Lazy Man and Money

The Million Dollar Dog?

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Today’s article is a little unique. It’s three articles in one:

  1. An obituary for my dog, Jake, who we euthanized in late March

    It’s extraordinarily difficult to write a dog obituary in a way that strangers will connect with. I’ve read a few online. I’ve included a link to one of my favorites at the end of this article. This isn’t the space for dog obituaries. I’m not ready to write one, and I don’t think it would be good anyway.

  2. A belated April Fools joke

    I love April Fools! I usually have an idea of what I’m going to write about a month or so in advance. It snuck up on me this year. I wasn’t in the mood to write anything that was humorous at all. I’m still not there. However, this article can be seen as a little tongue-in-cheek. Don’t take the premise too seriously. At the same time, don’t dismiss it completely.

  3. A personal finance article

    I write personal finance articles. Hopefully, the title was a hint that I’d try to stay on topic.

Let’s get started.

The Million Dollar Dog?

The Start of the Dog Business

Million Dollar Dog
The million dollar dog (left) with my 3 year old in 2015. The dog on the right was the second dog we’ve ever hosted.

More than fourteen years ago, I wrote an article exploring how much a dog costs. I had the wrong mindset back then. Instead, I should have asked the question, “How much money can a dog make you?”

When we got our dog back in 2009, I couldn’t have imagined that it would lead to a dog boarding career. It started as a tiny side hustle in 2015, earning about $1000 a month on average. All the pieces fit together to be a Rover.com host. I work from home. We have a nice fenced-in yard. My dog would love to have a friend come for a play date, so why not get paid for it?

I think most people will take an extra grand a month, but it certainly isn’t something that qualifies as a career. All that changed with COVID. With travel being shut down, we earned almost zero dollars for a full year. We were paying for a private school, and I was out of around $15,000 in annual income. In the meantime, I was teaching my six and 7-year-olds how to read and do basic math. My wife helped a lot, but she was working on the policy for the pandemic, so her time was more limited than mine was.

Everything changed when vaccines came out. Many people got dogs during the pandemic, and they wanted to catch up on travel. Suddenly, I was making $3,000 a month… then $4,000. I was getting so busy that I raised prices to try to get less business. I make a little more than $5,000 a month on average – over $60,000 a year. Some months are busy with school vacations or summer travel. We travel ourselves sometimes, and I can’t board dogs then.

Of course, this business would not have been possible if I didn’t have experience with my own dog. It also wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t fence in our yard for him to do his business. Jake loved being outside. Many days, he would only come back in to bark at me to tell me it was time for a walk. Whenever I got the leash, he’d hump my leg like crazy. Some people might have discouraged that behavior, but I thought it was great how freely he expressed his love. Most people don’t experience that level of happiness once a week. I loved seeing it from him a couple of times a day.

The Total Dog Boarding Numbers

Overall, I’ve made a little more than $175,000 boarding dogs. That seems low to me because I’ve been on that $60,000/yr pace now for a couple of years. That shows you that the first five years were slower, $12,000 years.

I don’t know if I’ll keep up this pace of dog boarding for the long term. I’m thinking maybe five or six more years, and maybe I’ll cut down. I can get help from the kids until then, but they’ll probably be off with friends, and maybe I’ll slow down as I get into my early 50s. If I continue another five and a half years at this rate, it will be around another $325,000. That would take me to a half million dollars in lifetime dog boarding earnings.

We’re halfway to Jake’s influence being a million dollars. There are a few ways to bridge this gap to get to the other half million:

  • Wife Joins in Dog Walking

    My wife is going to retire one of these days. She seems to push it out one more year. However, she came up with the idea of dog walking when she retires. I don’t go around and walk dogs because we have them come to our house, where I get some blogging done. She likes the idea of getting some exercise. Fortunately, she wouldn’t have to build the business from the ground up. I would just add it to the list of services I do, and she’d get clients fairly quickly.

  • Kids Join in with Biscuit Business

    My 10-year-old is really into cooking and loves the idea of starting a dog biscuit company. We should hopefully get this started this summer. My 9-year-old is interested in cooking too. They don’t work well together, but I’ve got an idea of how they could make competing brands.

    We’ll fine-tune our recipes with all the dogs we are boarding.

  • Personal Finance Math

    Whenever a money projection doesn’t seem to work, we can always use what I call “personal finance math.” (This is the tongue-in-check, April Fool’s inspired part of the article.)

    Personal finance math is an easy way to make half a million dollars into a million dollars. Instead of using that money for housing repairs and such, I say, “Let’s invest that half million dollars.” If we use the rule of 72, we know it will double in about ten years if I earn 7% interest. By my early 60s, we’d hit that million-dollar mark.

Finally, I should mention that even if I slow down in five and a half years, it wouldn’t be a stretch to make $30,000 a year for the ten years after that. In the end, it may be a mix and match of all the above that makes the decision to get a dog back in 2009 worth a million dollars.

Jake’s Other Jobs

But wait, there’s more!

Every year around Mother’s Day, Salary.com puts out a “value” on the jobs that mothers do around the house. The list includes things like event planner, executive housekeeper, and staff nurse. They add up all these jobs and determine that a mother’s job value is $178,000 as of 2019.

You can do a similar thing with dogs. Jake didn’t just inspire a dog boarding business. Much like a mother, Jake performed a few other jobs around the house.

  • Personal Trainer

    I took a look at my Fitbit lifetime stats the other day. I’ve been using one since 2012, and I’ve covered 35 million steps and a distance of 16,000 miles. I estimate that Jake got me up and walking for half of them. He was getting me walking before Fitbit was around, so his numbers are probably closer to 10,000 miles. I found an article online that says that dog owners walk an average of 24,000 miles during a dog’s average 13-year life. Maybe my estimate of 10,000 is too low.

    In any event, it’s hard to dismiss the health benefits of moving around. More and more research is showing that a sedentary lifestyle of sitting at a desk typing all day is not good for you.

    Fortunately, Jake reminded me of this a few times a day when he thought it was time for walks.

  • Therapist

    As I mentioned above, a few times a day, Jake forced me to get some exercise and fresh air/vitamin D. In study after study, those two things have been shown to help with a number of mental health issues.

    However, you’ve probably seen the bumper sticker of a paw that says, “Who rescued who?” The fact that there are so many sold shows that it resonates with a lot of people. Even the American Heart Association recognizes how pets can help with mental health.

  • Exterminator

    Dogs are great at keeping mice and snakes away.

    Jake had a strong instinct to get any other animals. He never caught the squirrels he chased, but one time while we were on a walk, he did get a woodchuck. I gave him a couple of tugs on the leash, and he let him go unharmed.

I’m probably missing a few jobs that dogs can do. Obviously, some are guide dogs or licensed therapy dogs. Jake wasn’t either one of those, so we can’t use those to bridge the gap to a million-dollar dog. Still, the cost of a live-in personal trainer and a therapist is very high. Over 14 years, that adds up to a lot of money.

Was Jake a Million Dollar Dog?

Value is the eye of the beholder. I say yes, but I’m sure that many of you could make a strong counterargument. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

P.S.

Looking for that dog obituary? It’s One final toss for The Dooze.

The Best Educational Streaming Shows for Preschoolers

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For years ago the day (and the hour), I published much of the article below. I’ve updated for 2020 with schools all over the United States closing due to COVID-19 (coronavirus). Parents need to stay home, but education never stops. Parents need a break some times, and there’s some valuable educational material on television. Now my kids are 6 and 7 and at the top of their private school’s class. I’m a fan of educational screen time, even at an early age! I just remember to have moderation in everything Also, don’t forget to turn on the closed captioning.

When my first son was born more than 3 years ago, I made it a point to not make this a parenting blog. While children change everything when it comes to money (and I’m happy to write about that), I simply didn’t want to give parenting tips. That’s not my strong suit anyway.

Over time, I’ve found myself, looking for more educational television for my 2 and 3 year old. I know some parents don’t believe in television for children, but I’m equal-opportunity when it comes to all learning formats. There’s a time and a place for books, television, tablets, and good old crayons and paper to teach letters, numbers, shapes… even foreign languages.

There was a time when parents had to accept whatever was on PBS at the time or buy VHS or DVDs of what they like. Fortunately, today we have on-demand, streaming media. Our Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions provide a ton of options at a great value.

I tried to find lists of the best educational shows online and couldn’t find any that I’d consider complete. Almost all of them get the obvious Daniel Tiger, but there are so many hidden gems. This list is going to focus on Netflix, because that’s where the majority of the best shows are. However, I’m going to slip in a couple of Amazon series that I think are top-notch as well.

I’d also like to add that Common Sense Media is excellent and often my first stop to read about a show. There’s almost too much information on the website that it is hard to best stuff. Admittedly, this is (obviously) one man’s opinion and shouldn’t be a substitute for the great work Common Sense Media does.

    Netflix

    All of these may not be on Netflix anymore. They change their programming. However, you can usually find these ideas streaming somewhere. For example, Amazon Prime (through a PBS Kids subscription) is perfect for WordWorld

    Reading

  • Super Why! – This is one of the only shows I’ve found to focus on reading. You can find shows on letters, but this really brings the whole words and reading to life. This isn’t exactly a hidden gem as it is still being regularly run on PBS.

    • Math

  • Monster Math Squad – I found this simply by searching Netflix for “Math.” What a hidden gem! The monsters appear to be knock-offs of Pixar’s Monsters Inc., but I don’t care. These monsters teach math concepts! And when I was looking around to write up this article, I found there’s even an extensive teacher’s resource guideline online.
  • LeapFrog (with LionsGate) – LeapFrog is known for its education material. The DVDs it produced a few years back are no exception. They are focused on letters, numbers, shapes, but extend to some math like simple adding and subtracting. I’m a big believer in STEM, so the math is a welcome addition.

    • Life Skills

  • Special Agent Oso – The episodes are cleverly titled after Bond movies (but kid themed). The special agent bear teaches basic life skills in “3 simple steps.” I’m not sure my 3-year old is ready to mail a letter yet, but it was helpful for learning to brush teeth. Sadly, there’s Spanish as the Oso name may indicate.
  • Curious George – The majority of what you’ll find are the television shows. They are great, but it’s hard to pin down what they are really aiming to teach from a skill point-of-view. I’d say they teach life… if you happen to be a monkey where everything always comes up roses at the end. There’s a lot of problem solving and discovery which is priceless.

    The real gem is the original movie with Will Ferrell and Drew Barrymore with music by Jack Johnson. For a kids movie, there’s a lot of entertainment for adults. They let Ferrell improv, his strength, and drew the movie to match it. It isn’t just his voice. Drew Barrymore is a voice of reason with the appropriate amount of Jessica Rabbit mixed in. (Was that too much information?) When I’m pulling apart pyramid schemes, I’m singing Upside Down and Talk of the Town. This is a top recommendation even if it doesn’t entirely focus on learning.

Team Work

  • Animal Mechanicals – The focus is on 5 mythical animals living in a fantastic mechanical world. They solve very basic physic problems by working together and using their unique abilities (strength, stretching, flying, gizmos, and speed). Each of the characters have their own distinct personalities. My sons and I ended up loving this so much that we bought the DVD because it had episodes that weren’t on Netflix.

    • Amazon Prime Shows

    Amazon Prime has some great shows as well. Many people have a Prime subscription for free shipping, so these come at no additional cost. As a extra bonus you can download them to Amazon Fire tablets and take them with you. (… Or so I am told. I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m going to look into it today.)

      Problem Solving

    • Go, Diego, Go! – I went looking for this because I wanted to introduce the kids to Spanish. They are much more interested in rescuing animals, but we’ve learned a little Spanish while watching it. Besides counting to ten, they can speak about 5-10 other words. If nothing else, Rescue Pack is 100x better than Dora’s lame Backpack.
    • Tumble Leaf – This Amazon exclusive is almost entertaining enough for parents to watch. The animation is incredible. The main character Fig the Fox, finds a new item each episode and figures out how to use it. The item could be a mirror for reflecting light, a flashlight for creating shadows, or a sponge for soaking up water. There’s a reason why it has won 5 daytime Emmys.

      • Math

    • Peg + Cat – Another math show… but I like this more than my kids. Maybe they aren’t old enough for the math concepts. At least once a week, I break an imaginary ukulele and sing this:


      • Other Streaming Services

      Reading

    • Wallykazam! – This is one of the few other shows that I’ve found focusing on reading. The kids love it! It’s on NickJr., so you might have DVR some episodes or get the Noggin app.
    • WordWorld – This is one of the most clever shows that will help kids read. The cartoon characters and objects are animated with the words themselves. So a couch is actually spells couch. You’ll find many seasons of this on the PBS Kids’ application. I subscribe through Amazon Prime Video, because it is easier for us to watch on a TV that way.

      • How do you feel about educational television? What are some of the favorite shows you and your toddlers have enjoyed? Let me know in the comments.

    Welcome to the Summer of Math

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    It’s been a strange year. On one hand, it feels crazy that it is already June. One the other hand, it seemed like a really long winter. Maybe that’s because we (in New England at least) skipped spring completely.

    Teaching Kids Math

    I don’t want to rush the year on too quickly, but for us summer is here. Our kids graduate their preschool classes on Monday and Tuesday, about two weeks before most other schools end their year and summer camps begin.

    I’ve got a bit of Tiger Dad in me, so I’ll be picking up where the teachers left off. It won’t be too bad though because the kids have camp scheduled. We also have a lot of other fun activities planned.

    My first academic love was always math. So far it looks like I didn’t pass the math gene on. It’s far too early to tell as pre-school math is mostly about counting and not much else. It can’t hurt to tilt their exposure towards experiences that focus on math.

    I’m sure you are just dying to read about pre-school math curriculum. Hmmm, maybe you are not. While this may be a better fit for a parenting blog, let’s not forget that math is the foundation for personal finance. It’s not like this is a completely crazy topic for a personal finance blog.

    Once we have a firm grasp at math the Warren Buffett’s Secret Millionaire’s Club Cartoon will make more sense. Bet you didn’t know that Warrent Buffet had a children’s cartoon about entrepreneurialism.

    Teaching Your Preschooler Math

    I don’t have a degree in education. I’m not known for my patience. I should be a horrible teacher. Maybe I am, but for whatever reasons my kids seem to get it. I’ve got a small sample size with similar genes, so this may not work for you.

    Math is a very broad subject. For the 4-5 age group that I’m targeting, the focus is mostly on adding and subtracting. I’m throwing in fractions, because the concept of slicing a pizza is something that I think they can get. I’m also going to try to develop multiplication because… well… #TigerDad.

    There are a lot of different ways to learn. I’m hoping by mixing a few different approaches, we’ll keep things fresh. I might as well start with possibly the most controversial…

    Shock Therapy

    … just kidding.

    Learning Math Through Videos

    Before I get to the good stuff, I should tell you that I’m linking mostly to Amazon versions of products. I will make a small commission if you buy product. However, you shouldn’t forget that your library can save you hundreds of dollars.

    I get that kids are glued to their tablets nowadays. When I was growing up, it was controversial for kids to be glued to the “boob tube” (a.k.a. television). There is a lot of research that says that limiting screen time is for the best. I agree with that. However, research seems to show that tablets can be good and the same is true for television. The key is focusing on the quality of what is being presented. By the very nature of what I’m trying to teach, it’s going to be high-quality by almost any standard.

    I’m going to start off with a few videos. These are short movies and something that be treated as a bit of a one-off.

    • Donald in Mathmagic Land

      Growing up I somehow missed this Academy Award-nominated film from 1959. I happened to find it on YouTube (not sure legally) and it was amazing. I think it’s exactly the movie to spark a child’s interest in math. It seems to cover everything, but I particularly like the focus on math in nature and music.

    • Flatland and Flatland 2

      I’ve never seen these, but they sounded extremely familiar to me. The original gets rave reviews. Some say that their high school class love it and others say that their 5 and 6 year old love it. My kids are doing well with basic geometry (flat and 3D shapes), but there’s always room to learn a little more.

    • School House Rock Multiplication

      I found this gem at my local library. It turns out that kids nowadays love School House Rock as much as I did. This focuses on multiplication tables taught through song. The interactive quiz part of the DVD was a great feature. My kids got every question wrong, but it was to be expected.

    • Older Kid Videos

      My kids are probably a few years away from some videos I found. However, rather than just move on, I’m include them here so I can research them in a few years. (This is another thing I love about blogging, looking back old ideas.) Let me know if you’ve seen or read anything good about Nova – The Great Math Mystery, The Science of Measurement, or The Story of Math

    Learning Math Through Books

    I’m still researching this area, but in the meantime I found a great series of math fiction books, Sir Cumference. These are fictional stories of knights and dragons with math spread throughout.

    We’re still on our first book, Sir Cumference and the First Round Table and the results so far are mixed. I thought it was a great book, but they weren’t as interested as they are for other stories. Maybe I picked a bad night to read it? Maybe it is a year above their level.

    I usually read to the kids before bed, so my hope was to get some mathy dreams percolating. We usually do two books a night depending on size). This is longer than most books we read, so I’m hoping we can stick with this series for awhile.

    There are also a number of great workbooks at our local Dollar Tree. However, this is a different kind of book than what I was originally thinking about with this section.

    Learning Math Through Games

    This was really the inspiration for the whole article. It seems there are so many tremendous board games out there for kids to learn math. I want to have game night a few times a week. We have to see how the summer scheduling goes with the wife’s work, camp, and night events like sunset concerts and baseball games.

    I found a pile of sneaky ways for a Tiger Dad like myself to slip math into their brains. I’ve been trolling Amazon for discounts and cheap prices on all of the following:

    • No Stress Chess
      This isn’t strictly a math game, but I had to include this timeless classic. This version comes with cards and players draw a card to tell them which piece they can move. My 5 year old is getting pretty good and see a move ahead now. My 4 year old beat me a couple weeks ago with a series of great cards. Once everyone is comfortable with how all the pieces move, we can graduate to the real game.
    • Sum Swamp
      This seems like the gold standard in math learning games. I bought it a couple of weeks ago with the idea of it being a school graduation gift. I have to talk with my wife about that, because we are trying to pare down the excessive number of toys that have invaded our home. It seems just about the right age (5-6) to teach just the right skills (adding and subtracting).
    • Math Dice Jr.
      Portable, easy to learn, award-winning, and priced under $7. It might be a stretch for our 4-year old, but I think he can grow into it. This toy is in our waiting room downstairs as the current sale price made me jump on it.
    • I Sea 10!
      Go fishing for combinations of numbers adding to 10. It’s another 6+ game, but I think we can work it in this summer. Since I already have Sum Swamp and Dice Jr. waiting, I’ll see how those go first.
    • Clumsy Thief
      “The Crazy, Fast-Paced, Money Game”?!?! Now we are talking. However, with an 8+ rating, we’ll probably wait on this until next year, maybe even next Christmas when our 4 year old is closer to 6.
    • Fraction Tower
      This looks like a fun physical way to learn fractions, decimals, and percentages. It’s not really a game, but I’m sure I could make it into one somehow. I like the idea that kids can physically see and feel that 1/2, 50%, and 0.5 is the same thing. I’ve been waiting for the price of this to get back towards its historical $12 level, but it seems to be pinned in the $15-range.
    • Pop For Addition & Subtraction
      This seems a little like I Sea 10, but without trying to make the combinations of 10. I could see setting up a reward system for correct answers. It looks like it would travel well to use while waiting for the food at restaurants and things like that. I haven’t seen the price budget from $9.99 in awhile.
    • Wrap-ups Multiplication Keys
      I really don’t understand how this works at all, but a ton of reviews says they are great and there aren’t a lot of multiplication tools out there. I like the tactile aspect to this and it certainly seems like something that could work on a road trip. I suspect that kids will get bored of this quickly though. I’m watching this for a good price and we can probably wait a year or more. There are Addition keys as well, which would be more appropriate.
    • Lake Shore Multiplication Machine
      I don’t know if most kids would find this very fun, but I think my kids would for at least a little while. It’s better for older kids (again multiplication), but I think my oldest could probably start it.

    Learning Math Through Television

    I covered videos above, but there are a lot of television shows that cover math concepts. My kids are already watching a lot of them. I have personally watched many episodes and highly recommend:

    • Peg + Cat
    • CyberChase
    • Monster Math Squad (used to be on Netflix, but no longer, so I bought it)
    • Team Umizoomi

    I’d like to call out CyberChase, it’s very much “under the radar” because it is an older show (though they still make several new episodes each year). I think it’s on PBS once a week. I ended up signing up for PBS Kids on Amazon for access to that and a bunch of other shows. I hope PBS gets the vast bulk of that money, because supporting PBS is something I believe in.

    Learning Math Through Apps/Websites

    I haven’t scratched the surface on using apps to learn math yet. I certainly should. I’d love to hear your suggestions.

    We have a subscription to ABC Mouse and it works well with our new Amazon Fire HD 10.

    If I find I need more, this list from Common Sense Media. They have another great list of apps and websites here

    Final Thoughts and Your Turn

    As you can tell there are nearly infinite resources out there in just about every fun way you could imagine. I wrote the bare minimum about a few of them and I still feel like this is the longest article ever. After all this typing, it feels like we’ll be spending 90% of our time on math, but that’s not the case.

    Now it’s your turn to give your thoughts. Feel free to rave about a mathy resource, rant about the lack of personal finance focus in this post, or anything in between.

    Makeshift Homeschooling on the Cheap

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    I apologize for the tumbleweeds on this website this week. I was hit with a perfect storm of pre-school ending for the 4 year old, my wife traveling, and the legal stuff that resulted from the time my wife and I walked into our Home Depot.

    I’m not sure why our school seemed to end two weeks earlier than everyone else’s, but it left all the parents in the school scrambling for childcare. Camp doesn’t start up for another two weeks when the rest of the kids get out of school.

    I decided to put together a “home school.” I put that in quotes, because it’s an embarrassment to those who really home school their children. I spent about 2 minutes on scratching out ideas on my Boogie Board. I didn’t have time to research a curriculum. I started with some things that I already around the house and went from there. Here’s what I came up with:

    Note: While I was making this list, I was surprised at all the stuff we have here. While most of it was cheap stuff, I was surprised that we had all this to cobble together a curriculum. In fairness, many of the items were gifts.

    • Reading

      • For reading I turned to Biscuit Phonics Fun (My First I Can Read). The 5-star Amazon reviews should speak for themselves. My son was able to sound out many of the small words. This is definitely the one to buy. I also bought the Batman one because my kids like Batman. Unfortunately, it’s much to difficult for them right now. I end up doing most of the reading myself, which they enjoy, but it’s not a “I Can Read” situation.

      I also picked up a book at a Dollar Tree that’s designed for 1st and 2nd graders. It’s far ahead of what my 4 year old can do, but if I read the passage he can answer some of the questions at the end. He loves solving the puzzles.

    • Writing

      • There was another book at the Dollar Tree that focused on writing. We got through capital A, lowercase a, and capital B, before he decided that he was not good at it and gave up. I don’t know how to push it without discouraging him from learning, so we moved on.

    • Math

      • We did a little Monkey Math, which is a fun game. I can thank a grandmother for that wonderful Christmas present.

    • Music

      • I tried to get my son interested in playing real music on our Melissa and Doug Piano, but that went about as well as the writing did.

    • Geography

      • We broke out this Map of the US Puzzle. My son loves puzzles, so why not learn the United States at the same time?

    • Physical Education

      • We broke out my son’s bike and went on a couple of trips around the cul-de-sac (with training wheels). My son also had a gymnastics class. We took in a local baseball game one night where we watched possibly zero baseball. His friends happened to be there so he got to play with them.

    • Nature

      • I don’t know if this counts as “nature”, but a kid can’t be inside all day playing with toys. Unfortunately much of the week was rainy. When the weather got a little better we took our dog to the dog park and practiced throwing with our Chuck-Its. We had just got these. Our dog doesn’t fetch, but since we do a lot of dog sitting, they are a necessary business expense. This was a win-win as my dog needed the exercise and interaction outside of the house too.

    • Computer Science

      • I was only positive about getting one toy this past Christmas. It was the Code-a-Pillar. This is sneaky computer science for a 4 year old. My 3 year old loves it too.

    With the exception of the bike, I think all this stuff comes in at less than $150 total. The piano and Code-a-Pillar are around $85, but the rest is $10-$15 here or there. The goal wasn’t to buy the cheapest stuff to do the job, but I think in many cases we accomplished just that.

    My son does enjoy watching television quite a bit. I mixed some television in between some of these activities. We avoided SpongeBob Squarepants which is like the soda of food – empty learning. Instead we watched Blaze (STEM), Team Umizoomi (Math), Super Why (Reading), and Salsa (Spanish).

    Overall, we made the best of a less-than-ideal situation and had a lot of fun. The downside was that I didn’t get to write much about personal finance this week. I was pretty happy to recycle some items around the house into a curriculum… and at least one article about personal finance.

    Lazy Man’s “Guide” to Black Friday

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    It seems like there’s an important holiday coming up this week. If you watched any television you can’t miss the commercials for Black Friday. Car dealerships around me are having Black Friday sales for 10 days. That doesn’t even make sense.

    I’ve noticed that many of the retailers are starting their Black Friday deals the Thursday before. And why not? It’s not like we have anything better to do that day. And we all know that if you want to participate in the deals you have to be present when the deals start.

    So my “guide” to Black Friday is simple this… skip it. Is it really worth camping out for hours in the cold for a chance at saving $50 or $100? For me it isn’t. Is it worth getting trampled in the mad rush to grab a deal? Again no. Last year a family near me got in a car accident and two people died. The sleep-deprived driver fell asleep on the way home from Black Friday.

    We are losing Thanksgiving. We may have already lost it.

    It’s not just Black Friday killing Thanksgiving. As I write this, two days before Thanksgiving, I’m watching Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Why, my 1 year old seems to enjoy it? Days ago, some of the local radio stations changed their format to 24-7 Christmas music. My neighbor was putting up his Christmas decorations this afternoon.

    Why on Earth would we do anything trivialize one of the best holidays of the year? Are we in that much of a rush for the holiday season that we need to skip over parades with amazing floats, turkey, stuffing, gravy, and copious amounts of football? I don’t know about you, but I want to spend that time with family. I want to take some time and actually give thanks for all the wonderful things I have. I don’t want to spend that time thinking about how I have to get in line to get the latest tablet.

    If you’ve read all this and are still going to participate in Black Friday, I can’t stop you. So I might as well you give you the one deal that I would take advantage of if I was going to participate. Wal-Mart has a one-hour in-stock guarantee on 20 items. The best bargain I can see is the 60″ Vizio LED Smart HDTV that has very good reviews at Amazon. At $688, it’s a much better deal than the nearly $1000 that Amazon is charging today. Most importantly, you are guaranteed to get it. Some might be enticed by the iPad Mini with the $100 Wal-Mart gift card for $299, but I’m not. It looks like last year’s model, and the gift card brings it in the price range of this year’s Nexus 7, which is faster with much better screen resolution. (I probably should have said that, because I’d like to spend my Friday looking into how to sell shares of Apple I bought awhile back for big gains.) The 32″ television for $98 looks like a steal for a bedroom or dormroom, even though it is 720P. At that price, I’m okay with the television thinking it’s 2006.

    You might find better deals elsewhere, but I prefer not to gamble when Wal-Mart is giving me a guarantee. I want to vote with my wallet to support this type of promotion, even if the retailer itself is one that is infringing on Thanksgiving.