It seems like I’m running in a hundred different directions lately. My wife has had a cold for the last few days, so I’ve been on chicken noodle soup duty. The part time job that I mentioned previously has come through – stay tune for more details on that in the future. Lastly, I joined a fantasy baseball league and the draft is today. In short, I’ve turned into Florence Nightengale – a nurse, a writer, and a statistician.
Scattered actions lead to scattered thoughts. Here are some of those thoughts delivered through a personal finance filter:
Last chance for cheap candy – If you missed me telling you after Halloween and Valentine’s Day to pick up discounted candy, this is your last chance for a while. The post Easter savings on candy are great. It’s also the best holiday for unique candy – Halloween’s candy corn can’t hold a candle to Cadbury Creme Eggs or Peeps. Just remember to keep it in moderation to keep your future health care bills low.
Liz Phair – [Piles] of Money – One of favorite artists is Liz Phair. I respect her willingness to say and do things that other people wouldn’t. She reminds me a little of George Carlin in that way. This weekend I found myself listening to a song that I will call “Piles” of Money (“Piles” is not her choice of words, but this is a family blog). In it, she has this tremendous verse:
It’s nice to be liked,
But it’s better by far to get paid.
I know that most of the friends that I have,
Don’t really see it that way.
But if you can give ’em each one wish,
How much do you wanna bet?
They’d which success for themselves and their friends,
And that would include lots of money
It’s a shame to think of “being liked” and “getting paid” as an either-or situation. It seems to me that she found a way to do both.
How do you know your neighbors have more money than you? – That was a question on The Family Feud yesterday. The results of the 100 people surveyed:
76 – Nicer Car
15 – Bigger house
3 – Vacations
3 – Pool
3- Shopping
Look at #1 and #2 carefully. If you could ignore the opinions of neighbors and reduce those two expenses, imagine how much money you could save? There’s a lot of talk about America being a nation in debt. This strikes me as a huge reason why.
RSS Problems – As some of my feed readers have noticed, I’ve been importing my articles from Prosper’s Blog. I’ve had numerous problems with the software that I’m using to do this. Today, I experienced yet another issue and brought a bunch of articles that weren’t mine in. I’ve tried to erase the articles from the site and hopefully have taken them out of my feed. However, feed readers might have instantly downloaded the articles before I could delete them.
I work extremely hard on my Prosper articles and I often find that they exhibit some of my best writing. As such I’m committed to exposing my readers to those articles. Going forward, I’ll be doing the smart thing and bringing in content as drafts rather than publishing directly. This will give me the opportunity to manually publish my own and make sure that the others are properly filtered. Let’s hope that works better.
Image Credit: Hernandez Fisher
Wow, I would have put well maintained house/yard, and well maintained car, up above nicer car and bigger house. Pretty much anyone can lease a nice fat BMW if they scrounge enough . . . but can they afford to keep it running for 4 years?
Also, I think the answers are a little suspect. The question was ‘how do you KNOW’ . . . to which there is only one answer; Compare financial statements. The questions should be “How do you judge if your neighbour has more money than you” . . . I guess I’m wishing too much :)
OK so it does sound a little cheap to go buy that candy after the holiday. Fortunately, my wife likes the idea. I obviously got her a few small, but nice chocolates for Valentine’s Day, but on the 15th we picked up probably $30 worth of candy for us and our son for about $7. And I’m not talking Hershey’s — more like the stuff in the $10-$15 range. It’s no good next year. That stuff lasted us a month. Speaking of an inexpensive Valentine’s Day, Costco normally has a pretty good arrangement of flowers, and they’re about $15 year-round here.
Now you know you’re working at home when you watch The Feud! (or in Foodservice, like I was when i watched it). Ah.. the guy next door… who happens to be in debt up to his eyeballs. There’s more than one reason why they say never buy nice furniture while in the military!
btw, for those who work during the day, Family Feud surveys are infamously inaccurate and screwed-up ;)
Family Feud is on the weekend if you get The Gameshow Network. I typically listen to music or watch CNBC during the day while working.
Apparently, the people who answer Family Feud surveys haven’t read The Millionaire Next Door. That book opened my eyes to the fact that it’s the people who DONT have the bigger houses or the nicer cars are the ones with more money.
I liked the Family Feud reference. Unfortunately, that stat probably WAS accurate as most people equate expensive cars and big homes with wealth. When I was in debt and barely out of college I went a bought a dumb, expensive SUV and all my friends thought I was rolling! I was…rolling in payments.