personal finance, wealthbuilding and the journey to financial freedom

Dec 5, 2007

linklings, Odin’s Day edition

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Five things people say about Christmas that drive me nuts » Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

  • Penelope has a great…well…gripe about the “holiday” season. I am nominally Christian but my wife isn’t, and I get a little irritated at all of the heavy-duty Christmas pressure this time of year. Christmas should be a working day just like any other day, and let people take it as a personal day if they want to take it. For that matter, I don’t think any holiday should be “mandatory” other than the 4th of July and Memorial Day, personally. Give me 6 personal days and 2 paid holidays. Fair enough, I think.

5 Signs That You’re Not Yet Ready To Take The Plunge And Leave The Rat Race | Location Independent

  • “Leaving the rat race” is one of the most frequently cited goals you hear from people, but the simple truth is that not everyone is really and truly ready to leave it. I wasn’t ready to leave it until a few months ago, when I suddenly realized two things I could do for a living outside of my current career path… but I need some work, still, to get there. This is a great article to ponder if you are sure you want to leave 9-to-5 world - because even though you THINK you are ready, you may not be.

My Wealth Builder: Another Blow To the U.S. Economy - Expected Delays For Tax Refunds

  • OK, this brief article at My Wealth Builder is extremely disturbing. The structural flaws in the US are becoming worse and worse. If our country gets to the point where it can’t even reasonably prepare a tax code each year, what will go next?

LifeEdit.net: 6 Thoughts on Raising Financially Responsible Children

  • LifeEdit is a blog I’ve just recently started reading, but it’s right along my line of thinking and I’m really enjoying it. I highlighted this article, but there’s a lot on this blog worth reading - plus there’s a weekly carnival!

Fecundity

  • Fecundity has had a fun little series of posts on telling her parents and in-laws about the imminent arrival of Fecundity Jr. There’s nothing like having that little nugget of information in your head for a few weeks before you start springing it on people - you feel like saying “wasn’t it obvious? Didn’t the baby’s aura just GLOW out where everyone could see it?”

Chief Family Officer: Guest Post: 5 ways to avoid dangerous toys

  • I had a guest post at Chief Family Officer about dangerous toys. She actually has a lot of good information on similar topics. Sad to say, but true - you have to assume that toys can be dangerous, even the most harmless ones.

When Even The Power Of Compounding Can’t Save You

  • After reading this article at The Digerati Life I didn’t know whether to be depressed or happy. It IS tough to make a million, but then again I think that there’s something to be cheerful about - after you DO make it, things get easier. I plan on making $2 million within the next 10 years, so what’s not to be cheerful about?

The Carnival of Personal Finance #129 | Cash Money Life

  • The Carnival of Personal Finance, the gorilla of carnivals, was at one of my favorite blogs, Cash Money Life, this week. My post was chosen as an editor’s pick, for which I’m really grateful - there are a lot of good posts at these carnivals and getting picked out of the masses is always very rewarding. Moolanomy’s post on Using Pareto Principle to Improve Personal Finance was quite interesting - I think you could use the Pareto Principle for at least 80% of the things in your life… :) And on a night when I’m exhausted from a semi-sleepless night with a sick toddler, The Happy Rock’s The Cost Of Having Children was a nice pick-me-up.

(photo by innuendo)

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Viewing 11 Comments

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    Use the Pareto principle for 80% of things in life. You crack me up! ;)

    Thanks for mentioning the carnival and taking part. :)
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    Hey Steve - thanks for the link! Great to see a fellow ex-rat racer following the dream :-)

    Lea
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    • v
    I will say based on the six or seven years I lived in NYC that Xmas in your city is way, way less insidious in many ways than it is in the other cities I've lived, Amsterdam, Dublin or Toronto. The 24th and 26th being working days; the significant effort, if lopsided, made to include Chanukah (though not Eid); delis transit and office buildings being open if you want to work; the "critical mass" of non-christians in the office and the culture; etc. I agree it's absolutely not perfect but it would really blow your mind to be in Toronto for Xmas in comparison! I do feel for Penelope, it's a good post and her frustration is palpable - certainly having to "request" days off for yom kippur etc and wait for some functionary approve it truly sucks.

    (My better half is nominally Muslim, we celebrate his family's holidays and my catholic family's ones and yes on his side it involves a lot of personal days and unnecessarily protracted explanations to clients and bosses).
    • ^
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    I'm nominally not relegious if that make sense. Christanity is by far the relegion I've been most exposed to. I think it's actually nice to have a block of time in the year where things are more "shut down." Though it could be anytime of the year...
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    I sympathize with Penelope about getting time off work for X-Mas. I think people misunderstand her, she doesn't say "don't celebrate X-Mas", she says "be fair and let everybody get their days off according to their own holiday preferrences". Companies should establish non-favoritism in the workplace. Give everybody "holiday time off" during the year and let employees choose how they use them, X-Mas, Yom Kipur or Ramadan.
    I come from a family of Russians (Orthodox Church) and Jews and growing in the former USSR we didn't have any religious holidays. My parents are not religious. So for us X-Mas and Hanukkah are not big deals, we don't really celebrate them. However, we always, as long as I remember, celebrated Passover and painted eggs for Russian Easter (without any religious undertone). We are really big into celebrating New Year! And I love all the holiday decorations and lights and Santa Clause (Ded Moroz), basically non-religious deocarations of X-Mas. For me it spells that the New Year's celebration is near.


    Once at work we had some big luncheon for the department (in the conference room) and when everybody gathered, one of the women said let's pray before we eat. Everybody lowered their heads and she said the prayer out loud. Never happened to me before, I was buffled, I felt so out of place among a few others. I, honestly, didn't know what to do: "should I lower my head and pretend? or should I just look out the window? (which I did)".
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    I agree with Dong. While I'm not really Christian (I was raised Protestant, but haven't gone to church in over 5 years), I enjoy not having to work....I have an entire week off between Christmas and New Years. I like that it's a time that you're expected to spend with your family...my boss doesn't question it at all...plus, seasonal days are always welcome!
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    Wow Bubelah, you couldn't pay me enough ....
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    Bubelah - that is very weird.

    Guinness - that's interesting that Toronto goes overboard with Xmas - I didn't realize that not everyone does this :)

    You would have loved what I saw last night - I was walking home from the grocery store and this car was stopped at a light as I crossed the intersection. The guy had his window rolled all the way down (in the cold) and had some loud song playing and he was howling away and be-bopping to the music. It would have been amusing enough except that he was also dressed up as Santa...I couldn't help but laugh.

    Mike
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    Thanks for the link, Steve!

    I enjoyed the post by Penelope. She had some very valid points and made me think about a few things.

    I love the idea of everyone having a set number of holidays (religious or otherwise) that they can take when they want, it would be much more fair than forcing people to take vacation time for non-majority cultural or religious holidays while those in the majority get a free ride. I do see a few administrative problems with that idea, though.

    What happens in the office on those days when 80% of people want the day off? Christmas Day comes to mind. Or when almost everyone wants it off, like Canada Day (or July 4th for you South of the Border folks)? Will a certain number of people be denied the holiday because the office needs them to stay open? What if those that are voluntarily staying are three managers and a director? Will an admin assistant and a janitor be forced to work on their holiday to accomodate those people's needs? Is it worth paying the money to remain open if no clients will call and no money will be made?

    My office is closed from Dec 24th to January 1st, and it's quite popular, even in our multicultural atmosphere. Everyone likes to have a week off with pay. But I would wager that many people would be keen on being able to move that to a more culturally appropriate time, whether it's for Yom Kippur, Diwali, Eid or whatever.

    Just keep in mind that such a policy change would require a lot of planning and discussion to keep it feasible and fair. In a lot of cases it would have to happen nationally and simultaneouslyy. For example, my company would have little reason to be open if the universities, research labs, academic libraries and federal/provincial/territorial governments aren't open.

    Bubelah: I'm happy to say that has never happened to me at the office. At my parents' place or at a wedding or something I just bow my head and go with it, but I'd probably look out the window at work. It's one thing to say grace quietly to yourself before eating at an office function. It's quite another to basically force it upon everyone else.

    Mike: I can just see Santa bopping to some death metal. You never hear those bands put out Christmas albums...such a shame. ;)
    • ^
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    That's a great series of responses. I guess my two cents are this: wishing that everyone would get personal days in lieu of holidays is just that, wishful thinking. In the US and Canada, the chance of Christmas devolving into an optional holiday are about 0.000000%. So starting from that statement, if I was in a position to work on Christmas and would get double pay to ensure a skeleton staff, yeah, I might do it. My family is a mix of traditions, as Bubelah said, so an occasional sacrifice for double pay on a day where - frankly - I would probably surf the net for 8 hours doesn't sound so awful.

    Probably the best solution is just to get more tolerant all around and give people as much flexibility in their workplace as possible. I don't care if people get Yom Kippur as a day off, and frankly if people are upfront with HR and say "hey, I really need this day" - don't even charge them a holiday.

    So much trouble in this world is caused because rather than giving some people something extra, we want to take something away to equalize everyone. Honestly, I would take The International Day of the Pancake off if I got paid for it :)

    Second point is that Santa can make it all around the world in less than 24 hours on Christmas Eve. If you think he can't rip into some Gwar lyrics after delivering all of those CDs, you don't know Santa like I know Santa.

    The more I hear about Canada, the more I like it :)
    • ^
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    Steve - the sad thing is that I've heard of GWAR from seeing them on Springer (yes, I used to watch him).

    Fecundity - you're right - simply not enough metal at Christmas.

    Mike

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