Lazy Man and Money

Don’t Buy Stuff You Can’t Afford

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A ways back, I was reading Jason Cabler’s Celebrating Financial Freedom blog when I came across a post he highlighted. He found a hilarious Saturday Night Live video featuring Steve Martin and Amy Poehler. More importantly, it is extremely relevant to personal finance.

The bad news is that SNL doesn’t like letting people share their skits online. However, there is a 30 second clip here:

Now that you have a little flavor of the skit, here’s the whole skit nearly identical remade without the fancy actors or set:

If you could “magic eye” the two videos together in your mind, you’d almost have the real thing.

Sometimes we make things too difficult in personal finance. We spend time trying to figure out lending club earnings to a tenth or hundredth of a percent. While that can matter over the long term, sometimes it’s best to stick to the basics.

This is a good reminder that personal finance doesn’t have to be difficult. Hopefully you got a laugh out of it like I did.

Random Thoughts and Personal Finance Links

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I’ve got lots on my mind this week, so I’m going to skip the introduction. As usual, there are links to personal finance articles that I liked at the end of this post.

  • I was Interviewed by The Slacker Method
  • Trip to Boston – I’m heading to Boston next week to visit friends and family. While it’s always nice to see people, some people mistaken call this a vacation. There’s typically so much running around that my wife and I are completely exhausted.
  • Saturday Night Live’s best show in years? – Neil Patrick Harris bought it last night. Almost every skit was hilarious. Taylor Swift’s reaction at the end of the song to the applause was like a 7-year old getting a Wii for the holidays. Ms. Swift, I know you are young, but at this point you have millions – in sales, dollars, and people who love you. Applause should not come as a surprise.
  • I Want a Palm Pre – I remember when the iPhone was announced some 18 months or so ago. The office at my work completely froze for three hours in awe. Early this week, I had a similar experience in my living room. Palm showed off the new phone that it’s been developing for a few years now. It looks much better than the iPhone. I don’t know if it will get developer support like the iPhone, but I’m impressed enough to probably pre-order it.
  • Yankees spent nearly 450M on players last month and ask for tax-free bonds for the stadium – This link says it all.
  • Surf the World on a Wii Fit Balance Board – This is amazing sounding stuff. I had no idea that the Wii Fit Balance Board was standard bluetooth with an open API. Very smart Nintendo. I’ve been looking for something else for the Wii Fit lately and the other games got horrible reviews. Unfortunately this looks a little too techy for me (and I’m fairly techy) and it may require a Mac.

    • Cheap Restaurant Eats

    I’ve been experiencing the wonders of a bad economy lately, with some restaurant deals. It seems every restaurant wants to save me money. I haven’t even needed my tips to save money at restaurants. Before I get to the deals though, I need to tell you about Everett Jones BBQ, a place based out of Oakland, CA. It’s the best BBQ I’ve had since I left Boston – though Boston isn’t exactly known for it’s BBQ. It’s been a 2+ year search, so I’m excited to put that search to bed.

    My wife and I celebrated New Year’s Eve at Turtle Bay Restaurant, another local gem. I mention it because it started out bad, but ended up great. We showed up for our 8PM reservation and they didn’t have a table for us. I was about to go into my Jerry Seinfeld reservations bit, when I decided that nothing good can come from that. Instead we simple voiced our disappointment once and asked if we could go to the bar to wait. I was expecting a couple of free drinks while we wait, but that didn’t happen. After sitting, we found out that the prime rib buffet was completely done. We still didn’t say anything much, but we were clearly disappointed.

    That’s when the 180 happened. The owner came by and told us that drinks would be on the house. My wife asked if there was any more of the creamed spinach that was with the prime rib buffet and if she could order a side dish. The owner gave us that on the house as well. By this time, we were so happy about the free food and drink that I didn’t mind when they forgot my caesar salad. I did mention it to them though because I didn’t want to be charged for it. Of course they felt even worse and proceeded to give us dessert. All totaled we had a three course meal, with a couple of drinks for around $55. I ended up tipping an unprecedented 50% to show my appreciation for their understanding.

    Lastly we enjoy the take out 1/2 priced burgers from Armadillo Willy’s for lunch on Saturdays. My wife and I found that for less than 8 dollars we get two large burgers and fries. We end up not eating much of dinner.

    And now for the personal finance links…

    Money Writers:

    More Financial Posts:

Links: Attack of Actress Amy Adams and E-mail Edition

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amyadams.jpgI don’t know what it is about this weekend, but Amy Adams is invading my wife and my lives this weekend. Friday night, we went to the local DVD Play in an attempt to rent Juno. Since it’s so new we had to settle for a back-up. The only movie my wife and I could agree on was Enchanted – starring Amy Adams. We watched that Friday night. Saturday morning, I woke up early and put in the next movie in the Netflix queue, Talladega Nights – of which she has a sizable minor role. (My wife had already seen it on a plane which is why just didn’t watch that on Friday). Finished up Saturday by turning on Saturday Night Live and it’s a re-run with Amy Adams as the host. She could knock on the door ten minutes from now and I’d ask what took her so long. Take a look at the picture on the left and tell me she’s not plotting something devious.

Earlier this week, I slipped an “e-mail this!” option into the footer of every article (near the social bookmarking bar). I must have been slick with it because no one has used it yet. Or perhaps that’s a sign that I need write something worth e-mailing. In the off-chance that my hundred monkeys produce something you find interesting or entertaining, I would appreciate it if you’d please send it friend.

On to the links…

In case your wallet has been getting fat from nearly two years of reading Lazy Man and Money, you might want to get a thin wallet like I did – it was one of the biggest upgrades of my life this year. Let’s pretend that speaks about the quality of the wallet and not volumes about my life.

Brip Blap wonders about a world without monkeys. It was truly one of the best articles I’ve read in some time, despite the fact that he overlooked my aforementioned hundred monkeys.

Digerati Life writes about how to become a frugal capitalist. I like to think that’s me, but I’m not sure I’m making the most of my “capitalistic” opportunities.

Generation X Finance asks a question, I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, how do you envision your ideal retirement? I don’t have a solid plan, but part of think that’s the point.

The Sun’s Financial Diary reviews a Morningstar article about 529 plans. We each opted for the Ohio plan (me for my nephew) and I’m constantly surprised that magazines miss out on our plan. Then again, I read things like about their highly-ranked Virginia plan, “The plan charges $10 for opening an account as well as $10 annual account fee. The expense ratio of this plan ranges from .65% to 1.10%.” It makes me wonder if Virginia is using those fees to buy off Morningstar, because it doesn’t compete with Ohio’s.

Money Smart Life writes about how much being healthy saves you. It made me want to get out and do a little running.

Million Dollar Journey has a three part series on retiring early. I’ve linked you to the third part here – because the first two are in the introduction. If you think I’m not copying this in the upcoming weeks and adapting it to myself, you don’t know me that well.

My Dollar Plan asks if you are missing some money. It turns out that I am – and I’m in a lengthy, lengthy process to get it back.

I’d like to congratulate No Credit Needed on the birth of their third child.

Mighty Bargain Hunter is up to his 7th part in his making money with an Ebay store series. For me this is the most important part, I hate the process of shipping things.

The Carnival of Peer-to-Peer Lending was hosted at Rocket Finance. He picked a good one to host with a few Lending Club articles around. If you have a blog and would like to host, hit the contact button at the top of the page and send me an e-mail – I’ll put you on the schedule.

Photo credit: Vanity Fair