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Things I’m Looking Forward to in 2021

January 1, 2021 by Kosmo Leave a Comment

I hope your New Year is starting off well. The following is an article from Kosmo. I’ll be spending the weekend preparing some articles to help with typical New Year’s Resolutions for next week.

2020 has been a year that many of us would like to forget.  As we finally flip the calendar, I’m looking forward to 2021 being much different.  Here are the things I’m looking forward to in 2021.

Getting Vaccinated

The COVID-19 vaccinations have begun in the United States.  I don’t have any health conditions that would put me in the highest risk category (although, like many Americans, I have hypertension), so I’ll be waiting a while until the higher risk people are inoculated.  I look forward to the vaccine causing the curve to not only be flattened, but beaten into the ground.

Hopefully, we remember the lessons we’ve learned from COVID-19.  There will be another epidemic of some sort in the future.  It might be two years from now, or twenty, or two hundred.  The next time we’re hit by an epidemic, we need to leverage what we’ve learned from this experience, rather than starting from square one.

Please do your part and get vaccinated, too.  If you have concerns, discuss them with your doctor.

Vacation

We visited Door County, Wisconsin in 2017 and thoroughly enjoyed it.  We planned a return trip to the same Airbnb in 2019, but it was derailed a family health situation.  The owner ended up refunding 100% of his portion – despite being entitled to keep half of it – and we only lost the AirBNB’s portion of the reservation.

We tried again for 2020, only to be derailed by COVID-19 this time.  We were able to use the entire amount of the trip toward a rescheduled trip in 2021.  I’m really looking forward to a nice vacation at the beach.

Kids back in school

Some kids have excelled in online school, whereas others have struggled.  My kids have excelled.  My 5th grader is in the gifted program, and my 7th grader recorded a 3.87 GPA in her first trimester.  They’ve kept in contact with friends over the phone and the internet.

Nonetheless, it’s not the experience they want.  Although they did choose online school for safety reasons, they look forward to physically returning to school next fall, so they can hang out with their friends.

I’m also looking forward to this.  Mostly, I look forward to it because it will make my kids happy.  But I’d also like to be able to attend a work audio meeting without hearing a fight breaking out upstairs.  We could use a bit less togetherness at times.

Last pinewood derby ever

My son is in Cub Scouts.  Honestly, it has been a great experience.  The one thing I dread every year is the pinewood derby.  I am not someone who is good at building things.  Trying to figure out a design that my son will like and that we can actually pull off is always a challenge.  I’m never more relieved than when his car successfully navigates the track for the third and final time.  We’re never going to win the derby – the goal is to end up somewhere in the middle of the pack.  Putting the pinewood derby in the rearview mirror will take some of the winter stress out of my life.  The Scouts, however, will remain a part of our lives.

First scout weeklong camp

My daughter is a girl scout.  She has always been shy.  For several years, we have attended the “daddy and me” overnight camp at the girl scout camp.  We have always had a great time.  I even managed to be the talk of the camp one year, when I dumped my kayak in the lake.  Most importantly, it has been a good experience for her to interact with a different group of kids and come out of her shell a bit.

Several times, we asked her if she wanted to do a solo camp for a week.  The answer was always a firm “no”.  She didn’t want to be in a group of strangers without a parent around.

After the 2019 camp, she changed her mind.  Yes, she would like to go to camp by herself.  This was a huge change.  We booked her for a 2020 camp – and then had to cancel when COVID came.  We’ll try this again in 2021.

A new job?

I have been casually job hunting lately.  I may end up with a new job soon, or I may end up staying where I’m at.  If I were a betting man, I’d bet that I’ll be starting something new in the next couple of months.

I’ve worked in the same industry for 20+ years, but many of the positions I’m looking at are in other industries.  Quite honestly, I’d like to diversify my experience a bit, so that I’m not pigeonholed into one type of work.

I’m written a full article about the job hunt, so I won’t bore you with the details.

My stamps

I began collecting stamps during the pandemic.  My initial plan was pretty straightforward – collect every distinct design through 1970, but do not pursue watermark or paper variations.  By my count, there are about 650 such stamps.

The good news is that I’ve collected about 540 of those stamps, including everything from 1941-1970.  The bad news is that many of the remaining stamps are quite expensive.  The mitigating factor is that many of these are fairly ugly postal fiscal stamps – stamps that could be used for either tax or postage.  I won’t cry if my collection ends up missing a few expensive and ugly stamps that aren’t even normal postage stamps.

The bigger problem is that my collection has expanded beyond New Zealand.  Someone in a Facebook group was nice enough to send me thousands of stamps.  All I had to do was pay for the postage.  I still have tons to sort through, but I’ve gotten exposed to enough other stamps that I’ve begun to diversify my collection.  I have an album for the USA and a smaller one for Austria, and I’m sure I’ll be adding an album or two for the countries of the world.  My goal is to collect a stamp for as many stamps-issuing entities as I can, as well as collected a few pages of stamps for countries of interest, such as Great Britain, Australia, and the Antarctic territories.

The Olympics

The International Olympic Committee postponed the Olympics when it became apparent that it would be a terrible idea to bring in hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world, have them share common spaces, and send them back to their home countries.  That would have been a recipe for a massive super spreader event.

The Olympics are, for now, scheduled for 2021.  I love the Olympics, and I’ll be glued to the TV.  I primarily watch track and field and swimming, but I’ll watch bits and pieces of many other sports as well.

What about you?

What are you looking forward to in 2021?

Filed Under: Year End Review Tagged With: 2021

We’ve (Almost) Survived 2020

December 24, 2020 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

(I’m not a fan of clickbait titles. I wrote the title meaning that 2020 is almost over, but I now realize that it could imply that my family didn’t survive 2020.)

This is the Christmas week post I thought I’d ever write and certainly not the one that you probably thought you read. Like everything else this year, the words, “But here we are!” apply.

I thought I might write a review of the last year. That’s typically what I do this time of year. For the first time ever, it seems that everyone can agree that we don’t need that.

Still, some things stick out in my mind and it’s worth a quick look back review.

I remember when I started to realize that COVID was going to be something different. It was February 24, when The Atlantic put it bluntly, You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus. I remember sharing that idea in a conversation with a medical professional and having it dismissed. After all, there were only 35 known cases in the US at the time (note there was almost no testing available). Three weeks later, much of the country locked down. Personally, our Rhode Island location was sandwiched between big NY and Boston outbreaks.

The lockdown was a very strange time. Remember being told not to wear masks because the frontline professionals needed them and that they wouldn’t work? As we learned more, we found that masks were perhaps our greatest defense (along with social distancing).

My biggest COVID story (so far), was trying to run to separate schools, kindergarten and first grade, in my house at the same time. My wife was virtually deployed and could help out for a couple of hours of the day, but it was exhausting. Our biggest expense is a private school for the kids, so paying tens of thousands of dollars to teach your kids was an extreme disappointment, to say the least. It also meant that I couldn’t blog and lockdowns meant that my dog-sitting business went to zero.

I complained about everything, but the reality is that we were healthy and our finances were doing well (despite the loss of my income). Our kids were learning. Sometimes life throws you a curveball and it’s all you can do to foul it off and get another pitch to hit. Everyone got a curveball in 2020. I hope you were able to foul it off. I think that in 6 to 9 months from now, we’ll be primed to knock the next pitch out of the park.

Reviewing the “Good Stuff” of 2020

As I wrote before, no one wants to review 2020. However, what if we focused on just the good stuff?

“Good stuff?”, you ask?

Yes, there was truly good stuff in 2020, Virginia

Here are a couple of examples:

  1. 50 Surprising Wholesome Christmas Gifts – Warning: Your heart will grow three sizes while reading these.
  2. Wired’s 20 Positive News Highlights from 2020 – Warning: Panda Sex!

We’ve had big achievements at the science and history level… and big achievements at the personal level.

With that in mind, I’m going to close out the 2020 review with a personal review. But, before I do, I expect to publish a goals review for 2020 next week. Hint: It is going to be ugly! Early on in 2021, I have some timeless tips to reset and move forward. I also have some investing tips and one thing new that is motivating for 2021. I rarely plan a week of posts in advance, but here I am with three weeks of posts.

Lazy Man 2020 Reviewed

  • January
    We started the year, literally Jan 1, with a kid who got scary sick. He wasn’t able to eat or drink much for a couple of days. We brought him to the peditrician and she sent him to the state hospital on emergency appendicitis speculation. Without thinking much about it, I offered him a full-sugar Coke on the way. We don’t allow the kids to drink much (maybe 3 times a year), but he drank it down on the way to the hospital. There they performed all the tests and came up with nothing. After an IV, he was mostly a normal person.

    We all got sick a week later. We were told it was a virus. Was it COVID? I doubt it, but we certainly thought more about it in March.

    My favorite part of the review is my new 6-year old building an extensive Pokemon Mew model. We were all sick so he was on his own. I also taught my 7-year old to add some two-digit numbers, and he came up with the best strategy with the ones he didn’t know: “Ask dad.”

    This month was packed with a trip to Ice Castles, hitting 100K miles on a car (remember driving?!?!), archery practice, and skiing. The sky was the limit in January 2020.

    My least favorite part of the review is about how spry my dog was. He’s going to be 84 in dog years and is not very spry anymore. Hopefully, some supplements we have in the mail helps with that.

  • February
    My wife and I had our annual overnight at a romantic hotel. Unfortunately, that’s not possible in 2021. We also had a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner, where we ran out of conversation in the first 10 minutes of a 3-hour meal. We’ll try again in 2022.

    I went ice skating because the kids made it a condition of them doing it. It was a horror show, but everyone had a good laugh. Most importantly, the kids learned that they can be better than their dad if they try (or in this case, just exist).

    The highlight was Mardi Gras night at the local Navy Base. My wife didn’t want to do it because we knew we wouldn’t know anyone. We danced the night away and no one had more fun than my wife.

  • March
    The start of COVID of course. You can see a downturn in my tone.

    My wife bought me some great steaks for my birthday. I’d rather go out to dinner, but we have to do our part.

    I have a picture of my dog on a beach walk with a caption of, “Before they closed the beaches…”

    The kids school has a normal March break where we usually travel. We couldn’t travel as we expected, so I ran my own “homeschool” consisting of chess, scootering, Mythbusters Jr., Ruff Ruffman, and anything else I could do to keep kids mentally and physically engaged.

    The highlight was one snow, just one inch, the only one of the year. It turned to rain briefly and froze over. I rushed the kids to a hill and we got an hour and a half of sledding on icy snow. They could go a mile on that icy inch of snow.

  • April
    April was the most challenging month of the pandemic. Trying to teach two curriculums is tough, but it rain almost every day. We weren’t just locked down from seeing other people, but we couldn’t easily go walk the dog down the street.

    We had some help from Jack Johnson (a video concert), learning how to cook, Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand, a visit from the Easter Bunny, and a Harry Potter puzzle.

    The highlight was simply having the energy to move forward and try to turn this negative situation into something positive. That burst of energy, unfortunately, didn’t last long.

  • May
    I thought April was the worst with learning how to homeschool in daily rainstorms. May brought police brutality and system racism to the forefront. My personal finance annual conference, FinCon, got “cancelled” due to some controversial conversations from the founder.

    Kids continued to cook and hike. They camped out on their floor under a tee-pee. We took the Mustang convertible for a ride – the first time the kids were old enough to be appropriate seats that worked. We even had outdoor dining.

    The highlight was that we can look back on those pictures and realize that, under the circumstances, we’re doing well.

  • June
    We took the opportunity to escape to Block Island. It’s the smallest town in the smallest state – a great place to hide from COVID. We were fortunate that we could vacation in our own state. The local mom and pop hotel we usually stay at called and asked us to come. The entire island is summer tourism and COVID hit them bad.

    We didn’t have school or camp for a time during this month. With my wife working full time, this put me back into “Dad school” mode. This is when having STEM toys really paid off.

  • July
    The kids started camp and it went well. We had them signed up with a lot of exciting special camps, but they all canceled. Outdoors with masks in a place with very few COVID cases was a winning combination. The kids got a lot of beach and swimming time in. They also picked some blueberries.

    My wife and I had an outdoor anniversary celebration as well.

    This was the start of learning to adapt to life with COVID. That said, our area’s circumstances allowed to have a very good summer.

  • August
    We went back to Block Island. My wife became obsessed with finding one of the glass orbs that they hide every year there. I suggested that we make it a competition and we divided into two teams. Team Floppy Whale (me and my 6-year old) against team my wife and 8-year-old’s team Fire (something). We made up shirts and flags – turned it into a whole event.

    Neither team found an orb. It usually takes a few years to find an orb. There’s always next year.

    We lost electricity as Hurricane Isaias knocked out the power. I thought we might be out for days, because it takes time to restore power to an island. We fled until we got to a place with electricity so we could at least check the news. (There’s no news when local cell towers and radio stations don’t work.) It wasn’t bad, so we enjoyed a meal and went back. My 6-year-old asked for only brown M&Ms in his dessert so he could make his gummy play. I explained how ridiculous the request was, but the restaurant did it anyway.

    The kids played with Gravity Maze and we watched the Trolls World Tour movie for free from Redbox. They learned some sweet dance moves in the special feature.

    The highlight was the trip to Block Island, but there was an honorable mention. The kids got to go to a local water park. “Water park” may be stretching it for two water slides, but it’s 2020. For 2 hours, the max allowed, they got about 12 slides each.

  • September
    By this time, you’ve noticed that I’m happiest when the kids are happiest. That’s why almost all of these reviews go through the kids. My wife and I are working and we don’t have much to share from an adult perspective. Plus, I don’t think you’d want to know it anyway, right?

    September was the start of in-person school. However, we still had a corn maze to do. The kids started in-person karate. They love it! I think this will be a thing that lasts for many months. We also went to a food truck event.

    We did a family event called the BouldrDash. It’s one of those “extreme” obstacle courses but designed for a family with young kids. My anxiety level went to 11 before the event but wasn’t bad at all.

    Lastly, our 7-year old turned 8. We had a socially-distant birthday party. We also had our annual Gregg’s birthday cake. (Gregg’s is a Rhode Island restaurant chain.)

  • October
    We did more cooking with the kids. The kids also learned how to play Stratego. We had “the best Halloween yet” that was just a trunk or treat with a lot of candy. We even got to see some friends, because that was something we could do.
  • Novemeber
    My 6-year-old built a Nintendo Labo Robot. I needed to help him a little, but not too much. We did a lot of cleaning of a new rental property (we sold one and bought one). We had a good Thanksgiving and set up the Christmas. I shared some of my 6-year-old’s unique thinking on homework – change the problem and solve that one instead.
  • We’ll get December next month because we’re still living it.

    Wrapping up 2020

    It’s fitting that on Christmas Eve I’m wrapping this up and putting a bow on 2020. Please note that all the family stuff above is the top 10% of everything and not the typical 90%. I recommend going through your phone and seeing if you can find some good moments in 2020.

Filed Under: Year End Review Tagged With: 2020

Money Decade in Review: 2010

December 12, 2019 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

Money Year 2010
Money Year 2010

I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s just a few weeks left before we close out this decade. As with any new year, we’ll rush into it with all kinds of hopes, plans, and dreams. However, before we get caught up in that rush, I thought it would it be helpful to look at the past decade.

Blogging has many advantages, but being able to look at my financial thoughts on almost any given day is perhaps the biggest. I can’t think of any of my blogging peers who still have almost of their original content in place going back a decade. Let’s hope that there wasn’t too much cringe-worthy stuff from back then.

Much of my blog is about my personal financial journey. So while I’ll be covering life events, I also will be highlighting the general personal finance articles as well as the news of the time.

At the start of 2010, my wife and I were still living in Silicon Valley – just a couple of DINKs. Our dog was celebrating his first birthday. I had left full-time work a few years before, but I had just taken a contract job doing technical customer service.

I was (and am) still dedicated to “making my money work for me, so I don’t have to” (my long-time slogan), but this job paid very well. Step one of making your money work for you is always, “acquire the money.”

I’ll go month by month and cover a few of the articles that are still interesting today:

January 2010

I started off the year with a guest post that foreshadowed much of the decade. It was about the single point of failure financial plans. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would become the victim of 4 strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPPs). We’ll get to those in a future article.

For most people these single point of failures can be avoided by having comprehensive insurance coverage.

I also started to read Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Work Week, which was roughly the idea of my website back in 2006. It got me thinking about whether it is better to Maximize Strengths or Minimize Weaknesses? Ten years later, I still don’t have the answer. Let me know what you think in the comments.

One of my friends asked me a simple question, “How much should I save each month for college?” This was more than two years before my wife and I had our first kid. We did a lot of math together and realized that saving for college is an exercise in depression. At the start of 2010, there wasn’t nearly as much coverage of the student loan crisis. Obviously things would change over the next decade.

I closed out the month writing an extremely short update that we hired a cleaning service. Despite being very frugal people, the value was amazing. It is one of the best ways to make a marriage last in my opinion.

February

I started this month roasting a Public Storage Commercial that suggested that couples moving in together should put a bunch of stuff in storage instead of throwing it out. They want you to pay a fee every month to ignore the underlying problem. No bueno.

I then showed off our room that Craigslist and Yard Sales built. We still have most of the stuff today. That even includes the hidden red Ford Mustang that you can see through the window. The candle stands went back in storage because of the kids, but I think it’s almost time to bring them back out again.

I had a random musings article, which gives some historical view into what 2010 was like. For example, I wrote about buying extended batteries for my netbook and my Palm Pre. I also wrote that the only thing that could challenge the Pre on Sprint seemed to be the Nexus One.

Finally, I noted my dog is a financial guru. I caught him burying bones and retrieving them later. I thought that was something from children’s books like a stork dropping off a baby. Who knew that dogs developed a budgeting and banking system for their most valuable currency?

March

I began the month with a guide on how not to lose your shirt in Las Vegas. I’m not sure if the tips are still valid today. I know that if I go back to Vegas, I’d start by re-familiarizing myself with those tips.

Next, I adapted my favorite Paramore song at the time into a financial warning Build Your Financial Home Brick By Boring Brick. The lesson was that you should avoid get rich quick schemes and use the tried-and-true method of boring bricks like 401ks, Roth IRAs, and emergency funds. (The video is worth the click too.)

When I was in the 5th grade every elementary school in my city took a trip to Washington D.C. Every one except mine. At age 34, I finally got there and took a Washington D.C. tour. There’s so much that I haven’t gotten to see, so that’s going to be a project for future family vacations.

Finally, I gave some advice on how to be more productive using Firefox Profiles. I still use Firefox profiles today to focus on certain businesses.

April

I strongly hinted that I won the lottery, but it was April 1st. If you do win the lottery (or have a windfall), there are some investing ideas in this article. Today, I’d put more money in dividend stocks and skip the annuity.

I posted some alternative income reports, which was mostly how much I made from blogging and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. The main focus was reiterate that I don’t like to trade time for money. I got away from publishing the reports until around 2017 when I brought them back.

I wish Mother Earth a Happy Earth Day. People have been writing about environment concerns for a long time, much longer than I have. It’s important to me to write about it a few times a year even if it doesn’t seem directly related to personal finance.

In April of 2010, it was difficult to get your credit score. You often had to pay for it. I made my case for credit score transparency. Nowadays, every financial institution seems to want to tell you your credit score. That’s excellent progress!

May

I invested in a 529 Plan because it was giving away free money. We didn’t even have kids at the time. I got some affiliate commissions from that promotion and that’s added up to around $3000 with the investment gains over the years. With 10 more years before the kids get to college, we might have $7,000 or $8,000. Hopefully that will buy a book then. The lesson: It’s never too early to plan for your financial future.

I answered a reader’s question about mortgages and ethics. If you have a financial question, write me and I’ll do my best to answer it.

By this time, I’ve been working from home quite a bit, so I wrote some tips to stay focused working from home. Lifehacker liked my tips and linked to it. In retrospect, that’s really surprising, because it wasn’t close to my best work.

I had an expert chime in with 8 tips to maximize airline miles. I don’t know if they existed at the time, but today there are tons of websites laser-focused on airline miles.

Have you ever wondered What is a good credit score? You don’t have to wonder any more.

I wrote for the second time about how I might cut cable TV. Nearly 10 years later, I still haven’t cut cable TV. The first time I wrote about it, Netflix didn’t have a streaming queue and Hulu didn’t exist. Some company named YouTube was just two years old. Nowadays, there are a lot of people doing a lot of cable cutting. Our TV habits have changed over the years, but there’s usually a few things that keep us into cable. One of the big ones is that, without the bundle, broadband is almost as expensive.

Of course, you don’t want to miss this one: How to Become a Millionaire.

June

You might want to bookmark these frugal Father’s Day gifts for a few months from now.

They aren’t very common, but you can save money at a drive-in theater.

I roasted the Sex and the City movie and its focus on spending. A Buffy the Vampire quote helped drive the point home.

I explored the Pros and Cons of Solo 401Ks and SEP-IRAs. In the end, I went with a SEP-IRA because I didn’t make enough money to take advantage of a Solo 401k.

I also wrote that I’m not a fan of internet marketers. The simple reason is that marketing can, in many cases, just be misinformation intended to make you a victim of fraud.

July

I was asked about the how the market was going and I didn’t have a clue. It’s interesting to look back on the stock market 10 years ago. After the Great Recession, I had no faith in the market in the short term. In fact, at that time, we had just experienced a “Lost Decade” of no market gains. There are so many FIRE bloggers today who have no idea of what that is like.

I bought a new laptop. I find it fun to go back 10 years and read about how ground-breaking that hardware was. It turns out that the move to Windows 7 from Vista wasn’t so bad.

Is it better to earn more or save more? I believe that you should do both, but not everyone agrees. This article was a whopping 1000 words, which at the time was twice as long as my typical articles.

I explored a new career of stealing cars, because Oakland police said they wouldn’t pursue such crimes due to budget cuts. My “career” in grand theft auto didn’t go beyond writing a satirical article. I didn’t even play the video game.

I explored whether you should invest in what you know, which made Peter Lynch famous. My investment in Palm hadn’t paid off. People with iPhones were wowed by how incredible my Palm Pre was. However, I didn’t know about the inner distribution deals.

August

A friend asked me how to choose between buying two televisions. Both were 46 inches, but one was $1500 and another one was $1000. My advice at the time was to buy the cheaper television because the football game will look fantastic on either. It’s like comparing diamonds, you only notice the difference in color when they are next to each other. I’ve since spent a lot on an top of the line OLED LG television and feel like I should have listened to my own advice.

I then suggested that he save the $500 and put it towards a 3-D television, when they are cheaper.

I got an email threatening me about my MonaVie article. This was just one of the times that people in pyramid schemes threatened critical analysis because it makes it difficult to recruit people. MonaVie went out business around 2014 when its pyramid collapsed. I think any historian would conclude that MonaVie was definitely a scam

Before there was MoviePass, we saved money on movies the old fashioned way. Now that MoviePass is gone it’s worth revisiting these tips that still work.

Even though I love USAA, I roasted their marketing of the Top Fund of the Decade. Because it was the Lost Decade, precious metals did well and USAA’s precious metals did the best with an annual return or nearly 25%. I cautioned investors that it isn’t always to chase after the top funds. If you had bought the fund (USAGX) at the time of writing you would have paid $40 a share. Those shares are worth $15.66 today… a loss of 61% while the S&P 500 is up 175.29% over that time.

I encouraged people to create their own inflatable slide after JetBlue employee Steven Slater went viral after he got so frustrated with a customer that he grabbed a beer and took the inflatible slide out of the plane. We’ve all been there. Having alternative income gives you the power to do exactly that without looking back. Steven Slater would get back in the news in 2019 after going missing in Mexico. I couldn’t find if they found him.

You might also want to book these tips on how to save money on back to school shopping.

September

I started off the month with a bang – Ignore Your Personal Finance Guru. It’s true… Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey were just as bad back then. There were even articles about how bad David Bach’s math was with the Latte Factor. Of course, we’d revisit that in 2019, with Suze Orman taking the reins.

I even found a reason to trash the awesome (in my opinion) Jean Chatzky. Her publicist contacted me and offered to answer 5 reader questions. I got the questions and then the publicist ghosted me. I don’t even think ghosting was a term in 2010. I still like Jean Chatzky’s financial advice though.

For much of September I was on vacation and not writing anything noteworthy. I had a guest post that encouraged people to Swing Away. Or as Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

September ended with another bang, as I reflected with a friend about impending layoffs. We’d both been software engineers around the “dot bomb” era of 2000 when there were no jobs available. We agreed we were in pretty good shape. I was particularly relieved that I had diversified my income with the website income stream.

October

This was the month that I made the mistake of checking Zillow on the Boston suburb condo that I bought in 2005. I paid $287,000 then for it and at this time it was $193,000.

Even today, in 2019 my condo is only at $265,000. Never depend on real estate appreciating. It usually happens, but in this 15 year period, it’s gone down in value.

The media brainwashed me into thinking, “If you don’t buy now, you’ll never be able to buy. Prices will just keep going up and up forever.” With this strong evidence showing that is not the case, I compared it to my local (at the time) Silicon Valley market. With the hindsight of 2019, Silicon Valley’s prices have continued to go up forever.

I also wrote an extensive review of Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw. You can learn a lot from just the quick 3-5 sentence summaries I wrote in the review.

If you ever wondered what was in my wallet, now is your chance to find out. I’ve been thinking of updating this for 2019. There’s a bunch of new credit cards that I like better now.

I realized there’s secret savings in a paperless office and covered
7 ways to lower your printer costs.

We also saved 33% on our cable bill. Turns out we were paying for things we didn’t use and simply needed to cancel them. The major lesson here is to periodically review your bills and see if there is a reasonable way to lower them.

I reviewed Safeway’s Just for U rewards program. Later, they’d invite me (and some other bloggers) to tour the corporate office. I think I was the only male of around 20 bloggers. I’m used to not fitting in anywhere in life, but I didn’t even fit in among the world of bloggers back then.

November

After more than 10 years I broke up with Sprint. It simply wasn’t worth paying $70/mo. when I could get the same value from Virgin Mobile for $25/mo.

I also wrote about that it appeared to be a great time to buy a vacation/retirement place. In the article, I tossed the idea of either buying in Jacksonville or Newport, RI. We’d buy a home in Newport, rent it out for a year, and then move there when my wife was able to transfer duty stations.

Looking for some ideas to make make your money go further? Of course you are. And here you go!

I wrote about how fantasy football is like personal finance. I played fantasy football for just this one year (2010). I scored more points than most in the league, but I ended up losing most of the games. I did pick up two extremely late round players that no one thought would be very good: Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez.

Are you thinking, “What is Quantative Easing?” Of course you are! It’s a day that ends in “y”, right? So get clicking on that link and scratch that itch.

I also reviewed Kimberly Palmer’s Generation Earn. It was a great personal finance book with a rare surprise: incorporating the idea of making the world a better place into the book itself.

I also bought our first Kindle. These e-ink tablets were originally nearly $500, but finally came down to $89 on Black Friday.

December

I had a moral dilemma with with buying a new television. I got upset and and ranted about Fry’s website practices and finally bought the cheapest flat panel at WalMart. That savings allowed me to buy a fancy OLED television guilt-free later in the decade.

The CEO of a company called NerdWallet offered a guest post addressing whether payment protection insurance is ever a good idea. I guess NerdWallet is a big company now. I should have been writing guest post for them!

I admitted that I have mild face-blindness, which makes it extraordinarily difficult to make new friends. I find it especially hard with the other parents at my kids’ school. Two of them in particular look exactly the same to me. They were in the same place at the same time and I said to my wife, “Even looking at both them at the same time, I can’t tell the difference.”

Final Thoughts of 2010

The above 3000 words are a lot to digest (and a little exhausting to write).

I wanted to end with a financial summary. I was very inconsistent with my net worth spreadsheets back in 2010, but I was able to piece together some numbers from February of 2010. We had a net worth of a little less than $450,000. The vast majority of it was in retirement accounts and equity in paying off the condos we each bought when we were younger.

We had a lot of life events from 2010 to 2019. I hope you’ll follow me as we continue to year 2011.

Filed Under: Year End Review Tagged With: MoneyDecade2010s

Twelve Posts of Review – May 2007

December 31, 2007 by Lazy Man 1 Comment

[In this series, I’m reviewing some of my better posts of 2007. If you started reading this blog in the middle of the year, this is a good time to catch up.]

To begin the month of May, I compared Compound Interest and the NFL. I brought up how the Patriots traded the #28 pick of the current draft for San Francisco’s first round pick in the upcoming draft. It looks like San Francisco might be picking in the top 10. The Patriots could probably trade this pick for #20 and #28 in this draft. This is a gain of a #20 overall pick simply because they were willing to wait a year.

I also wrote about the Top Ten Ways Personal Finance Blogging has Helped Me. This might have been one of my favorite articles.

I also introduced compound interest week. In addition to that introduction, there was also a post on the real rate of return. I then compared the real rate of return in a high interest saving account vs. the real rate of return in the stock market.

My whimsical look at the top 5 paths to a million dollars, got a lot of attention, especially considering that I wrote it in about 20 minutes.

I wrote about why, you shouldn’t depend on blogging for an income and gave some better options for those at the end of their rope. Six months later, I would try to do that to a large degree.

A news article came up that Americans are living larger than usual. I argued that people are just living differently. Unexpectedly, it turned into a two-part article.

Lastly, I challenged the notion that you need 80% of your income to retire.

Filed Under: Year End Review

Twelve Posts of Review – April 2007

December 27, 2007 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

[In this series, I’m reviewing some of my better posts of 2007. If you started reading this blog in the middle of the year, this is a good time to catch up.]

In April, I wrote how is your home an asset or a liability. It stirred up 28 comments.

My wife and I came across some cheap wine and found it can be a frugal gift.

I wrote an article about an entrepreneur friend that I have.

There’s also the stocks vs. real estate article that I wrote. It seemed to me that you can make some short term money in real estate if the market is good, but after about 17 years, you might be better off stocks.

I finished up the month wondering if it’s possible to find value where other’s do not. My example was the New England Patriots trading a fourth round draft pick for Randy Moss. The move is probably the biggest reason why New England is setting records for the best offense and hasn’t been defeated.

Filed Under: Year End Review

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