There-ain’t-no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch.
This adage from the 1930s encompasses the idea that you can never get something for nothing, the foundation of our government, our economy and our personal life.
Everything costs money.
Yet we have something of a skewed notion about the role of finances in our personal life, feeding into a society full of fat debt.
It all begins with childhood. Every week you give your child that five to fifty dollar allowance, sometimes in exchange for basic household chores. The habit often leads children to believe that something necessary, like cleaning a bathtub when you get it dirty, will earn you valuable credit. Such a lovely fantasy.
That child soon becomes a teen, asking for that weekly allowance to cover things like a movie or fast food and then begging for more money when something drastic, and costly, occurs. Think about a car crash. Or braces. Or a parking ticket.
Maybe the teen gets their first credit card, introducing them to the dangerous realm of fake money, the kind you can spend long before you can ever earn.
By the time college comes around, the habit of spending and debt and free money is so engrained into your mind that it seems unfair that you cannot attend an Ivy League private school without a ridiculous amount of debt or that the state will not cover all of your living, driving and scholastic expenses. They also give you parking tickets.
Graduation means transition, not only out of college but into a realm where you are financially responsible for all your shopping and spending habits. The overhead of the car payment, apartment, school loans, food and utilities and taxes comes crashing down. There is no one to step in and help you out when you decide to go to six flags and spend all of your money on entertainment instead of paying the electric bill.
The responsibility part is where our vision gets a little hazy. Should the state step in? Or our parents? Or our friends? Or should we merely learn the definition of living within a budget?
The curse of Generation X is to think that money really does grow on trees. Unluckily it runs out. Quite fast. Heck, you are even punished in some respect when you do not pay off loans, or parking tickets or taxes. And these punishments are a little longer lasting than a time-out from your parents.
Rule number one, you cannot get anything for free. You must work hard to make money and maintain a budget system.
There-ain’t-no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch, friends.
Instead of spending like a child with that parental-wallet-back-up plan, it is now important to make a more long term plan in the form of a budget, something realistic that we can stick to.
For me this means a little bit of math.
What I make per month minus all my necessary expenses, setting aside money for food and gas and such, then taking the rest of the money and splitting it into my “rainy-day” pile and my “go-blow-this-in-a-weekend” pile.
The spending pile quickly gets turned into cash. I use this as a method of forced budgeting. You can only spend what you have in your pocket.
Most of all, beware the plastic cards. They easily become a dangerous pattern. In reality, if you do not have money you should probably not be spending money.
Rule number two, you cannot buy anything unless you have the money for it. And you do not have the money for everything.
A little common sense when it comes to personal finance would help slim down a bunch of fatty debt.
For my parents this meant prioritizing paying off the house. This meant working hard and habitually saving money so that when the economy crashed we could keep our house.
Rule number three, you have to save money for the rainy day. Cause otherwise a random parking ticket will kill your finances for the next month.
I definitely just got a parking ticket.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
Dooce. Rhymes with Moose and Juice.
I guess it really is not ok to say anything you want on the internet. Seeing as it could get you fired.
But sometimes it makes sense to be honest about your devil-child. Or poke fun at the little Asian database administrator. Maybe publicly torment Mormons. Oh, and probably the people that care about whether their chicken broth is made from free range chicken or not.
Being called a “well rested self-entitled ho bag” might actually feel great.
This title was affectionately given to Heather B. Armstrong, professional blogger, the 35-year-old stay-at-home-mom allowed to wear pajamas to work.
Armstrong started her blog, Dooce, in 2001 with a poem about Carnation milk, rants against organized religion and an honesty springing from a life of feeling repressed under long skirts and frizzy hair.
After growing up in Mormon-ville, Tennessee, learning about porn (and English) at BYU and teaching herself HTML, Armstrong was hired by a web designing firm in L.A.
“I worked as a web designer for drug-addicted executives and discovered what life was like as a recovering Mormon. Meaning life was filled with PowerPoint templates and lethal amounts of tequila,” Armstrong said.
Dooce, pronounced like deuce and a subtle tribute to her inability to type “dude” over IM, was Armstrong’s hobby until an anonymous co-worker complained about her sarcasm. She was fired in 2002, sparking a fierce debate about privacy issues on the web. After the apologies to the Asian database administrator that Armstrong mercilessly ridiculed, Dooce gained the loyalty of readers, now averaging about 300,000 a day.
She told BBC News: "Blogging is an easy and powerful form of personal expression. It's a way of communicating with friends and with becoming part of a community."
The emotional meltdowns, her husband, two children and two dogs are all source material for this web blog. The advertising revenue allowed her the free time to publish two books, including, It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown and a Much Needed Margarita.
Armstrong lives in Salt Lake City, Utah with the “charming geek” in her life, Jon, writing, photographing and blogging daily about her life. Armstrong was voted by Forbes number 26 on their list of Most Influential Women in Media.
According to the blog, “Dooce chronicles my life from a time when I was single and making a lot of money as a web designer in Los Angeles, to when I was dating the man who would become my husband, to when I lost my job and lived life as an unemployed drunk, to when I married my husband and moved to my mother's basement in Utah, to when I became pregnant, to when I threw up and became unbearably swollen during the pregnancy, to the birth, to the aftermath, to the postpartum depression that landed me in a psyche ward. I'm better now,” Armstrong said.
The irreverent, liberal, caustic and insightful style of Dooce boosted it into the top American blog of 2009, according to The Weblog Awards (Bloggies) http://2008.bloggi.es/
The result is a lot of hate mail, said Armstrong. Her response is to give the critics exactly what they are looking for: more exaggerated sarcasm.
“When you call the Department of Children and Family Services, please get the story straight. Not only do I leave her [daughter, Marlo] alone with paper towels, I set her in the middle of a flea-infested floor and surround her with sharp objects and porn. Then I turn on a wood-burning stove in the corner of the room and seal all the windows. Before I leave the room and lock the door, I stick a bottle full of vodka in her mouth to muffle the screaming,” Armstrong wrote.
Armstrong eventually took down some of her religious-bashing scorn in preference of a decent relationship with her parents. Although the honesty in her blog is refreshing and surprising, the monotony of evil children and religion-hate can sometimes seem extreme. Then again, as Armstrong points out, motherhood is a hell some of us have yet to experience.
The hodgepodge of child crises, butts, feeling guilty, believing that her daughter might actually be a little boy in disguise and the guy that talks like Elmo during sex, Armstrong ventures into a territory few bother to explore: scathing and witty unselfconscious writing.
For more entertainment, visit http://www.dooce.com
But sometimes it makes sense to be honest about your devil-child. Or poke fun at the little Asian database administrator. Maybe publicly torment Mormons. Oh, and probably the people that care about whether their chicken broth is made from free range chicken or not.
Being called a “well rested self-entitled ho bag” might actually feel great.
This title was affectionately given to Heather B. Armstrong, professional blogger, the 35-year-old stay-at-home-mom allowed to wear pajamas to work.
Armstrong started her blog, Dooce, in 2001 with a poem about Carnation milk, rants against organized religion and an honesty springing from a life of feeling repressed under long skirts and frizzy hair.
After growing up in Mormon-ville, Tennessee, learning about porn (and English) at BYU and teaching herself HTML, Armstrong was hired by a web designing firm in L.A.
“I worked as a web designer for drug-addicted executives and discovered what life was like as a recovering Mormon. Meaning life was filled with PowerPoint templates and lethal amounts of tequila,” Armstrong said.
Dooce, pronounced like deuce and a subtle tribute to her inability to type “dude” over IM, was Armstrong’s hobby until an anonymous co-worker complained about her sarcasm. She was fired in 2002, sparking a fierce debate about privacy issues on the web. After the apologies to the Asian database administrator that Armstrong mercilessly ridiculed, Dooce gained the loyalty of readers, now averaging about 300,000 a day.
She told BBC News: "Blogging is an easy and powerful form of personal expression. It's a way of communicating with friends and with becoming part of a community."
The emotional meltdowns, her husband, two children and two dogs are all source material for this web blog. The advertising revenue allowed her the free time to publish two books, including, It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown and a Much Needed Margarita.
Armstrong lives in Salt Lake City, Utah with the “charming geek” in her life, Jon, writing, photographing and blogging daily about her life. Armstrong was voted by Forbes number 26 on their list of Most Influential Women in Media.
According to the blog, “Dooce chronicles my life from a time when I was single and making a lot of money as a web designer in Los Angeles, to when I was dating the man who would become my husband, to when I lost my job and lived life as an unemployed drunk, to when I married my husband and moved to my mother's basement in Utah, to when I became pregnant, to when I threw up and became unbearably swollen during the pregnancy, to the birth, to the aftermath, to the postpartum depression that landed me in a psyche ward. I'm better now,” Armstrong said.
The irreverent, liberal, caustic and insightful style of Dooce boosted it into the top American blog of 2009, according to The Weblog Awards (Bloggies) http://2008.bloggi.es/
The result is a lot of hate mail, said Armstrong. Her response is to give the critics exactly what they are looking for: more exaggerated sarcasm.
“When you call the Department of Children and Family Services, please get the story straight. Not only do I leave her [daughter, Marlo] alone with paper towels, I set her in the middle of a flea-infested floor and surround her with sharp objects and porn. Then I turn on a wood-burning stove in the corner of the room and seal all the windows. Before I leave the room and lock the door, I stick a bottle full of vodka in her mouth to muffle the screaming,” Armstrong wrote.
Armstrong eventually took down some of her religious-bashing scorn in preference of a decent relationship with her parents. Although the honesty in her blog is refreshing and surprising, the monotony of evil children and religion-hate can sometimes seem extreme. Then again, as Armstrong points out, motherhood is a hell some of us have yet to experience.
The hodgepodge of child crises, butts, feeling guilty, believing that her daughter might actually be a little boy in disguise and the guy that talks like Elmo during sex, Armstrong ventures into a territory few bother to explore: scathing and witty unselfconscious writing.
For more entertainment, visit http://www.dooce.com
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Real Life: Plan B
Financial stability is all a matter of perspective.
I think of it in terms of my father’s small business. When I was a child, I never understood the concept of employees and why my father would not want people to work with him and go to lunch with him. But the financially stable architectural company he dreamed of was not possible if he chose to fund employees and a large overhead cost.
Some people questioned my father’s decision to pursue a solo career. Until the economy plunged.
Footing his own health, dental, office space and overhead costs up front kept my father’s company out of debt. Unlike most of the companies and employers in the housing industry, he was able to keep our home and his business afloat through the recession.
Whenever we toy with the hypothetical of what-could-have-been, a sweat breaks out on my father’s forehead. A bigger business means more money in advance and more risk of crashing with the economy.
Government is like a big business. And the public services offered require more resources and more funds from more taxes. Eventually the cost of government services swell to 100 percent more than the cost would be if a private company took over to achieve the same goals.
A government service means more money deposited out front and more risk of crashing with the economy. Or the lack of a budget. Or a failing health bill. Or a prolonged recession.
Privatization of businesses is not taking away necessary control from the government but relieving some of their fiscal responsibility and becoming a check and balance on government power.
It is called capitalism, checking and balancing power so that not only one entity has complete control over every aspect of life. Capitalism is a synonym for private enterprise. Capitalism is the foundation for our government.
And yet there still is a political fuss among economists, government officials and businessmen over whether services such as public libraries, road work, school systems or fire fighters should be privately owned and operated industries.
Perhaps if these companies were operated like a private business instead of a large government system, the financial plan of businesses would be implemented instead of the relaxed monetary direction of our current leadership. See the budget crisis for a recent example.
For a small business, the first step in making a plan for the direction of the company is to make a plan for the money. A business only works if it is financially sound. Private businesses are usually wiser with their finances. Unlike the state, they don’t have a seemingly endless source of coffers to borrow from. And they usually understand the damaging nature of debt.
When I was 10, I built up over $50 dollars in debt to my mother. I felt like she owned my soul till I worked it off. Especially since mowing the lawn meant a $5 dollar a week allowance. I swore never to be in debt again. I was even shy to order my first credit card.
I wanted private control of my finances. Like my dad, I wanted to make sure I was financially able to fund each purchase I made and understand the financial repercussions I would have if I was spending outside my budget.
Despite capitalism and the proper function of businesses in the real world, money is looked at differently when it comes to the government and the resources they provide.
Is the money borrowed by the government to fund public resources really a safer bet than the stable and financially secure business models offered by private providers?
Stability is not always attributed to the sources that deserve the praise.
In real life, we rarely put trust into something that is failing. Time for Plan B.
I think of it in terms of my father’s small business. When I was a child, I never understood the concept of employees and why my father would not want people to work with him and go to lunch with him. But the financially stable architectural company he dreamed of was not possible if he chose to fund employees and a large overhead cost.
Some people questioned my father’s decision to pursue a solo career. Until the economy plunged.
Footing his own health, dental, office space and overhead costs up front kept my father’s company out of debt. Unlike most of the companies and employers in the housing industry, he was able to keep our home and his business afloat through the recession.
Whenever we toy with the hypothetical of what-could-have-been, a sweat breaks out on my father’s forehead. A bigger business means more money in advance and more risk of crashing with the economy.
Government is like a big business. And the public services offered require more resources and more funds from more taxes. Eventually the cost of government services swell to 100 percent more than the cost would be if a private company took over to achieve the same goals.
A government service means more money deposited out front and more risk of crashing with the economy. Or the lack of a budget. Or a failing health bill. Or a prolonged recession.
Privatization of businesses is not taking away necessary control from the government but relieving some of their fiscal responsibility and becoming a check and balance on government power.
It is called capitalism, checking and balancing power so that not only one entity has complete control over every aspect of life. Capitalism is a synonym for private enterprise. Capitalism is the foundation for our government.
And yet there still is a political fuss among economists, government officials and businessmen over whether services such as public libraries, road work, school systems or fire fighters should be privately owned and operated industries.
Perhaps if these companies were operated like a private business instead of a large government system, the financial plan of businesses would be implemented instead of the relaxed monetary direction of our current leadership. See the budget crisis for a recent example.
For a small business, the first step in making a plan for the direction of the company is to make a plan for the money. A business only works if it is financially sound. Private businesses are usually wiser with their finances. Unlike the state, they don’t have a seemingly endless source of coffers to borrow from. And they usually understand the damaging nature of debt.
When I was 10, I built up over $50 dollars in debt to my mother. I felt like she owned my soul till I worked it off. Especially since mowing the lawn meant a $5 dollar a week allowance. I swore never to be in debt again. I was even shy to order my first credit card.
I wanted private control of my finances. Like my dad, I wanted to make sure I was financially able to fund each purchase I made and understand the financial repercussions I would have if I was spending outside my budget.
Despite capitalism and the proper function of businesses in the real world, money is looked at differently when it comes to the government and the resources they provide.
Is the money borrowed by the government to fund public resources really a safer bet than the stable and financially secure business models offered by private providers?
Stability is not always attributed to the sources that deserve the praise.
In real life, we rarely put trust into something that is failing. Time for Plan B.
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