Lazy Man and Money

Baseball Mogul – what’s that have to do with money?

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I play a game called Baseball Mogul. You play the general manager of a baseball club. Your responsibilities are drafting players, trading players, and managing the financials. Provide your team with the right resources and you’ll be winning World Championships. However, make bad trades, and overpay free agents and you’ll make Tampa Bay look good. On it’s own the game is fun, but it takes several steps up when you play it against other people online.

Here are a few of the things you learn:

  • As Robert Kiyosaki would say… Formulas. You probably can’t apply these baseball formulas to earn you a cent, but it gives you practice in developing a working system.
  • Finances. You have to maximize your team’s revenue and be sure that you have enough money to pay the players. It’s not usually the type of game that a George Steinbrenner would succeed with.
  • Negotiating. When you are in the online leagues, you learn a lot about negotiating when you are trying to trade with other players. It’s a life long skill.
  • Marketting. When you are trying to trade your players, you need to market them well.

The game typically costs around $20. It’s a small investment for all the skills you learn. The best part is that you have so much fun, you don’t realize you are learning.

Save Money or Grow Money… How about Both?

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The timing couldn’t be better for Moomin Valley’s “Reflections on PF Bloggers” (via Adventures in Money Making). When I started this blog, I realized that I had two very different influences. On one hand, I just finished Rich Dad, Poor Dad which is about making money. On the other hand, I grew up in household where Sunday morning was for clipping coupons.

So maybe that will be the niche that makes this blog successful. One can dream, can’t he?

[Update: I misjudged Aventures in Money Making a bit. I had figure them to be largely about the growth of money, but on further review there are a few tips on how to get the most of your income.]

Buying a car for fuel efficiency

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My fiancee has recently moved in with me and has made the sacrifice or lengthening her commute from the “get out of bed and slide into work in 10 minutes” to the “break out the iPod because it’s going to be awhile” time of 40 minutes. I have had to commute more than 40 minutes before and it’s not that bad, but losing an hour a day is a shock. I’ve thought about giving in and moving a little closer to her work (I enjoy the 10 minute commute now) when we look for the next home, but I’m not that comfortable moving that far outside of Boston. I’m already further than I really intended to ever be, but with housing prices what they are, it’s necessary.

Here’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. She has an SUV that simply guzzles gas like no tomorrow. We can’t really get rid of it, because we always seem to be moving some big thingamajig. My car doesn’t get the greatest MPG, but it’s better. We switched cars a couple of times, but I can tell that’s not something she feels overly comfortable with. She’s mentioned possibly getting a third car for commuting. Seems like it’s not a terrible idea as long as our insurance doesn’t sky rocket and we get the condo to allow us to park a third car.

So this is where I ask for your help. If you could buy a car now as the most cost effective way to travel about 60-70 miles a day, what would you get? I’m eliminating a new cars as it would take too long to recoup the cost of gas when you factor in depreciation. I get the feeling it’s going to be between a 4-5 year old Miata, the first year the Prius was made, or some kind of Kia/Hyundai that gets decent milage.

Give me your suggestions and in a future I’ll run some rough numbers.

Live Long and Prosper?

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That will be my first and hopefully last Star Trek reference I make. I’m probably one of the few software engineers that haven’t spent any time watching it.

About 6 weeks ago, I took $100 and deposited it with a new website, Prosper. The website is often called the Ebay of loans. It basically matches up borrowers and lenders. It’s an idea that I came up with quite some time ago, but never did anything with it. I didn’t have the resources or connections to get it done right, and well, as this blog says, I’m lazy.

Let’s get back to the Prosper. A similar website has been successful in Europe for awhile. The site is backed by some pretty big sources, so I had no doubts about their legitimacy. They’ve done all the right things and provided lots of financial checks on the borrowers as well as providing collection agencies for the lenders.

For my first loan, I found someone looking for a loan at 12% interest. That’s about 3 times better than I can in my high interest bank account and 12 times better than a lot of savings accounts today. I presume this rate is better than what the person could have got from a bank or else he wouldn’t take it. Sure I’m taking a risk, but sometimes that what it takes if you want to make more than 4%. In the end, the borrower wins, the lender wins, and the bank misses out.

Don’t forget to read my Prosper Review

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

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I’ve been reading about Rich Dad, Poor Dad for some time and finally took the plunge and used a gift certificate to pick it up. I have to admit that I really enjoyed about the first 120 pages, but the last 60 or so weren’t quite as good.

I’m sure I should have took away more than just this, but what I did take away was a lesson that I already knew, but had forgotten. That lesson was to collect assets that will earn a passive income – money that I can count on each month to subsidize and eventually replace my salary.