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Why Sports Matter

November 4, 2013 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

In the later half of April, I wrote about The Longest Week. As a Bostonian, I felt the need to write about the Boston Marathon bombings, even if it was just for my own piece of mind. It’s the kind of event that I simply couldn’t ignore and though it’s not related to personal finance, I hoped you’d understand. At least one awesome commenter, Patty got it, and wrote a few paragraphs that 99.99% of bloggers dream to receive and never do. I hope you’ll understand with today’s post as well.

If you aren’t from Boston, I don’t know how to explain the Boston bombings. I’d imagine it’s probably how you felt about the United States after 9/11 (assuming you are a US reader)… except that it’s one step more local… closer to “home.” I can’t remember Americans having more pride in their country after 9/11. It was the same way in Boston throughout New England.

If there’s one thing that Bostonians rally around it’s the Red Sox. For 86 years, the team failed its goal to win the World Series, despite coming agonizingly close many times. My father was born 25 years after they last won in 1918 and died 15 years before they’d win again – a (short) lifetime of never seeing the Red Sox win a World Series. Maybe it’s because misery loves company, but everyone loves the team. I see grandmothers and their granddaughters wearing Red Sox shirts and hats… even when they aren’t competitive (which, except for last year has been rare). Whenever anyone asks me what they need to see in Boston, my first answer is always: “Fenway Park for a Red Sox game.”

However, this year’s Red Sox team couldn’t possibly be the pick-up the region needed. Last year, they were one of the worst teams in baseball. For the first time in a decade they couldn’t sell out the diminutive Fenway Park. Their stars all had problems. David Ortiz was too old and coming off an injury. Dustin Pedroia injured his hand at the beginning of the season. Their best pitcher, Buchholz, can never stay healthy a whole season. They lost two closers early on. Local scribes were writing, “It’s hard to get excited about these Red Sox” and “… But here’s the reality, people: The 2013 Red Sox might be really bad. Worse, they might be really boring.”

A strange thing happened on the journey to last place. The Red Sox won… game after game. Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Red Sox were getting clutch hits and walk off wins. As any sabermetrics (baseball stat nerd) will tell you, there’s no such thing as being clutch and it all evens out over time. Except it never evened out for the Red Sox this year.

Not only did they win, but they did it with heart. Jonny Gomes looked like an idiot wearing a battle helmet, until you read the story of soldier to gave it to him, calling him the most patriotic player he’s met.

After the bombings the team took it upon themselves to try to give people a little break from the everyday realities. There are marathon runners who lost half their leg. However, you can see why sports matters in their face, when they walk onto the grass at Fenway Park or throw out the first pitch. I can’t count how many news stories I saw about players visiting the bombing victims at the hospital.

This is why sports matters.

We’re told that nice guys finish last. We’re told that nothing is perfect. We’re told that fairy tales don’t come true. Sometimes “they” are wrong.

I suppose I should write about money related, so here goes. The other day, I had a David Ortiz game jersey with the 2013 World Series in my hands. It was $115. I don’t think I had ever wanted a piece of clothing more. (Of course I already own this Serenity T-Shirt.) That’s a lot of money for a shirt, and whenever I spend that much money, I like to think about it a bit. Maybe I’ll think about it long enough for Santa to bring it.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: 2013 World Series, red sox

Ten Things I Think I Think (and Personal Finace Links)

October 17, 2011 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

  1. Steven Wright Performance and a Financial Joke – I’ve been huge fan of comedian Steven Wright since I saw his first HBO special when I was about 10. I just loved the dry humor. I’ve probably see that special a couple of dozen times (it’s second place to Serenity on my all-time watched list. Last night, I got to see him in person for the first time. The seats were awesome (second row in a small theatre), and “relatively” cheap at $40 a ticket. I had 1985 Steven Wright in my head and I wasn’t prepared for the 2011 version. He’s still very much the same, but like anyone – they don’t look they did they 25 years earlier. The jokes weren’t quite as good as HBO special, but there were some good laugh-out-loud moments. I took care to note the one financial joke for this space: “24 hour banking? No thanks. I don’t have that kind of time.” The part of me that loved linguistics a decade ago just gets a mental workout during his routine. (Mr. Wright, if you are reading this, get some new web hosting. I would have linked to you, but your website was down.)
  2. Amazon Kindle Fire and Privacy Concerns – I mentioned it over at the The Soap Boxer’s on their Kindle Fire Review (check the comments), but I was surprised that no one brought up the privacy concerns of the new Amazon Kindle tablet. Well my own congressman, Ed Markey seems to be on the ball: Congressman raises privacy concerns over Amazon Silk. I like that he’s taking the extra step and not just letting Amazon allow people to opt out of it, but making sure they know issue and choose to opt-in. Too many times technology companies give the “opt-out” method to appease the people realizing that 99.99% of people won’t know to opt-out or figure out how to opt-out.
  3. Chase Sapphire perks at the Eater’s Choice SF Event – My wife and I ventured into San Francisco for a food truck event this weekend. I don’t know if food trucks are a big trend everywhere else, but they are big here in San Francisco. The event had the top 10 in the area as voted by the people. We got there knowing that my Chase Sapphire card was going to get us early entrance and a VIP seating area. Chase surprised us with better perks than promised. We got special menu items, a dollar off of most items, free “high-end” beverages (such as Coke in a bottle made with cane sugar not high fructose corn syrup), and a Chase Sapphire picnic blanket to bring home. I particularly liked the fact that there was a Bacon mobile. One items ingedients list was just bacon listed 6 times.
  4. Retirement in Focus – This week, the plan is to focus on retirement – specifically my wife and my own early retirement plans. I wrote about it almost three years ago: Our Early Retirement Plan: Introduction (Part 0). It’s time to re-evaluate and see where we stand.
  5. Cobb Salads – While on the topic of bacon, I have to say that the Cobb salad is my favorite “new” food. It’s not that new, but it’s new to me in the last year or so. It’s like they took everything I like and said, “we are going to actually make this healthy for you.” I’ve never had it with salad dressing – it simply is unnecessary.
  6. Craigslist Frustration – I’m 0 for 2 over the last week in getting a fitness item that I’m looking for on Craigslist. The items are sold out within a few hours from posting. The prices have been around 40% off of Amazon’s, which is pretty low to start with. I’d tell you more about the item in future weeks, but I really don’t need any more competition from my fellow San Francisco readers. I’ve got time and I’m going to wait for the right price.
  7. NFL Thoughts – I heard today that about 66% of America watches the NFL. This gives me a little confidence that I can put forth a few thoughts here. I’m content with where my favorite team, the Patriots, are. Given the 5-1 record, it “content” shows how spoiled I am now. It will be hard to see Tom Brady retire. While on the topic of great QBs, it looks like the Colts are in position to “Suck for Luck” as the saying goes. For those not into football, Andrew Luck is expected to be the best QB to come about in a decade and it just so happens that the Colts could replace what is arguably the best quarterback of all-time with the next great QB in a few years. In other thoughts, the locals are starting to fall in love with the 49ers. It’s almost like when the Giants won the World Series.
  8. World Series – Since the Yankees got eliminated, I haven’t followed a single game. It turns out that baseball isn’t all that interesting to me anymore when the Red Sox or Yankees aren’t involved. I can’t give a real reason – maybe I’m just more involved with my businesses. My pick for the series is Texas in 6. That’s not so much an educated guess, but it’s more of a wish. It would be good to see those Rangers fans get a title.
  9. Red Sox drama – There’s a lot of drama involving the Boston Red Sox of late. I’ve watched an average of 130 Red Sox games a year since I was 9 and I haven’t followed any of it. I guess Josh Beckett ate some fried chicken and everyone is up in arms. (Note: It’s actually a lot worse than that and it seems that people should be upset, but I’m in some seriuos denial and don’t want read the drama.)
  10. Financial Fixit Friday – I’m curious if anyone actually got any financial fix-its done this Friday or if it was just me. I got about 1/3 of the main things that I was looking to do. Considering my previous progress, it was very substantial.

And now for the personal finance links…

Top PF Posts:

  • Digerati Life presents 10 concrete tips to dine out for less: save money when eating out.
  • My Dollar Plan shares 7 favorite frugal fall activities.
  • My Journey to Millions explains why I don’t buy stocks with my gut.
  • Money Smart Life points out 8 ways to waste your cash back.
  • Generation X Finance goes over how to change banks.
  • Frugal Dad with some frugal homemade Halloween costume ideas.
  • Humble Savers discusses numbers you should know for personal finance .
  • Debt Sucks comes up with 3 outrageously creative ways to pay off credit card debt.
  • Money Ning gives three reasons why volunteering is a wise investment.
  • 4 surprising truths you must learn before you can be rich from Len Penzo dot Com.

Filed Under: Links Tagged With: Chase Sapphire, nfl, red sox, steven wright

Eight Things I Think I Think (and Personal Finance Links)

September 27, 2011 by Lazy Man 7 Comments

  1. Google on the Schedule Today – I think that whenever I get the chance to take advantage of Google’s AdSense team inviting me to review my website 1-on-1, I have to take it. I did it last year and it was excellent.
  2. My Wife’s Take on Invitations – I think that while on the topic of invitations, my wife has an interesting take on them – go to everything you are invited to. I’ve often joked that she’d mow someone’s lawn if invited. I’m starting to come around to her way of thinking on some things. You miss out on 100% of the opportunities that you don’t take.
  3. This Week in HP Touchpad 1 – I think that HP made the first good move in a long time when it fired CEO Leo Apotheker and put Meg Whitman as the CEO. I don’t know if Meg Whitman is the answer, but I do know it wasn’t Apotheker. It’s pretty shocking that HP’s board hired Apotheker without even meeting him. In sharp contrast, I had to interview to run the cash register at Papa Gino’s when I was 16.
  4. This Week in HP Touchpad 2 – I’ve been vocal supporter of HP/Palm webOS and its Touchpad since even before I owned one. I’ve claimed it has been one of the great mobile operating systems in some time. I understand it’s easy for “Lazy Man” to claim such things. Most people don’t know that I used to plug a phone cartridge into a PDA (search for VisorPhone) for my phone 10 years ago, because I knew the smartphone was the wave of the future. I’ve been a developer with two successful mobile start-up companies since then and the market need webOS. Not having it would be like Mozilla pulling the funding for Firebird back in 2004. It is now known as Firefox. I was one of the few people using that at the time and all my friends just said that I should go with the industry de facto standard – Internet Explorer. Today Fireox had blazed a path that inspired Google Chrome and together they’ve provided significant competition to Internet Explorer… which has lead Microsoft to admit that they need to advance Internet Explorer.

    If you don’t believe me, listen to the Mobile editor for ZDNet, James Kendrick as he seems to think it is very important to get support for the Touchpad. The takeaway quote: “The decision to cancel the TouchPad line will go down in history as one of the most ridiculous business decisions ever made.”

  5. Pandora’s New HTML 5 App – I think the new slogan should be, “You don’t need an app for that.” The use of mobile applications (iOS, Android, webOS, etc…) seems like it’s early 90’s and we are using Windows 3.1. Thank you Pandora for blazing the trail.
  6. Red Sox Collapse – I think that the Sox didn’t collapse – they suffered too many injuries. Some say it historically bad and in a lot ways there is. However, it’s hard for any team to compete when Tim Wakefield, who wasn’t one of the top 7 pitchers in the rotation became the 2nd best the Red Sox had. Loved Peter King’s statistic of the Red Sox being 2-18 this month when they don’t score 12 runs. That’s now 2-19.
  7. Patriots Collapse – I think that the Patriots collapse wasn’t as bad as it will be made out to be in Boston. The Patriots had a nice 21-0 lead after a quarter and a half to the Bills and then lost 34-31. The Patriots had just about every bad bounce imaginable and were flagged for about 7,000 penalties. I guess when everything goes wrong, and your injury-plagued team plays close on the road, you can’t be too upset with that, right? (Trying to convince myself…)
  8. Ringer – I think the new Sarah Michelle Geller show on the CW is greatly surpassing my admittedly low expectations. I thought the first episode was disappointing, but it heated up with the second episode. They’ve already had so many twists and turns that it would make a fan of 24 dizzy.

Money Writers:

  • Brip Blap says just start.
  • Digerati Life with how social & mobile retail sites are changing the way we shop.
  • Frugal Dad posts Bank of America in Trouble – is it still safe to keep my money in a bank?
  • Generation X Finance goes over how to talk to your aging parents about their finances.
  • Million Dollar Journey posts Scotia iTrade offers commission free ETFs!
  • Money Smart Life with the pill to cure debt.
  • My Dollar Plan asks should I go to grad school?
  • The Sun’s Financial Diary explains how one missed bill becomes one costly mistake.

Top PF Posts:

  • The Soap Boxers wonders will Amazon reinstate California affiliates?
  • Free Money Finance on taking a private boat vacation.
  • Smarter Walley says get to know your credit rating.
  • My Journey to Millions says I feel guilty making unnecessary purchases.
  • Len Penzo presents 21 reasons why corner lots are for suckers.
  • Humble Savers gives five ways to save – with the children.
  • One Frugal Girl wonders am I crazy to consider refinancing again?
  • Scott on MONEY goes over what you should know before borrowing money from your retirement plan.
  • Bill Eater offers ways on how to protect yourself from credit card skimmers.
  • Debt Sucks Blog asks bad credit? What are your options?

Filed Under: Links Tagged With: patriots, red sox, Ringer, Touchpad

Personal Finance Links (Boston Sports Edition)

June 19, 2010 by Lazy Man 1 Comment

As you may have noticed lately, the posting here has slowed quite a bit over the last month. I have been spending a little more time enjoying the summer and following the NBA Finals. I don’t typically watch basketball, but when the Celtics are in the playoffs, I get interested.

One of the things that I like about Boston sports is that a team is usually in contention. The Red Sox started off slow falling 8 games back, but I had the Celtics run to essentially a coin flip in game 7 of the finals to keep me entertained. The day after the Celtics were eliminated the Red Sox found themselves with the 3rd best record in all of baseball. They actually have the best record since April 20th, despite my favorite player Jacoby Ellsbury being injured almost all season. If the past in any indication the Red Sox will stay in contention until around September when my interest will turn to the Patriots. It’s great how that works out…

Money Writers:

  • Brip Blap posts job junkie.
  • Digerati Life asks are you ready for a Social Security system overhaul?
  • Learn how to prepare your house for a baby at Frugal Dad.
  • Generation X Finance provides a list of restaurants
    that let kids eat free
    .
  • Million Dollar Journey does a Capital One Aspire World MasterCard review.
  • Money Smart Life shares how to get your car ready for a roadtrip.
  • My Dollar Plan goes over health care bill impacts: insurance options for young adults.
  • The Sun’s Financial Diary presents 6 easy ways to save money without a budget.

Top PF Posts:

  • Free Money Finance poses a question about money
    ethics: what would you do with found money?
  • Learn how to cash your check when you have no bank account at The Smarter Wallet.
  • Saving Advice asks how
    does your spending stack up against your neighbors?
  • Darwin’s Finance examines billion dollar inheritance: heirs pay NO tax ““ right or wrong?
  • Bill Eater asks trying to save money but don’t know where to start? How to prioritize.
  • Budgets Are Sexy says increase your savings with every raise you get!
  • My Wealth Builder wonders is $1 million enough for retirement?
  • Frugal for Life writes is a penny worth a stoop?
  • Don’t Mess with Taxes blogs on tax policy and the American homeownership dream.
  • Well-Heeled Blog poses the question: do you need a dating prenup when moving in together?
  • Rich Credit Debt Loan writes about saving money with a government loan option.

Filed Under: Links Tagged With: Celtics, patriots, red sox

Busy Memorial Day Weekend (and Personal Finance Links)

May 31, 2010 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

I had a pretty busy, but pretty great Memorial Day weekend… and it left me with a lot of material to write about. I only hope to find the time this week to do it all justice. Without going into very specific details, I thought I’d go through the weekend and give an overview. I don’t expect many will care about my weekend itself, but it might provide some with a couple of frugal ideas.

  • Friday Night – Celtics Win – The weekend started off on a good note with the Celtics advancing to the finals. With the game on cable television
  • Saturday Day – Yard Sale – We had a successful yard sale, clearing 1/3rd of our inventory and converting it into $90 in cash. One of the keys to the successful sale was good signage… including using a white glass marker on our very strategically placed cars to direct people to our home. During the yard sale we were able to do very light cleaning of the garage and setting up an American flag on our home (an obvious, but appropriate move considering the weekend).
  • Saturday Night – Hosting a Party – I didn’t think it would be a good idea to go from the yard sale to hosting people at our house to root for the Red Sox. We asked people to bring something (a bit of a pot-luck thing), but supplied a party lasagna and a couple bottles of wine. It was relatively cheap and the Red Sox pulled out a 1-0 win.
  • Sunday Day – I took our dog to the dog park (always a fun time) and then my wife and I went shopping and for lunch at on a restaurant on the water. We did spend a little bit of money, but the lunch served as two meals for us.
  • Sunday Night – Drive-in – We got a tip from someone at our yard sale that there was a drive-in about a half hour south from where we live. Expect more details on this later in the week. Here’s a teaser: it was a great value.
  • Monday Day – The day started off with more dog park. My wife prepared some corned beef and cabbage. Most people were probably having hamburgers and hot dogs. We recently joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group. They send us some organic fruit and vegetables from local farms every two weeks. The shipment we got this week had cabbage in it. I expect to write more on the CSA in a future post.
  • Monday Afternoon – Kayaking – We live near a pretty sizable lagoon (extremely similar to this one). I think we got it for a $100. We haven’t gotten our value out of it yet, but hopefully we’ll be out on the water a lot this summer. In related news, I don’t expect to be able to lift my arms tomorrow.
  • Monday Evening – Dinner – We relax and wind down. I learn that I don’t hate turnips, parsnips, and cabbage nearly as much as I thought I did.

I don’t think we ended up spending $75 all weekend. Combine that with the fact that my websites earned between $200-$300 (without me checking in on them) and the weekend was that much sweeter.

Filed Under: Links Tagged With: cabbage, CSA, kayak, red sox

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