Lazy Man and Money

Five Random Financial Thoughts

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I’ve had a few things percolating in my head over the last week. It’s time to pour it out into the blog. Please let me know in the comments if it’s Kopi Luwak or 3-hour old sludge in the office’s coffee machine.

  • Liberty Tax Service is Odd – I was surprised to see Liberty Tax Service parading people in Statue of Liberty costumes outside their tax locations. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust my taxes to a mascot. And if I were forced to go with a service with mascot, I would probably choose one with a clown over one with the Statue of Liberty. She seems like she would be biased towards Uncle Sam.
  • Have a Credit Card Balance? – I could be wrong, but I think this opportunity to transfer your credit card balance to one with a 0% interest rate, is ending at the end of the month. For those of you who are unaware, that is today.
  • Capital One’s 3x the Interest – I love sneaky marketing, but can we retire Capital One’s “3 times the Interest” campaign? Next to zero times three is still next to zero… plus other companies offer similar rates.
  • I still love SodaStream – When I wrote my review calling SodaStream the Product of the Year, I meant it. Some wondered if I’d grow tired of making my own soda and stick with it. It really isn’t that much work, probably about 30 seconds worth once a day – well worth it.
  • True Lemon/Lime/Orange – This year’s early contender for product of the year is True Lemon/Lime/Orange. As one example, True Lime could revolutionize Corona drinking everywhere. I had to update my review of the SodaStream above to include the better pricing I found on True Lemon.
[Editor’s Note: This was supposed to publish on Friday, but apparently I had a hiccup and it only got saved as a draft. Fortunately, only the credit card offer is time sensitive.

What Fantasy Football and Personal Finance have in Common

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This year I finally gave in to the pressure and decided to play fantasy football. In the past, I’ve skipped it because I never wanted to get in a situation where I’d have to choose between rooting for my favorite team and rooting for my fantasy team. I would like to say something magical resolved the issue. I wanted to find out what all the hubub was about and the pressure finally got to me. In hindsight, it was a great learning experience… and I’m not talking about learning about football X’s and O’s. In the end, I learned a bunch of lessons that can be applied to personal finance:

  • I was unjustly over-confident – Another reason why I wanted to play is that I thought I could win… easily. My co-workers never seemed to talk about football. I knew this stuff. Sometimes I think I know a player, team, stock or industry, but it turns out that…
  • …I didn’t account for uncertainty – Picking football players is a lot like picking individual stocks. Sometimes there are winners who don’t seem to perform as you’d expect (Tom Brady’s fantasy football numbers until Sunday Night’s game) and sometimes you things play out just like you thought (Aaron Hernandez’ rise from obscurity to being a great value at tight end). Even if you feel you have a great team, a number of unexpected factors can sideswipe you.
  • I wasn’t diversified – You may have noticed from the previous point that I mentioned two Patriots players. To avoid having to root against my favorite, I drafted nearly an entire team of Patriots players. I have QB Tom Brady, WR Wes Welker, TE Aaron Hernandez, TE Rob Gronkowski, and K Stephen Gostkowski. If the Patriots don’t have a good day, I’m practically sunk that week. Plus with the Patriots, you never know who is going the target that week. Hernandez has lead the team in receptions and only 10% of the leagues in CBS Sports had him drafted. Randy Moss and Wes Welker were drafted at the top. This past week Gronkowski got all the playing time as Hernandez sat. Gostkowski got injured for the season, so I had to pick up another kicker.

      • While I can’t related it to personal finance, I’ve learned that football isn’t at all like fantasy football. In the world of fantasy football, my backup Kyle Orton is better than Tom Brady because he can pick up a bunch of garbage time statistics. Maurice Jones-Drew, one of the top picks, almost had to bench himself in his fantasy league because he got off to a slow start. Brandon Marshall, one of the most talented players in the game, has been a bust as he gets all the attention from opposing defenses. Stephen Jackson, one of the best runners in the game, has been pretty good, but not his usual self.

      What is the result of my “superior team”? I have a 2-8 record. In fantasy football you control how many points you score, not how much your opponent scores. In a 12 team league I have scored more points than 6 teams, yet I have the worst record. The team with the 3rd best record has scored fewer points than me.

      I think my fantasy football experiment is going to be a one-time only thing.

When you Sue a School, Does Anyone Win?

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If you’ve been following the news lately, you may have come across a story where a Pennsylvania school system has been allegedly spying on their students. The Rosemont’s Harriton High School’s computers included software that would allow them to turn on the webcam whenever they wanted. This would effectively allow them to spy on students in the privacy of their own home. This came to light when the school allegedly informed student Blake Robbins’ parents that he had been selling drugs and even showed a still photograph as evidence. The Robbins’ family claims these accusations are false. You can read more details here or watch this video:


CNET noted that the school system could be sued for violating a number of laws/regulations such as, “the Fourth Amendment, the Electronic Communication Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act, and Pennsylvania common law.” They didn’t even get into the potential child pornography charges that could potentially come from the girl who said that she shower with her laptop open to listen to music (if they are shown to have violated that).

I find the story interesting on many levels. Having a Computer Science degree and working in the technology industry for the past decade, I usually stay on top of technology happenings. It never occurred to me that a web cam could be used in a nefarious way like this. Take it a step further and imagine a virus that does the same thing. Yikes!

The biggest question for me from a financial perspective is, “What if the school is found guilty of all these violations?” The damages could be millions and spread across numerous families. On the outset it would seem that justice would be served and everyone could just move on. However, the community would be left with a bankrupt school system. That typically means raised taxes. So others in the town would have to pick up the pieces. This leads me to think, the ones who “win” could be the lawyers. It might even be in the community’s best interest to root for the school as outlandish as it sounds.

Selling Wine – Almost Like Blogging

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This past holiday weekend my wife, my dog, and I headed down to the wine country of Paso Robles, California. Each year a group of 17 vineyards called the Far Out Wineries get together to host a wine tasting event. For a price of $35 you can spend 4 days visiting any of the wineries and taste their wine for free. To make it even a better deal the money goes to charity (tax deduction!) and you can win some prizes as long as you go to at least 8 of them. It’s a brilliant marketing plan to get people down there and buying their wine.

This was our third trip down to Paso in the last two and half years. One thing we noticed this time is that there are a number of new wineries popping up. I don’t know if it’s the economy picking up, but it seems like the wineries have doubled in number. When we got to Carmody McKnight I had to ask, “With all these wineries popping up, can I expect this annual wine tasting event to expand from 17 to 30 and go on for a week?” I feel like I should have known the answer…

The sommelier explained that the 17 wineries that participate are good friends and that they’ve been doing the event for nearly 30 years. It’s an exclusive club. Though the newer wineries are quite good, it’s not practical to let everyone in the club. As you start adding more people the value of being in the club actually goes down. It would be difficult to coordinate events like the annual one around Presidents Day and probably lead to the whole group collapsing under its own weight. The sommelier also pointed out that there is a delicate balance to strike. For instance the new wineries could get together to form their own network and compete with their own program.

It struck me that this is very much like blogging networks. I’m part of The Money Writers which is a group of ten bloggers. We have the same issue of newer bloggers asking to be part of our network. We feel we are a good size and adding new people would increase the complexity. And often other bloggers will go out and join other networks. The only difference is that I encourage bloggers to join networks and don’t view it as competition in the same way that the wineries do.

Can you think of some other area where this concept of a limited network enters your life? (Outside of blogging, I couldn’t think of any.) Let me know in the comments below…

Random Thoughts (Some Even Financially Related)

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Financially, I feel I couldn’t me less organized right now. I haven’t done my net worth in a few months. Haven’t asked the wife to do hers in much longer. I also need to look over the cash flow of my web-based business (this website being a sizable component of that), which I haven’t done in the last 2-3 months. I’m hoping that after the long weekend, I can start to finish that up.

Also on the to-do list is to set up an SEP-IRA for last year (I’m looking at you Fidelity). It will be interesting to look at more traditional investments for the first time in a while as I’ve been doing more investing in my businesses. I know I’m going to go with index mutual funds or exchange traded funds to broadly diversify with minimal expenses, but for fun, I will at least look at some blue chips. I don’t know why, but I love to tempt myself.

With that quick financial update out-of-the-way, here are some of the non-financial thoughts I’ve had lately.

  • I’ve been spending more time on my MonaVie Scam website. With the help of a few other dedicated people, more and more reasons why it’s a scam keep popping up.
  • I didn’t mind the Super Bowl halftime show as much as most people. Yes, The Who is old, and yes they’ve lost a lot on their fastball. However, when I hear the song, my brain kind of fills in the gap between what they are now and what they were. Also, I heard some radio station saying that most people can’t even name a song The Who sing. If you can’t name at least 5 songs The Who sing, I can never talk music with you. And if one of those songs is “Teenage Wasteland…” *sigh*
  • I realize that the Super Bowl is being really, really careful not to invite people who might have wardrobe malfunctions, but they are probably going to be running out of artists soon. You’d probably think that the wardrobe malfunction is the most amazing thing to happen on live television during a halftime of the Patriots game, but Joe Namath’s drunken “I wanna kiss you” interview with Suzy Kolber is up there. Those are the only two times I can recall literally fell out of my seat in my life.
  • While on the topic of football, I’ve already anointed Janell Wheeler as the winner of American Idol this season. I think they should just cut everyone else on the next show and just name her the winner. Perhaps they can give everyone else a parting gift and invite them back next year. How is Ms. Wheeler related to football? Google her and you’ll find she’s linked to Florida star Tim Tebow.
  • In the last two weeks, I’ve become much more portable. I bought an extended battery the Aspire One that I got pre-Black Friday sale. The new battery set me back $40, but it also seems to give me 9-10 hours of juice (though I haven’t put it to the full-test yet). I also bought an extended battery for my Palm Pre. It cost around $20, but lasts twice as long as the battery that came with the phone. I can get very close two days on a full charge now. Thank you Ebay.
  • While on the topic the Palm Pre, I can’t figure out why more people don’t buy one. Sprint has really cheap plans. Looks like the only competition should be the Nexus One on T-mobile. I realize it was limited to Sprint which might not work for everyone due to coverage. For those people, Verizon may have better coverage.