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!

political news is a disease

Stay away from the news. I’ve given that advice over and over.  It does not entertain or educate or enlighten.  Unless you plan to do something about it, reading about a tragedy on the other side of the globe will only depress you.  Yet I have a confession to make.  I am addicted to presidential politics.

It started slowly in 2007. I read a column here and there.  I checked out Bill Richardson’s web site.  I drifted by  instapundit and dailykos (no, I’m not linking to them) to see what the right-and-left-wingers were saying, but just once a week.  I gave my mother (a hardcore political junkie) a hard time for her addiction to americablog.  But I was harboring a secret.  I was cruising one political website and news site after another, looking for a quick and cheap fix.  I didn’t care about the consequences, I needed THE NEWS.

Of course after months of furtively reading political news I realize it (a) didn’t even vaguely change my thoughts on who to vote for and (b) didn’t come close to educating, enlightening or even entertaining me. It’s a sad state of affairs to admit you’re addicted to something which doesn’t even really give you pleasure.  I hate the whole sordid business of presidential politics but I just can’t look away.  The personal-finance-blogosphere loves to give opinions on money, but the leadership of this country determine so much of how we save and how we spend that - in a sense - no personal finance issue should be more important than VOTING.  Disagree?  What if the next president changes the tax rate on capital gains?  That would affect your savings strategy.  What if they rescind Roth accounts’ tax-free status?  What if they decide to heavily tax gas to subsidize public transportation?  There are a million possibilities that impact our lives far more than “should I clip coupons”?

regret, shame and recovery

I am ashamed. I waste a lot of time I could be writing, or reading something fun or entertaining or educational or even just silly.  I read about McCain’s latest angry jab at Obama, or Obama’s latest platitude about “coming together.”  I spend 10 minutes thinking about voting for Nader or Barr or writing in myself and then go back to reading about the latest congressional idiocy.

I have a problem.  I need help.  I have to give up presidential politics. Nothing I hear between now and November is going to change my mind, because I already distrust and fear both candidates and the American political systems.  I will leave you with this horrible sobering thought:  I am almost 40 years old, and this is the first time since I was an eligible voter that my presidential ballot will not have the name “Bush” or “Clinton” on it… and that’s only by a narrow margin.

And just in case anyone is wondering about my political affiliation, it is simple:  anti-incumbent.  It’s the only way to go, if you ask me. photo credit to GeneC55

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Part of the fabric of a modern life is access to the internet. You don’t really think about it but you rely on it more heavily than you know.  In addition, you rely on simple and quick fixes to problems with your access.  You could say the same for most services.  Most of us don’t anticipate a year without phone service, or a year without electricity.

Let me dial back about 10 years to a younger Steve living in Moscow, Russia. I had a home telephone line through the state phone company which had - at that point - resisted efforts by the state to privatize the service.  Cellular phones were available, but considering handsets started at $1000 apiece, they weren’t a reasonable option for your young expatriate-about-town.  I relied on my home phone, which I had jury-rigged up using a half dozen European converters to my Radio Shack answering machine.  I conveniently recorded polite messages in both English and Russian, informing callers that I might be back soon.

As I’m sure my worried parents could attest at the time, my phone service was spotty at best and nonexistent at worst. I tried to keep up with payments, which had to be made in cash to a local branch.  Bills were shoved into my keyless mail box and tended to “fall out”.  I struggled to keep up my payments, but since my mail box was an empty hole in the wall and - unsurprisingly - mail often disappeared, I missed a payment or three.  Service was cut.

After I was cut off I was forced into two dark underworlds - first, the world of Russian payphones, and second, the world of state telephone service restoration. Suffice it to say I did not merely endure - I prevailed.  I stood in the local subway station and called friends for weekend plans.  I abused office calling privileges to call the States.  I threw myself against Soviet power, and was rewarded with a restoration of phone service (after being disconnected for six weeks).  I spent hours in line.  I brandished forms.  I triplicated.  I stuttered my way to glory in Russian.

My point? Simple. In every way that matters, dealing with the post-Soviet state services was easier than dealing with the horrendous post-globalization customer service we have to deal with in America today.  People were nicer, humans were easier to come by, solutions were easier to arrive at and resolutions were clearer.  I love India.  I wish India the best going forward replacing the US as Superpower 2.0.   But let’s face it - India’s really not ready to deal with Steve from New Jersey’s internet access problems.  Steve is needy, and won’t be mollified with reading from a script unless it solves his expensive problem today, or at least promises some chance at a solution in the near future.  Whether or not Megacorp believes he will be, Steve won’t be happy dealing with voice response systems, endless menus and customer service reps from the far reaches of the former British Empire.

I’ve got internet access again for the first time in weeks tonight. It’s nice.  What I don’t feel happy about is the fact that I had to fight for that access.  I’m paying for a service.  I can understand when Google doesn’t perform as advertised - I’m not paying to subscribe to Google.  I’m paying some other services, and I expect at least a pale imitation of service.  If these corporate customer service departments are the future, I’m ready to fold.

Photo:  photo credit: gruntzooki

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photo credit: thengineer

Today’s post is a guest post from my wife, Bubelah.

Last night we watched a movie - “Last Holiday” - and it made me think. Starring Queen Latifah as Georgia Byrd, a Louisiana retail clerk, the premise is simple: Georgia’s doctor tells her that she has three weeks to live and she changes everything about her life. Rather than giving in to despair, she quits her job, cashes out all of her savings and decides to blow all of her money.  She sets out to live her life to the fullest in the brief time she believes she has remaining.  She treats herself to the European vacation of a lifetime.  She flies first class, stays in the Presidential suite, eats the finest food and gets every spa treatment on the menu.

It was a cute movie- not grand - but fun enough to watch and thought-provoking at times. I especially enjoyed Karlovy Vary’s (Carlsbad’s) wintry landscape.  The movie was filmed in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic and in Tirol, Austria, and the result was amazing.  The movie’s scenery wasn’t limited to outdoor scenery, either:  chefs from the Food Network traveled with the movie crew and prepared beautiful culinary creations used in the movie.
But this post is not just about the movie.  As I said, it made me think.

What would I do if I had only 3 weeks to live? I have so many things I want to do and see and experience in this life. Where do I start? Mind you, I have two little kids and a husband. And I have my family that I love dearly. In the movie, Georgia has no family and the only relative mentioned is her sister.

Would I cash out everything I saved and blow it on my last fancy vacation or experiences? Here I stop. I pause because I do not know. Of course I would do it with my family and my children. But I have my  children’s future to think about.  Their future is in my hands now while they are still very young. I guess I will agonize about the right decision until my time runs out.

What would YOU do if you had only a few weeks to live?

It is so tiresome to think about the money all the time. It’s like a person who is on a starvation diet.  Once you realize that the starvation diet might not work, you have a tendency to binge.  In the movie, Georgia realizes that her choices have been simplified - she will die soon, and so without consequence she can live life to the fullest.  What all of us have to decide is where the balance is between spending and saving.  Sometimes it’s worth living like today is your last chance at life.

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photo credit: HAMED MASOUMI

For this Monday morning, The Money Writers decided to start you off with a cheerful bit of Monday reading - namely, how did our investments fare year to date? We’re a group of people who take our investments seriously, so we ought to have a pretty good take on the market. The results are surprising.

First of all, if you have any young children reading this post, avert their eyes..there will be blood. It has not been a pretty year in the market, certainly, and my family’s portfolio is no different. First of all, a little background: Bubelah and I share an “operating account”. When we were both working, we contributed to a joint checking account, and we continue to pay all of our expenses out of that account now that she’s not working. However, we’ve never invested jointly - she has her brokerage and retirement accounts, and I have mine. We keep each other informed of what we’re doing, and we take each other’s advice, but neither of us really worries about the other’s asset allocation or investing methodology. This may not be the ideal solution - but it’s what works for us. We keep our cash jointly and our investments separate (and thanks to the largess of the Feds she still gets to contribute to an IRA despite not earning a wage, although most assuredly still working).

So here’s the result. I prepared a spreadsheet with four columns: the first is the name of the investment, the second is the value of that investment on 1/1/2008, the third is the value on 7/28/2008, and the fourth is the net gain or loss on that account from January 1 to July 28. The accounts are ordered from our biggest gross dollar value investment to the least (i.e. we have more money in Vanguard’s High Dividend Yield Index Fund than anything else). If the graphic isn’t clear (and I suspect it isn’t, because I had a terrible time trying to make it appear here), click here.

If you look at that, there’s nothing pretty to see. Not one single investment has appreciated since 1/1. I didn’t buy any on 1/1 of course. Citigroup, for example, I bought in late January, so the price isn’t exact. But other than that, almost all of them were things we held at 1/1, so it’s a good indication of our losses since the beginning of the year. Almost 10% … a 9.85% loss since 1/1. Phew.

I try to remind myself, of course, that there are mitigating factors. Dividends were received, and some of my alternative investments (P2P, etc.) did bear a scattering of fruit. We also have approximately 15% of our net worth in trusty American dollars… yeah, those greenbacks that are losing 3% of their value per month. Thanks again, George/Hank/Alan & company. But the most important point is that many of those investments - such as Mechel and Vanguard Pacific Stock index - had huge runups in the past couple of years that we’ve owned them. We’re not down 9% from our initial investment, just from the beginning of the year. That having been said, nobody likes to be down almost 10%.

So what conclusion can be drawn from this exercise? Only two, in my opinion: (1) get an investing strategy and stick with it even if it doesn’t look like it’s going well in the short term, because there’s no way you’re going to beat the market* and (2) don’t keep all your eggs in the market. Honestly, I am not too concerned. We had a great runup over the past couple of years, and net/net we’re still doing quite well. I would love to see things going better, of course, but you have to be realistic - markets are cyclical.

So to see how the rest of the wealthbuilding group did (and some did better than others), check out how the rest of The Money Writers did:

• Lazy Man and Money
• My Dollar Plan
• The Sun’s Financial Diary
• Generation X Finance
• Million Dollar Journey
• Money Smart Life
• The Digerati Life

So if you’re like me (and us) hang in there, work on your alternative income and chicken entrepreneurial projects and your side businesses, and pray for rain…

If you have any questions about my portfolio, feel free to email me - bripblap at the email service gmail.com.

* I always point out that you CAN beat the market if you’re willing to put an inordinate amount of time and effort into studying companies for investment. If you have a day job, or you just don’t like reading the minutiae of 10Ks, invest largely in index funds. End of story.

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photo credit: VideogameVisionary.com

Early in my career one of my manager imparted this little bit of corporate wisdom to me: there are two types of people in the world, “big picture people” and “small picture people”. These two types of people were complimentary but had wildly different skill sets and worldviews.

Big picture people

In a nutshell, big picture people see the world in grand themes. They think of end games, the needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-few and goals. Details are swept aside for the sake of progress. They view everything in terms of an overall objective, and facts and opinions are gathered selectively to support the objective.

Small picture people

Small picture people, on the other hand, agonize over facts. They attack every problem related to a project with equal fervor. They make sure all of the staples are at 45 degree angles, and they view every single step forward as a battle to be won. A goal is not as important as the validity of the points supporting its achievement.

This manager told me that big picture people inevitably rose above small picture people in the working world, but at the same time were incapable of functioning without small picture people. Small picture people were the engines; big picture people were the drivers.

How this applies to us

You can extend this far past the corporate world, of course. Politicians are often big picture, ignoring inconvenient details. Soldiers are small picture people, focusing on task management handed down to them by their superiors. Both are necessary, and a big-picture army private will have just as much trouble as a detail-oriented senator - both will be fish out of water.

One of the most apt criticisms you could make of the writing I do on brip blap would be that I’m awfully big picture. I like to think in terms of grand goals (”achieve perfect work/life integration, have a perfect lifestyle, achieve financial independence”) without attention to the detail to support that (”fix your credit score, maximize your tax credits”, etc.). I confess. I’m a big picture person at work. That’s helpful - one of the reasons I’m a corporate consultant is my ability to take huge numbers of small problems and weave them together into a theme and propose overarching solutions. That makes me, of course, annoying to the small picture people who have to create the spreadsheets and forms and widgets to fix problems in accordance with my recommendations, but you know what? Together, we get the job done.

So extend this to your financial life, or relationships, or whatever you’re worried about. I’m a big picture person, and Bubelah’s much more detail oriented. We try to plan a vacation and I worry about how it will affect our capital purchases or whether it fits into the grand scheme of our finances. She worries about whether we’ll be able to book the week we need, or have access to a washer/dryer for the inevitable piles of dirty clothes. I think it’s a nice compliment of skills, but from time to time it creates conflicts. But as much as it may create conflicts between couples, those conflicts are resolvable. The problem really arises when the individual can’t decide whether he’s big picture or small picture.

I know I’m a big picture guy. But if you’re someone who worries about details AND goals you’re going to have trouble. If you like to hammer away at the small things in life, embrace it. Fire up that to-do list and enter everything on it. If you’re a big picture guy or gal, write out a mission statement and forget about clipping coupons. I’ve got to say something terrible here - this is probably the single biggest argument in favor of marriage (other than providing a stable set of parents for kids) that I can make: finding someone who complements your “skill set” - for lack of a better term. You can of course accomplish this with friends or partners as well. The important thing is to recognize how you view the world - and find someone who can provide the yin to your yang, if I can steal a philosophical phrase.

So recognize where you’re coming from, and (at least according to my manager, who I had a lot of respect for), cast your lot. Don’t try and pretend you love detail if you’re a big picture person. Don’t try and pretend that you love goal-setting if your idea of a good time is wringing out an extra 5% savings. Embrace your “type” and use it to your advantage. Don’t try to be something you aren’t.

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As a side note, I’ve continued to have terrible computer AND internet problems - more or less a perfect storm of hardware problems (laptop dies without warning) and high-speed service breakdowns (one service died, and another will be hooked up next week- right now I’m sneaking a neighbor’s unsecured wireless account, and hoping I’m not hurting him while doing it).  I’m hoping for a resolution next week but any irregular posting is probably due to those problems.  Yesterday there was no post because I wrote one, published it, saw the PC crash - and lost the post.  Sleep won out over rewriting

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