Cage

I've built a cage around myself. From the outside it looks like a comfortable place, nice place to live, quiet workplace, weekly routine of things to do. Still a cage.

There is this idea that I and I'm sure many others subscribe to in our everyday lives. You commit to a routine, convincing yourself that you're progressing. Each day earns some more money and you're building to this day when you can finally be free. You can turn in your 9-5 for that peaceful, happy retirement that you've earned through sacrifice of all the best years of your life. There are just enough small victories along the way to keep a person appeased into continuing to live quietly.

I feel it's all an illusion. The society we've built up around ourselves along with the ideas that keep it going are really just a house of cards keeping the truth out. There are many people on the other side, shouting to us to come outside, but its so hard. Once you get into the routine, you've set a standard. How can you not work to keep it? Why would you want to lose now for the hope of an uncertain future regardless of the potential benefits?

Why? Because it's the truth. Outside of our cages is the lifestyle people were suppose to live. Maybe it doesn't include as much modern luxury but it does include what we desire at our core. Meaning.

We all desire to matter. To be something great. To make a difference.

I know for myself that I am not making that difference in my cage. I'm the hamster running on the wheel. I desire to do something that matters but that is not what is asked of me in the cage. Just keep spinning, don't disrupt the flow. That is what is asked of me.

But there is no reprieve. All that exists is wrestling with the fear that keeps you where you are until, hopefully, one day you break through. I just hope I have what it takes to make it to that point.

Perspective

I think I'm starting to get a better understanding of how people see me. This is mainly because of the people who are doing to me what I must do to other people.

Let me take a second to explain. When people send me emails, I respond usually within the hour if not immediately. When people call me, even if they don't leave a message, I call them back, usually right when I see the missed call.

Recently I've met some people who respond constantly with no delay to any message they are sent. It's nice at first, but then after a while you start running out of stuff to say back. They're all about results, results, results. I don't have any results for some of the stuff I'm working on. It's because I'm afraid and don't put the effort into it that I should. I know this, I hate this, but it's extremely hard to force yourself to act on something, even when you don't have anything else to do.

So clearly I do this same thing to other people. They're doing what they want and moving at their own pace and enjoying it and I keep making demands of them to do more or do what I think they should. That must be really annoying.

Knowing this, I'm not sure what is a good solution. Most people seem to be able to generate stuff to do when they are bored. Maybe my lack of focus on detail is what saves me time but then kills me later because of the lack of recall. Also, my jumping from thing to thing leads to a large amount of projects left uncompleted or pending. I never seem to make the time to accomplish big things.

Ironically enough, the big things that I have accomplished and taken the time to do right are the ones I usually end up happy about. An example is my car. I took a long time searching around to determine all the criteria that mattered to me. Then I tried out a lot of cars and finally had put together all the info I needed to make a decision. To this day I'm extremely happy with and excited about my car.

I think the reason I have a problem at work is because of my location. Being in the middle of an open cubicle room, I feel like people can always see what I'm doing. This makes me think I have to always have the appearance that I'm working or busy, even when I'm not. Even when I am working, I feel like any distraction pulls my focus away even when wearing headphones. So I have a situation where I'm setting myself up for failure.

Having these thoughts is always a dual edged sword. It's like now you know what the problem is, but most of the time the solution seems out of my control. So you end up just stewing in the problem.

Insight

I belong to Toastmasters and am working my way through the original manual to get the ten speeches finished in order to get my Competent Communicator award. Last night I gave my ninth speech. Normally, I'd post the speech here but I did a presentation with slides, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense without all the elements.

I learned something interesting in giving the speech. For each speech I've spent a lot of time crafting an informative and interesting mixture of content. I figured this approach would keep the audience's attention while giving them valuable advice they can start to apply. I've found that the reaction is never what I would expect.

Here is an example. Last night I started my speech by saying "You're fired!". The idea was to grab attention because people are worried because there is constant talk about how bad the economy is right now. I then talked about steps that people can take to remove that fear by diversifying their income sources.

At the end, the feedback I got was pretty standard. "Great speech". "Very informative". The one that stood out was that I could have said "You're fired" like Trump does in his Celebrity Apprentice show.

So what I've learned from this is that people really don't care about the content of your speech. You could give them the advice of jumping off a bridge or hiding their money under the mattress. It's all about entertainment. Relatable entertainment. Which means pop culture references, word play, unexpected shifts and anything for a laugh.

I'm not sure why this is. I have a feeling that when you present something that seems academic in nature, you're challenging people to think. After a long day at work most people are tired of thinking. They want to shut down and be entertained. This is why athletes, musicians and entertainers get paid so much money.

I have a feeling this is part of the reason my blog is not popular. I could post random photoshoped images and probably get orders of magnitude more hits than I do currently.

So the question is what to do with this knowledge. I write this blog mainly for myself to help organize my thoughts and capture knowledge gained, so I don't anticipate changing that any time soon. I also write these speeches because I have a message I want to get out. I will have to change my approach in that area though, because people don't care about your message if you don't wrap it right. Maybe I'll write the tenth speech the way I normally would, and then from there forward I'll just play to the crowd as much as possible.

I'm still left a little unsettled by this. I don't want to judge, people work hard and deserve to live their lives the way they want to. I seem to have a personal obsession with growth and progress, and it usually makes me unhappy because I'm always pushing to do more. So if others have found a way to be happy and that's what it takes, then I wish them the best. This life is short with fleeting rewards for hard effort. Finding any kind of happiness and holding onto it as long as possible is sometimes all we really have. I'm not ready to give up my quest and abandon my ways, but at least now I hope I can go forward with a clearer understanding.

Perfect

So I'm hitting rock bottom in desperation. I'm trying to meet girls on these damn online services. I found one girl I actually liked and sent her a message. She does swing dancing on Monday nights, so I was going to try and meet up with her tonight.

I drove all the way up to Baltimore to this Can Company center where the swing dancing is suppose to be. Once there, I forgot where it was suppose to be, so I asked at the Outback. They laughed at me and told me they don't do swing dancing there and maybe it was the "kiss cafe" next door that just recently closed. (It was actually a little worse than that as they told me I could dance in the corner and entertain their diners, thanks a lot jerks) So, with my tail between my legs, I headed back home.

Once I got home, I realized it was actually at the Austin Grill, which I walked past twice, completely oblivious. So now I'm a little bummed.

Maybe I'm just too willing to accept these things not working out, like I expect for it not to. It was hard going into Baltimore because it triggered some repressed memories of my ex and the different fun activities that we use to do (the actual good times of the relationship). Honestly, I don't miss her at all, I just miss being in a relationship and that feeling like you have someone to love and someone who loves you.

I think I'm too obsessed with the perfect, hoping that I'll meet some ideal women that doesn't really exist. I just feel like I've put so much effort into becoming the type of person who deserves someone great that I don't understand why I can't find someone great. I get this feeling like everyone else is surrounded by people their age and have all these friends to go places with and do things and I'm missing out or some kind of outcast because I always seem stuck by myself. It's so much harder alone as well because you feel like an outcast, like you weren't even good enough for someone to want to hang out with you, so why would anyone new want to talk to you?

I just don't know what I don't know, and unfortunately that seems to be what I'm doing wrong or not doing. I need help but I don't even know where to start or who to go to. People have recommended dating sites and stuff like speed dating and I'm trying it, but I get little to no results.

The Price of Success

I've been thinking today about this concept of "The Price of Success". I have read a lot of books about habits, ways to be successful, different techniques and skills to learn. All kinds of things that, if applied correctly, should lead to success, happiness, all your wildest dreams...

Here is what bothers me though. They don't talk about what you give up. In order to be successful, it seems you almost have to be a slave to a routine and a certain way of thinking. Sure that sounds fine and dandy because you don't focus on it, all that is focused on is the rewards. But it's all starting to sound like a sales pitch again. I've learned the secret to a great sales pitch is never to talk about the product first, always start by establishing the customer's goals and dreams, then find some way to incorporate how your idea or product is essential to fulfillment of that dream. That way they're so fixated on something ethereal and far out that they forget about the short term inconvenience of what they are giving up to you, essentially their freedom.

Now, this may be totally off balance. Maybe these people really are trying to help. Maybe the success and happiness promised that they say they have attained is the end goal everyone should strive for. Maybe being a slave to this routine and habits and way of thinking is really the best way to develop as a human being, and secretly we think we want freedom but the reality is that we just want the freedom to pick out our cage.

The question though is, what if I want to make "bad" choices? What if I don't want to be frugal? What if I want to not think about the consequences of my actions? What if I want to gorge? Maybe I would never read their book or advertisement. But does having doubt, having this sense of a conscience, this uncertainty about the direction I'm taking with my life really just make me a pawn that's easily coerced by their speak?

What if the real answer is your answer? What if reading this advice is just a deterrent from you actually just doing what you want but by providing it, I'm feeding your insecurity and weakness, perpetuating your fixation on needing someone else to tell you what is right because you don't have the confidence to believe in yourself?

Maybe the reason people reach a level of success is because they stopped listening, they stopped looking, they just did what they wanted to do, fought through the resistance and became free of the lack of trust in themselves? That's why people who lose and lose big do so well. They forget about everything else, loss all the inhibitions that they've collected because they reach a point where it's just about survival, not about the shallow constructs that are so easy to build around yourself and trap you where you are.

But how can you be sure I'm right about this either? I'm just a talking head like the rest of them.

Dealing with Disappointment

One of the things they teach you in Quixtar is when you make an appointment with someone, always restate the details of the appointment and make sure that they wrote it down in order to confirm. Apparently, most people are not good with keeping appointments.

This was always, and still remains, a foreign concept to me. I strive to be as truthful as I can, which actually seems harder to do when making commitments to myself rather than to other people. But for some reason this is not the case for other people, which surprises me because of my perspective towards it. I remember in the Rich Dad Poor Dad Coaching tapes this one interview with a guy who studied wealthy people. He said they all seemed to share two things, real estate and their word was their honor. Apparently for a lot of people, making a verbal or written commitment is more of a guideline than a commitment or a maybe than a yes.

Again I say how this seems strange to me because I firmly believe that in any relationship the most important things are trust and communication. If you cannot keep your word, how can a person believe anything you say or come to count on you if they need your help? What is the good of having an unreliable friend other than if you feel like there is value in "being friends" with a large quantity of people? If you are missing the trust, how can you have good communication? I personally would not share anything personal or important to me with someone I don't trust because it would be like giving money to a known thief and expecting some positive return on investment. It just seems so contradictory.

The final thought I have about this is a question about why people make the commitment if they don't intend to keep it. I'm more disappointed when I'm expecting someone to do something and they don't than I am upset if they just say no outright. Usually these happen in situations that don't contain any sense of urgency, like if someone says "Oh, I'll call you tomorrow". If they expect to be busy tomorrow or they know that calling me back is not a high priority so they'll probably end up pushing off, then don't commit to tomorrow. Just be honest, because then at least I know the truth. If I'm not happy with the truth, then it is my responsibility to make the truth more inline with what expectation I have or what I want, but if you just lead the person on then how can you validly say that it's the other person's problem rather than your own? If you just have a bad memory and you forget, at least you can be honest and offer the other person the opportunity to remedy the situation by taking over responsibility to remember contacting you.

I guess you could make the argument that you try to say what you are saying without actually saying it, by giving clues that are "obvious". I would argue though, that nothing is more obvious than just saying what you really want to say directly rather than trying to spare the person's feelings.

Buy maybe I should just change my base assumption of trustworthiness and instead only trust through validation. They say when approaching a business deal you should always trust by verify, so maybe all encounters should be treated this way.

Bad Customer Service

I'm writing this not to settle a personal gripe but more because I feel this needs to be said. I've had experiences with three businesses lately that have shown very poor Customer Service. In business, I believe that Customer Service is, if not the most important part, one of the most important pieces. One of the reasons I decided to work at GameStop part time was because of their emphasis and understanding of the importance of Customer Service. If you do not treat your customers correctly, providing them with prompt and courteous service and solution to their need, then they will not remain your customer for long. In this day and age, word of mouth advertising is one of the few genuine, trustworthy sources of recommendation left. Bad recommendations are an even purer source with much larger reach and less hesitancy to spread.

That being said, here are my three recent example of bad Customer Service.

First is Chipotle. This is not a universal criticism, but rather specific to one location and one employee, but as an employee of the company you are a representative of the brand. Recently I went in to a local store, waited my turn in line and ordered my common order, which is hard tacos to go. The lady placed the aluminum foil down and pushed it along. The next lady in line filled the customer before me's order, paused, removed the aluminum foil for my order from the line and proceeded to fill the next customer in line's order. No explanation was given. I politely asked about my order, but no response was given. The next person in line's order was filled and the line started to move along past me. I inquired again, but still no response. At this point I looked around at the other customers, then left the store. I'm still not sure why exactly my order was left out and why the ladies behind the counter were ignoring me, but I have not returned since and do not plan to any time in the near future.

Second is Three Brothers. Being lactose intolerant, it is always a nuisance to have to tell everyone at restaurants to hold the cheese or not put cheese on, but I always make a special emphasis of the point. I ordered a normal order of a chicken cheese steak, without the cheese (making special emphasis because this store has gotten it wrong probably 3/5 of the time I've ordered there). Not surprisingly, they got it wrong again. Normally, I'm very forgiving of this and would not make a big deal out of it. This time was different. The manager there, after finding out that they got my order wrong and were going to have to remake it, came up to me and said, "Next time, make sure that they type it into the order." There were several things that bothered me about this. The first was the tone, which doesn't come through in print. The second was that, even though I made special note of this when ordering, apparently it is my responsibility as the customer to make sure her staff does their job correctly. Something rang false about that to me. I'm paying them for a service, and apparently I am now responsible for supervision on that service. That sounded more like her job to me than mine.

The third and final example is Sprint. I'm not sure exactly where it all started. It may be the poor level of service, it may be that they have hung up on me so many times, but Sprint is probably my least favorite company. In my most recent conversation with Sprint, they called me during the work day (for the fourth time or so) to tell me that I have an old crappy phone that I should upgrade. They of course want to provide me the upgrade for free (minus the new commitment to a 1 or 2 year contract). After the lady was laying into my phone for a while, I stopped her and said that I wanted to speak with her manager about my account. She put me on hold for about 10 minutes, then hung up on me.

So there you have it. Each of these small, almost petty seeming encounters have left a bad taste in my mouth as a consumer. We have the choice to vote with our dollars and my patronage at these companies has been lost.

Thanksgiving

I was going to write an angry post about how some of this conventional financial wisdom on different sites is extremely lacking, but I decided against it. I guess it applies to some people, but I think the idea of having to lie to yourself in order to not spend all your money and go into debt is ridiculous.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a good holiday, and for everyone outside the US, I hope you have a good Thursday.

I'm going to spend the time off doing some reflecting about where I am in various areas of my life (my job, my living situation, my business, my current financial approach) and where I want to be. Then I'm going to brainstorm about how to get the different areas where I want them to be. I've been in a holding pattern with some things for about a year or so, but I will have reached a lot of goals starting 12/1, and therefore it'll be a good time to implement changes.

One Laptop Per Child

First, a quick update:

I test drove the car I'm thinking about buying yesterday. It seemed alright but had a weird smell along with the ugly outside color. Superficial things yes, but still annoying. I do like the idea that I can write a check and own a car that seems good enough that I'd be happy with it for years to come without any additional payments. I'm not 100% sold yet and I'm looking at some other cars on Autotrader as well as this site I heard about yesterday called AutoNation, where apparently you can buy a car directly from the site. I'll probably take another trip up to the lot on Saturday for round two of negotiations, so we'll see how it pans out. In case you are in a similar situation where you are looking to buy a car, I suggest checking out sites like this: http://www.negotiationdynamics.com/Newcar.asp

I'm going to blow off the REI meeting tonight and go to a different one on Monday when I have the day off for Veteran's day. From what I've read, most of the mingling is done in the half hour or so before the meeting begins, so trying to fight through rush hour traffic to show up late seems like a poor decision. Instead, I'll take my time on Monday and go prepared. Also, I checked the classifieds today for investors and found the same ad again as yesterday and the day before. No call back yet, but I figure if I am going to get a call it'll most likely be over the weekend.

Ok, the main thing I want to mention today is the One Laptop Per Child program.

Last year I took a "Rich Dad Coaching" course for a substantial sum. While I'm not ready to endorse the program since I have yet to make my money back from the investment, one habit they recommended has stuck firmly with me since. It is the idea of "The Three Piggy Banks".

The Three Piggy Banks

Essentially, each day you are suppose to put a certain amount of money of your choosing into three separate banks. The banks can be of any form from a small paper cup to different bank accounts you have setup. The first one is for saving, the second is for investing and the third is for charity.

Saving

The idea behind the saving bank is that this is money that you are going to hold onto. You aren't going to put this money under any kind of substantial risk. Your best bet would be to put this into a money market account or a savings account and let it accumulate 5% interest or so. This is your base, your security fund. Regardless of what else happens you will have this money to rely on for your future.

Investing

This is your gambling money. Say you come across a stock you think is going to take off. You pull money out of here and put it in your stock choice. If the stock bottoms out and you lose it all, no big deal because you still have your savings. Regardless, this money gets you thinking about what could get you good returns as well as gives you incentive to learn about different investing vehicles that exist. Eventually, as your knowledge and experience grows, this money will start working for you and getting you bigger and bigger returns, which should lead you to the comfortable level of wealth.

Charity

This money you give away. The idea is that you are giving back to the community. Maybe you pick your favorite charity or your church or whatever you like and you give the money away to it. Similar to the idea of tithing, by giving you are getting the feeling of making a difference in the world and actually having the ability to help others. For all the karma believers, this is what will help you to see how much you have, help you to be thankful for what you have and ultimately help you reach more and more people.

My Three Banks

Overtime, you are suppose to keep increasing the amount you put into the banks. I started out very low, at a penny per bank each day. I'm only up to a quarter a day right now, but I also setup my income stream from my job to be split somewhat along the same ratios. I say somewhat because currently I'm at about 60% saving, and 35% investing with very little left for charity. But now I've found a charity that I really support, so that is going to change.

One Laptop Per Child (http://laptop.org/)

This program was setup to help provide a means for those who have none to gain access to education and information that has the potential to make a substantial difference in their lives and the lives of those around them. By giving a child the chance to link into the internet and the human network, you open up the world to them, allowing them to see perspectives of people outside of their family, outside of their country, perspectives of people around the world. I personally believe that this will be a big step towards ending a large amount of conflicts we have in the world today as well as allowing people to break free from the cycle of poverty that has trapped so many throughout the world.

On November 12, the One Laptop Per Child program is going to start up a program where they reward you for rewarding others. By paying $400, you will be paying for a laptop to be supplied to an underprivileged child as well as receiving a laptop for yourself or your child. This is a unique opportunity to really help change someone's life and even directly get something in return. Also, by having one of these laptops you will help to spread the word about what is happening and be a trend setter for change.

So I encourage everyone who can to put forth the money to make a difference. Even if it's just the $200 for a laptop to be sent to a child in need, do it. This isn't like those commercials where they say "for 37 cents a day" or anything like that, this is a one time payment that will make a lifetime difference.

Written Off

For some reason, before I even got up this morning, I had written today off. I worked late on Wednesday anticipating going to county two today, but when it came time to make it happen, it didn't. Again I figured not having an investor to send the leads to made it not worth the time and parking money to go. I did go to courthouse one and picked up 15 leads. Pretty solid numbers for that area, but again, no investor to send them to at this point. Plans are still set to go out to a REI meeting tomorrow morning, so I'm hoping that will be productive.

I was talking to my sister last night, who has an MBA in Finance, about her job. The stuff she does and the people she works with seems so much more interesting than what I do. Plus, with a background in Computer Science and software development, I feel like I could really make some big strides in moving the Finance department of a company to the modern era. Most of the time they use plain Excel spreadsheets to do their calculations. There is very poor UI for what each field is expecting and what it means to the project as a whole. My sister showed me this cool tool she made to replace it, so I'm glad to see that someone is pushing forward and making things happen.

When I talked to her about her job it just reinforced how little I like my own. I want to blame my company because they hired me with false promises, but even so, if I wanted to I could change things. I just feel no desire to do so. I feel like I don't want to do this stuff for the rest of my life and I have no interest in it outside of doing enough to get paid. But the money is only worth so much because once I meet my financial objectives, I won't need a high salary anymore. At that point I could quit and take a lower paying job somewhere else just to get into something that I love doing. If you're doing what you love you end up getting promoted faster and it's worth more than the money. In the long run you end up ahead.

Back at my old job, when I first started working there, we were building up a new department. I spent a large amount of my days in the finance and contracts departments. I learned a lot there and was really into it. I even built a pretty elaborate Quote system that is still in use today. But then I got pulled back to doing testing and customer service and I lost a lot of my motivation. I want to do project management, working with customers, doing analysis of how a project is going and the risks it faces. That kind of thing seems exciting to me.

I do feel like this job could be tolerable if I moved back into development instead of just bug fixing. When I started here and was learning new things I was excited. I designed a security program and a few cool tools. But then I had to be placed somewhere that was billable and the guy who was mentoring me threw me to the sharks. I don't think he's even talked to me in about 2 months. So I go from actually doing and learning something to sitting on the back burner. One of the VPs told me that it was like a right of passage to do bug fixing for 6 months before you really get into anything else. That seems stupid to me though, since I'd learn a lot more if I was developing something worthwhile and interacting with multiple parts of the system. I chalk it up to poor management and bad distribution of resources.

That's enough whining from me for now. I encourage all of you out there in a position like me to not settle either. Find your passion, or make a career out of what you do with your free time. Put the time and effort into making it happen. Otherwise your financial commitments will grow around you, pinning you in. Do it now while you can because it'll only get harder. Good luck and best wishes.

Laptop Pursuit

So after a few days of scanning Craig's List (more like a week at this point), finally a seller not only contacted me back with answers to my questions, but actually showed enough interest in selling the item listed that I've arranged a time for the sale. Unfortunately, it's like 40 miles from my house so it's going to be a long drive up and back. It'll be worth it to have a laptop to use for this week. I've found that the transfer time from written out to the computer is much faster than from the source at the courthouse to where I write it out. I imagine by bypassing the writing stage completely, the time I have to spend at the courthouse will be greatly decreased. I'm sure over the upcoming months, the time saved will greatly surpass the time spent driving up and back tonight.

The only other problem is that I've lost confidence in my current investor. Not responding to me for 2-3 weeks does that kind of thing. But currently I do not have any other investors lined up. I will most likely continue sending leads to him for now, but I found another potential investor's number in the paper yesterday, so I just have to call and hope that they are what I'm looking for. If not, there is a REI club meeting a week from this Saturday that I will go to. If you can't find an investor at a REI club meeting, something is terribly wrong.

If the flow keeps up at 90 or so, or even 75, that's still way too many leads for one investor to take on anyway. I need to start branching out, finding people who work specifically with foreclosure cases and actually start getting some sales done. Right now I have the flow coming in where I need it, but nothing is coming from it. The laptop will make that process even easier but it still adds up to zero without it leading to sales.

Stocks

I did some calculating of my stock performance today. I'll post all the numbers if people are interested. Currently I stand at an annualized ROI of 12%. It's an ok start, esp since I haven't actually fully primed the pipe with one year's worth of investment, but I'm a little disappointed. The advice in The Little Book that Beats the Market says to put about 1/3 of the amount you are going to put into your portfolio in the first year because over 3 year periods the average ROI should be between 20-30%. I haven't figured out what my plan is for after December when I reach the 1 year mark, but I might juggle some of my other investment amounts and keep the amount I'm putting into individual stocks steady.

I've come to realize that the mutual funds that I'm invested in through my 401ks, Roth and house fund are not performing up to the standard I'd like. I have a lot more faith in my individual stocks since I know exactly what they are invested in, I can focus on lowering the amount of tax by making sure they are taxed as long term capital gains, and there are no management fees and small trading fees. I realize that 401ks and Roths are tax free accounts, but the performance is still controlled by the company managing the fund, so they probably spread their costs equally across their accounts. Also, in my breakdown I count the 401ks and Roth as savings accounts and I'd like to get the percentages to favor investments over savings.

Quick Rant

First off, I really like Facebook but this just needs to be said.

I read this great article on Codding Horror: the Daily WTF recently that talks about Why Does Software Spoil. It's mainly because rather than focusing on performance and fixing bugs, new iterations always add more and more features. These features are great sometimes, but over a long period of time you get to the point where the core functionality that you use something for is eclipsed and ruined by a gross amount of unwanted features.

Welcome to today's Facebook.

What I use to love about Facebook was that it wasn't MySpace. It was exclusive to college aged or near college aged people. It was centered around finding people in your classes or that you meet on campus. Once you did, then you had all their contact information or at least a method of reaching them as well as a basic profile about them.

Nowadays, Facebook is filled with crap. This whole "Ninja vs Pirate", "Vampire", "Werewolf", "Zombie", "Write on someone's wall in paint" and various other plug-in stuff is crap. Not only does it make everything load slower, but it clutters up the page real estate. The last straw is coming soon because Facebook is going to become International. I can picture it now, everyday you'll see a new friend request from Viagra or Cialis written out in a mixture of characters and numbers or in Russian.

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution. I'm just sad that another great tool is starting to grow mold.

Habitually Automatic

First off, congrats to everyone who owns Apple stock. I wish I had more shares because today was a big day. I imagine it is only the first of many to come, so if you don't have any, look for dips and jump on in.

In some reading I did today, Get Rich Slowly did a review of The Automatic Millionaire ( link for the review). The review was excellent and the book seems to have a lot of good concepts. I think there are a few factors that are also important in the quest to becoming wealthy that were not mentioned though, so I'd like to build further.

What really matters? Four Points that really matter towards building wealth:

Point 1 - Your Net

First of all, it seems The Automatic Millionaire hits dead on with spending habits. What you do with your after tax money is extremely important. Of course you need to spend it to survive, but how and what you spend it on will determine, very clearly, your future. I like to think of it like every dollar you make, net (or after tax), is your employee. If you don't manage your employees well, the business that is your financial future will not continue to grow and may even go bankrupt. So setting up automatic deposits and planning for your retirement should be the first step. As they say, spend less than you earn, save up and start building wealth.

Point 2 - ROI

In line with this, the next point is what return on investment you are getting. Basically, measuring how well your employees are performing for you. If you read The Little Book that Beats the Market, it discusses how to determine a base line for your ROI. Basically, you can get a 6% ROI with little to no risk if you buy US Treasury Bills that are backed by the stability of the US government, or something to that effect. So if you aren't getting at least 6%, then you should change what you are doing.

The stock market indexes average about 11-12% over the course of their history, so with a little knowledge and a little risk, along with a long enough investment horizon, you can easilly get a better return than a lot of high fee mutual funds or leaving your money in a Money Market account will get you. But you should be able to get an even better return than that.

Point 3 - Your Time

The best and worst part of the stock market, is that you are not in control of your return once you've bought your stocks. For most people, this is good enough and they are content with leaving their future in the hands of other people that they believe are more competent than themselves. The rest of us are hungry to get even better returns. That's how point three comes in.

What better can you invest in than yourself? How you spend your free time will also determine your future. If you read my blog, you can see that I'm trying to build a business in my spare time. That's because I know that eventually I will start to create revenue with the skills and knowledge base, as well as connections, that I am building. Everyone who went through college and got a degree has already seen this process work. Putting the time in to study and learn is what got you the job that pays your bills and gives you the foundations for wealth already. Why stop there? Why not keep educating yourself towards the goal of being the guy at the top of a company directed towards your own interests? The only difference between the employee and the boss is the amount of time they've put into something and their persistence towards continuing to learn.

So just like your money being your employee and working for you, if you make your time work for you now, it will pay off in abundance later. I've said it before, but the one main commonality between the richest Americans is that they all started a business or own a business. The potential is there for everyone, it's just a matter of taking action. Your time can have exponential gains for you just like your money.

Point 4 - Multiple Streams of Income

The final point is the end result of all the previous. By making your money work for you, you start to develop a stream of income that is not reliant on your efforts but only your direction. As this grows, so do good habits and your knowledge and ability. As time is going by anyway, if you use your time and energy to build a business, eventually you will get to the point where you can hire people and promote yourself up the ladder. Eventually, you will promote yourself all the way up to a primary stock holder and not have to be actively involved in operations anymore. That frees you up to start again, setting up more and more streams of income. As you do it, it gets easier and easier and your have more and more time and freedom. This is why you hear the phrase, "the rich get richer", because as wealth grows it becomes easier for it to continue to grow. At the end, you're doing very little work but making more money than just your time and labor would ever be able to make alone.

Habitual Millionaire

If you're young enough, it's likely that changing a few spending habits and removing temptation by automating where your money goes will eventually make you a millionaire. In doing only this though, you are giving up your time. If you follow the rest of the points, both your time and your money will grow exponentially and you will reach your goals much faster. So while I definitely agree with taking the first step, I also suggest not making it the only one you take. The first step is always the hardest, so if you're going to take it, be aware that you're already well on your way.

Wasted Money

I just wanted to write a quick post about this article.

I'm really glad to see the stats on these things posted. I had computed the average cost of alcohol for a moderate drinker at one point based off of averages from a friend of mine. It was something like $6,000 a year. This, by the way, is after tax money. Now try throwing in coffee each day, which some people will get 2 or 3 cups. And then after all that, you add the health costs for the illnesses that you will get from dehydration. That's a large amount of money thrown away each day. If you smoke, it's even worse.

Let's take a low estimate of $8,000 a year. Say you do this for 5 years. There is a BMW you could have bought. Say you invested the money instead of spending it on a BMW. Even if you get a 5% ROI per year, that's still a potential gain of $6,415.30 (before tax) that you've thrown away. And what do you have to show for it? Most of the time people go out drinking to have fun they end up not remembering what they did. So in order to compensate for that they convince themselves they had a good time. That leads to the pattern of reliance on drinking to have a good time, which is a bad cycle. In the end you've spent your money, don't remember what you did, but at least you've convinced yourself that you enjoyed it... that is until you wake up and realize that you're 35 with a beer gut, potentially a few more kids than you expected to have, and stuck in a job you hate.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't ever spend money. The question is the value gained vs the potential value lost. Sometimes it's worth sitting down and thinking about what you're spending your money on and if it's worth it to you or not. What you're really losing in the end, is your time. When you put your money to work for you, you buy back your future.

Sales

I find it amusing that probably 95% of the conversation I've had at the office since 9/25 revolves around having the insert from Halo 3 sitting on display on my desk. It's amazing how many people play it, as well as the demographics of the people.


So today I want to rant a little bit about sales. My entire life I've been told about how education is important, mainly because without education you end up doing some "low level" job, usually involving sales. Well, while education is important, the ability to sell is extremely important as well, and there is no avoiding it. Everywhere you go, every conversation you have, when you are expressing your ideas or your thoughts, you are selling.

One of my greatest disappointments was the realization I had after a few months of my first real job. Before that I had done all these various ridiculous jobs that were more task oriented than time oriented. At one point I had a job where I sat in the back room and stamped numbers onto cards for 8 hours a day. Yes, this actually happened. By the end of the time I was working there, my right arm had grown significantly compared to my left from the stamping. I think it was something like 8,738 cards that I stamped. Looking back, a computerized device could have and should have done this.

Anyway, the disappointment was the fact that when your raise or performance grade is determined, it's not based off of your performance or some kind of tangibly measured statistics that are very concretely in your control. Instead, it is largely based off of how much your manager likes you, how much he or she thinks you do, and how much easier you make their job. (Some of this may have been correlated with my previous boss who, if you follow any Jung personality models is an ESFP) I was disappointed by this because I've always had a problem with being what I consider "phony".

I think this problem with being a phony goes back to this conditioning against sales. I have this ingrained feeling like when I'm doing something with the sole intent of trying to get someone to like me or just purely sucking up, it's dishonest and morally dishonorable. I also have a problem with taking other people's money because I get this feeling like what I'm doing is wrong. But in reality, being able to sell and incite good feelings in people is important and will make a large difference in your career and workplace environment.

In regard to this, I don't really have any advice. I've read "The Greatest Salesman in the World" and even did the nightly routine they suggest, slowly working my way through each scroll for 9 months. Do I really feel like I'm better at sales because of this? No, I don't. I think the problem is that to be truly good at sales, you actually have to get to the point where you aren't selling at all.

What I mean by this, is that you aren't really looking for the what the result of convincing someone of something will get you anymore. It's more just about you having a passion for something that is so great that you can't contain it. It just explodes forth from you and other people can see how important it is, so it becomes important to them as well, or they feel like they should learn more. Instead of trying to get people to like you, you become so legitimately interested in the other person that you really, truly care, and the person sees these and cares for you as well because of it.

In cases when I've gotten to a point like that, I haven't had problems with that feeling like I'm doing something wrong. I think it's because nothing about that is phony, so why would I feel like it is?

Ranting and Raving

I'm going off topic today since I don't have anything new to report on my business front.

So, watching Heroes last night I noticed a few things. First, a TV show is a lot more fun to watch without the commercials. I originally got into Heroes late and therefore was watching the episodes online with very limited commercial interruption. Also, I watched them in bulk. I was working night shifts at that point and old TV episodes were my only solace, so I'd plow through as many as I could fit in an eight hour session. I got through the first half of season 1 of Heroes before I caught up, and I plowed through most of season 1 of Friday Night Lights.

Anyway, I believe commercial advertising is dead. I cannot recall a time I've ever ended up buying a product because I saw a commercial for it on TV. The closest thing is maybe a movie or a TV show I watched, which does not completely fit even since I was going to see it anyway, regardless of the commercial. In some cases, I've actually changed my mind and not seen something because I hated the commercial. So it seems to actually be a net negative. The only value commercial breaks hold anymore is allowing the viewer to get up and get something to eat or go to the bathroom. Soon, when I have a little more control over my living situation, I will only watch TV shows after recording them so I don't have to watch commercials. I may even just record whole seasons and then just watch them in binge fashion to save time. This also applies to listening to the radio as well. Soon everyone will just listen to CDs or HD radio without commercials.

The second observation was that Heroes is becoming the OC. They're adding relationship drama to what was once a show focused on the next stage of evolution for humanity. It's like watching a "boy" comic become a "girl" comic. Do more women watch TV then men? Is that why there seems to be a need to add this element into every show? Maybe the writers have all been offered better jobs on other shows, but it's just disappointing and annoying.

So my second off topic rant for today is the Dallas/Buffalo game last night. I started watching it late, but the entire time I couldn't shake this feeling like Dallas was going to win. I wasn't sure how, but I just knew it was going to happen. The entire Buffalo organization needs to be fired and replaced for the absolutely pathetic management display. The plays they called and decisions they made, they might as well have put out a Welcome mat at the goal line. How does someone throw 5 picks and still end up winning the game? Esp when you have 2 defensive and 1 special teams touchdown. Just pathetic. The best part of the whole thing was this commercial with this really dumb looking cowboy to which my brother said, "What is this? Tony Homo's boyfriend?" Priceless.

One final rant for today. I'd like to get some feedback from the audience about the Employee/Employer and Employer/Employee relationship and obligations. To what extent is an employee indebted to an employer for that paycheck? If the employer has nothing for an employee to do, why is the employee still indebted 8 hours of time to be spent at the office just to receive their salary? If they employee has other things they can do that will add more value to themselves, which means they are increasing company assets, shouldn't the employee be sanctioned to do them? Where is the moral obligation line for the 40 hour work week in regards to time spent at the office? Let's hear what you think.

Special Bonus Post/Rant

I just read this article that discusses how people who hang out together usually have the same spending habits. Oh really? How about, DUH!

I'm sorry, but to think that this isn't obvious information really baffles me. Maybe I read too much or at least more than other people, but the idea that people living together or spending a lot of time together do the same things seems pretty much like common sense. You see articles that discuss how people who have been married for 25 years even start to look like each other because their natural biorhythms cause them to use the same facial expressions as each other, which over times causes the same wrinkles.

They end the article discussing how kids whose parents own stock are more likely to own stock themselves. This is another duh. The same goes for other behavior like drinking and smoking and the person's overall temperament. Also, the value system of the parents is usually reflected in their children as well. Why wouldn't it be?

The bottom line is that we are all animals. We learn from the other people around us. If someone does something a certain way and we don't have another way to do it or their method seems more effective, we will adopt their method. It's natural. That's why if your parents have poor spending habits, so will you unless you break free from them.

This is also why their are tiers of schools. The better schools have better methodologies for doing things. Maybe they are more complex or harder to do and only brighter people are able to execute them, but they still produce more effective results. The better schools are the ones innovating even better methods all the time because they are pulling in the money to do the research. The lower schools just copy their methods as they trickle down. I know this first hand as my teachers would steal lectures and projects from Carnegie Mellon.

Anyway, to end this on a positive, it just goes to show you that if you want your life to change, you have to change your environment. Sometimes this means ditching friends or family members to hang out with other people who have the habits you want to develop. This will prevent you from lapsing into what you are trying to avoid. This is also the reason why they should never put a reformed criminal back into the same neighborhood they got arrested in. It's too easy for old habits to come back when one person is trying to push out their changes on a larger group. The group just has too much momentum in a majority of cases and the individual can't win. So be aware of your friends and your surroundings.