Announcements Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Another Government Shut Down Starts to Hit Home

January 22, 2018 by Lazy Man 13 Comments

Every few years, it seems like it’s another time to talk about how the government shut down affects our life. It started in 2011 and I wrote about it next when it happened in 2013.

A government shut down is a weird situation for most families of government workers.

We have a weird situation put on top of a weird situation.

My wife is active duty, but she has a position that is generally held by government worker. Because she’s active duty she has to work even when the government shuts down. At the same time, there’s often no guarantee if she’s going to get paid. Finally, she’s often becomes the division leader as the highest ranking official.

Everything’s generally confusing when there’s a government shut down. You’d think there would be a solid plan in place because it seems to happen often enough. Nope. It’s not easier that this happens over the weekend when most people aren’t work anyway. The most confusing of all is that my wife’s special case slips through the cracks.

There are so many questions. Are troops getting paid? (It seems like they might not be.) Does my wife count as being part of those troops? (Sometimes yes, sometimes no.) Is the office building going to be open or is she going to drive 2 hours to a locked door? Will the shutdown be over in a couple of hours or we plan for the long haul? (Who knows.) Can Tom Brady fix this? (Probably. Who would doubt his ability?)

So far it looks like my wife is still going to be paid. That’s a big one for us, because she’s the breadwinner. We found out that she won’t be the division leader this time, which is fine by me. (I don’t want to get into why she isn’t, but I feel it is a little controversial.)

It’s a very confusing time (Did I use the word “confusing” before? It’s confusing. Confusing.) However, it does seem like we are starting to get some answers. I know that a lot of people have had enough with politics, so I’m trying to put those thoughts aside. I will say that I spent much more time than I would like to reading all the updates and bickering. I should be focusing my attention to other tasks, but I can’t seem to help it.

I realize that this article is a little light on the “money” and high on the “politics”, but government shutdowns can be a real personal finance situation for us and we can’t be alone there. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll get to a real investing article. Let’s hope it doesn’t blow up on me like my recent GE article.

Ask the Readers: What Makes for a Successful GoFundMe Campaign?

February 17, 2016 by Lazy Man 7 Comments

Over the last few days I’ve been dealing with a number of major life changes. I’m really not ready to write about them today, but you’ll be the first to know when I am.

Some part of the life changes are financially related. It’s not something small like my expenses going up $200 a month. One of the changes would have a nearly $1500/mo. impact. The other one is even larger. It’s kind of like the equivalent of Surprise Honey, I Just Added $60,000 to Our Debt. It’s being thrust upon us (in my opinion unjust and unfairly) and not the result of our action or inaction.

So I’m looking at a website like Go Fund Me, which I’ve read a lot about. I usually just read the results, never what goes into making a successful campaign. I’m going to give some quick thoughts on that and then turn it over to the comment section.

My first thought is that the cause has to be one that people deem worthy. A young adult harassed by United Airlines seems to be worthy. Someone in “need” of Hamilton tickets posting a sad fish doesn’t appear worthy. (Sad fish everywhere have my sympathy.)

I think the cause I have is worthy and compelling… at least if judging by the commenters on this website on some of my articles.

Other than that, I’m guessing that catch titles and good images are probably very important. I’m not sure if a sad fish is a good image. I think it’s kind of creative personally. Thoughts?

What else would be in the recipe of a successful GoFundMe campaign? I’m sure that marketing the message is important. Unfortunately, I’m a terrible marketer of anything related to myself. (In what seem like something out of a Greek tragedy/mythology, I’m great at marketing other people.)

Lazy Man and Money Takes a New Direction

October 26, 2015 by Lazy Man 12 Comments

I mentioned it briefly a couple of weeks ago, but Lazy Man and Money is taking a new direction… I’ve hired a couple of writers. I think you are really going to like them.

There’s always a risk in introducing new writers to a blog. People are probably expecting an article written by “Lazy Man” and be disoriented by a female writer. My articles also tend to be personal. I write about what’s going on in my life. Another author is going to be living a different life (I hope!) and have different experiences.

When J.D. Roth stopped writing for Get Rich Slowly, I stopped reading it. I read the blog because of him. If I wasn’t getting him, why waste my time?

So why am I hiring writers? It’s a bunch of different things. Some of them include:

I’m not seeing as many comments on my articles as I’d like. Perhaps the quality of my articles on a daily basis isn’t where it needs to be. By reducing quantity, maybe I can increase quality.
As I touched on earlier, the new writers can write about different topics such as debt that I usually don’t cover due to lack of experience. Maybe readers are looking for this.
I want to put more time into different things. I really want to write a book (even if it short and terrible). I want to be more active on social media. I want to grow Be Better Now into the best website that it can be.

Finally, (and I’m purposely separating this from the list), I like to try new things and see what works. That’s what lead me to start this blog in the first place and look how far it has come? It looks like Lazy Man and Money will do more than 2.2 million page view this year.

In the ideal scenario, Tuesday and Thursday will feature other writers. Tomorrow we have an article from Christina Garofalo who is co-author of the blog Adventures in Frugal, where she writes about travel, food, finance, and more. Her writing has also appeared in Paste, First We Feast, Robb Report, and Art & Hustle. In her free time, you’ll find her writing poetry and eating her way through Brooklyn, New York.

This Thursday we have an article from Michelle from Fit is the New Poor. While we are still working on her biography, feel free to check out her website.

If it really doesn’t work and you hate their writing, let me know that you want more of my writing by leaving comments. Don’t be scared of the comment box.

Odds and Ends

October 13, 2015 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

You might have noticed things have been a little quiet here. Even the article I wrote last Thursday was a little rushed.

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. (I never thought I’d be able to say that and have it be accurate.)

I’ve been a little preoccupied for a few reasons.

This weekend was hectic as the wife went on a much-needed girls weekend. So it was me and the two boys (including the furry one) for the weekend. We visited grandma and the other grandpa took them for a few hours.

I’ve never been able to figure out if Columbus Day is a real holiday. For years I got it off of school, so I assumed it was. Then my work said it was not. Just as soon as I adjusted to that, I started dating a woman who gets Columbus Day off as a military employee. (Spoiler: I married her years ago.) And apparently day care workers get it off too.

The upshot is that everyone was expecting me to work yesterday, but I had to be a single parent first.

So one of the important things that has been going is this. I’d like to go into it deeper, but nearly everything I say has to be vetted by two sets of lawyers. Even when I get one lawyer to say it’s okay, the other complains. I’m going to say more on this in the future, but the process is complex and as I mentioned, I’ve got a lot of other stuff on my plate.

You never realize how important freedom of speech is until you lose it.

In other site news, I’ve starting to make some of my older articles more Pinteresting. For example, see How To Be Successful. If you are wondering, that’s not my artwork. I got an assistant helping me out (i.e. doing everything).

I’ve also taken steps to hire a couple of writers. I think you’ll like them as they bring a female view into personal finance. They are a little more focused on debt, which is welcome, because I rarely cover it myself.

So hopefully things will pick up around here.

Setting Goals for 2015

October 13, 2015 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

There’s some irony in sitting down to write this article on the morning of January 29th. I had hoped to have it done a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully that’s not an indication on how my goals are going to go this year.

I’ve thought long about how I set goals every year just to find give myself a D+ the following year. The fundamental problem I’ve been having is to look at things from a year-long perspective. There’s always next month to hit revenue goals. I can lose 5 pounds next month. I’m trying to do something a little new and set goals by the month. For example, there’s Setting Goals for January 2015.

I’m not going to take this space to set monthly goals though. It doesn’t make sense at the financial stage we are at. The closest thing I can think of is building up emergency fund, which we are making great strides in.

There are a couple of things that I want to shot at though:

The Big Net Worth Milestone

One of the biggest goals I have is hitting that big net worth milestone. I’m not saying what that is, but if you read the comments, you should be able to put it together. Much of our net worth is not liquid, tied up in real estate investment properties and retirement brokerage accounts. Unfortunately, I don’t control either the stock or real estate markets, so my influence is limited to what I can save. I have to leave the rest up to “the powers that be”.

I’m wondering if those “powers that be” are related to low oil prices. Though we probably will see a raise in interest rates this year, the low oil prices should help company’s profits. (Perhaps the strong dollar eats into those though.) If consumers save at the pump, they might have more money for rents and houses, driving the theoretical value of our investment properties up. We’ll see what happens. At any rate, it will be fun to look back on this paragraph a year from now and see how crazy it was.

This is a terrible goal to set due to the factors outside my control, but I also see it as a can’t lose situation. If I don’t achieve it, I won’t be disappointed because I’ve managed my expectations to start. If I do achieve, then it’s “unicorns, show ponies, ‘where’s the beef?’!!!”.

Business Goals I

I continue to try to keep Lazy Man and Money as a daily money journey diary sharing my favorite tips of what works for me, while looking out for consumers to keep them safe from scams. Currently too much of my income relies on this website. I would like to diversify. It’s not just for the purposes of where my income comes from, but to match my interests. There’s more to life than money, and I want to write about it.

I realize that not everyone is a fan of reading about MLM scams. They are interesting to me from an intellectual standpoint and the number of comments I get tell me the articles are extremely useful. Overall, I’d say that 95% of the population doesn’t care. Of the remaining 5%, I’d say that 99% of those people are wrapped up in the pyramid schemes and not open to me exposing the fraud.

With that I’d like to announce the launch of a new website: Be Better Now. It’s a self-improvement site with a few unique twists to set it apart from anything else I think you’ve seen. I’ll go into it in more detail later in a separate post. For now I suggest you go explore, but here’s why you’ll love Be Better Now.

(Side note: To all those MLMers, who send me death threats or simply try to sue me, your best move is to help me be extremely successful with Be Better Now. Time that I spend there is time that I am not spending exposing your pyramid schemes. Also, you do your “industry” no favors when you attack people who are trying to help others.)

With the two websites combined, I hope to have 800,000 visitors throughout the year. I’ll put a huge stretch goal at an even million. Like the net worth goal above, I control some things such as how good the content is. I don’t control other things, such as getting people to spread it or search engines to say: “This is really useful!” If I build it, will they come? I guess we’ll find out.

Business Goals II

(With the upcoming Super Bowl, I’m in a Roman Numeral mood.)

Aside from the obvious website businesses, I’m still the a full-time family CFO. This means that I’m focused on ways to save money such as shopping for bargains or refinancing mortgages. It even includes our foray into solar power.

There are a lot of these little thing that I do which stretch the money we make further.

The closest thing I have to a goal for this year is to finally sign up as a host at DogVacay and bring in some extra money outside of website stuff. I estimate that I could make about $30 a day or roughly around $2000 a year doing it around once a week. It isn’t huge money, but when you already know how to stretch a dollar, $2000 is more than you might think.

Everything Else

I have bunch of tiny goals, but nothing sweeping like the yearly ones. One example might be to drink at least 50% almond milk instead of my current milk. I’d like to investigate all those tiny health choices I can make and really cement them as habits that stick. Most of this is going to be covered at Be Better Now on a monthly basis.

When it comes time to look this over at the end of the year, I’ll go and grade those monthly goals and come up with a meta-analysis of how things went.

… And if all this doesn’t work, I’ll look to improve the process for next year. I view it as an evolutionary process.