Tag: other

holy dismal science, batman!

Dick: “Gosh, Economics is sure a dull subject.”
Bruce: “Oh, you must be jesting, Dick. Economics dull? The glamour, the romance of commerce… Hmm. It’s the very lifeblood of our country’s society.”

- From the Batman TV series, Dick Grayson (Robin) speaking to Bruce Wayne (Batman)

If Batman was right - and let’s face it, he’s The Batman - then the lifeblood of our country seems to be pumping quite feebly these days. Tales of woe and tidings of Huns scurry across the (virtual) front pages of every (electronic) rag day after day. Gas prices are exploding, house prices are falling, banks are collapsing and deficits are exploding. The two major party candidates stumble over their own feet promising easy fixes that don’t require BOTH tax increases and spending cuts. The US continues to slog forward in two wars and muttering about future conflicts across the world. Major institutions are failing and unemployment, inflation and blood pressures are rising while real wages are falling. Batman, where are you?

Roar
photo credit: Beard Papa
So what can The Batman tell us about the best ways to deal with an uncertain economic future?

1. Believe in yourself. Batman is always confident in his ability to combat chaos and evil. He is aware of his own shortcomings, and works to make them strengths. He doesn’t try to bluff - he knows what he can do and he uses those strengths to his own advantage.
2. Innovate. Batman knows that he’s fighting unpredictable villains. He uses surprise and unusual approaches to foil them - just as we have to when considering the new economic challenges we face. Don’t wait for the “inevitable” to happen - get out in front of it.
3. Take aggressive action. Batman is not one of those superheroes - like Spiderman - who spends a lot of time worrying about whether his action are justified. He gets out there and gets started, pronto. Don’t wait for the economic misery of the country as a whole to hit you directly. Get out there and work around it first.
4. Have firm guiding principles. If one point is made over and over again in the Batman universe, it is that Batman doesn’t kill anyone. No matter how angry he is, he keeps a guiding principle. If you have a guiding principle, trust in it. Don’t want to work for a big corporation? Stick to your guns. Don’t want to leave New York? Move into someone’s closet and go out and make money to rent someone’s hamper.
5. Rely on technology. One thing that’s clear about the economy of the future: prized workers are not going to be tech-ignorant. The days when you can sit back and tell people with pride that you know how to do The Google are over. Just like Batman, you need to remember that the brute force of your personality isn’t going to save the day by itself.
6. Remember that even loners can benefit from being part of a team. Batman likes to project a loner image, but he has Alfred, his butler. In some Batman stories, he has Robin. Batman is willing to leverage a team when he needs to do so. He is ready to take the plunge on his own, but he is unafraid of sharing the credit.
7. Don’t give in to despair. Batman never gives up. From day one, when his parents were murdered, he turned his despair towards improving the world, not shying away from it. Even when economic times get tough, and you see that shiny 401(k) descending into a batcave, you need to focus on your guiding principles and efforts to achieve greatness.

site changes, all for the good, I hope!

A brief note to everyone: if you are a site visitor (and not a feed reader) you’ll notice that the comment system has been pumped up substantially. I’ve signed up with a service (disqus.com) that allows threaded replies (you can reply to specific posts), voting replies “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to set the most popular replies, and the addition of gravatars (images of yourself that will appear every time you comment). Hopefully everyone will find these changes to the comments fun - and useful. Please play around with the options if you get a chance - some fun manipulation of the comments can be achieved.

You’ll notice a few other “neat” things being added over the next week, so please let me know if anything doesn’t work - or let me know if there’s any new feature you enjoy. My goal, as always, is to make brip blap as interesting a place to visit as possible! Feel free to give me suggestions, too - if there’s anything missing that you’d like to see, let me know.


photo credit: fab to pix

a desperate addiction

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.

more or less a one year anniversary

“To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.” -Johannes A. Gaertner

I have been writing Brip Blap for slightly more than a year now in its current incarnation. For those of you who never saw the old site (which is probably 99.999% of you), I did maintain a Blogger blog with this name for about four years. It was, at best, a giant linkfest for political articles, primarily about US presidential politics. I would get readers occasionally but it was first and foremost a personal venting forum. I restarted Brip Blap last June with a focused plan to write useful, informative and hopefully sometimes funny articles about life, family, personal finance and whatever else crossed my mind - but always on the general topic of self-improvement. I decided to write this post early on to make sure I would never forget to thank the people who helped me at the beginning. I actually wrote this post last summer (in August 2007).

This version of Brip Blap has been far more satisfying to me, both as a writer and as a person, than the first version. I have been very lucky to receive some encouragement early on from people who had no obligation to help me out, but did anyway. Each one of them kept me motivated when my total number of visitors were tiny and my struggles with learning how to write a coherent post and how to use WordPress were killing me.

So as I hit my one-year anniversary, I would like to first say thank you to: Lazy Man and Money, who was the first person to link back to Brip Blap. His link spurred the first surge in traffic - basically providing the first readers who weren’t related to me. He has continued being exceptionally helpful, both visibly and behind the scenes, and most importantly providing a lot of encouragement over the last year, without which I never would have really gotten started. I owe him a great deal. Thanks to Patrick of Cash Money Life, who used StumbleUpon to ‘stumble’ an early post of mine which then exploded into tens of thousands of page views and expanded my blog’s reach by huge amounts. I would also like to say thank you to Penelope Trunk, who took the time to write me, the author of a tiny little blog, several very kind and encouraging emails out of the blue when I first started. She also linked to a post of mine from her Yahoo! Finance column. That one mention drove a huge amount of traffic to my site. I am still amazed to this day that she did all of that.

But that’s not all! Thank you to Saving Diva, who started commenting on my site when nobody else was. Thanks also to many of the other bloggers who have provided content that inspired me and whose thoughts on my work, both in comments and emails, have helped me improve my writing (I hope): Moolanomy, AskDong, Four Pillars (now Quest for Four Pillars), The Digerati Life, and many, many others. My Two Dollars and Finance Is Personal were the first sites to feature guest posts from me, which I really appreciated. Thanks to every blogger who allowed me to guest post, and thanks to everyone who has given me a guest post. I have also drawn a lot of inspiration from Millionaire Mommy Next Door, and the support of other bloggers like Guinness416 and Mrs. Micah. Zen Habits and The Simple Dollar were real inspirations early on for me, too.

Thanks to my network, The Money Writers. I joined a few months ago and since then I’ve received tons of encouragement from them, plus a lot of technical advice. It’s a great group and if you like my blog they all have the same mindset as I do:

The M-Network blogs have been great. I have some great interactions with all of them and I think they are a great bunch of people and bloggers. Almost all of them have helped me out in one form or another from the beginning and I really appreciate it.

Commentators here at brip blap have been fantastic. If you are a blogger you’ll understand what I mean, but if not let me tell you - the first few times you have someone make a reasoned, thoughtful response to something you wrote … well, it’s a rush. I am terrible about responding to comments, I know, but I read all of them, and I couldn’t be happier to see everyone having an opinion on my blog. It is absolutely amazing as a writer to get that feedback.

A special thanks to anyone and everyone who has read brip blap in the past year, comments or no. I enjoy writing enough that I would do it for my own entertainment, but obviously it’s a lot more fun when someone reads what you write! I was happy when I hit 100 visits and now I am approaching a million. That is quite - for lack of a better word - cool.

If I’ve forgotten anyone, forgive me! I have enjoyed every exchange of ideas over the last year, and every bit of correspodence, traffic, suggestions, good wishes and constructive criticism has been priceless! The blogging community has been terrific. So many people have been so good to me it’s impossible to list them all. There is hope for this world…

I’d also like to thank the advertisers on the site, who I am sure are also faithful readers…

And of course, most importantly I have to thank my family (thanks particularly to you, Mom) and above all my wife, Bubelah, who encouraged me to start writing and who in her relentlessly positive attitude never, ever expresses a second’s doubt that I will succeed at this or anything else I do. Ti moya sertse.

Thanks, everyone. On a personal level, I really appreciate it. I never expected this. You are great.


Creative Commons License photo credit: joeltelling

a brief update

stethescope
Creative Commons License photo credit: happysnappr

Just in case anyone has noticed that I have been somewhat quiet in regards to comments and emails, I beg your forgiveness and I hope to catch up soon. Something I never could have predicted - out of all of the things I was nervous about - happened over the last few days after my daughter was born. I got very sick the day after she was born with what I guess was a flu. I’ve been staggering around with a 103 fever, unable to eat anything, coughing through the mask I had to wear for fear of infecting everyone else and generally struggling just to keep moving. Just to put it in context, I am very seldom sick. After losing so much weight and starting to eat a healthier, natural diet (and washing my hands and using Purell a lot) I’ve found I get maybe one cold per winter and it’s usually over in 48 hours. I haven’t had anything more serious than a cold except once in the last 10 years (I had a bout with strepthroat about 4 winters ago).

I do count my blessings, though. My parents and my wife’s parents and sister were supremely helpful, my daughter and son are both doing well, and my wife is recovering very well from the delivery, too. So there is much to be grateful for. If the worst that happened was me getting sick, so be it. Probably the worst of it for me has been that other than the first day - before I realized I was sick - I haven’t been allowed to hold my daughter, which has been a real emotional downer. But tomorrow I think I will be ‘healthy’ with a small ‘h’ and getting back on board with the fun stuff of parenting and problogging and enjoying summer at home.

So bear with me! I appreciate all the comments and emails and just felt bad that I had fallen so far behind, and I will get caught up!

The Final Four

No, not the basketball one - I’ve made the Final Four in Free Money Finance’s March Madness. I’m being killed right now by the (quite worthy) article from I’ve Paid For That Twice Already on snowflaking! I’ve been cruising through the tournament up until this point, but it looks like I’ve got an uphill struggle to win this one. Gimme a hand if you have a sec - just go there and comment “Game 1: Late, Game 2: Lessons” (the second one is my fellow Money Writer, SVB of the Digerati Life).

I want to win the whole thing. The proceeds, should I win, go to a charity, The Russian Children’s Welfare Society (link to my article about it), that I’ve already won some money for this year, and I’d desperately like to do it again. I need some votes so if you have a second and can help me out, I’d be grateful! Head on over and help me help Russian orphans. It’s a nice way to spend your Sunday!

Creative Commons License photo credit: *sean

crowdsourcing


Creative Commons License photo credit: davidChief

If you’ve ever visited a doctor about an ache in your shoulder you’ve probably been given the cliched-but-true advice “get a second opinion.” What if, instead of just getting two opinions you could get three? Eighteen? 48,132? That’s the principal behind crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing is - at a very basic level - throwing a task or request for information out into the public, and accumulating and selecting the best results. The theory is similar to “getting a second opinion.” You go see a second doctor because you want to see (a) if the doctors agree - which gives you a level of confidence that they are both right, or (b) if they disagree - in which case you’ve been given a level of confidence that at least one of them is wrong. If they disagree, you may need to seek a third opinion as a tiebreaker. If you take that and extend it to 10,000 doctors, you’re crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing - as a term - was first used by Jeff Howe in a June, 2006 Wired Magazine article (from Wikipedia). Most people are familiar with crowdsourcing through sites like Wikipedia, which uses tens of thousands of contributors and editors to create “encyclopedia” articles, on the assumption that errors and inaccuracies by the few will be corrected by the many. You don’t have to go far to find “offline” examples of crowdsourcing (Wikipedia even cites a few). When the World Trade Center towers were destroyed, the public was asked to vote on architects’ renderings for new construction on the site. American Idol is almost a form of crowdsourcing - instead of record executives plucking the next Britney or Hillary or Rhianna out of obscurity, AI relies on the assistance of the American voting public to select the Next Big Thing (with surprisingly mixed results - for every Kelly Clarkson there’s a Justin Guarini).

Crowdsourcing is evident daily in the New York public transportation system. Law enforcement is crowdsourcing surveillance, a tactic used by the US in World War II and (slightly more disturbingly) by the Soviet Union.

The Internet has made crowdsourcing simpler. Some interesting examples:

Each of these sites rely on crowdsourcing. Digg and Wikipedia, for example, effectively have thousands and thousands of people working diligently to provide, vet and publicize their content - for free. Manipulation of these services is attempted from time to time - Wikipedia quite famously has had bad publicity over paid crowdsourcing. Interestingly, the crowds usually supress efforts at manipulating content - but as the value of crowdsourced information becomes greater and greater, the efforts by third parties to manipulate the results will grow both more effective and more subtle. However, the results of sites like the National Journal’s Political Stock Exchange have been remarkably accurate over time - often more accurate than paid professional pollsters. Witness Senator Clinton’s comeback win in New Hampshire over Senator Obama, for example.

Since I learned of the term I’ve been fascinated with the idea. There is a book, The Wisdom of Crowds, that’s on my reading list that talks about this phenomenon, as well. The ideas of individuals are less and less reliable today, particularly coming from the Internet. You may still trust your neighbor when he tells you his doctor is the best in town. But can you trust BookLuvver439 on amazon.com’s review of a book? I imagine you don’t. What you DO trust is looking at a book with 15 reviews that are all positive, and this trust grows with the number of reviews. Would you trust 486 positive reviews more than 3?

So how can you apply this concept to your personal life? First of all, rely on crowdsourcing wisely. If you read crowdsourced advice on losing weight, it’s what’s popular for the crowd - but it may not be applicable for you. Your tastes may be different (I was the only person in America who thought Titanic was boring, poorly acted and cheesy, I think). However, it can be a powerful tool. In personal finance blogs bits of advice like “invest in index funds” and “live frugally” and “buy a Wii” (just kidding) are so common that I would call them crowdsourced. Look for areas where consensus has evolved around the answer to a common question.

I want to find the next great crowdsourcing idea. I doubt I have the programming skills to make a website like Digg work, but all it takes is an idea. Could you crowdsource crowdsourcing ideas? The possibilities are endless.

When you look at my most popular posts on the upper right hand side of this blog - that’s crowdsourced. A lot of people stumbled my article on losing weight. Does it make it right for YOU? It might, although if you’re seeking to alter your diet or exercise I would always check with a health professional. A lot of people read those tips, liked them and thought they were good enough to recommend to the rest of their crowdsourcing “group” at StumbleUpon (my favorite crowdsourcing site). What I find really cool about it, though, is the fact that what other people choose as the most interesting articles are not the ones I would have chosen - that teaches me something about what works and doesn’t, and that’s always a lesson worth learning.

new prosper blog post


Creative Commons License photo credit: DeclanTM

I’ve got a new post at the Prosper blog, and I’ve got a post on the most recent Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by the mighty Canadian duo-blog team at Quest for Four Pillars. I’d also like to refer everyone to Daily Lit - if you use a feed reader and you like books, this thing is addictive.

a brief foray into political what-ifs

Imagine, for a minute, that you don’t have to worry about saving for retirement. Imagine that you don’t have to worry about health care costs bankrupting your family, or losing benefits when you lose your job. How would that affect your life?

Bubelah and I like to gripe that consideration of these two factors cripples much of the entrepreneurial spirit of America, or at least ours. I remember when I was working in western Europe most people had a very lazy attitude about saving for the future. The social contract in most of those states provided for their health care and retirement, so the practice of amassing huge amounts of wealth was not a popular one. Mortgages were much less common, so people would rent until they had enough cash to buy a home. At least amongst my colleagues the use of credit cards was minimal and concerns about the future seemed muted (or restricted to meta-problems like the environment or peace in the Middle East).

“But wait! The taxes!! The taxes!!” the American psyche cries. I pay a lot of taxes already. If you bundle up what I pay (and even worse, will be paying) in health care costs, plus the costs of what I have to save since there’s no REAL governmental pension forthcoming, I bet 80% of my income is gone:

  • Approximately 40% goes to federal and state taxes.
  • Another 6% goes to property taxes.
  • I pay 8% of my gross monthly income to healthcare premiums.
  • Another 20-25% (at least, sometimes more) goes to “savings” - loosely including IRAs, 401(k)s, our cash savings, our brokerage accounts.

Now imagine all that is gone and you pay a flat 70% tax, but in exchange you have free healthcare regardless of age/job status/condition/etc. Imagine that you have a guaranteed retirement income of 80% of your (admittedly quite low net of taxes) salary. In exchange you have a smaller income, but no need to save for retirement or worry about a single health-related incident bankrupting your family.

You know who doesn’t want this? Consumer products corporations. Companies that make flat screen TVs, iPhones, DVDs, designer jeans and gourmet coffees. The US stock market, because all that money that’s pumped into mutual funds and locked up until you’re 59 1/2 won’t be coming to them any more. Any company that makes stuff we don’t actually need. They want you to feel like you have that extra income. They don’t want the choice to save or spend taken out of your hands. They need you to keep buying.

No politician - not Barack Obama, not Ron Paul, not Ralph Nader, not John McCain - is ever going to seriously propose fixing this system. We’ll keep putting our “savings” into the market and spending money on cheap consumer goods imported from Asia, and sneer at Europeans and their high taxes. Yipee.

(photo by ButterflySha)

an interview with Ur

I activated my time machine so I could sit down with Ur, a Cro-Magnon man, for an interview. We had a little trouble agreeing on basics of the interview. He preferred to conduct it after ritual drinking of antelope blood, which I politely declined on the basis of personal beliefs - namely, my belief that a person should not drink antelope blood. In the end I got a few good quotes. Here’s the result.

Ur, thanks for joining us. What would you say are the greatest financial challenges facing you and your family today?

Ur fear no challenge. Ur fought mighty Cave Bear. Ur does have concern about saving for old age, since Ur has already seen all fingers plus one foot of toes worth of summers - Ur is almost old man. Ur like to retire from hunting in time to enjoy his time as Elder of Clan at age of all fingers plus all toes summers. Ur worry that cost of living in cave very high. Ur paid ten wolverine skins for flint spearhead that cost seven wolverine skins just many-many moons ago!

How much do you save each year?

Ur set aside one kill from five for winter. Ur know one finger of hand is hard target to achieve, but Ur has fought the mighty Cave Bear. Ur knows no fear, except fear of getting cavity.

What are your long-term retirement goals?

Ur much like have a least some teeth when retired. Not have teeth, no eat meat. Antelope have much gristle.

If you could give just one piece of advice to 10,000 future generations, what would it be?

No invest in dinosaur futures. Ur lose his pelts investing in dinosaur futures. Better to diversify - flints, wolf pelts, grains and fire. Oh, and take care of teeth.

(strange picture that stole Ur’s soul by Lorri37)

~~~

Odds and ends:

I recently won a copy of The Prosperity Bible from JLP at All Financial Matters. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone - but Bubelah and I were really impressed by the book when it arrived. The book has those thin, soft cotton-y pages you see in family heirloom books or Bibles. Two of the first few books included in the The Prosperity Bible (and yes, it contains 19 full-length books) are two of my absolute favorites: The Science of Getting Rich and Think and Grow Rich. I am really looking forward to reading it once I can snatch it out of Bubelah’s hands. I’ll try to post a more thorough review in the future (although I really hate doing book reviews).

Just in case it wasn’t blindingly obvious, my post yesterday was meant to be about 98% sarcastic. My parents are both educators, with degrees in philosophy and classical languages. Despite my staggeringly practical accounting MBA degree, my undergraduate degree was in mathematics, and I received enough credits for minors in linguistics, Russian and German (and had Russian been available as a major I probably would have double-majored in Russian and mathematics). I do think private schools need to pick up more of the burden of financial aid for their ballooning tuition rates (as Harvard and some other Ivies are doing, for example), and that the primary goal of federal financial aid should be subsidizing public university students’ tuition, but the last thing we need in this world is an America filled with accounting graduates and no poets. I also really liked PaidTwice‘s comment:

poetry may not win the war in Iraq, but little else will either. maybe we should try poetry. 🙂

It would have to be pretty hardcore poetry. Maybe this one would work:

“…Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…”

(read the rest of the poem here)

Eh, too depressing. Better use this instead:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty back together again.

~~~

I haven’t done a giveaway in a while, but I have a few ebooks and even a couple of books that I’m going to give away in honor of my upcoming birthday, which takes place on a holiday (Town Meeting Day in Vermont - everyone knows what day THAT takes place on - sheesh)! Stayed tuned, I plan to offer several over the next few weeks.

Super Tuesday

After an absolutely Super Sunday - far exceeding my expectations, thanks, Eli - we have Super Tuesday. It’s a bit off topic for this blog, but I did meander on with a political blog for three years before relaunching six months ago, so forgive me. Throughout my adult life I’ve formed opinions on political candidates quickly and decisively, based on their promised policies (and yes I know they always go poof and disappear once elected) and their - for lack of a better word - charisma.

Today, for the first time in my adult life, I’m actually torn about my choice in a primary - and my choice will be made in a state where the result will matter. Now, my decision isn’t indicative of future success. I have voted for a presidential winner exactly one time in my life so far. Other than that, all losses (and incidentally, I voted for third party candidates twice so I knew they were losers in advance). This time I think it’s too important to vote for a third party candidate, although Bloomberg would be interesting.

So here’s what I’m asking - feel free to express yourself in comments to influence my vote in the critical New Jersey primary. And if you are in a Super Tuesday voting state, go vote. Whether you are a Republican or Democrat or Tory or Whig or Green voter, vote. The stakes are too high to avoid it.

A lot of personal finance bloggers won’t talk politics, but politics affects personal finance more than almost any other factor. Taxes and monetary policy and the strength of the dollar and the dependence on foreign oil - all of them impact your wallet, now. If you want to be rich, you have a choice to make. It may be the wrong choice, but it’s important for you to express yourself.

So wish me luck in making up my mind on Tuesday. I won’t say if I’m voting for Barack Obama or John McCain or Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton or Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul, but I can promise you I will be voting. Let’s go.

photo by joebeone

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