Lazy Man and Money

Three Dreams, Two Household Tips, and One Merry Christmas

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Money Gift

Last week, I wrote an article that was tough to publish because I was feeling very depressed. Tasks everywhere just caving in on me and I was getting buried… and I don’t even have a traditional career. Turns out that much of the cure for those feelings may have been just writing about them. Or maybe is was all the heartfelt comments I received. I’m sure the passing of time played a role as well.

Whatever it was has had a very interesting side effect. After years of only remember one or two dreams per year (at most), I now have a 3 day streak of very vivid dreams. It’s been years of since I had one vivid dream.

I wanted to share them, because they give a little peeks into myself, this blog, and have a little money mention in them. (I wouldn’t blame you if you just skipped down to the two household tips.)

  1. My MLM scam exposure stories haunt me (and Tom Brady)

    In this dream, one of the old MLMs that sued me into silence was upset about some kind of new story that was being done by a journalism student, Mary Higgs, on the Boston College campus. I guess she uncovered all my previous findings and wrote it into a story. No one would give me a clear story, but the lawyers were fighting and demanded I come in.

    Tom Brady happened to be taken a master’s course there for some reason. In fact, the Patriots had a whole satellite office there. All of it was connected, but no one would tell me how. When it finally came time watch the video of Higgs’ exposé, Tom Brady came in and asked if could talk to me for a few minutes. It was a clear distraction tactic. I don’t have many rules, but one is, “If Tom Brady wants to give you a few minutes of his time, you don’t say no.”

    Of course, I woke up before talking to Tom Brady or uncovering the mystery of the reporting and the connection to the Patriots. I could only assume it was like when the Red Sox players were caught in the MonaVie pyramid scheme.

  2. I sailed around New York City

    I’ve been sailing exactly once in about 10 years. However, I live in a sailing community, Newport RI, so that will change. On this day it changed really quickly as I hopped a quick flight to NYC (not sure how that’s quicker than driving) and rented a sailboat. I took it around the sea a few times and got a picture of the Statue of Liberty through some kind of arch.

    Since I was wet, I got a hotel room and showered. Then it was too dark to sail back to the rental place. A fine Japanese young man who happened to have a sail planned in my direction offered to guide me. I got the sailboat back safely. Then I rented a car and drove back home only with the fear of having to explain to my wife that I spent a few thousand dollars.

    In the morning, I checked my phone for that picture of Ms. Liberty, just to make sure that it didn’t happen.

  3. Barstool Sports makes my son famous

    I posted something on Lazy Man about my son’s scooter not being charged for school. Very mundane stuff. Barstool picks up the story and uses their traditional sarcasm to explain that he must have a howitzer to get girls with such a terrible ride. (Howitzer, is a reference to an old Barstool scandal.) I don’t know if they knew he was 5 years old, but the media jumped on them for that.

    All of this time, traffic to my Lazy Man story was going through the roof. The only thing is that I don’t check traffic very much and I had a full day of real world errands to run. I missed the whole media circus until everyone had moved onto the next interesting thing.

    Come to think of it, that very much sums up everything you need to know about blogging. (Also, I haven’t read Barstool in years.)

Hopefully those weren’t too long or boring. I promise not to give up personal finance writing for dream writing.

Two Household Tips

I realize that you don’t come here for the above stuff, but I didn’t think Christmas Eve was the right time for a deep analysis of the SECURE Act and stretch IRAs. As a compromise, I’ll leave you with two random household money saving tips that I’ve been saving up for years because they don’t fit anywhere else on the blog:

  • Fogless Shaving Mirrors Forever – I NEED a fogless shaving mirror in the shower. It’s the best thing ever invented. The only problem is that they lose their foglessness as you clean them. Sometime they give a 1/10 of an ounce cleaner and ask you to buy more. A better plan is to get RainX anti fog repellent for car windshields. I put a couple of drops on a piece of toilet paper and any old shower mirror is anti fog for a few days. A bottle will last you for years and years. It’s usually about $5, so Amazon’s pricing is very weird today.

    They seem to realize that people have discovered this trick and added that it works great on bathroom mirrors on the bottle. I’ve been on my same shaving mirror for 15 years now and before I had to churn through them every year or two.

  • Bullion Cubes – This is further proof that moms are the smartest people. My mom used bullion cubes fairly often, but I’m mostly self-taught cooker. I bought chicken broth in boxes. Then I’d throw half the box away because it was too much. Then I bought cans because I was less wasteful of broth – but probably more wasteful in creating trash.

    At Aldi’s I discovered bullion cubes on just a random glance on the aisle. It was about $2.00 for the equivalent of 25 cans of broth… in 1/25th of the space! It’s a perfect replacement. I don’t know if tastes the same, but fortunately my cooking is bad enough that no one will the notice the difference.

I hope you got something out of your time reading this today. If you have a favorite household tip, please share it below. Maybe we can compile a greatest hits and turn this into a valuable resource (minus my weird dream stuff).

Finally, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. The plan is to do a financial year in review before the New Year.

Holiday Sundries: Mesh Wifi, Best Investment Idea, and No Camp

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I hope all my United States’ readers enjoyed their Independence Day holiday. The July 4th holiday is a good market for half of the year being completed. I’ll be reviewing my goals for the beginning of the year soon. I know I’m behind where I wanted to be with decluttering, but still ahead of where we’ve ever been, so that’s win.

Pell Bridge Sunset
The sunset view before the fireworks in Newport, RI

I hope to publish a financial update through the end of June in a few days. I ran some preliminary numbers while we are still waiting to receive rent checks and the numbers are looking amazing.

It’s a good thing too, because the past week was a really difficult one for us. There are some things that I can’t get into, but one of them that I can was a dog I was sitting on Rover. This puppy was kind-hearted, but it just chewed up everything. I couldn’t leave it alone for more than 5 minutes. Most of the time the dog sitting gig is great. However, not every job is perfect and this was a reminder of that.

I have serveral longer articles almost finished, but I didn’t want to get anything too deep due to the holidays. Instead, I’ll go with a few little thought nuggets.

Installing a Mesh Wifi System

I used to laugh at the idea of mesh wifi systems. I figure it just made sense to use an old router as a repeater. Maybe we have too many devices now, or maybe it’s that my recycled repeater router is 10 years old, but we’ve run into a lot of wifi problems in the house. I decided that life is too short to go through it with bad wifi. (I’ve been thinking that a lot lately.)

I did some research and it seemed to say that one product was the best. So I ended up buying a renewed/refurbished version of this Netgear Orbi RBK50 for around $200. Some mesh systems are $400, so hitting the $200 number was important to me. There’s also a new standard coming out soon, so I’ll feel better replacing a $200 system in a few years than I would if I spend $400. For now, I’ll hopefully be able to sell my old routers for $50 combined.

Unfortunately, the process of installing the Orbi requires a reboot of the cable modem. I rebooted my cable modem a few weeks ago and it took a call to my cable company’s customer support to resolve it. It turned out to just be dumb luck that it decided to work. This time my cable modem didn’t come back. It’s 6 years old, and I stored it in a drawer where it was likely overheating. I went to Amazon and bought a new one. In the meantime, I’m renting a combo router/wifi from my cable company that is terrible, but it at least gets us online.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to review the Orbi soon.

My Best Individual Investment Idea

Pell Bridge Night
A view of the same bridge at night.

In reviewing two years of stock picks it seems like my hand-picked value stocks far out-performed the market. I’m still the person who held onto oil and Twitter for years just to see it do nothing, so I don’t claim to be a stock picking wizard. I’m very much an believer in buy and hold index investing.

However, if you were to look at those articles in the past and how the stocks did, you might ask me, “What are some example stocks that are going to break out in the future?” Unfortunately, I don’t see any from the group that I track that seem particularly good. The closest I have is Kraft-Heinz (Nasdaq: KHC). It fits the model because the stock has been badly beaten (for good reason). It still pay for a very healthy 5.24% dividend, but that dividend may get cut in the future.

I think the company will figure things out and turn it around. It could be months or it could be years. I don’t think anyone’s crystal ball is perfect when it comes to picking company stocks.

If stock picking isn’t your thing, I’m planning to write something in the next week or two that will be of more interest to you. Here’s a preview: Bonds look to be a much better investment over the long term than I thought.

Keeping Kids Home During the Summer?

Joe from Retire By 40 is having a whole summer with his son. This struck me as odd as I grew up in an environment where kids went to summer camp. It was just what is done and I never gave it a second thought. When my kids were younger, I appreciated any time off I could get, because taking care of a 2-year old is much more tedious than a 7-year old. With our kids being a year apart, it was “double trouble.”

However, now that they are older and largely take care of themselves (not that they always want to), we could use the summer to do more family stuff during the week. I have largely ignored the cost of camp and let my wife handle it. However, it’s nearly $50 a day per child, so $100 for the two. The easy math shows that it is $500 for the week or $2000 for the month.

That’s a lot of money especially because it’s only 6-hour days. As soon as I drop them off, I feel like I’m picking them up again. I feel it’s important for them to have a camp experience and play with kids their own age in a fun environment that’s less structured than school. I also feel it’s important to me to still have some time to focus on work during the summer.

Maybe next year, we’ll do a 50/50 camp/home split – one week on, and one week off. There are some specialty camps that I’ve been looking at, but they are a little more money. It’s much more affordable to do 5 weeks of specialty camp and home with dad than it is to 10 weeks at general camp.

I’m coming up with this idea on the spot. I’ll have to see what my wife thinks of it.

Have yourselves a great weekend. I highly recommend Toy Story 4 if you want to beat the heat. I’ve also started the new season of Stranger Things on Netflix, but I’m sure some of you already finished it.

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.