Tag: investing

4 quick steps to building wealth

1. Find something you can do well and (at least moderately) enjoy doing.*
2. Do it.**
3. Try to save some of the money you make doing it.***
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3.****

I think that may be it. What do you think?


Creative Commons License photo credit: woodleywonderworks

* Notice I didn’t use a phrase like “doing passionately” or “doing because you love it.” You don’t have to love it, but you have to enjoy doing it enough that it is not annoying to you. If you love helping people, maybe working as a nurse’s assistant is enjoyable. If you have a passion for music, maybe owning a record store would be fun. If you have a love of football, maybe being a sports writer is enough. You don’t have to be Brett Favre, always “having fun out there.”

**It helps, obviously, if you enjoy investment banking or building fantastic dot-com startups instead of making rag dolls for the neighborhood kids. However, I don’t think you can discount loving doing it. If you want to make rag dolls, figure out a way to get rich doing it. Launch a rag doll company, or write a how-to on the internet. Somebody got rich on Cabbage Patch Kids, after all.

***As I’ve pointed out before several times you’re always better off thinking of more ways to MAKE money than SPEND money. At the same time, UNLESS you are investing in your wealthbuilding (spending money to increase your skills or education or to grow a business, etc.) you’re better off spending no more than 99% of your income. The difference between spending 99% of your income and 101% of your income is the difference between getting richer and getting poorer, any way you look at it.

****I hope that the general theme of wealth and ‘becoming rich’ doesn’t always come off as a crass pursuit of one more dollar. I realize, for example, I might have made a lot more money continuing to claw up the corporate ladder, but I felt so drained and lifeless doing it that I had to quit (see step #1). I like the idea of doing something more-or-less enjoyable, while making money doing it. It may sound childish, but if you work hard at something that makes you miserable you have to wonder whether you’ll be able to continue doing it well enough to succeed. Something you like doing - even something you just TOLERATE doing - is a better option. If you become wealthy doing it, so much the better; life is easier when you have a little money in the bank.

how to deal with a financial crisis

Watching the market these days you can be forgiven for a case of the heebie-jeebies. I’ve had them for a while now. You have two choices in dealing with downturns like this: either assume it’s the end of the world and time to start buying canned beets and bullets, or accept the conventional wisdom that this is a downturn like every other downturn in economic history. If you believe that, you believe that things are going to turn around eventually, be it six months or six years.

Great Depression
photo credit: Koshyk (traveling)

Here are 7 mistakes I’m not going to make in this crisis:

  1. Listening to pundits. I was watching a series of comments by guys working at firms that have a hand in this crisis - brokers, bankers, candlestick makers. Remember this: brokers win if you buy OR if you sell. They don’t care if you gain or lose, just that you move your positions a lot. Don’t be fooled by guys telling you it’s time to get out - they get the same commissions when you sell that they do when you buy.
  2. Stopping 401(k) contributions or withdrawing from retirement accounts. That money’s set aside, tax advantaged, and already “in there.” I’m not a financial adviser, but I’ll tell you this - I’ve upped my 401(k) contribution rate. That is the easiest method of averaging out purchase price on funds that I know of (other than Sharebuilder). I’m going to keep putting money in my 401(k)’s S&P 500 index fund. Why not? Tax free investments in a cheap fund? Sign me up. It may not be forever - I’ve expressed my doubts - but at least so far it looks like the best bet out there.
  3. Doubling down on my job. You may think now is the time to concentrate on your job and cling to it like grim death. Wrong. Now is the time to network, expand your skills and polish your resume. Now is the time when you have to be prepared - more than ever - to make a move to a new job or even a new career. I’ll give you an example - I’ve been attending seminars on emerging accounting issues to increase my consulting “cred,” and at the same time I’ve been looking into the requirements for a complete career change. I’m also making sure that I keep up my contacts, even as 50% of them are laid off.
  4. Neglecting my health. Market goes up, being healthy pays off. Market goes down, being healthy pays off. I’ve been neglecting my health recently. My weight is up, fitness is down and my eating habits are terrible. Any time is a good time to focus on health, though, and I will be doing just that. Your health is an asset, just like an IRA or a house: protect it.
  5. Taking on excessive risk OR being overly conservative. If you think now is the time that you can throw money in penny stocks and become the Buffet of Pennies - OR if you think it’s time to stuff euros in a sock in your closet - pull yourself together. As I said above, if you think this is the final economic crisis in the US - the beginning of the Road Warrior years - yank everything out. If you think you’re a lucky, lucky investor, plow your money into speculative junk equity. If you’re STILL convinced that the broader market will recover someday, do this: stick to the investment plan you had a month ago!
  6. Giving up on positive thinking. If you are like me, you are getting killed by negativity these days. I worked in the New York financial services sector as a consultant. “I told you this was going to happen” is not something people wanted to hear from their governance consultants these days. Even if you don’t expect the best, try to promote the best.
  7. Assuming my opinion doesn’t matter. Again and again you’re going to hear from political candidates what they will do and what they will fix. Let me tell you a secret that no candidate wants you to realize: they are terrified YOU will hold them accountable, and half (or 90%) of their election strategy is hoping you don’t. And a second dirty secret is this: your Congressman/woman is assuming you will vote for them once they are incumbent, because they are. But you know what? Your opinion matters. They are citizens, with one vote, just like you.

Mistakes? I’m sure I’ll make plenty. But I am trying my best in this crisis to realize that the biggest mistake I can make is changing my core beliefs in how to behave, how to invest and how to live. If more of us take charge of what we can control, we’ll be able to devote more of our attention to controlling our economy.

heat and links

Just in - it’s hot. The whole eastern US is hot. It’s interesting how extreme heat and extreme cold both have the same general effect on a family with small children - both extremes tend to make you stay indoors. We made it to the pool every day this week but one, but Saturday was hot enough that even the pool was unbearable. Good times.

So due to the heat, another one of my fairly abbreviated link roundups. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a “what I’m reading online” box over on the lower right hand side of the front page of the blog that’s updated throughout the week. I consider that a bit of an add-on to this weekly post. Plus my “thoughts” tumblr blog and my twitter account usually have a few more links, too.

  • BlogCrafted — build the blog you want!: A good consulting service if you need help building a blog.
  • Download My Free eBook: Invest Like a Pro: A good eBook for investors from Generation X Finance - worth checking out if you’re interested in learning more about investing.

    • » The secret of education: An excellent and thorough breakdown of the value of higher education that makes reference to a post I wrote way back when, attacking the humanities and praising a practical education in the sciences (read both Jacob’s post and mine before you bash me, incidentally).

And more…

the question that can only be answered one way

Both Bubelah and I have one surviving grandparent apiece. Until I was a young adult, I had all four; three of her grandparents had died either before she was born or when she was much younger. But now we both have a single grandmother left. It’s tough, of course, to lose relatives or friends but I think there’s something to watch the people whose genetic makeup pumps through your own veins pass away. The loss of health is sad; the loss of mental health is despair-inducing.

My own grandmother, though, will be one of the last people to see her way through retirement with the following: her pension; Social Security; survivor benefits from my grandfather’s pension; and finally, the remnants of my grandfather’s aggressive and carefully planned investment strategy. He began investing as a young man and was still studying stocks and monitoring his portfolio until the end of his life in his eighties. My grandmother was typical for those days, too - she understood very little about their financial situation. Like many women of the Greatest Generation, she focused on the expenses, not the income.

Once my grandfather passed, my parents took over my grandmother’s finances. I gave some advice but not much more than that. Nonetheless, my grandmother has continued to rely on my opinion simply because I do work in a field related to finance and (vaguely) economics. Speaking to her the other night, she asked a question which began to haunt me as a young man and these days has started to keep me up at nights.

“Do I still have enough to last until I die?”

A gambler or a credit card addict doesn’t think about that question. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Somebody will be there to help: daddy, adult children, the government, the market, the bank, Batman… but there is no scenario for most people that involves lying in the street freezing. I imagine that in the worst case most people imagine being stuck in a government nursing home, but consider what a safety net even that is: people expect the government to guarantee old age care. Yet the same people complain about communists like me who’d like to see government-provided health care for all ages.

That question can only be answered one way: yes. The question has two levels: will I have enough for basic cable and fresh milk and the occasional new sweater on one level, and ‘is there a future where I am aged, infirm, helpless, cold and hungry’?

I don’t spend enough time around the elderly in general - I think we have a lot to learn, good and bad, from them - but I have spent enough time to realize that the question ‘do I still have enough to last until I die’ is going to be a scarier and scarier question in the years ahead. I used to worry about the first part: would I have enough for me (at first), and then later, for my family: enough to do a little traveling with Bubelah, send my grandkids a Transformers XIII action figure and so on. But in my darker moods, watching the slow steady decline of the middle classes’ standard of living, the second part of that question creeps in, latches its claws into my lizard brain and stays. That’s when I remind myself that there’s only one possible answer to that question; I have to make sure that answer is ‘yes.’

photo by Eleaf

draft, drift and dreft - and links

I had a sudden inspiration on that title and realized that these words summoned up my past few days in a nutshell. The draft - the NFL draft consumed a good piece of my attention for a few days. My Jets didn’t need much current-year help, so I wasn’t too worried about their picks, but the draft was interesting overall. Here in Florida the Tebow watch was unbelievable. The drift? I managed to spend another week - in a long series of weeks - without really managing to do anything about the increasingly-likely-to-end consulting contract I’m working on. This blog provides minimal income, and my other business ventures are a victim (sob story) of the poor economy. I’d like to start a landscaping design business, but it’s hard to set aside the six-figure consulting gig. And Dreft? We were up to our ears in baby-and-kid tasks this weekend; cleaning up the house, running kid-related errands and simply serving the needs of The Kids. Exhausting. Very fun, at points, don’t get me wrong: I loved chasing down a soccer field with my 2-year old daughter who has shown an amazing ability to kick and direct an adult-sized soccer ball; she caught me with a crossover misdirection that had me dreaming of MLS contract money (hah). It’s all good, but it’s all tiring!

Some links. Someday I’ll start summarizing them again, but for now, just pick a couple at random and go there!

recurrent greed

A little more than two years ago I made one of my twice-a-decade stock purchases. During the early days of the financial crisis I bought what I thought was a severely underpriced General Electric (GE) at 19 per share. I allowed myself to fall into groupthink; working at a huge Wall Street client (which was almost about to collapse itself). All of the frequent traders I worked with were clamoring about ‘bargains’ and ‘steals.’ I let myself get seduced by the idea of blue chips on sale and snatched up a fairly substantial chunk of GE stock.

Soon I had unrealized losses soaring up to more than 50% of my original investment. GE bottomed out at a little more than $7 per share. As the market tumbled, I berated myself for being so foolish and set an alert to notify me if it ever rose about $19. I swore I’d get out of that position and get back into funds (or frankly, simple cash accumulation).

Time passed. The crisis thrashed around for a bit, then quieted down. Health care ‘reform’ replaced financial reform on the headlines and the market began a slow steady climb back up to 2008 levels. I forgot - as I like to do - about my portfolio and turned my attention to more important things like Season 2 of Mad Men.

Then suddenly, earlier this week, my phone pinged with a text: GE is above your notification limit of 19. More than two years later, I was reminded of how arrogantly I had crowed about my bargain purchase. I remembered how, with consulting work drying up and my portfolio bottoming out, I had bitterly regretted that purchase and told myself I would get out if I could ever just break even.

And I stared at the message. I could almost imagine the little angel on one shoulder (‘now you can get back to sensible investing’) and the little devil on the other (‘keep it just a little longer… this time it will be different’). I wondered if I should hold on to it just a bit longer… and deleted the text, and returned my attention to my work. I hoped this time things would be different.

Out of this mindset, of course, investors become speculators and Wall Street snickers. I know I’m supposed to be in it for the long term, and I know my investing strategy is now firmly centered around broad-based low-fee index mutual funds. But I still remember the “go-go” days and hope that I’ll get one more lucky strike.

Uncategorized

is life fair?

Can citizens in western societies strive for wealth at the same time society tries to be ‘fair’? Let me give you a few situations, and in each case think whether society is being ‘fair.’ Fair is a loaded word, but just assume for the time being it means that all people have equal outcomes for similar actions.

  1. A college graduate, well-educated about personal finance and the economy, decides to burn through everything they earn right now, saying “Why save for later? I’ll have fun now and hell with consequences.” Should society be responsible for his medical care and living expenses when he is 70 and can no longer work or care for himself adequately? If someone chooses to smoke and doesn’t insure himself, does society owe him health care?
  2. A child is born with 50 different health problems (heart, congenital diseases, you name it). The cost of keeping that child alive is monumental, exceeding even the most generous insurance benefits. The cost of keeping that child alive cripples not only the family but put a strain on the local doctors, etc. who effectively donate their time to treat her. What if the cost of keeping that child alive until she’s 25 will be astronomical, and that cost could immunize or treat hundreds or thousands of children who need it? What obligation does society have to help this child at the expense of others?
  3. Taxes on earned income in America (wages, etc.) are significantly higher for the middle class than for someone in the lower class (more than 40 percent of the US population pays no income taxes). Many people feel that is unfair (depending on your political and economic perspective). However, someone who lives off earnings from investments may pay 15% or less on their earnings, significantly less than a middle-class married couple who work as employees. Is it fair that employees - most of the middle class - pay a disproportionate share? And would it be fair to tax investors (“the rich”) more, but not tax the poor and middle class more?

Those are just a few examples of how a wealth-building society can be unfair. You have your own reactions to the scenarios above. Here are mine:

  1. I detest this attitude. His attitude will take money out of my pocket when he is older. But in western society, particularly in the US, the care and treatment of the elderly, the ill and those simply unfit to care for themselves are often left to the state. Should we have means testing for these people? “You didn’t get a decent job with good health insurance and keep your health up in your younger years, so to hell with you now that you’re old and have heart trouble? Live on the street because you didn’t save up.” As much as we might growl that in a moment of anger, I doubt anyone is prepared to see these people sleeping on the streets.
  2. I knew a child like this. She was a lovely, happy and intelligent child who suffered from an incurable genetic condition that meant her chances of living to be a teenager - much less an adult - were minimal. I knew her years and years ago and I have no idea what happened to her. The logical line to take would be to say “no, society has to follow the principles of the herd and Darwin and the devil take the hindmost” or “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one,” but unless you are a serial killer, devoid of emotion, it is impossible to meet children like her and not imagine society moving heaven and earth to care for her. Even if the chances of her living to be an adult are slim, she deserves her chance at whatever life she can have. My higher insurance premiums that may have resulted from that? Please.
  3. I am routinely infuriated by taxes. I am, however, not an adherent to the “no taxes” philosophy; a society that provides public services like police, postal services, libraries and a military has to raise revenues. They may not be spent wisely, but I can’t throw out the $800 screwdrivers with the public libraries - there will be good and bad. But I do realize that the unfairness in the system - the loopholes, the imbalance in taxation which favors investing income over wage income - may not benefit me now but it will when I am financially free. I plan to be one of the people living off my investments, earning no wage income and avoiding my fair share of taxes. So if I want to build wealth, why should I rail against this system? I intend for it to benefit me in the end. So I throw myself into battle against my 1040 again this year, struggling forward in anticipation of crossing the financial finish line. If I finish it - against the relatively daunting odds, considering I have no singing talent, ball-shooting ability or parents named Hilton - will I become a “raise my taxes to even things out activist”? Er, no.

Fairness is an overused (and misused) word. There is no fairness in a free, capitalist society, nor - when you stop to consider it - does anyone want complete fairness. Inequalities in the system are what allow wealth to be built, or care to be given to the exceptional, or even to allow for the occasional idiot. A fair society would not allow elderly poverty, but it would not allow for financial freedom, either - it would demand equality of outcomes. It would not have plastic surgery for starlets, but it would also not have medical treatment for children dying of expensive incurable diseases. A fair society would increase the burden of taxation on everyone without increasing benefits for the most needy. Human society being what it is, the concept of fairness will always remain just that - a concept. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

photo by Clearly Ambiguous

linklings, propane edition

So apparently if you have a propane tank to heat your water, you need someone to come fill it AFTER it’s been unlocked.  Having never dealt with propane before, I was a bit – to put it generously – confused about how it works.  Fortunately, after three days without hot water we finally got it sorted out and now have no excuse for smelling bad.  I put Little Pumpkin in a bath today and she positively babbled from excitement at being clean.

Having moved twice this year, I’ll recommend you never attempt it.  I think it worked out well enough, but the stress of packing and unpacking twice in six months is significant.  Add on Christmas – albeit a low-key one – and it’s a hectic time for us.  At least I don’t have to worry about snow this year.

linklings, life is good but life is busy edition

Once again, I found it way too easy to fall behind schedule. Here are few links for reading – I have been swamped with negotiating multiple long-term contracts, setting up my own firm and dealing with an impending move (Saturday) and the omnipresent kiddies! Life is good, but life is busy.

never underestimate the influence of a teacher

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After writing my post on my grandparent’s influence on my investing habits, my Mom clarified on how my grandfather got “into” investing and I thought it was worth a guest post. Lightly edited: how a Depression-era farm boy got into stocks. Largely in my mom’s words…

Your grandfather’s 8th grade teacher, Mr. Woodfin, who was also the “principal” of the two-room school house in Science Hill, Tennessee, taught his tiny class all about the stock market. He made them “buy” stocks and look them up in the newspaper (that came once a week). Your grandfather, in other words, participated in a very early version of the stock market game. This would have been in 1932-ish, so the timing is very odd but that’s what happened. Mr. Woodfin really indoctrinated at least one of his students, because your grandfather referred to him always when asked how he got interested in the stock market. Never underestimate the influence that teachers have!

As for how your grandfather picked stocks, he had two kinds of stocks: the ones he knew about (i.e. AT&T, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Ford, etc.) and the ones he didn’t know anything about (Intel, Microsoft, etc.). He did do a LOT of research but his main point of reference was the P/E ratio. He went to the library (well, he sent his wife, your grandmother) and checked out one of those big S&P stock reference books to do his research (it was navy blue, and I actually bought him one for his very own for Christmas one year). He did tend toward companies whose products he used (all of the above, plus pharmaceuticals, energy, and insurance). But he was also quite interested in the future during his middle age and early retirement years, so the whole computer thing fascinated him and he would ask your dad which companies looked like the ones that would succeed.

With regard to buy-and-hold, it worked well up to a point. He bought Cigna, his usual 100 shares, for a couple of thousand dollars, and we sold it right after his death for about $100,000 (at your – Steve’s - suggestion) in order to lock in some cash for Mother. So that worked well. On the other hand, he bought Ford at $40. He loved Fords, I love Fords. But we all know what happened to Ford. It is coming back, but I doubt Mother will live to see Ford hit $40 again. But he could barely stand to sell anything, partly because he was so sure that he had selected good companies, and good companies will always triumph in the end (right…). And secondly, he hated paying capital gains taxes, so he figured he’d pass them on to his descendants, or give them away to relatives and let them deal with it!

All in all, he did well. If he had been a little more aggressive about selling, he would have done better, but apparently Mr. Woodfin didn’t go that far in his stock market lessons!

The lesson I’ve always taken away from my grandfather was that careful study and disciplined investment meant a return on investment. I don’t know if the paradigm has changed; it’s been rough the last few years. But if you want to assume that the game hasn’t changed that much, invest in good companies, hold, and sell when the time is right. It ‘s a tough strategy to dismiss. It worked for my grandfather - on a “poor man’s” salary, he ended up with - for lack of a better word - financial freedom at the end of his life.

photo by kla4067

what my grandparents taught me about money

old couple going for a stroll

Most of my relatives have divergent ideas about money and its place in our lives. By relatives I’m including the wide range from my wife to my parents to my in-laws, etc. I realized a long time ago that it is a trivial undertaking to pick out the flaws in other people’s philosophies or actions - while at the same time failing to recognize them in your own thoughts and actions. However, I still find it a fairly useful exercise to try and determine the how-and-why of people’s good decisions and bad decisions. Even more important is trying to understand the ‘why’ behind those decisions.

My mother’s parents (my grandparents), for instance, were always quite frugal. They were both raised on farms in the 20s and 30s and suffered through the Depression. My grandfather left home to join the Army pre-World War II, serving in the horse cavalry – and yes, it’s hard to believe the US still had a horse cavalry less than 80 years ago, isn’t it? Here are some of their views towards money that I think are interesting, both good and bad, and my take on them.

  • Investing, a good habit. My grandfather was an early fervent believer in investing. Coming from a rural background and suffering through the Great Depression you might expect him to be very wary of investing, but he was quite the opposite. He invested heavily in the market, and on a schoolteacher’s salary did quite well over the years. He invested in the market although he had a state pension, and could have chosen to spend that money on other things. From him I learned a very conservative study-buy-and-hold approach. Although I didn’t know it at the time I learned it from him, his approach was basically the same as Warren Buffet’s. While it didn’t make my grandfather a billionaire, it did make him a huge ‘extra’ retirement fund on top of his pension and my grandmother’s.
  • Never selling, ultimately a bad habit. My grandparents maintained an almost emotional attachment to some of their stocks and held them year after year, even in times of declining prices, shrinking dividends and their own advancing age and deteriorating health. They saved these stocks thinking that they would be passed on to future generations (for example, me). But as they moved into more and more expensive housing (nursing homes are much more expensive than regular apartments, obviously) until he passed away, it became obvious that all of that money would not outlive both of them. Had they moved it into a savings account paying 5% ten years ago they could have been earning steady income and perhaps avoided some of the market fluctuations that ate away at their net worth.
  • Never really spending, good and bad. Although they amassed a modest “fortune “, during retirement my grandparents never spent much. They constantly talked of wanting to pass it on to my mother (an only child) and my brother and myself. They never traveled, although my grandfather dreamed of returning to see a peaceful France and Germany, where he had spent years during the war. They did ‘live large’ in some senses - they ate out frequently (albeit modest restaurants), they bought new cars for cash every few years while they could still drive, and they were extremely generous to everyone in their family. They gave us stocks, cash and other gifts for years. However, it is hard for me to look back on their 20+ years of retirement together before my Grandfather passed away and think that they never really did much after retiring. I know that part of that is my perception, since I love overseas travel, but I am not sure retirement was meant for watching TV and eating out. That’s a judgment each person has to make individually, I guess. But to view it in a more positive light, when my mom was younger and living at home they were very frugal, and even late in life my grandfather’s frugality could be amazing. A heavy, heavy smoker for his entire adult life, he quit cold turkey one day because he thought cigarette prices had finally gotten too high - and didn’t ever smoke again (17+ years). He never worried about the health aspect as far as I know, but paying $3 for a pack of cigarettes instead of $2 was apparently one dollar too much.
  • Avoiding debt, extremely good. My parents and grandparents gave me one gift that I realize is invaluable after I read many personal finance blogs: the fear of debt. I have been convinced since an early age that going into debt is practically a mortal sin, a stain on your character, a flaw. While I think it may have been overstated a bit, this philosophy has made me somewhat unique in a sense: I have never carried a balance on a credit card, EVER. I have had only two debts in my life: a car loan one time and a mortgage on my current house. Other than that, I have never bought anything I couldn’t pay for with my existing funds. So debt has never been a headache for me, which is a great gift. Possibly the greatest one you can get, because with debt so little else is possible.
  • Charity begins at home, mixed. I know this may run counter to many people’s beliefs, but another closely held belief of my grandparents was to take care of themselves and their own before others. This philosophy meant that there was no ‘automatic giving’ to charity until everyone in the family was taken care of. They gave generously to their church every week, but I am sure (without ever having seen it put to the test) that had I been in need for some reason they would have given that money to me, instead, for as long as I needed it, and forgotten the church. Give when you are able. Get your own financial house in at least minimal order before trying to help others. I do not subscribe to the Christian teaching that I should give ALL I own to the poor, and apparently from the number of late model SUVs and families in nice clothes I see in church parking lots I’m not alone in rejecting that teaching. It doesn’t mean you can’t give to charity - I certainly give to several children’s charities - but take care of your family first.

Those points are really just highlights. The important lesson to remember is that anything your family or your friends teach you about finance is valuable. Sometimes you may learn by avoiding their mistakes, sometimes you may learn by taking their advice to heart - but it’s all learning. From my maternal grandparents, I learned to save and to avoid debt but also that sometimes you need to spend money, too, because there ARE things and experiences in life worth the money. The truly important thing was never the money, it was the security the money bought, and being able to give back to their family, that mattered to them.

(another reworking of an article originally appearing on brip blap in 2007)

photo by Ghostboy

linklings, mid-week edition

I’ve decided to shift the link roundups to Wednesdays and stop posting on Saturdays. Traffic drops off significantly during the weekend and I tend to put off working on the blog Friday and Saturday nights.

I have been attempting to pull together about 15 different mini-projects, ranging from the personal (getting termite monitoring underway) to the professional (completing multiple SOX projects at work) to the “future professional (setting up an LLC). So far, not going well. I have been tripping myself up constantly by trying to jump from one to the next, rather than completing one and moving on to the next. One of the takeaways from Getting Things Done (a book I didn’t care for that much so I won’t even put an affiliate link here) that I did like was the idea of “context” to-do lists: instead of categories like “home projects” and “business”, you should have categories like “things I can do on the phone” and “things I can do while sitting at the computer”, etc. I liked that idea except for the “at the computer” category – it’s so easy with multiple tabs, etc. to jump to the next task “just for a second.” I need a British nanny to whack my hand every time I’m trying to complete a form online, then suddenly remember I need to check for a nearby oil change shop.

So for more click-away-from-what-you’re-doing fun, some links:

Robert Kiyosaki is Off his Rocker (Again) – Is The 401(k) Really the Biggest Scam Ever?: I don’t know if the 401(k) is the biggest scam ever; Madoff might have topped it, for example. I do think that a 401(k) is only worth investing in up to the point of an employer’s matching program. Past that, I think you are better off investing in an IRA, where you aren’t limited to an arbitrary set of funds. If your employer doesn’t match, it is a bit of a scam, designed to funnel workers’ savings into a narrow range of funds selected by the fund administrator, who may not be totally impartial. Gasp.

How to be a Millionaire… Not!: Statistics can be manipulated, quite cynically. I suspect that you have to rely on the author’s honesty more than you’d like to in many cases, particularly with a book meant to sell a certain worldview.

I’d also like to mention Akemi’s new ebook over at Yes-To-Me: “Lightworker’s Guide to Self-Employment”. It’s a nice resource on becoming self-employed, and since she’s recently done it herself she’s filled the book with some very practical advice. It’s generously priced, as well…free. Akemi’s more focused on the spiritual aspect of things than I would be, but I try to keep my mind open and she offers a lot of good advice in the practical sense, as well.

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