Lazy Man and Money

Focus on My DDoS and Timeshares

by 4 Comments

I’m still working with a couple companies to keep this website up and active. In the meantime, I will be giving occasional updates via Twitter (@LazyManAndMoney). I plan to put in some time creating guest posts for various blogs, so look for some content there.

The plan for the next few days is to focus on vacation and timeshare ownership. It’s fresh in my mind as I’ve just returned from a week’s vacation in Maui. I will focus this articles on specifics (Marriott’s Vacation Club for example). While you may not be able to relate to those specifics, I believe larger trends can be extrapolated from them.

Eight Things I Think I Think

by 3 Comments

  • Ready For Zero – I think I want to thank Ready for Zero for hosting a good San Francisco area meet-up this past week. The company has some free tools to help users help themselves get out of debt. If you carry debt, it can’t hurt to take a look at what they have to offer.
  • Dog Show at the Cow Palace – I think I probably shouldn’t have gone to a dog show at a local arena called the Cow Palace this past week. My wife went last year and due to many giveaways from vendors ended up with great value for her admission dollar. With the two of us going this time, the total cost was $36 ($12 for each ticket and another $12 for parking). From a financial perspective it wasn’t a win as there were fewer giveaways this year. As for the dog show itself, it wasn’t every entertaining with no announcer of the dogs and programs costing another $7. The highlight was seeing a couple dozen Golden Retrievers getting groomed. I’m secure enough in my masculinity to say that it would be hard to find anything cuter. (By the way, in case you were wondering the Cow Palace is the furthest thing from a palace, and there wasn’t a cow to be seen.)
  • Jayne Cobb Hat Arrives – I think that I’m proud to wear my Jayne Cobb hat in public. I wrote a post a little while back about Kimberly Palmer’s Planners. In it, I mentioned how I’m not really an Etsy fan, but that this Jayne Cobb hat had me interested. The creator of the hat offered to send me one for free, which I jumped on. For those who don’t know, the hat is from an episode of the short-lived Firefly television series. The big burley mercenary character got it mailed to him from his mother in a bit of comic relief. The hat itself matches absolutely nothing else that I own, but it is surprisingly warm. The downside is that in northern California it hasn’t been that cold.

Football Thoughts

  • Super Bowl Tickets – I think you won’t see me at a Super Bowl in my lifetime. More than a few people asked me if I’d be going to the Super Bowl to watch my hometown team, the Patriots. Even though I embody the term “superfan”, the thought never crossed my mind. The Super Bowl seems to have a ton of festivities and I think I’d just want to avoid all that and concentrate on the game. If I won free tickets, I’d surely go, but I doubt I’d pay more than a couple of hundred dollars for the whole experience.
  • Gronkowski’s Ankle – I think I’m not sure where Gronkowski’s ankle injury ranks in the last 10 years of Boston postseason sports history. Is it up there with the Brady’s in 2001 when he was knocked out of the championship game and some questioned whether he’d play in the Super Bowl or if the Patriots would go with Drew Bledsoe? Is up there with Schilling’s blood sock performance in 2004 (the sock is in the Hall of Fame)? It has to be somewhere in between right? I’ve heard just about every angle of this Super Bowl coverage, and no one has put it in that perspective.
  • Indianapolis Colts 1 – I think this might be the quote of the week. Someone told me that Indianapolis Colts’ coach Jim Caldwell said, “if you are prepared there’s no reason to sweat” before the Super Bowl on February 7th, 2010. For those who might not follow sports, Jim Caldwell got fired a couple of weeks ago, after his team had the worst record in football, which was attributed to the failure to prepare for an injury to the team’s star player Peyton Manning.
  • Indianapolis Colts 2 – I think everyone agrees that the 2nd best quarterback I can remember (sorry Montana, I didn’t follow you as much) has played his last game in Indianapolis. Some say that Manning might never play again. If true, it will be a big loss for the NFL. The show will go on, but I think the biggest rivalry over the last 10 years, the Patriots-Colts will not be the same.
  • Super Bowl Thoughts – I think that for all the coverage the Super Bowl is getting there are a lot of topics left uncovered. For example, there has been a lot of talk about how bad the Patriots defense was this year. A lot of that is deserved due to Patriots giving up a lot of yards. However, no one seems to mention that the Giants gave up a lot more points than the Patriots did. They also don’t mention that the Giants were 27th of 32 teams in giving up yards (while the Patriots were 31 of 32 teams). Despite how “bad” these defenses are made out to be by analysts they each shut out each other’s “great” offense in the first half of the first meeting.

Top Personal Finance Posts:

Five Things I Think I Think

by 3 Comments

  1. Cocktails with SavvyMoney and DailyWorth – This Wednesday I was invited by SavvyMoney and DailyWorth along with some other San Francisco media types (bloggers and others) to a cocktail party. It was great to talk with both CEOs. I’ve been a big fan of both products. SavvyMoney is still viewed as DebtGoal in my mind, but I’m making the transition to the new branding. Loved talking with the founder about MLMs (he’s from Utah where most of them originate). I get DailyWorth’s emails every day (though it is more targeted at women) and there’s some great advice there.
  2. Free Tax Filing for those who make less than $57,000 – If you made less than $57,000 last year you might be able to get your taxes done for free through My Free Taxes, a company that seems to have partnered with the Wal-Mart Foundation, the United Way and other reputable organizations.
  3. Bad Technology Week – The week started with my website going down when I was ironically trying to fix things. I was able to get things in a couple of hours and it was the weekend, so hopefully not too many noticed.

    The bad week continued when I got the System Check virus. That knocked out my primary computer for about a day. Fortunately the advice at My Anti Spyware got me a virus free state. I also owe a little hat tip to to Bleeping Computer. One of the take away lesson is to have a thumb drive with Windows Defender Offline, Malwarebytes, Rkill, and TDSSKiller. If follow those websites directions and have that on hand, you can pretty much cure most viruses. It saved me from going to Geek Squad and spending $200.

    The week ended with Google announcing that they’ll penalize sites with too many above the fold ads. That seemed to earn me a penalty from Google. I admit that my site may appear a little ad-heavy, but most regular readers have fewer ads. I spent much of the day changing a few things on my site and I hope to make a few more changes this week.

    Finally, I got word that my old hosting company, Dreamhost got hacked and some websites that I had stored there may have had their passwords compromised. I haven’t seen them offer me any free service, yet. Bad times, bad times.

  4. NFL Championship Week Review – If you watched the two football games yesterday, you were treated to a pair of nail-biters. Typically, I would put the day high on my list of great football games for that very reason, but not this time. Each game was won more by a team making a mistake on basic fundamentals rather than the opponent forcing them into an error. I’m not sure if either winning team was really the better team on that day. A case could be made for the games going either way. I feel for the local 49ers, though I am happy that the my hometown Patriots were able to pull through. It could have been a long two weeks having to be the “bad guy” amongst the locals.
  5. SuperBowl Preview – It will be a long two weeks anyway, because the Patriots face a rematch of the 2007 season Super Bowl, the game that lead to this depressing post. The Patriots and the Giants are completely different teams this time, but they still have many of the same underlying traits. I think a lot will come down to the health of Patriots’ Gronk, the protection of the Patriots offensive line, and turnovers. (It always comes down to turnovers it seems.)

Ten Things I Think (and Personal Finance Links)

by 6 Comments

Once again I’m ripping of Peter King’s format.

1. I think that if Martin Luther King, Jr were alive he would endorse his day being expanded to something like “Anti-prejudice Day.” That’s not say that racial inequality isn’t deserving of a day of reflection… However, if not for the movie a couple of years ago or living in San Francisco I wouldn’t have known of Harvey Milk and I think he and his cause is worth remembering as well. (I’m disappointed in myself for not posting this in time for most of you to read this on MLK day.)

2. I think hosting a party is the best motivator I know for cleaning up our house. I have to give most of the credit to my wife on this one because I typically think that people won’t care.

3. I think I’m more than I little confused at Safeway’s coupon policy. We were the victim of a cash register error involving coupons at Safeway today. We had about $15 in coupons for dog food and treats and our receipt only said we saved $6. Due to the line of waiting customers we had to go customer service and find out what was up. We went through with a calculator and got all the money owed to us. There they said that their registers were changed yesterday so that if there’s one “buy one get one free” coupon that the rest of the coupons on the entire order wouldn’t apply – even if they were for different products. I started to argue because that clearly makes zero sense and the representative just offered to print out the coupon policy and then sent us on our way. I wish I wasn’t in a hurry because I would have liked to have found out why the register didn’t reject the coupon and at least give it back to us.

I glanced through the coupon policy and couldn’t find anything about the “buy one get one free” thing that the representative was talking about.

4. I think that I foolish brought down my site on Saturday morning for a couple of hours. For a little while I thought I might have lost a weeks of work, but I was able to get things up and going. Ironically, what brought down my site was my work to prepare more extensive backups of the data.

Five from the NFL (just a warning to those who aren’t football fans)

5. I think that was the best I’ve seen the Patriots play this year. As one player commented, they are peaking at the right time, which is what you want if you are a Bostonian like I am.

6. I think for all the talk about offensive teams being the best in the NFL this year, it’s interesting that the Saints and Packers no longer playing. Also that San Francisco – New Orleans game was one of the best games I have ever seen.

7. I think that the Saints and Packers games reminded us why it’s worth putting “any given Sunday…” at the forefront of any NFL playoff discussion. The media can go little wild with statistics and the small sample size of NFL playoffs games give them a lot more license to bring up things that aren’t statistically relevant. One thing that I think I saw was that Green Bay was 13-0 before 2002 in home playoff games and 2-4 since then. The turnover of the roster in the NFL means that few of those players before 2006 are still with the team. Let’s not mention that no one from the 1960’s teams that built up much of that 13-0 record are still with the teams.

8. I think I’m feeling a little proud about what I wrote about Gronkowski and Tebow previously: “While the football world is going crazy about Tebow, they are missing out on Rob Gronkowski – who is actually performing at a much, much higher level than Tebow.”

9. I think that as a Patriots fan living in San Francisco, I’m in a bit of quandary in the NFC Championship game. If the Patriots win (and that’s how I have to think), who should I root for in the NFC Championship game. It seems like a no-brainer for me to root for my local team and against New York (rooting against NY in sports is built into our Bostonian DNA). However, that puts me in an uncomfortable position for the next year of having half my wardrobe either appearing to taunt the local team or leading me to face ridicule of the local fans.

10. I think I ran out of items so this is filler :-).

On the other hand, if the Giants make it to the Super Bowl with the Patriots… that’s going to be a long two weeks of replays.

Top Personal Finance Posts:

Ten Things I Think (and Personal Finance Links)

by 3 Comments

  1. Going to a Personal Finance Blogger’s wedding – Yesterday, my wife and I went to Cap from Stop Buying Crap‘s wedding. He’s not blogging much anymore, but he is still one of the most trusted experts in knowing everything about how to make your web business successful.
  2. That “AppSumo” Guy – I bumped into Noah Kagen at the wedding. Nowadays he’s known as the guy behind AppSumo, a kind of Groupon for tools to those of us who create digital products. I had met Noah almost 5 years earlier when he demo’d a financial product to me for a company that he was working for called MyMint. The website wasn’t available to the public and the office was little more than a bunch of boxes, but the company, rebranded as Mint, would later be sold to Intuit for over $100 million dollars. It was a little unusual running across him again like that.
  3. A Few Words About Laguna Beach – That wedding brought us down to Laguna Beach for the weekend. My wife got us a good deal on a hotel room on the beach – offseason is a good thing. The community is very much geared to the Paris Hilton crowd. Went for a walk and went by three salons, a jewelry store, a dog boutique, a candle store, 3 art galleries, and a Hello Kitty store. I think Laguna Beach has some kind anti-testosterone city ordinance.
  4. It is All About the 647 – If there’s anyone into numerology, please chime in with your thoughts. One Friday night, my wife I boarded flight #647 leaving at 6:47PM. When we landed we got in our rental car and headed to our hotel which had a street number of 647. I looked to play the lottery, but couldn’t find one.
  5. Mastro’s Steak House – Mastro’s is still the best steak house I’ve ever been to. It is a very expensive meal, but again it is fantastic. My wife is not a steak eater, but even though they have an extensive seafood selection, she ordered the steak. American Idol singer Stevie Scott was singing there last week, but the entertainment that we had was extremely good as well.
  6. One Hit Wonders on sale at Amazon – Here’s a list of 130 songs for 69 cents available at Amazon. You aren’t likely to buy the whole albums of Baha Man, the Proclaimers, Marcy Playground or Jesus Jones. But there are some pretty good songs available. I’m tempted at throwing $25 and getting a batch of music.
  7. Music Quiz – While on the topic of music, I thought up a little quiz for you. What artist had a famous song with the thought-provoking lyrics of, “You can’t write if you can’t relate?” (Answer Below.)
  8. Kiyosaki in Focus – I got a lot of great emails from readers about my article on Robert Kiyosaki. I had almost posted it on MLM Myth instead of Lazy Man and Money. Glad that I went with Lazy Man. Also, proofreading may not be as overrated as I think it is.
  9. NFL Thoughts – The Saints and Broncos showed me something this weekend. Both were much better than I had expected. The difference is that my expectations were very low for the Broncos. I think the Saints are probably the best team in football. I’m looking forward to the Patriots’ game next week where they have hired ex-Bronco head coach Josh McDaniels helping them out against Tebow and any other deities he can summon.
  10. Music Quiz Answer – The artist is Beck and the song is “Loser.” Other, not-so-thought-provoking lyrics include, “spray-paint the vegetables”, “shave your face with some mace in the dark”, “drive-by body-pierce”, and of course “get crazy with the cheese whiz.” Sometimes thoughtful ideas come from strange places – like hidden in the middle of a bunch of nonsensical music lyrics.

Top Personal Finance Posts: