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From Wikipedia:

The Cambrian explosion was the seemingly rapid appearance of most major groups of complex animals around 530 million years ago, as evidenced by the fossil record. This was accompanied by a major diversification of other organisms. Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organised into colonies. In the following 70 million to 80 million years, the rate of evolution accelerated by an order of magnitude, and the diversity of life began to resemble today’s.

photo credit: Michael (mx5tx)

A half billion years ago, the only living things on Earth were, generally, pond scum. Life had been around for billions of years in the form of very simple living things, but evolution had ground to a halt. Nothing changed for a long, long, long, long time.

Then suddenly, some sort of event occured that scientists call “The Cambrian Explosion.” In the next 70 million years - an exceptionally short period of time, in terms of the history of the Earth - the number of species exploded. You had little critters, not just algae. You had trees, bushes, insects, all kinds of animals. And we have no idea why the jump occurred from single-celled pond scum to scurrying critters. None. Darwin said this event was the big, big, BIG hole in this theory. Some freak event happened and everything that’s come since originated from that funky timeframe.

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is taken as fact by most people. I do; to me, even if you believe in God Darwin makes sense. God’s complex enough to design evolution, I think. But even Darwin said the Cambrian Explosion cast some doubt against his theory of evolution. Life had dribbled along for eons without any change, then BOOM! Big change happened in a short period of time. Mutation must have exploded beyond any reasonable or possible level to make the Cambrian explosion occur.

Here’s my question: do most of us have a moment of Cambrian explosion in our lives? In my case, it happened when I read (completely by accident) Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It’s not that I was stupid about money - I had plenty of savings, I was making a lot of money and I was living relatively frugally (albeit with the almost obligatory-excessive Manhattan lifestyle in regards to social life). But I suddenly had a flash of inspiration: the goal was not to maximize my income from my job so I could maximize my spending, the goal was to maximize my LIFE by making my income sufficient to cover my expenses for the forseeable future.

That’s no small achievement, and to this day I would thank Kiyosaki for that insight. But that insight was driven by an external force, and I never would have found it without reading that book. Dumb story: why did I buy Rich Dad, Poor Dad? Because I had a child on the way and I searched on amazon for “finance for dads.” All I wanted was tips on 529s and similar things. I didn’t ever consider that the greatest gift I could provide my son was a mom and a dad who were financially independent and no burden on their kids, even though that’s probably the greatest gifts MY parents have given my brother and me.

Most of us do have a Cambrian explosion in us; a moment when some dumb chance (or divine intervention if you’re so inclined) strikes us and causes a staggering change in state. Make sure you’re open to it, ready for it and willing to accept it - even if things were working before and you don’t see the need for the change.

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I wrote this post for The Giving Hands a few months ago. I really liked writing it since I care deeply (although I have a long way to go in implementing my concern) about the environment and I don’t write much about it at brip blap. People took issue with my point about foam cups, but I’ll let you be the judge!

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Sometimes the simplest actions can have the most profound effects. A tiny nail can puncture a car tire and cause an accident. A handful of votes in Florida can change the course of history. And according to the infamous ‘Butterfly Effect’ even the beating of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can change weather patterns across the US.

When we look at global warming, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways in which our small actions can help postpone the coming disaster. Too often people are intimidated by the enormity of global warming. Thinking of such vast and epochal changes can make our role seem insignificant or even unimportant. However, the road we are traveling down is propelled by countless individual choices, and if enough of these choices can be made for the good of the environment instead of for its harm, we may yet see some slowing of these troubling trends.

So the challenge is to help people identify the small changes they can make as a first step in the fight against global warming. Not everyone needs to attend a demonstration, or live like No Impact Man (although it couldn’t hurt to emulate a lot of what he does). Instead, try doing some of these simple steps yourself.

• Take the stairs. The average office elevator consumes 350 watts of electricity to travel from one floor to the next, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior. That’s enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 3.5 hours.
• Unplug your chargers. According to the US EnergyStar program, the chargers for cell phones, laptops and other rechargeable devices can use up to 20 times more energy than the devices themselves! They continue to actively draw energy as long as they are plugged in, even if the device is fully charged.
• Unhook unused devices with remote control capability. 40% of the energy used by a TV in its lifetime will be used while it’s turned off.
• Change your thermostat. When it’s hot outside, remember that a room cooled to 75 degrees Fahrenheit uses more than 25% more energy than one cooled to 78 degrees. And when it’s cold outside, for each degree you turn down the heat while you sleep your heating bill is reduced by approximately 1 percent.
• Turn off the water before brushing. Every time you brush your teeth you use up to 5 gallons of water if you leave the water running.
• Take a bath. A typical bath uses about 25 gallons of water. A typical 5-minute shower uses 50. Consider installing a low-flow shower head to cut back on shower water usage.
• Switch out ONE light bulb. Replacing one incandescent bulb with a CFL bulb reduces the amount of carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1,000 pounds over the lifetime of the bulb.
• Skip eating meat for one meal. A pound of soy requires 250 gallons of water. A pound of beef requires an amazing 10 times that much water - 2500 gallons. The massive overuse of water doesn’t include the damage to other water supplies due to runoff from animal waste.
• Use a foam cup for your morning tea or coffee. This one is surprising, but did you know that for each time you use a foam cup, you use 1/1000th as much energy as is needed to produce one ceramic mug? That means you need to use a ceramic mug 1000 times before you are ‘breakeven’ with the energy usage of a foam cup - and that is assuming you use an EXTREMELY water-efficient dishwasher and don’t wash by hand. So if you use a foam cup for 3 cups of tea or coffee before disposing of it, it’s significantly less wasteful of energy than if you used a ceramic mug EVERY day for 8 years before it breaks or is disposed of! The energy needed to create (and wash) a ceramic mug makes it less friendly to the environment than you might think.
• Most importantly, convince one other person to look at this list and start making changes in their lifestyle. That is the biggest step of all.

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In no particular order, with no particular theme, here are a few random simplification tips. Each one of them were ideas I had for separate posts, but they never really gelled, except #2, which was one of my early, early posts. Hopefully taken as a whole they provide a few simple ways to simplify life…simply.

1. Learn to cook. You will be healthier (fewer health-related bills if you eat homemade healthy food than if you stop for takout every evening) and you will save money (unless you shop exclusively at Whole Paycheck, and even then it’s probably cheaper). Learn to cook healthy food, though. If you don’t cook, learning to cook will change your life for the better: it’s cheaper, healthier and better for your social life.
2. Consolidate accounts. I used to spend a lot of time worrying about ten different credit cards and five different brokerages and a half-dozen retirement accounts and three checking accounts… you get the picture. It got worse when I got married - but then we saw the light and consolidated our accounts. Now I can go to Yodlee (easily the best account consolidation site out there, bar none, which I get through our bank) and tell you my net worth within seconds, pay all of my outstanding bills in minutes (those that aren’t autopaid) and check up on all of my accounts immediately. Our financial “basics” take less than an hour each month to maintain, freeing us up to concentrate on other things.
3. Get married (and the corollary, don’t get divorced) or at least keep a stable monogamous relationship. If you get married, you’ll inevitably spend more money and save more money, have more time and less time - but I believe on balance being married means you have two brains to assault money problems (and opportunities) and we all know two brains are better than one.
4. Stop trading, start investing. One of the worst time-wasters in my life used to be trading. Trying to keep up with the markets was a losing battle. Sure, I won some and lost some but the amount of time I spent and the tiny net improvement over passive investing was not worth it. Make targeted investments in things you understand. If you understand real estate, invest in real estate. If you understand hedge funds, invest in hedge funds. If you don’t understand anything, invest in some books about finance.
5. Take public transportation if it’s available. I know you love your car, and I know the bus is a half mile away and crowded and doesn’t run on your schedule and blah blah blah blah. Public transportation is cheaper, better for the environment, better for your health (lots of walking and stairs). You don’t have to get train insurance, or fill up the subway with gas. You don’t have to take the bus in for repairs or buy new wipers for it. The bus is destroying the planet at a slightly smaller rate.
6. Don’t buy stuff. I’ve already written about this, but I am a firm believer that you should buy stuff you need and don’t buy stuff you don’t. That’s a simple concept but hard to execute for a lot of people.
7. Adapt to change. Trying to fight change in your life can waste money and make life more complicated than it needs to be. At every stage in my life I’ve found instances where I fought changing my habits - I didn’t want to cook at home (too lazy), to consolidate accounts (too much work), to get married (too busy with career), to invest instead of trading (I was smarter than the market, oh yeah), take the bus (I’m a busy international jet-setter, I have to take taxis!), or make do with what I’ve already got (this recipe calls for peppercorns ground by hand in a mortar and pestle, I couldn’t possibly find anything around the house to duplicate that action). Be willing to change your thinking and you’ll be ahead of 90% of the population of Planet Earth.

Popularity: 4% [?]

photo credit: southtyrolean

I was at a street fair last summer when Little Buddy was first toddling along and knew how to dance just by wobbling back and forth and waving his arms. We were walking with my parents and came across one of the booths playing some music.

If you haven’t ever been to a New York street fair, they are tremendous fun. One of the North-South avenues is blocked off for 30 or 40 blocks and a variety of vendors fill up the streets and pedestrian traffic fills it up quickly. Everything is sold: sheets and bamboo mats, CDs and funnel cakes, high end purses and knockoffs of high end purses. Music blares from every corner, the smell of fried foods and kebabs and onions fill the air, and a good time is had by all.

So in the midst of this street fair Little Buddy tottered along with a protective father hovering over him. We came by a booth selling reggae CDs and blasting out reggae music (or faux reggae - UB40’s “Red Red Wine” - but it’s all good). He stopped and listened, entranced. Two guys who were either rastafarians or very accurate imitators of rastafari style were leaning against the booth, smoking. I am no expert (although I am not a complete naïf) but the smell of their smoke was not exactly cigarette smoke. Eh, no matter, it’s all-natural, after all. I was ready to pass on by with a wry smile, as I do.

But Little Buddy marched up to them and started to dance, beaming like the sun. He turned around in front of the two of them and danced. Everyone walking by laughed. He swayed and popped to the music. One of the two guys turned to me and said, “He is irie, mon, he is irie an’ he don’ care who know.” (That’s my poor written imitation of a Jamaican accent, and it sounds - to me, a fan of reggae music, the most positive, happy music I know - almost unbearably cool). It was a nice comment to make to a still-relatively-new father.

But that’s not the point - the point was that Little Buddy saw his happiness and grabbed it. Children have a way of doing this. They don’t think of consequence and they don’t think of fear or embarrassment. It’s not always a good thing - sometimes caution is necessary - but adults have definitely had this ability to seize happiness beaten out of us. We feel the need to be self-deniers, to SAVE forever for a retirement that may not come or a dream house that will have an empty room because we can’t afford furniture after making the mortgage payments.

If you read a lot about money on the internet, stop once in a while. Buy a latte. Eat lunch in the park. Live your life a bit. I know you need to scrimp and save and deny, deny, deny, but the moments when you can grab your happiness and wring it dry are few and far between. Your money problems will be there tomorrow. Today, be irie.

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“The joy of having a baby today can only be expressed in two words: tax deduction.”

- Anonymous, via About.com

By the time most of you read this post, I will probably be sitting and waiting. Whether I’m sitting and waiting hand and foot on my wife and daughter or still waiting for the doctors to catch up to their schedule remains to be seen. I feel somewhat superstitiously trepidation writing something like this in advance of the event, but today my wife’s C-section was scheduled and we were off to the hospital for our (ever so slightly early) 6:30 am appointment.

photo credit: mape_s

Preparing for a child is a funny exercise. We have been running around, cleaning, organizing, buying and returning for months now. Our son has been fed a steady diet of “I’m a Big Brother” books and given a baby girl doll to care for. We think we’re ready.

And of course you never are… I fully expect to be hit in the head with a brick just like I was when my son was born. The brick was the “wow, I’m a father! uh-oh, I’m a father!” brick. It was followed closely by the “can humans actually survive on this little sleep” brick, by the way.

Posts will still be appearing but forgive me if I’m a little slow replying to emails or comments for a few days! Actually the real chaos will begin early next week when Bubelah and the baby (gotta think of a nickname like Little Buddy has) come home!

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I ride the New Jersey PATH trains into Manhattan most weekdays.  If you aren’t familiar with New York, I can summarize by saying that it’s basically the “New Jersey subway.”  It connects three of the big Jersey cities - Hoboken, Newark and Jersey City - to midtown and lower Manhattan.  A lot of commuters will drive to the station, park and take the train from there rather than ride into the city (I take a bus).  It’s slightly cheaper than the New York subway and (in my opinion) better maintained.

The first stop in Manhattan is the Christopher Street station, in Greenwich Village.  Christopher Street and the immediate area is a charming little bit of Manhattan that summons up images (unfortunately) of Courtney Cox living in a multi-million dollar apartment on an unemployed cook’s earnings.  It’s a nice little area, but not a big center for business - it’s more of a shop-and-restaurant kind of area.  One of my favorite restaurants, Alfama, is nearby.

I never get off at Christopher Street during the work week.  I only exit there if Bubelah and I are going to dinner in the Village, which we haven’t done recently.  But during the work week there’s an odd little scene that goes on during the morning commute.  Two guys who appear to be station workers - I never really see their badges, but they have the general PATH worker getup - stand near the station exit.  And they yell.  A lot.

The funny thing is that they yell really funny, encouraging things to people.  “Looking great!”  “Go get ‘em, tiger!”  “You are the man!” are mixed with cheery waves, high fives and big grins.  These two guys look like they might’ve just finished the evening shift and just decided to hang around to cheer people up.

It’s a fun little scene to watch.  I get a smile from it every day.  And the good lesson is that I hope if someone asks those guys “What do you do?” when meeting them for the first time, they don’t say “I work for the PATH.”  I hope they say “I make people happy.”  It’s nice to see good people doing good things for nothing except the sake of doing good things.

photo credit: skunks… and yes, I know, it’s Hoboken’s PATH station… I couldn’t find a pic of Christopher Street!

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Physics tell us that one of the laws of the universe is this:

You can’t unscramble an egg.

Think about it. It can’t be done. You can freeze liquid water, then heat it and turn it to gas and back to water, but you can’t unscramble an egg. It just won’t unscramble. Hit it with gamma rays, do whatever you want and it won’t unscramble.

I like to think of this every time I feel like eating junk food these days. Sure, I can eventually lose the weight I gain from eating Ho-Hos, but those chemicals and those unneeded calories have passed through my body and there is no way to undo that. As you eat, you are either damaging or helping your body, and that damage - although possibly almost infinitely small - can’t be undone.

The same principle applies to finance. If you spend an hour of your life earning $20, then you spend that $20 on a CD, it’s gone. Your life is gone. If you spend two hours getting a listing ready on eBay and you make a profit of $1.34 selling a CD, that time is gone, too. Was it worth that $1.34? Was the initial purchase of the CD worth $20?

And similarly, every time you watch TV you lose a piece of your life. I know it may sound like an obsessive focus on money, but that is time you could have been working on your education, or coming up with money-saving ideas, or studying investments. Everyone needs to relax, but you have to choose how to spend your life. Watching an episode of Gilligan’s Island for the third time is not what Benjamin Franklin would have done. Tony Robbins has a good bit about watching reruns of programs: he says we have two driving forces in our life, the desire for surprise and the desire for consistency, which are constantly at war. We want to watch a funny TV show for the second time because we know it’s funny; but we also hope something new will happen or we’ll see something we missed before. The chances of both of those desires being met decreases each time you see the same show in reruns. As he says, if you ever watch any TV show or movie more than once - get a life.

And trust me, I do this all the time. I have seen The Matrix and The Russia House so many times I can practically recite them - but I do know it’s time wasted.

So the next time you think about buying that CD or wasting time “making money” on eBay or seeing “that great episode where Gilligan breaks the Professor’s coconut-powered radio” just ask yourself if you really want to scramble that egg. Time is short, and it always - always - moves forward.

photo credit: swanksalot

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