Lazy Man and Money

Are You Successful?

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That’s a loaded question for three simple words, right?

The only way to get started is to come up with a definition of success. A couple of days ago, Joe from Retire by 40, asked, “What Does Success Mean to You?”

That question indirectly leads us to a definition of success. You are going to have to create a definition for yourself. Maybe you must be a banker to be fulfilled in life. While that may work for a sitcom, chances are your definition of success is much deeper.

Is Money the Measure of Success?

This is a blog about money… it’s in the name. And most discussions of success are going to lead back to money. After all, in the impeccable wisdom of Liz Phair:

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 want to bet?
They’d which success for themselves and their friends
And that would include lots of money
I would surely include lots of money
You’ve got to have sh**loads of M-O-N-E-why, money

As you might be able to tell, Ms. Phair values money as a great sign of success. However, I think we can agree that it isn’t the only sign of success.

Most people would consider Saint Teresa of Calcutta as very successful, but money wasn’t a part of that success. Additionally, we have all heard the stories of lottery winners who have been unhappy. Joe made the great point that the richest person in the world failed at marriage.

Joe did what I would have done. He made a spreadsheet of the qualities that he considered important to success. Hopefully he doesn’t mind that I share it here, because it makes it easier to see where I’m going with this:

In his article, Joe then goes through each one and gives a little explanation about why it’s important and why he gave it the score he did. He chose to score each of them equally on a scale of 1 to 10 and average them out.

I (obviously) loved the idea or I wouldn’t be writing about it today. However, I thought I could make a couple of improvements. I love to tinker, especially with spreadsheets.

The first thing I did was take notice that some things are related. Joe has money, material things, and experiences all listed. If money is high (which it is for him) he can trade some for material things. The reason he doesn’t is that he doesn’t value a lot of material things as high as he does his freedom, another item on his list.*

I’ve started to do some mind mapping recently and I’d group some of these related items together. There’s a Four Burners Theory that says you have to split your efforts across family, friends, work, and health. It’s almost impossible for everyone to have enough gas to have all of them on full power.

I decided blatantly steal borrow Joe’s list and put the items in some categories. It’s not perfect, because I’d rather get your thoughts on this draft and evolve it. (That’s a hint to please leave a comment.) I also decided to allot 100 points among all the categories. The categories with more points are more important to me.

For example, Ebenezer Scrooge might have 90 points in the money category… and he might award himself an 85 for his success in getting money. In this system, he will have likely rated himself a great success. Saint Teresa would likely have put most her points in the philanthropy and spirituality categories and rate herself as a great success.

Here’s what mine looks like:

Lazy Success

The first thing you might notice is that my 1 to 100 scale only goes to 70. That’s because I’ve reserved the last 30 points for relationships, family and friends. I’ve decided to keep those private.

One important thing to keep in mind is that the numbers are very subjective. I just went with my gut and quickly filled up a 100 possible points. Then I spent 30 seconds thinking about whether I valued one thing more or less. In fact, I did this so quickly that just before publishing, I realized that I left health completely out of the spreadsheet. (It would have been an average 50% score.)

In the future, I may value material things less, but I bumped it up to an even number so that I could give myself half the points. In hindsight, the overall money category is worth the same amount as relationships (30 points), which needs some adjusting in a future draft.

Lazy Man’s Success Breakdown

Money Category

We have a very nice house and some nice things. However, I’m inherently frugal. I don’t mind Dollar Tree utensils for cooking. I’m very happy to wear an old Patriots sweatshirt from 1993 most of the time. We do have a fancy OLED TV and a luxury SUV. We also have a futon from Wal-Mart and our bedroom furniture is what I got after graduating college.

We have plenty of good experiences which includes our trips to Aruba and Disney World. We live on an island that is 5 minutes from the beach. Our kids get (mostly) the best education money can buy.

We are doing well with our finances. I hope to update this old article this summer, but we should have $200,000 a year in retirement income after my wife’s pension, rental properties, investments, social security, and some hobbies that make money.

Work

Joe included his engineering career and his blogging career. I’ll do the same and throw in my dog sitting career. I wasn’t the best software engineer, but I had some big accomplishments I can be proud of. In 13 years of blogging, I’ve managed 12 million page views and have been nominated for a Lifetime Achievement Plutus Award. I haven’t been featured in Rockstar Finance and I am still Susan Lucci/Ash Ketchum when it comes to winning a Plutus Award.

This is life on the blogger roller coaster.

Others’ View

I didn’t know what to call this category of fame, power, and legacy, so “others’ view” was my best attempt. I don’t care to much for fame and only a little bit about power. I care more about legacy.

I rated myself highly on legacy for things that have mostly flown under the radar. They are the things that show up in the 12 million page views and that Lifetime Achievement nomination. I’d like to write more about this someday, but I’m a little humble. Also, I don’t want it to trigger too much fame.

Own View

I gave myself a 3 of 5 when it comes to philanthropy. Some would look at money that I’ve donated and say that 3 is generous. However, I’ve devoted thousands of hours to helping people not get tied up into pyramid schemes and other scams.

I need to work on spirituality. It should be a larger in both possible points and awarded points.

I was perhaps generous in giving myself a 6 in contentment. It’s something that I actively have to work on.

Freedom

Finally, I gave myself a freedom score of 6 of 8. Maybe freedom should have more possible points, but it shares some of the Money’s points. The score of 6 is based on our financial situation and ability to work from home in a variety of different ways. It’s not going to be perfect because it’s not like we can just pick up and go to France on a moment’s notice. It’s hard to be truly free when you are raising a 5 and 6 year old.

Final thoughts

So I scored 45 of the 70 points. That’s nearly 65%… a solid D grade. Part of the reason it isn’t higher is that I didn’t believe in giving myself a perfect score, as there’s always someone else doing it better. So realistically it is 45 of 59 (I did give myself perfect fame) which is more of a C.

If I go buy a few nice things, win a Plutus award, and meditate my way to higher contentment, I should be able to pull of a solid B.

Now I’m off to go look at my old, very popular how to be successful article and see how I can make it better.

* I may be projecting my thoughts about Joe, but it’s my interpretation after reading his blog for a long time. While I could be wrong, we can still move on as if it were true for the purposes of the exercise.

How To Be Successful in the New Year

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Welcome to 2018!

It still feels like 2017 to me. The kids are still on their winter break from school. Tomorrow, I get focus on writing again. It feels like forever, and I’m so excited to get started. In the meantime, I’m going to continue a 9-year tradition… bumping up one of my most popular articles.

How To Be Successful In The New Year
How To Be Successful In The New Year

Start at the Beginning

I’m very biased here, but my more recent blog Be Better Now focuses more on success and self-improvement. It covers important topic from How to Make and Keep Your New Year’s Resolution to this Quick Guide to Success.

If you only read and followed through on those two general articles, I can almost guarantee you’d have the best year of your life (short of an unrelated tragedy).

However, let’s continue on:

Preparation and Planning

  • Make a List of Short, Medium, and Long Term Goals – Each night before I go to sleep, I try to write down 3-5 things that I want to accomplish the next day. I make sure that at least a couple are things that I can complete that day and purge from my to-do list. I also make sure to add a couple of small parts of medium or long-term projects.

    Here’s an example: Imagine that you want to write an eBook. The first day you create a rough outline of the book – just the chapters. The next day you might want to pick 3 or 4 things in a few chapters to cover in each chapter. Repeat this for 3 or 4 days and you’ll have a great plan for a whole 9-12 chapter book in less than a week. Then you simply need to spend a day expanding each chapter. In about 20 days you’ll have completed the first draft. Use the next 10 days (or more) to review, revise, and edit.

  • Catalog Your Progress – I started this blog to keep me accountable. I can’t go out and buy a Ferrari on credit. If I did, I’d have to write about it here. I have a strong streak of not buying a Ferrari on credit. See? Simple, right?

Fix Your Finances

This is important enough that I created a whole article focusing on it. Unfortunately, the article is quite out of date. Still the ideas are sound. Still there should be a half dozen easy ways for many people to save thousands of dollars.

Learn These Skills

  • Sales / Marketing – Even if you don’t think you have a product to sell, you do… yourself. I’ve learned that sales and marketing are not easy skills to learn. You can’t shout “look at me!” or people will think you are obnoxious. You have to find people who might be genuinely interested in what you have to offer. I always find it best to be open and honest with what I have to sell. If the product is of value, you price it accordingly, and have the right buyer, it should sell itself. I’ve found that if you have to “sell” too hard, it’s probably going to be a sale you regret making.
  • Public Speaking – I am most shy person on Earth. Talking to someone one-on-one often ties my stomach in knots. I’ve almost completely given up using the phone. Imagine how I feel about public speaking right now. There’s at least a 90% chance I’d faint.

    However, public speaking was a required class in high school. I started off horrible, but by the end, I had earned an A. The head cheerleader said that I was funny… which is the kind of thing that sticks with you 25 years later (Thanks Amy!) I have to remember that public speaking really is a skill where practice means everything. An organization such as Toastmasters, seems to be the best way to get that practice. Unfortunately, Toastmasters usually takes a back seat to the pile of other things that I’m currently focusing on.

  • Writing – Even if you are crafting a short e-mail, try to use proper grammar. You’d be surprised how many e-mails I receive where people make 6 mistakes in 6 sentences. Poor writing skills on the first impression impacts my view of the person’s intelligence and/or professionalism. Perhaps it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. A person who can write great commands my respect and my trust.

    I realize that my articles have more than their fair share of writing mistakes. This article probably has 3-5 in it. I feel that it is a balance. I’d rather spend my time writing another article than proofreading the previous one for a couple of typos.

  • Networking – Get out there and meet new people in your areas of interest. When you know a lot of people, opportunities multiply. [Editor’s Note, I’m going to date myself on this, but I wrote this about Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income who wasn’t widely known in January of 2009 when I wrote this article:

    “To go back to the eBook example above, I met one person who has had some success with an eBook. He’s in the process of getting it translated into an audio book now. He could definitely be a great resource for me to learn from. He’s newer to blogging and doesn’t have the number of readers that I have. I can probably give him a few tips and help him out. Now if I knew 100 people like this guy, I’d have a solution to almost every question I’d ever have at my fingertips.”

  • Read More and Faster – I have always been a very slow reader. I simply don’t scan text very well. Perhaps I’m afraid I’ll miss a critical word or something silly like that. This is one area that I’m going to work on in the new year. Much of my time is spent reading, you’d think I’d at least be good at it.

Take Action

  • Help Someone with Something Everyday – This may sound like some kind of “Pay It Forward” hype. In some ways it is. I estimate that I’ve given guidance to around 50 or 100 bloggers who are just getting going that were looking for advice. Some of them became successful bloggers and some stopped blogging. The successful ones have returned the favor 100 times over or more. They link to my articles, they comment on my site, and fill me in with opportunities that I would have otherwise missed. This isn’t limited to blogging. If you mentor someone, you’ll be seen as a natural leader. I’ve always seen a strong correlation between leadership and success.
  • Make Mistakes – When I just got out of college, I took a job with a top ten Internet company. It was a very high profile job as I managed the search engine myself. It was about 20% of this 2 billion dollar company’s traffic… and some of their most valuable real estate (look what Google did with search). The thought that I’d make a mistake scared me to death. I spent each day walking on eggshells until the day that I made a mistake. It was a terrible mistake that crashed the whole database. A strange thing happened. No one got upset with me, and we were able to recover pretty quickly. From that experience, I learned to always have a back-up plan. This allowed me to take some risks, experiment more, and eventually produce ideas that made the company tens of millions of dollars. Perhaps as importantly, I learned to tolerate other people’s mistakes.
  • Surround Yourself with Like-Minded Individuals – There are studies that show an individual’s income will be somewhere around the average of your closest five friends. That formula works for me and my closest friends – or it did until I decided to build my career from websites. There are also studies that show your weight will reflect those who you hang around with. It makes sense if you think about it. If your circle of friends likes to bounce business ideas off each other while playing a game of pickup basketball, you’ll probably put yourself closer to the path of prosperity than if you tell fart jokes while eating Bon-Bons.
  • Exercise – Whenever I work out, I am all pumped up with endorphins for hours. It feels like nothing can stop me – as if I could tackle a bear. Instead of tackling a bear, I focus that energy on my list of goals and churn through it like never before.
  • Start a Website or Blog – It’s easy to talk the talk, but what matters is if you can walk the walk. A website or blog not only makes you accountable for the goals that you set, but can also help you network and gather useful information. For more inspiration read how personal finance blogging helped me.

Be More Productive

  • Don’t Get Wrapped Up in Television – I love television. However, I try to watch shows that you don’t have to follow too closely. This way I can work while it’s on. You won’t see me watching a lot of Law and Order because it requires too much of my focus. However, having the Red Sox on the background doesn’t distract me from accomplishing what I’m trying to.
  • Commute with Books on Tape (or Podcasts) – Most of the people I know have a 30-60 minute commute to work each day. You can listen to some morning talk show or a shock-jock DJ or you can learn some of the skills that I mention above. I’m not saying that you should throw away all entertainment, but if you are looking to increase your productivity, utilizing this downtime is a great start.
  • Declutter and Organize Your Home and Work Area – I used to waste a lot of time looking for stuff. The problem? I had stuff everywhere. I couldn’t find the stuff that I needed from the old stuff that was piled around it. It’s amazed me the number of things that I had around the home that I didn’t use. Finally I simply said “Stuff It!” and got rid of most of the stuff that I didn’t use and put other special stuff in a closet that I’ll probably ignore for another years. Just like in What About Bob, “baby steps…” I tell myself.

Think Your Way To Success

  • Think Positively – I’m not going to get Stuart Smalley, Motivational Speaker on you, but making the conscious decision to focus on being financially successful is extremely helpful. Bringing finances to front of my mind, instead of the back has made a huge difference in my finances.
  • Don’t Hate Money – Lose the thinking that money is the root of all evil. Start thinking about it as a key to freedom to do whatever interests you. Think of it as a way to help friends, family, and charities important to you. Think about how you could use money to make the world a better place.
  • Appreciate What You Have – Schedule a day to just appreciate yourself. Appreciate the things that you do have. The fact that you are reading this likely means that you are much better off than others in the world.
  • Be In A Good Mood – One of my favorite lines from Say Anything is when Lloyd Dobler (played by John Cusack) says to his sister, “Why can’t you be in a good mood? How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood once in a while?”

The Most Important Key to Success…

  • Do What You Love – You aren’t going to be successful at something you spend all day dreading. When I was excited about software engineering, I was good – perhaps even above average ;-). When I got stuck on a project that didn’t interest me, I was honestly a poor software engineer.

    However, be careful about blinding heeding the “follow your passion” advice. You must also recognize supply and demand and work within those constraints. There’s a large supply of people who want to become professional baseball or basketball players, and the demand is for only a few hundred. This means you have to be so much better than everyone else. There are few people looking to be morticians because it creeps a lot of people out, but there is a big demand, leading to a high-paying lucrative career.

    Mark Cuban has a great article on a related to this: Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort.

Why NFL Franchises Fail

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Editor’s Message: If you are a fan of personal finance, I ask that you stick with me and read this article. Yes, it is going to focus on the National Football League (or “American” Football for my foreign readers), but many of the concepts can be translated to running any successful business and/or getting top value for your dollar.

This is also a unique article, because I drafted parts of it as long as a year ago. A lot has happened in that time, and I have very mixed feelings knowing that the the commissioner of the league openly lies. At some parts, you may see that I love the game, but at others, it will be a very different picture. Also, I’ve gotten into a time-crunch with life events and this article isn’t nearly as polished as I hoped it would be.

Tonight the New England Patriots open up the NFL season in defense of their world (well USA) championship. I’ve been following the Patriots since the sexual harassment of a female reporter “marred” their dreadful performance of a 1-15 season. Even before that… more than 30 years now. That’s just what you do when you grow up outside of Boston.

I’m a huge fan of the football in general. I think it is unique amongst the four major sports in America. It is a team game where a weak link can end the season (as explained in the beginning of The Blind Side). You have to do a lot more than piece together a “Big Three” and watch them dominate like in basketball. It is a sport where the strategy is always evolving and each game is a unique chess match that had a week of planning put into it. It isn’t like baseball where game strategy is very, very basic. It also has free agency and salary caps ensure that a team can’t hold a nucleus very long. Typically a team loses half of its players each year… and usually some very good ones.

Under those circumstances, I’m not sure if I am aware of another franchise that has had more success in the history of sports than the New England Patriots. The Celtics won many titles with Bill Russell, but they were able to hold that nucleus without fear of free agency. The San Antonio Spurs are probably the closest, but again they’ve done it with a nucleus of a few players.

I’ve put in countless hours into following football and the Patriots. If you have a life you probably have better things to do. I commend you. At the same time, I feel like I’ve learned so much that I wanted to give a little back.

So I decided to put together a “guide” for fans to help them understand if their favorite football franchise is moving in the right direction.

There Can Only Be One

Football, like many sports is a zero sum game. When one team wins another team loses. There are only so many wins and losses to be handed around the NFL… not everyone can be 12-4.

Success and failure is relative in zero-sum games. If the competition is terrible, you will be successful even if you are just less terrible. This is an important concept to keep in mind as you read this “guide.” Not every franchise is going to perfect in all these areas. When a franchise is extremely successful in one area it can even cover up deficiencies in other areas. Put a few successful areas together and it can take you a long way.

(By the way, did you catch the reference for the title of this section?)

Success Starts at the Top

A franchise will fail if ownership, the general manager, and the coach aren’t on the same page. Coach Bill Parcels was famous for saying, “If they want you to cook the meal, they ought to let you buy the groceries.” At the time, he was referring to how ownership didn’t allow him to draft the players he wanted. He was left trying to coach players who he felt weren’t a good fit for his system. That’s just asking for trouble.

The Patriots have had the same owner and general manager/coach for the entire millennium thus far. The level of trust there is unparalleled. This continuity allows them to make trades for the future in mind. It allows them to structure contracts for the future. Coach Bill Belichick can make unconventional draft picks without fear that it is going to cost him to lose his job.

This continuity is very important. It leads us to the next point:

Successful Franchises Avoid Buying on Credit

We live in a world where we demand success right away. A new coach feels the pressure to produce positive results immediately. This can lead to trades that may look good today, but hurt you down the road. It’s like buying a top of the line suit for a specific job interview on credit. In some world, that may make sense, but if you don’t get the job, you are left paying credit card bill for something that’s hanging in your closet.

Pressure can cause NFL franchises to buy on credit. They pay interest on that credit. It mortgages their future for success today.

Teams buy on credit when they trade a future draft pick for a player today. They buy on credit when they sign a player to a contract that likely leads to dead money in the salary cap in the future, when that player is no longer on the team.

New coaches aren’t the only ones getting pressured to succeed. Two of the most successful franchises in recent years, the Patriots and Broncos, have had pressure to add talent at any cost due to the “closing window” of their aging superstar quarterbacks. The two franchises got into “arms race” with all the moves they were making to get better.

I believe that the Broncos bought on credit for their run and have lost a couple of their best players (Julius Thomas and Terrance Knighton) because of limited salary cap space. The Patriots almost never buy on credit, but they did to sign Darrelle Revis one of the best players in the game. It didn’t disrupt the core salary structure of the team and the players they lost were ones they deemed were no longer a good value for their talent.

The turnover of coaches in some unsuccessful franchises has been so extensive that they’ve been buying on credit for more than a few seasons. Oakland is one franchise that comes to mind. They seem to have been digging themselves out of hole for years now.

The Patriots have been very successful in lending their draft currency to other franchises. I wrote about draft picks as currency back in 2007 and again in 2011. The Patriots traded #28 to the 49ers for their first round pick next year. The worst case scenario was that they’d get #32 then. However, the 49ers weren’t very good (as the Patriots suspected) and the pick turned out to be #7.

A #7 pick was very valuable and actually worth more than 2.25 #28 picks (there are mathematical charts for this stuff). Essentially the Patriots got over 125% interest in waiting a year. Patriots fans were very unhappy at the time to not have the asset right away. However, it was a great long-term move for the future success of the franchise.

Successful Franchises Find Diamonds in the Rough

Back in 2007, the Patriots traded a 4th round draft pick for Randy Moss, a superbly talented player. He had been on that Oakland franchise that floundered at the bottom of the standings year after year. He was labeled as a “malcontent”, which is natural if you are competitive and go home as a loser each week.

Randy Moss went on to score more touchdowns than any receiver in the history of the game that year. Presumably 30 other teams could have traded a 3rd round pick for Moss, which would have been tremendous value. To be fair to those teams, the Moss-Patriots break-up was ugly, probably what they feared. However, it was quick and the Patriots moved on without missing a beat.

Randy Moss wasn’t an isolated case for the Patriots. They routinely found value in other team’s cast-offs. They were able to win the 2001 Super Bowl, with a bunch of free agents that that were signed to very small contracts.

No one has played more defensive snaps in the last three years than Rob Ninkovich, who had been bounced around a few teams before becoming a core Patriot.

Last year the Patriots won The Super Bowl on the memorable play by Malcolm Butler, an undrafted free-agent rookie without any other offers. Butler’s agent tells the story, “[Patriots cornerbacks coach Josh Boyer called] and he said, ‘Is Malcolm still available? I can bring in one player in the country for a tryout and I picked Malcolm. I believe Malcolm can play in the NFL.'”

Every NFL team can point to successful diamonds they’ve mined. I don’t know of any way to quantify which ones are more successful than others. I can’t say that Patriots found more than other teams, but from my biased view it feels like it. (Though I tip my hat to Seattle on their diamond-finding ability). However, an important ingredient to success is finding value where others don’t.

I believe the best way to do that is to have a well-funded scouting department. Just like continuity of management is important, it is important to continuity of scouting, so you are comparing apples to apples year after year.

Successful Franchises Work Hard

This should go without saying, but let’s just say it. I love this quote:

“Welcome to the NFL. That will start Thursday. They’ll get a big dose of New England Patriots football over the next whatever we’ve got, six weeks — however long it is. We’ll give them everything we can in heavy doses, try to get them ready for training camp and they’ll get even more then… The strong will survive. The other ones will fall off. And we’ll keep going…

We’ve got 31 other teams competing just as hard as we are to do the same things. Yeah, we’re going to have to outwork people, out-hustle them and just do a better job. That’s what our business is.

Successful Franchises Maximize the Quarterback Position

The importance of the quarterback in football is crucial. He’s the leader. He touches the ball on every play. It’s become a passing league and they are the ones doing the passing.

There are arguably 5 elite QBs in the NFL (Brady, Manning, Rodgers, Brees, and Luck). Having one of these 5 players is almost a guarantee your franchise is going to win at least 10 of the 16 games and make the playoffs.

After the elite group there is another tier of very good QBs. That tier includes players like Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, Russell Wilson, Joe Flacco, etc. You could have some losing seasons with these players. However, if a franchise surrounds these players with a good (or great) defense and they get hot at the right time, it can win a Super Bowl with them.

So realistically, the franchises with a top 12 QB are the ones that are successful. That may sound obvious, but it is interesting to note that 20 teams start the season in a difficult position.

There’s another level of this when it comes to the salary cap. Because QB is the most important decision, they command the most money on the market. A team putting a lot of money into a QB will naturally have less money to spend on the other players on the team. This gives an enormous advantage to teams with a QB in their rookie contract such as Russell Wilson (until recently) and Andrew Luck.

Taking that point from a Patriots point of view, they are fortunate that Tom Brady doesn’t demand top dollar. In fact, Over the Cap says, “Tier 1 [of salary caps] for ESPN is hampered because of Tom Brady’s incredibly ridiculous team friendly contract. It is almost unfair to include that.” They also show that his salary cap number is 19th among 22 non-rookie contract QBs, which is an extraordinary value.

These low numbers allow Seattle, Indianapolis, and New England to add a couple of extra stars that other teams simply can’t fit into the cap. Seattle is now paying top dollar for Russell Wilson, which may make them have to make tough decisions down the road on some players. Thus far, they’ve been very, very good at managing the salary cap, a credit to their planning.

If you can’t get one of these elite quarterbacks, perhaps the best plan is try to get one who doesn’t make mistakes. Alex Smith comes to mind. I believe a strong defensive team with a few other pieces could do very well with him. As a Patriots fan, I would be scared to see him on the Bills. Fortunately for Patriots fans, it seems like Rex Ryan is always going to be cursed with a bottom of the barrel quarterback.

Successful Franchises Build a “Complete” Team

When you think of the Patriots, you probably think about Brady, Belichick, and maybe Gronk. You probably don’t think of anyone on defense (unless you are a Patriots fan). Vince Wilfork and Darrelle Revis may have been the most obvious stars, but they aren’t with the team any more.

However, the Patriots have used 6 of their last 7 first round draft picks on defensive players. Four of the 6 are highly-ranked veterans. The other two are essentially having their rookie year this year (one was injured last year). It might not seem like it, but the Patriots defense compares to the Ravens and Texans, which is very good.

Patriots fans know that Father Time is undefeated and Tom Brady’s skills will lose to him at some point. I believe the Patriots are trying to put together a defense that can compete if Tom Brady’s performance becomes more like Joe Flacco’s.

The Patriots also happen to have one of the most accurate kickers in the NFL. Typically fans don’t think about the position much. Long-time fans of the Patriots know the value of this position as they went from Missin’ Sisson to Adam Vinatieri.

Successful Franchises Manage the Salary Cap

I touched on this a bit in the quarterback section. You have to know when you commit to a player and when you can’t… and you have to know how long you can. For the most part the Patriots have been very, very good at this*. They’ve moved on fan favorites such as Lawyer Milloy, Wes Welker, Randy Moss, Logan Mankins, Vince Wilfork, Richard Seymour, Asante Samuel, Deion Branch, Adam Vinatieri (before he came back), and more.

In just about every case, Patriots fans went nuts. They screamed that Bill Belichick had finally lost it. Then a funny thing happened. In almost every case, the players vastly under-performed on their new teams. (The exception being Vinatieri, but the Patriots replaced him with an equally good, younger, cheaper model.) Fans reluctantly had to develop an “In Bill We Trust” attitude.

Moving on from such players saved them a lot of salary cap money that could be used to retain younger talent. Sometimes they were able to trade them for additional draft picks.

Draft picks are an important part of managing salary cap. Players on their rookie contracts can be paid less than veterans and often perform as well as some stars. The Patriots like to draft and develop a quarterback to be the back-up, because it is cheaper on the salary cap than many veterans. I’m sure they’ve done the math and figured that over a 4-year deal they can save somewhere around $8 million in cap space vs. paying the market rate for a veteran. It all adds up.

The Patriots may have reputation for heartless when it comes to player contracts, but this frugality helps them get more their salary cap dollar. That translates to wins.

* This excludes the tight end who is rotting in prison for murdering someone. Whoops.

Successful Franchises Cheat

Just kidding, all NFL Franchises cheat.

Taping Opposing Teams Practices

This never happened and the source, the Boston Herald printed a retraction. Media outlets, specifically ESPN, reported it as truth recently as a few weeks ago. When it was brought to their attention that it never happened they issued an apology to the Patriots past midnight when no one was watching.

Still when reporters report false incidents, a perception is created that the Patriots have a “culture of cheating.”

SpyGate

This actually did happen, but here’s what it amounts to:

“Spying” is perfectly legal. As John Madden said on live TV, it’s common place in the NFL. Jimmy Johnson admitted it as well.

It is exactly like going 66mph in a 65mph zone. It’s wrong and you shouldn’t do it. Everyone does it anyway. If a police officer wants to target you and let everyone else go 80mph, that’s an unfortunate part of life. You may be able to appeal it to neutral judge, but as we’ve found out with DeflateGate that process doesn’t exist in the NFL.

Worse, the NFL doles out punishment without any understandable logic. The Patriots got the equivalent penalty to a life sentence in prison for what was clearly a misdemeanor. The next time you break the speed limit, imagine being thrown in jail for life and having others say, “Well, you shouldn’t have committed the crime.”

DeflateGate

As Patriot-hater and New York Law School Professor on Robert Blecker points out DeflateGate never happened and the NFL cheated:

If you think it happened, you probably read the media headlines that were generated by the NFL leaking false information to media outlets such as ESPN. When you take the time to read analysis of the Brady’s appeal and the Judge Berman’s questioning, you’ll have a better understanding of what really went on.

Summary of cheating

So we have one event that clearly never happened (taping practices). One event that is widely considered to never have happened (DeflateGate)… and one minor misdemeanor (SpyGate). Lazy people group all three together ignore the real reasons for success above. They then jump to the false conclusion that their team was ripped off.

The Aaron Hernandez and Lisa Olson scandals were a thousand times worse than all of this combined. If you want to attack the Patriots, at least go after real events with real victims suffering real consequences.

Of course if you are going to do that, let’s credit the Patriots Vince Wilfork helping pull a car crash victim to safety on the way home from the AFC Championship game. That is a little more meaningful than air pressure in footballs, right?

Final Thoughts

If you got this far, congratulations… this was certainly a long read. I actually had more information in my notes (such as successful franchises don’t go “all-in” for a chance to win one Super Bowl), but at some point I simply need to stop writing and publish this thing.

I had hoped to tie in more of life lessons, but since this is the equivalent length of a week’s worth of writing, that will also be saved for an update down the road. Maybe some of those lessons are obvious in how I structured the article.

If you are a football fan, good luck to your team this year.

Best of Lazy Man and Money

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I thought I’d take a little time today to highlight some of the more popular posts I’ve written over the four and a half years I’ve been blogging. It has nothing to do with the great traffic I’m seeing this morning from Kimberly Palmer’s article on how to make extra money. It simply seems fitting to look back since it’s the start of the year. (Are you buying this? Even a little bit?)

For those new to the site, I’m a pretty lazy guy in general. However, the Lazy Man name stems from the fact that I had all these great business ideas, but never the drive (nor the finances and connections) to get off the ground. If I’m not going to actually implement these ideas, I might as well write about them, right? Well, somewhere along the line, my plan changed, and I started to focus on personal finance. The result is some 1,200+ articles about how I’m trying to save money, make money, retire early… all the things that you came here for.

I’ll let you be the judge if I did a good job at that. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Thousands of ways to save money – Unless you are unusually talented or lucky, it is extremely difficult to retire early without keeping an eye on spending. I put together a page of all my articles on how to save money on just about anything. The advice isn’t to cut all the fun stuff out of your life, but how to keep all the fun on a fraction of the budget. Warning, it’s addictive and you could lose a day there.
  • How To Be Successful – I wrote this article a couple of years back and it still resonates with people today. In fact, I got an email last night from someone who is trying to sort out his life after a bunch of missteps. As soon as I’m done with this post, I’m off to email him, to see if what kind of wisdom I can share with him. (This is a scary thought for me.) I always try to get back to my readers, so feel free to contact me.
  • MonaVie – I became somewhat famous (in blogging circles at least) for my article on MonaVie. In the article, I asked a simple question of whether it was a scam, since $45 for 25 ounces of juice isn’t the norm… it’s not close to the norm. The article garnered more than 5000 comments and lead me to create a spin-off site MonaVie Scam.

That should be enough reading to keep you busy. In case it’s not, these final two articles (not really the Best of Lazy Man and Money) round out a bit of what you’d read here:

  • Make SMARTER Goals This Year – I think I watched Office Space (if there is such a thing) one too many times before writing this one. If you are looking to keep your New Year’s Resolutions this is a great place to start.
  • Hedge Rising Food and Gas Prices with ETFs – I didn’t want to leave you with the impression that this website is just about saving money. You see a lot of investing ideas such as this one as well.

For those who came here from that Yahoo article, I’ve gotten tons of mail asking a question I should have anticipated. You want to know How to Start a Blog… well click that link and dig in. Please recognize that it is a broad question and that article is just geared to get you going.

P.S. Don’t forget to check check Kimberly Palmer’s book Generation Earn, which I reviewed here ;-).