Lazy Man and Money

Let’s Fix Money Magazine!

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I love Money… the magazine and the concept. Today, I want to focus on the magazine. I’ve been reading Money (along with Kiplingers) since I was in high school. That’s around 25 years now.

When each issue hits my mailbox, I’m so excited to see what’s inside. It’s little bit of Christmas that comes every month. Except this last month’s issue was… different.

The cover almost made me throw-up in my mouth. Money has already sold me so the cover isn’t important to me.

Then I started to read it. It didn’t get better. If possible, it got worse.

I gave it to my wife and asked, “Do you see anything wrong with this?” I feel like this is a good litmus test. She’s not a personal finance junkie like myself. So if she says, no, that’s great. I might be crazy, but maybe it would be differently crazy.

My wife pointed to an article that I hadn’t noticed.

This issue of Money magazine was such a dumpster fire that we couldn’t even agree on which trash is getting burned the most.

I am going to point out why the magazine was so bad. This might make me Grumpy McGrumpface I deliver this criticism with love. Tough love, but love nonetheless. Perhaps my stinging criticism will get their attention.

I’m going to offer some solutions to their issue (pun completely intended). I sympathize with Money. The issue before this one announced an editorial change. I imagine it is difficult to sell magazines in a world where newspapers are a dying breed.

(Note to Money: If any of the “fixes” below make sense, then reach out to me. I’m happy to write for you. This article isn’t a soliticiation. Some companies would pay tens of thousands of dollars for this kind of feedback. I offer it freely.)

What Wrong with Money Magazine?

It starts with the cover. The sub-heading on the magazine is “Tony Robbins Wants to Make You Rich.” It reminded me of when Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki published a book in 2006 titled “Why We Want You to Be Rich.”

I covered Kiyosaki’s scam here. I cover that other guy here. The book was terrible according to The Wall Street Journal and Kiplinger’s. Here’s a quote from that Kiplinger’s article:

“The Donald needs no introduction. Kiyosaki’s success with Rich Dad Poor Dad has spawned a franchise of books, games and speaking engagements… Impressive resumes. Alas, unimpressive book. Why We Want You to Be Rich is a thinly veiled infomercial for more financial-advice products from Kiyosaki, Trump and their minions. They sell positive thinking and can-do haziness — specific details cost extra.”

I’m not being political, I’m quoting a review from 2006. If Pee-Wee Herman runs for office, it’s fair for me to quote Pee-Wee Herman reviews (and Chair), right? This isn’t partisan.

Sorry, I got sidetracked.

My point was: If you want to make me rich, then simply give me your money. I’m here and I have a a contact form. If there’s a way I can make it easier for you, let’s talk. Don’t try to sell me a book.

It’s strange to hear that Tony Robbins wants to me rich. For decades he’s been known as an inspirational speaker. He didn’t seem to be interested in helping people with money until a couple of years ago.

In fact, Tony Robbins talked about his connections with “financial people” in this video in 2010. This “economic warning” gives a recommendation of taking money out of the stock market.

With the benefit of 7 years of hindsight, it doesn’t seem that it was good advice.

So it is very strange to have Money trumpeting Tony Robbins on the cover. He seems to admit that he doesn’t know jack-poop about finance in the video. I can find 2000 people at FinCon, who care about personal finance deeply. They live and breathe it. Why aren’t they on the cover of the magazine? (To avoid an aesthetics argument, there are attractive people at FinCon… myself not being one of them).

But even if you throw away Robbins’ failure at personal finance, there’s the time he was directly responsible for dozens of injuries according to the Washington Post. That article is from June of last year… it’s not old news.

Money magazine couldn’t wait 5 or 6 years to promote someone with almost no personal finance knowledge (that he seems to admit to)… and what he seemed to say was proven wrong.

I don’t have the space to express the number of people who might be more appropriate for the cover. Instead, I’ll jump to animals. Yep my dog is a personal finance guru. And yes my dog is much, much more handsome than Tony Robbins. He has the paper to prove it.

Phew… that is a lot of writing that seems to attack Tony Robbins. I love second chances. Let’s give him one. That’s fair, right?

Do you think this Money Magazine feature of Tony Robbins is about saving money, investing appropriately, or something that is actionable by readers. As my 4 year old would say: Nahhhh!

Instead the Tony Robbins feature seems to openly disclose that he’s promoting for a 401k company. The point he’s trying to make was essentially “401k fees are bad.”

It’s a valid point, but I covered the problem of excessive 401k fees a decade ago. And I wasn’t paid to promote a company. I was simply explaining something I read.

Oh and I didn’t include a picture of myself on my private jet like Robbins did.

I’m ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille Mr. Money Magazine.

Not everything wrong with this issue of Money is about Mr. Robbins… though I wonder if he’d like it to be. I threw him under the bus (and drove over him a few times), but this isn’t about one feature. I didn’t jump to that article.

Let’s take Tony out of the picture and pretend that “scandal” didn’t happen.

One person does not a dumpster fire make.

The Rest of Money Magazine

On page 12 there was a 2-page spread (“First”) on a $250 million dollar home. It appears to be a rewrite of this January article. CNN used to be CNN Money, I think.

I hope there isn’t a picture of a candy wall… Nope, there is. It looks like your standard candy store, but it’s important journalism to note that this is in my “typical” $250 million house. Why is a personal finance magazine wasting precious publishing space with this?

Can the average person relate to a $250 million home?

The next page has an article of “She Became a Billionaire at Age 82.” It is about an entrepreneur in Japan who started her company in 1973. It appears there were unique gender challenges in Japan at the time. Kudos for her overcoming huge odds.

Can you relate to an 82 year-old Japanese billionaire? Can you use that to improve your financial situation.

The next article is about “Streaming on a Shoestring Budget.” Good idea, but it isn’t about streaming services… where the real cost is. Instead it is about streaming devices. Fine… but if you have a “shoestring budget”, why pitch the Amazon Fire TV at $90 instead of the Fire Stick at around $40?

Page 18 has the article that caught my wife’s attention, “Which Would You Rather: a Million Dollars or True Love?” It starts out with “Love or Money? It looks like money has the edge.” It turns out that the poll is about a million dollars annually. The title is clearly misleading, right? Using the 4% rule a million dollars is worth around $40,000 annually, right? If you stack the deck with dozens of millions of dollars, is it really surprising that money wins?

I’m not even at page 20 and there are 3 articles that have a focus around people having tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Oh and there’s that Tony Robbins stuff.

Let’s Fix this!

This article is getting long, so I want to make this quick. Fortunately this isn’t complicated. Here are a few recommendations:

  1. Don’t get carried away in thinking that the title of the magazine (“Money”) means you should write about everything that fits. This isn’t the Robb Report.
  2. Think about your readership and ask, “Can my readers relate to this article?”
  3. Then ask, “Does this article give actionable information?” How can a reasonable of percentage of people use the article (How does a house with a candy wall help my personal finance situation?)
  4. Please say no to informercial stuff. You have Tony Robbins promoting a 401k company. He’s talking with Bogle, who happens to be featured in his new book. If you want me to listen to your message get the special interests out of the room. Why not have Elizabeth Warren talk with Bogle about 401k fees? I am confident she’d jump on the opportunity. Maybe you could disclose the financial relationship you had in promoting it?
  5. In for a penny, in for a pound… I’m going to go all Brick Heck on you. I’m the last person to talk about fonts, but they were all over the place. It’s like San Serif and Serif are fighting it out. I’m not sure who the winner was, but it certainly wasn’t the reader. And I didn’t mention the capitalization in the “Which Would You Rather: a Million Dollars or True Love?”, but I think a 9 year old knows that you need to capitalize that “a”. Oops, I did mention it. I’m obviously not the grammar or proofreading police, but I think there’s a difference between paying subscribers and my blog.

I suppose I’m now Grumpy McGrumpface. In nearly 300 issues, I haven’t seen something so bad in so many ways.

Labor Day Sundry Thoughts

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It’s Labor Day, so I don’t know if I’m supposed to be writing an article or not. Hopefully, you are all grilling away and not too buried in the Internet.

I had a couple of article ideas for today, but they seemed a little curmudgeon-y. Those articles wouldn’t come out well, because I’m in a terrific mood. My last week has been a little like one of Ice Cube’s “good days” (warning adult language/themes).

The biggest piece of news is that I am a finalist for a Plutus Lifetime Achievement award. I’m not sure what it really means, but in my head it is everyone unanimously agreeing that I’m the best blogger ever. (Imagine if I believed in proofreading my articles.)

Dog sitting has been continuing to go very well. At one point this weekend, I had 4 golden retrievers in my house.

The kids were with the grandparents for a couple of days giving me and Energi Gal some time to go out and be adults.

My oldest is enjoying his new school. It’s a great school… so great that it inspires me. The school’s “awesomeness” is contagious. (My wife feels the same way.)

My fantasy baseball team has been doing well. (Thanks, Dustin Pedroia.) Football is starting this week.

Enough about my excitement. I wanted to share a few things with you, just in case you aren’t at a BBQ. I presume you aren’t, because even no one reads blogs at a BBQ (even if they are Lifetime Achievement finalists).

What to Watch

My wife was looking for a new “laundry show” (a show to watch while putting away laundry) and stumbled on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on Netflix (originally on CW). It’s a smart, funny show… deserving of all the awards it was nominated for. Created and written by two women, the title isn’t as controversial as you might think. We ended up binging 15 episodes this weekend.

What to Read

I’m not usually one for crime dramas, but I got sucked into this story of a PTA Mom framed by two Silicon Valley lawyers. It is amazing how many things had to go exactly right for justice to be served. It will make you think about all the crimes that go on where justice is not served. (So much for my positivity streak.)

What to Save Money On

It turns out that beef and actually all protein is on sale. This explains the really low prices I’ve been seeing. I thought competition from my grocery stores were creating the great prices. Is everyone else seeing low prices?

How Do Like The New Uber gPod?

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I’m doing something a little different with this article. If you like it, please leave a comment and/or share this article with a friend.

It’s 2030 and my little man, Giles*, is now a big man. He’s a month away from his 18th birthday. He’s studied extremely hard and he’s got a shot at Stanford next year (finger’s crossed).

I’m continually amazed at all the things he’s been able to fit in his head. However, this is about the one thing that isn’t in there.

Giles doesn’t know how to drive a car. Neither do any of his friends.

Since the government passed the new Manual Driver Requirements in 2028, none of them have even taken a driver’s test. Why would they?

I couldn’t be happier about how things have developed in the last 15 years. When I started this blog nearly 25 years ago in 2006, I had planned to spend thousands on transportation in retirement. Who would have thought that transportation has become a small income stream for me?

Did I lose You? Let me take a step back.

In late 2015, I realized that several technologies were converging to change the world.

My solar panels hadn’t celebrated their first birthday, but they already had me thinking: “If only there were reasonably-priced electric SUVs, I could eliminate most of my gas bill. (I’d need something for longer trips.)”

Several months before that, Uber came my town. I’ve only used it a couple of times, but the idea of on-demand transportation is changing the way millions of people travel.

And the year before that, I was on “the 101” in Silicon Valley and next to me was a Google car without a driver.

A funny thing happens when you put autonomous cars, on-demand transportation, and “free”** solar power together. The cost of car transportation becomes very small.


Uber's future gPod

Currently, the average American family spends 19% of their money on transportation. (I’ll make the assumption that the number is typical, or more, for car owners and those who commute via public transit save money.) However, the average car is in use only 4% of the time according to Morgan Stanley.

So, roughly, 1/5 of the money goes to something that is used 1/25th of the time. That’s terribly inefficient.

In a world of autonomous, on-demand cars, people pay for what they use. I choose to save money by riding at off-peak hours to run errands.

What about the cost of human drivers? In 2016, Uber had to pay hundreds of thousands of drivers. Autonomous cars is a huge, huge cost savings for them.

I don’t mind one bit, because autonomous cars are great for riders like me as well. We can use our commuting time productively. The average commute to work appears to be about 24.5 minutes. We’ll estimate that to be 50 minutes a day (round-trip). It appears that the average hourly wage is $20.43, meaning that the 50 minutes saves people around $17 a day on just their work commute. (This makes the dangerous and possibly false assumption that people would be as productive while in the car. If they aren’t being productive, I humbly suggest that they have a higher quality of life.)

In the spirit of the late, great, Steve Jobs, there’s One More Thing.

The autonomous cars drive much more efficiently. They merge perfectly because computer sensors direct everything. The same sensors help ensure that there are extremely few accidents. Commuting times are reduced which is allows people to have more time to do the things they want to do.

What about solar? How do I make money from Uber’s gPods?

A few years ago, the last of the gas-powered auto companies announced they’d be switching to electric, just like everyone else. At the time of the announcement, I couldn’t help but think of the last companies to make typewriters and VCRs.

Our family has always tried to be a little ahead of the curve. In 2015, We were the first house in the neighborhood to get solar power. So when Alphabet’s Uber subsidiary announced their latest innovation a couple of years ago, we were quick to sign up.

We make a little money each day renting out a parking space in our driveway (and electricity) to Uber. Uber realized early on that by distributing cars throughout a neighborhood, people would always have fast access to a car. Location, location, location. It was much more efficient than having them in a central parking area. By tapping into the solar power that’s already in most people’s homes, Uber eliminated the need to “refuel” cars.

I imagine that Uber swaps out cars for maintenance, but it’s hard for me to be sure. The cars look mostly the same. The come in any color you want as long as it is black. All I know is that we have size 1, 2, or 3 in our driveway at any given time.

Back in 2016, I was estimating that we’d pay more than $800 a month for our two cars in retirement. That’s around $10,000 a year. This system is much, much cheaper. In fact, our car expenses are essentially zero when you factor in Uber’s payment to us for the parking space.

We finished paying off our 15 year mortgage 3 years ago in 2027. With our electricity and transportation costs zero we are left few other expenses. I haven’t figured out how to eliminate the cost of health care, food, taxes, insurance, and other utilities. For most people health care is one of their biggest expenses. We’re very fortunate to have my wife’s military coverage. Though it is much more expensive than in was in 2016, it’s still a great deal compared to the other options out there.

Thank heavens that we’ve been able to reduce and/or eliminate all these expenses. This year Stanford is $150,000 a year. Giles’ younger brother, Xander, is looking into MIT. That’s not any cheaper.

Is it silly to reflect about saving $10,000 a year on transportation when you are spending $300,000 a year between two colleges?

* In traditional Lazy Man fashion, I have substituted real names with a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

** Solar power isn’t free, but the panels are very cheap and efficient in 2030. There’s no incremental cost to power cars like there is with gasoline.

“Are You *IN* Debt or Do You *HAVE* Debt?”

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This weekend my wife and I had a date night while the kids slept over their grandparents house. We used the opportunity to go to Foxwoods casino for a special dinner and to see comedian Chris D’Elia. He was a co-star in NBC’s Whitney and Undateable, two shows that I thought were fantastic. I didn’t particularly like them due to D’Elia, but he was the common theme.

I’ll get back to Chris D’Elia and the dinner in a bit, but I found the opening comedian somewhat interesting. I think his name was Mike Lomborg. I wish I could find out for sure, but he wasn’t mentioned in writing anywhere I could find. My best attempts to dig through Google came up empty.

Comedy usually doesn’t pay good money for people at this level. And that’s a point that Mike grabbed onto and ran with. Comedy also works best when it’s a little self-deprecating. Mike explained that having a scooter instead of a car significant diminishes his dating prospects. He also said this (paraphrased) about one of his break-ups:

“She said that she loves me, but she’s not in love with me… That’s like me saying that I have debt, but that I’m not IN debt. So I went to the bank and told them that while I have debt with them, I’m not IN debt with them, so I’m not going to be making any more payments.”

Obviously, that wouldn’t work out very well for Mike’s personal finance situation. I found it funny, so I had to share it.

He had another personal finance joke. This one was about student loans. He mentioned how he wrote a $300 check and somehow still owes the same amount of money (it’s a comedy show, not math, but let’s presume that the interest rate is the reason). He goes on to ask if they are the mafia, because it would be easier if they just broke his legs and called it even.

He warned that this is what happens when you go to college and don’t use the degree. That’s some sage advice from a guy who started out his act with about 25 pointless swears in the first 2 minutes.

Ever see the movie Memento where the movie’s scenes are in reverse and then returns to the present day at the end of the movie? I’m going to steal that idea for this article.

A couple of hours before Mike took the stage, my wife and I sat down for dinner at David Burke’s Prime Steakhouse at Foxwoods. This was not going to be a cheap dinner. However, I hoped to have a steak that I wouldn’t forget. In a way, they delivered on that promise, just not the way I had hoped. I’ll start by saying the service and the table-side Caesar salad were very good. Unfortunately, the 75-day dry aged ribeye was very ordinary… and certainly not of the worth the premium price in my opinion.

Continuing the Memento backwards theme, we were a half-hour early for our reservation. We decided to have a drink at the bar.

The price of wine at David Burke’s Prime was shocking. The cheapest bottle on the menu was $82. I’d say only 20% of the bottles were in two digits. I’d say the median was probably around $125. With four glasses of wine per a bottle, that’s anywhere from $20-$30 a glass. They had good wine, but having been to several of the vineyards, they weren’t extremely premium-priced ones. The interesting thing to me is that if you bought wine by the glass, there were many selections between $18-22. That seems to be the best way to go… if you want wine.

I went with the beer myself. At $7-$8 for most of the drafts, you can have 2-3 before you get to the price of a glass of wine… or around 15-18 drafts for the price of (my estimated) median bottle of wine. (Note: Please don’t try to drink 15-18 beers.)

I don’t think I’ll be back. It’s not because it was bad, but I found David Burke’s Prime Steakhouse was a slightly above average experience for an extreme price.

Before we went to David Burke’s, we stopped to play some craps. I’m a big fan of craps, probably because I know many of the odds. That helps you minimize the house’s advantage… which is the best that most people can hope for.

We proceeded to lose $50 fairly quickly. What are the odds of three straight rolls of 3 on the come out roll? Well, it’s 3/36 for one roll. My math skills are very, very rusty, but I think it’s something like 27 in 46,656… or about 1 in 1725. That’s exactly what happened to us.

We figured that we might as well move on to dinner. Though it was early for our reservation, maybe they’d be able to seat us early. Worse case, we could pass the time to dinner with a drink at the bar.

Now we jump to ten minutes before the Chris D’Elia show starts. I decide to hop on Twitter and see if people in the audience are Tweeting about him. I do a search and see tweets saying that his show Undateable was cancelled by NBC hours before. I figured that this could be very interesting…

… it didn’t get interesting as he didn’t mention it until near the end of his act when someone in the audience brought up Whitney. He said something about his stand-up routine being different from his television stuff. So that was disappointing. He also seemed to be so tired that he’d laugh at his own jokes before he told them. One time he told a joke and ad-libbed something and said, “Hey someone Tweet me that so I remember that.”

This is nitpicky stuff as most of his act was very good. He had two financial jokes (that I remember).

The first was about Wells Fargo greeters. It was funny, but I couldn’t related because: 1) Wells Fargo is barely in New England and 2) Who actually goes in banks? I’ve been inside a bank about 3 times in 5 years… and they were for fairly unusual circumstances such as getting a HELOC for solar power and opening a business account.

The second joke, and I’m not sure this was supposed to be a joke, was D’Elia admitting that he has no idea how to switch banks. He thought that perhaps they give you bags of money with money signs on them when you leave the bank.

I wonder, is this really a problem that people can relate to? I understand that it’s a joke, but it seems like the joke would be funnier if there was basis of truth that people could laugh as if to say, “It’s funny, because it’s true.”

My favorite joke of D’Elia’s was about how we are the stars of our own movies. While we might all agree that he’s the star right now with the literal spotlight on him addressing a large crowd, there’s an entirely different perspective to consider. For some couples, such as ones on a date, he’s just a small part of their evening… he might as well be “Comedian #2.”

Let’s end this rambling article on that sage thought from “Comedian #2.”

P.S. If you are still reading, I’m going to be releasing a special deal exclusively on my mailing list tomorrow. It’s free, so you might want to sign up if you aren’t a member already.

Should We Pay Criminals to NOT Commit Crimes?

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This is an article that I’ve been kicking around for a few months. I’d like to say that I came up with that “banana pants” title, but it is largely stolen borrowed from this Washington Post article: Paying criminals not to commit crime may not be so funny after all.

I’d like to be more original with my titles, but…

… being a stay-at-home dad makes working very difficult. I’m usually trying to play with and educate Little Man, which is obviously time-consuming in and of itself.

However, when trying to carve out some time to work, I put on a television show. The show that Little Man wants to watch is Bo on the Go. The show is annoying on so many levels. It’s so very far from TumbleLeaf. It’s almost like Bo on the Go is trying to annoy people so much that they won’t notice that the “solution” is almost always to put the “problem maker” in a Sisyphean task. For example, the current episode I’m watching punishes the “Neat Freak” with a “Never-Ending Puzzle.”

It’s almost impossible to write a good post in that kind of environment. I’m going to lean on heavily on the “almost”… it’s up to you decide what “good” is.

Sorry, that rant escalated quickly. Let’s get back to the original topic.

The article from The Washington Post makes a convincing case that paying criminals not to commit crimes actually makes sense. A funny thing about writing is that you never anticipate putting a string of words like that. The article doesn’t mince words, focusing on the controversy and “optics” at the start.

I put “optics” in quotes there because “optics” seem too often to be used as a way to hide the “meat” of the issue. (Yes that’s a lot of quotes.)

Oddly the “pay-for-peace” plan seems to work. I’m conflicted on the idea. By nature I’m idealistic, but the extremely strong logical side of me appreciates a cost-effective solution to an obviously very complex problem.

In the end, I’m going to agree with the author:

“But then someone asked more of them. They took trips to college campuses, and they were forced to make friends with rivals. For every month they attended meetings, listened to mentors, didn’t get in trouble, they got $1,000.

The cash helped pay rent and buy food. But ultimately, it was the attention to them, their futures and their success that kept those guys coming back, that kept them straight. It’s focused attention to their well-being that many never had before.”

So criminals got regular money, not just for avoiding crime, but for actively showing that they are turning their life around. And it’s hard to argue that giving positive focused attention is a bad thing.

What do you think? Is paying criminal to be good bad? If that question is too deep, let me know the kids’ television show that annoys you (ha, ha).

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