personal finance and career success, in balance with life
“So it goes.” - Kurt Vonnegut, in Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, a Fourth-Generation German-American Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod [and Smoking Too Much], Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire Bombing of Dresden, Germany, [...] Read more »
Went to see “The Lorax” this weekend. Here’s a short commentary on expectations, politics, and message. I expected the theater to be packed. I loved the book as a kid, my kids have heard it many times and we were all eagerly awaiting the movie for a while. Since we were going to the first [...] Read more »
One of the things I come back to again and again in my conversations with family, friends and colleagues is that there is no way to waste money on good health. Organic food can be pricey. A gym membership can be expensive compared to working out at home. Vitamins or medications can be burdensome. But [...] Read more »
Click image to enlarge Via: Streamline Refinance - the stats above were compiled courtesy of Mr. Money Mustache. Read more »
Minimalism and frugality* have been hot topics since the financial crisis of 2008 dropped the US into a deep recession, a shallow recovery and now apparently the beginnings of a second recession. As I’ve read about the minimalist, frugal lifestyle and thought about my own childhood, I’ve wondered about whether the ability to achieve a [...] Read more »
I’ve been stuck for blogging topics recently, and I realized that part of the problem is that I’m less interested in personal finance and productivity now than I was in the past since I feel I’ve reached a bit of a plateau. I understand some of the core lessons, and while I’m not perfect in [...] Read more »
One of my most popular posts on brip blap for several years now has been my “101 thoughts on how to lose 100 pounds” post. It still gets 100 or so views a day, three years after I published it. It’s an inspirational post, I hope, based on the true story of my efforts to [...] Read more »
Many of the choices we make in terms of the substances we ingest determine our health, of course, but also influence our wealth, happiness and emotions. A lot of the “ingestibles” in America are really bad for you. This is not solely an American problem but it seems to be exacerbated to a greater degree [...] Read more »
By Curmudgeon. Just to make sure none of my anxious relatives read this and think this is me, I’ll repeat – no, I didn’t write this. That having been said, Curmudgeon has a few important notes about health care in America that we’d all be better off thinking about now rather that later. My family [...] Read more »
One of the things I come back to again and again in my conversations with family, friends and colleagues is that there is no way to waste money on good health. Organic food can be pricey. A gym membership can be expensive compared to working out at home. Vitamins or medications can be burdensome. But [...] Read more »
By Curmudgeon, brip blap’s favorite guest writer… I have just had my annual physical examination (I passed, although some of the parts that have gone out of warranty are getting a little creaky). What? You haven’t seen a doctor in ten years? Are you, well, nuts? My parents were children of the Great Depression (not [...] Read more »
I’m going to divert from my usual ramblings and talk about the staggering (to me, at least) implications of the COBRA premium reduction. First of all, what is COBRA? From Wikipedia: “The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985… is a law passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Reagan that, among other [...] Read more »