A couple of weeks ago I presented you with The 10% Compounding Myth. A few people brought up in the comments that the examples are used as a tool to encourage people to save. I applaud that endeavor, but I wish we could do it with real math.

What happens when you don’t? Meet Luke and Hannah Wickham courtesy of USA Today. The couple is doing extremely well financially, far better than most. You can tell they’ve been ready their Kiplinger’s and/or Money Magazine. However, they have lofty goals – perhaps too lofty.

“The planner points out that the couple would actually need $18 million upon retirement to have the spending power of $10 million today, assuming a 3% annual inflation rate. This insight is eye-opening to Luke, who admits he ‘really hadn’t thought about the time value of money'”

I think 3% is a little conservative for inflation, but the point is the well made. We all need to start think about the “time value of money.”

Update:  I apologize, but the new theme was having problems matching up comments, posts, and titles.  It would occasionally show mix them all up in one page.  Functional wins over pretty, so until I can resolve the issues, I’m switching back.  Sorry for the confusion.
To all my returning users, there’s no need adjust your monitors. You are at the right place. Lazy Man and Money has a new design. I’d like to thank John Godley of Urban Giraffe for an amazing theme.

Truth be told, I had never really liked the neon green theme. When I had moved from Lazy Man and Money from Blogger to it’s own domain, I had to switch themes. I did some research and it the only one that had 3-column layout with the features I had required. It’s time to grow up and evolve to a more mellow green.

Besides the whole look and feel, we’ve added a few more gadgets to the site:

1. Top Commenters – You’ll find this area on the right, just under my goals. I encourage you to strive for the top of the list by being very active.
2. Search – Type in a few letters and you’ll get search results right away. This is one my favorite features.
3. Archives – These still exist, but they don’t take up a lot of real estate. You’ll find the drop down on the right.
4. Translate – Utilizes Google’s translation to give you a rough translation of what I’m saying in another language. If you are bilingual (with one of the languages being English), I’m guessing this could be a source of a lot of humorous bad translations.
5. Category Cloud – Tag and Category clouds are a new cool “in” thing. I like them because it allows me to squeeze a lot of information into a small space.

I hope you agree that this redesign is a vast improvement. Let me know by leaving me a comment.

I’ve watched every one season of Survivor, but never pay much attention to the contestants backgrounds. So imagine my surprise when I’m watching the finale and the camera pans on the crowd in San Mateo cheer for Yul Kwon’s victory. For those that missed it, he was an ideal competitor. He always had the right thing to say and could work himself out of any jam.

What did winning the big prize on a national prime time show get Mr. Kwon? He’ll probably take home $600,000 after taxes. In San Mateo, he could choose between a 1400 sq. foot condo or a 1200 sq foot house. I get the feeling that he’ll do okay though:

“After graduating from Yale Law School, he clerked for a federal judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, was a legislative aide to Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, and worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company and joined the business strategy group at Internet search firm Google.”

Read the rest about Yul Kwon and his victory at The SF Gate.

A representative from Morningstar.com contacted me about a special that they are having today. You can access all their premium stock research for free. If you were thinking about making a stock trade soon it may be worth checking it out. Unfortunately, there’s registration required.

Now only if I had built that web spider, I could pull all these down for later viewing… Hmmm…