepreneurship at Casual Science

• Here’s someone who is thinking how to earn more than he spends: “I could take a vacation to Mexico and find some cheap guitars (true story, $5 guitars in Mexico). I think to myself: “Hey five bucks? These go for like $50-100 in the states”, so I buy four of them and take them back home. I could sell them for $50 each along with a nice story: “These are authentic Mexican guitars”. Who is going to go to Mexico just to save $45 on a guitar? Surely not me, I just went there on a vacation and stumbled across them. And $50 for a real Mexican guitar is a pretty good deal- they got those cheap crap guitars at Wal-Mart for about $100. So I sell the Mexican guitars and make $200…”

Prosper and Collections Agencies | Mrs. Micah: Finance for a Freelance Life

• Mrs. Micah has some concerns about Prosper, and mentions the debt collection agencies. I’m sure many of them are unethical, but frankly if someone has money that they legitimately owe me and won’t pay me, I’ll use any method that is legal to recover it. If you have money in a bank, part of your money is being lent out to people at ridiculous rates anyway. It’s not like Chase doesn’t issue credit cards. Prosper just cuts out the middleman in lending (and the overhead).
  

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What makes someone who loved "Louder Than Bombs" by the Smiths in the 80s listen to Madeleine Peyroux in 2007? 

Here is a proposal:  there are three types of music lovers.  One loves music in general, and their tastes evolve with the times.  Another loves a specific type of music, and sticks to that type of music over time.  The third starts out listening to popular music but drifts off as they get older into calmer music (shifting from Public Enemy to Kenny G would be an extreme example).

The first may have listened to the Beatles in the 60s, the Eagles in the 70s, the Smiths in the 80s, Pearl Jam in the 90s and now listens to the Killers (that would be a pretty amazing evolution for someone in their mid-to-late 40s).  The second type listened to the Beatles in the 60s, the Wings in the 70s…and then the Beatles again for the last 30+ years.  The third type listened to Cream in the 60s, but by the 90s they were put off by grunge and now listen to Sarah McLachlan or Miles Davis or even Vivaldi.

I suspect most people get stuck on the music of their youth OR slowly regress to calmer music over the years.  It’s fairly rare (although not impossible) to see someone in their 50s who is listening to Kanye West or Kid Rock.  At the same time, all you have to do is check out the charts to realize that there’s STILL a big market for the Eagles, or Bruce Springsteen - and while a lot of younger people may be listening to them, many of their listeners probably are a little older.

What does this listening behavior tell you about that person’s behavior in general? Does someone who listens to cutting edge music have a more risk-tolerant nature?  Would they be more likely to be single, or live in big cities or have more creative careers?  Do you think that people whose musical tastes soften become more conservative politically or in their behavior?  Is any of this reflected in how they treat their finances?

I really have no idea, but I suspect there is some correlation.  I have become much more conservative in my lifestyle over the last ten years - getting married, settling down, having kids and so on.  I know you might argue that none of that drives becoming more conservative in your attitude and behavior, but it does.  My musical tastes have shifted, too.  I used to listen to goth-kid stuff in the 80s:  Cure, Smiths, Depeche Mode.  In the 90s I listened to grunge but when it was time to go to a concert or buy a CD I chose REM and Dave Matthews (notice a softening)?  In the last 10 years I doubt I have seen 3 concerts or bought 4 CDs, but I listen to a lot more jazz and "pop-era" like Bocelli and Sinatra and whatnot.  I occasionally put on K-Rock (New York’s semi-hard-rock station) or load up some DMX or Prodigy, but for the most part I’m Softie McLight.

If anyone wants to chime in on this, answer this question:  what music do you listen to today that you are POSITIVE you will listen to til death do you part - and what music did you listen to years ago that today you can’t believe you liked? 

Comment and make sure you leave a valid email address.  I’ll pick one at random this Sunday and send the lucky winner a mystery CD.  Don’t expect anything good, either.  I have owned Stevie Nicks, Judas Priest and the Stone Roses music over the years, so my entire collection is filled with questionable music.

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(a possibly apocryphal exchange between British Prime Minister Churchill and an unnamed socialite woman, which demonstrates that anything (or anyone) can be bought for the right amount of cash):

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

What if I told you a surefire way to save somewhere from 6% to 10% on every purchase you make that was illegal but hard to get caught at? And before you answer too quickly that you’d never do anything illegal, have you ever exceeded the speed limit while driving? I’m talking about the cash economy.

If you think you live in a place with no cash economy, you don’t get out enough. Here are a few examples:

• If you hire a nanny, you need to pay social security taxes and so on. Many people choose to pay cash to avoid taxes, illegally.
• If you buy a big ticket item (jewelry is a common example) you can pay cash and avoid sales taxes - illegally.
• Offering to pay a cab in cash rather than having him run the meter is an example of a common cash transaction.
• Waiters and waitresses.. working for cash tips and then failing to report those tips as income.
• Many people buy services or goods with cash so that neither the purchaser nor seller have to report the transaction for tax purposes - for example, paying a yard cleaning service in cash so they can underreport their income.

This is definitely an illegal practice. It is also definitely happening, every day. In New York City, where I work, it is widespread.  In certain parts of town you hear that almost all transactions have “legit” and cash components. Why does this happen so often, and does it really hurt anyone?

Let’s say Jarvis sells jewelry. He has a $5000 ring that he’d like to sell. The sales tax rate in NYC is 8.375%, resulting in sales tax of $418.75! Now Jarvis knows that his ring is just as nice as Carl’s, but Carl is selling his for $4700 plus tax. Unfortunately for Carl, he’s an honest guy, so the cost of his ring with tax is $5094. Jarvis decides to sell his ring for cash. He risks getting in trouble with the law, but he can easily undercut Bart and also offer a bargain to the customer by selling his ring for $5000, cash. Who doesn’t like saving $419?

The state and Carl, that’s who. Those tax revenues of course go to fund many of the great public services of New York City, as well as many ridiculous wastes of money. Whether or not you view taxes as a good use of money is irrelevant - paying them is the law of the land. Jarvis possibly drives Carl out of business with his practices, therefore depriving the state of even more tax revenue. The state then has to investigate and sue Jarvis, using up even more of the state budget… you get the picture.

Using cash to pay illegal immigrants to be nannies or day labor or whatnot is another example of the cash economy. This is a horrible burden on the US economy. It keeps honest businesses who seek to pay minimum wage uncompetitive and it exploits the immigrants who may not know any better (or have any other choice). The treatment of immigrant labor is worthy of a whole separate post, but suffice it to say that it is not doing anyone any favors, except the greedy company seeking to exploit people by breaking the law.

You will probably hear some politicians make the once-every-four-year battle cry for a consumption tax during the presidential campaign. To me, the idea of a 20% value added tax (or sales tax or whatever you choose to call it) is ridiculous beyond describing. In New York alone, half the economy would go underground overnight. If I was buying a $5000 ring and had to pay $1000 in taxes on it I would definitely be motivated to at least consider my “black market” options. Any politician who proposes this simply doesn’t understand how the cash economy - which exists and is thriving - would explode in the US and create a legitimate “black market.”

So would you be willing to pay cash to avoid taxes? Have you ever? I think everyone has to answer the morality of cash transactions for themselves, but the cash economy is there, it’s strong, and it provides a huge savings to anyone who is willing to assume the risk of entering it.  I think it’s terrible that it exists, but it’s a natural result of higher and higher sales and payroll taxes over the years.

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 Well, it’s the day after Christmas.  Again.  I didn’t get a Wii.  Again. Maybe next year.  I have an interesting holiday dynamic since I celebrated Christmas growing up (and still do) and my wife Bubelah’s big holiday was New Year’s Eve - the biggest holiday of the Soviet/Russian year.  We have both traditions in our house, so my son gets two big to-dos over 7 days.  We had a muted Christmas this year since my family was scattered this year, but my son still gets Santa/Christmas on the 25th then Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost)/Novy God (New Year’s) on the 31st.  It makes the days between Christmas and New Year’s feel more like a pause than a letdown, which is nice.  I’m also debating the tax benefits of making a few investment moves now, which is not nice - thinking about taxes is always annoying.

 OK, on to the links:

Money, Finance and Fancy: The Carnival of Personal Finance #132, Whimsical Christmas Edition

• My article “Spend Less Than You Earn - The Wrong Way To Think” was an editor’s pick at the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted this week by SVB at The Digerati Life. I also liked this article at The Investor’s Journal about setting rules for your investing since Bubelah and I were just talking about this today.
  

New Year, New You: How to Travel the World with (or without) Kids in 2008 | The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss

• This was more or less a guest post on Tim Ferriss’ blog. I have high hope to travel the world with my kids. I don’t think it gets easier as you have more - and we have another on the way - but I think too many people are scared of traveling with kids anywhere more ambitious than Disneyworldlandburg, so this was a nice article to read to reassure me that more is possible.
  

Millionaire Mommy Next Door: How to Become a Famous Blogger (or) I’m a Closet Millionaire No More

• MMND is going to be on Montel Williams’ show on December 28th. I’m looking forward to watching - not every day you get to see bloggers “live”, is it? This is a big step forward for one of my favorite bloggers.
  

Investing has Social Consequences Whether you Like it or Not » The Dividend Guy Blog

• Honestly, I worry about this all the time - then forget about it when it’s time to invest. I know that by investing in index funds I’m investing in all kinds of things I would rather not be investing in - defense contractors, oil companies, Wal-Mart, etc. I don’t know how to resolve my desire to do socially responsible investing with my desire to gain financial freedom. However, I’m being socially irresponsible regardless of my investments. In a sense, every time I buy a drop of gas I’m already subsidizing the oil company I buy it from, for example, unless they are selling at a loss - which I doubt.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

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