Resolutions II

Roughly a year ago (on another site, sorry) I wrote about my goals for the 12 months following. Time for a status check.

A good bit of progress in the past year, more incremental than breakthrough. In our society "breakthroughs" usually involve therapy or jail time, so I can accept that.

Job. Got a promotion? More interesting work, better rewards, and more room to grow. In truth it's still toward the shallow end of the IT pool; on the other hand, just a few years ago I was working Target's receiving dock for roughly one-fourth the compensation.

I said last year that I wanted to do something more altruistic. I was really channeling frustration at my then-crappy income; if I was going to be broke, I might as well be broke and helping people. But as my sister pointed out, "Well, you're not hurting anyone."

Edumacation. Going to Park full-time since last fall, and thus muuuch closer to a B.S. degree than I was last year. I've even stayed motivated.

Finances. Squaresville but important. Last June my net worth was just a skosh better than not shit; that's changed. This is another area where I'm playing catch-up, but in this case I'm doing well even by outside standards.

Like I said, more build-up than punchlines. But progress nonetheless.

Surprise surprise, it turns out having goals helps--especially if they're more involved than "Be married before I'm bald." What I've found, though, is that I operate in life as I play poker: work patiently and methodically upward, take calculated risks, and when an opening appears, take it.

That doesn't translate well to benchmarks or timelines. But I need to have some targets simply so there's something to shoot for. So...in no particular order:

Vocation. Finally building up momentum. Just need to tap that momentum to keep moving upward.

Avocation. Aiming for better work doesn't mean I want to keep it forever. So alternate revenue streams are in order. Rental real estate, website, side business, angel investing?

Vocalization. My low baritone isn't as good as I thought, for staccato use anyway, but my tenor's still decent. Thanks to the wisdom of Zefrank, realized that I should treat music like the nonsense I write: nothing I do will ever be perfect, so I should just do it and move on. Worrying too much about end product prevents that end product from existing. Down with brain crack!

Evocation. Understand myself better, blah blah blah. This belongs in later postings.

Though there's definitely more to say, this is I have for now. Just wanted to post since I started writing it a month ago.

Detroit

So my employer decided to send a few people to our co-headquarters in Detroit. For some reason they included me.

My first thoughts were, paraphrased, something like this: Free travel. Excellent! Detroit. Bogus!

The city's reputation is virtually synonymous with "urban decay." When I finally bothered to tell real-life people I was going, on an early-morning flight at that, I received the following replies.

"Well, at least it's free."
"You mean Detroilet?"
"Don't get stabbed."
"That whole sentence sucked. I heard 'Detroit,' 'seven a.m.'..."
"Don't get stabbed."

The Kentucky Fried Movie sums up the consensus nicely, at the three-fourths mark of this clip.

Planning the trip was pleasant since someone else did it. I was momentarily alarmed, upon reading my itinerary, to learn that the hotel cost $195 per night; two nights, plus tax, cost more than my monthly rent. I later learned that with food and transportation, my tab alone cost more than all my monthly living expenses, period. This was disconcerting. But the human mind is, as Troy Denning puts it in Pages of Pain, "a maze where every path always leads wherever the captive wishes." Soon I realized that plenty of my coworkers make money at this rate or better. So I chose to do my employer a favor by accepting these harsh realities.

The flight was fine as far as flights, or anything else early Sunday morning, go. Except Northwest Airlines now charges two bucks for pretzels, those bastards. We landed, retrieved our luggage, and were greeted by an obsequious, suited middle-Eastern man holding a sign. Not much can make you feel important like a chauffered Town Car.

The lodgings certainly came close. We stayed at the Omni Hotel, across the Detroit River and within Tiger-Woods distance of mystical, exotic Canadia. My room had a fifteen-foot ceiling, cherrywood furniture, a six-pillowed king-sized bed with a goosedown comforter, and a ginormous bathroom with marble everything. The hotel itself has its own shuttle, a fitness facility with an Olympic-sized pool, and all sorts of amenities that didn't interest me.

That afternoon we went to the Tigers vs. Twins game. We were in the twelfth or so row, directly behind home plate. Comerica Stadium is little short of splendid. Even the concession stands were good, serving the usual crap but also excellent grilled chicken-breast sandwiches. Which evoked an irony of sports: watching extremely fit and healthy people while eating and drinking some of the worst cuisine known to man. Another irony is that the Tigers are Detroit's pride and joy, but the so-called "tiger economies" of Asia are kicking Detroit's ass. Anyway, it was a decent game, especially since I didn't have to pay. Too bad I don't like baseball.

We left the stadium amid the crowds. Comerica is in the middle of downtown, so lots of people stick around after the game to hang out; Kansas city voters, take note. We walked back to the hotel, then whiled away the evening strategizing at an unimpressive casino buffet. Then I did homework. Yeehaw.

The work part of Monday was basically one long-ass meeting. It's always awkward to meet people previously known only online or by phone. This was enhanced, though, by our Detroit colleagues' belief that we wanted them all to be fired. Which isn't completely inaccurate. But we found some common ground, and surprisingly enough I cared.

For dinner we headed to Pegasus at the Greektown Casino. The yuvetsake ("Individually baked casserole of tender simmered lamb in tomato sauce with rosa marina or spaghetti, with Kasseri cheese," per their menu) is amazing. Afterward we went to a local club, and much fun was had by all.

Tuesday involved more work. This included lunch at Bangkok Crossing. I'd never had Thai, and I'm not sure what defines "curry," but I'm convinced both rock balls.

For all of Detroit's reputation, it's actually a great downtown area. Lots of artwork and sculptures, broad avenues with parks at several intersections, magnificent architecture. But it was dead; the streets were empty at 8am and lunchtime. I know their economy's in a rut, but what the hell?

Sadly, no expense account lasts forever, so that night found me returning to my apartment. I learned several things while in Detroit, not least among which is that the city does not, in fact, suck. But one lesson stands out above all others: getting paid to travel ROCKS!

Pictures

Saving

Before we get started, yes, I know this article is drab. This is due in part to the prosaic subject matter. It's also a question of incentive: as of this writing, and probably the next dozen, my net income from blogging is negative beer.

Good, that's out of the way. On to the dullness!

Lots of columnists have columnized about saving, but most focus either on its importance or innovative new ways to be chintzy. Rather few describe an aggregate strategy, so let's own those biznatches.

(Just to be clear, this is my strategy. Yours will probably be different, especially if you're not me.)

The short of it is that not all personal finance advice is crap. One nigh-ubiquitous idea, attributed to David Bach, is that of "paying yourself first." The idea is that if income goes straight into savings, it's more likely to remain saved than if we have the opportunity to spend it.

Some people already sort of do this by having the government withhold a lot of taxes, so that they get a big refund check at the end of the year. That's not an entirely bad idea if the object is to spend it later. It's a poor solution for long-term savings, though, for reasons I've yapped about previously.

The key is to make it as transparent and painless as possible. So that's what I've done for myself.

• Employer matches 100% of 401(k) contributions up to 5% of wages, effectively 10% of income. I never see it, so I don't miss it.

• Rather than blowing money on health insurance premiums, I opted for a high-deductible plan. Of the $696 saved just this year, $20/paycheck, or $520/year, goes to a Health Savings Account. Employer matches 100% up to $300 annually, versus $96 in total premiums, so all told I'm making money on health insurance. But I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.

• Everyone needs an emergency fund, but building those funds sucks. So I'm basing mine exclusively around windfalls, aka "found money." In this way I've saved about $800 in the past year, mostly from cash I've already spent.
  


• Examples: tax refunds, rebate checks, proceeds from selling junk, pocket change, debit card cashback rewards, savings at grocery stores if marked on the receipt


• One advantage to this method is that it's scalable. Over time I'll have more responsibilities, and conveniently I'll have more emergency cash. If this fund gets too big (unlikely), then I'll just route subsequent cashflow elsewhere.

• The consumer whore in me likes shiny objects. So for big stuff, each month I "transfer" $100 to a fake account in Quicken. Basically it stays in checking but no longer counts toward net worth. This is part forced discipline, part bean-counting.

• I was putting 5% of my income into my employer's stock purchase plan, but someone pointed out how risky that is. The problem is I already rely on them for income. If the company were to tank, then I'd be out both my livelihood and a good chunk of my portfolio. Daaaamn.

• Savings includes paying down debt. This I'm doing via an interest-based debt snowball, which has already paid off a sizable personal loan, an even larger credit-card balance, and two student loans. Continued enrollment at Park ensures that I'll be working on this for a while, but hopefully not for long after graduating.

• Anything remaining after expenses goes toward a house down payment. There's no longer any hurry (responsibility sucks), but eventually I'll probably be either married or evicted, so I might as well be ready.

As noted above, this is just how I approach divvying up funds to save. Limiting actual expenses, and related ballyhoo, is a discussion for another time. Cheers.

Trekkage

This week I went on a trip.  Let's pretend you care.  And let's pretend I remember half of what happened.

3/21:  Left work early, hauled ass to Parkville to buy college books, hauled ass to my place.  Packed in 20 minutes.  Power went out 10 minutes before I left--off to a great start.  Flew to Denver, met up with the rest of my people.  Learned we'd be staying in Frisco, skiing in Breckenridge.  Sweet.

Props:  Chrysler Motors, for making a minivan that didn't suck ass.

Drops:  1) Pushy car rental guy.  2) Vehicular gadgets.  Winding mountain roads, in the dark, in a top-heavy vehicle, are not ideal for cruise control.

3/22:  Found out I don't look as bad in a beanie as I thought--good news for if/when I shave my head.  First time skiing in ~13 years.  Didn't do too badly, only really fell when others were available to smirk.  Shit-tired by the end of the day.

Aye:  1) Buffalo-wing pizza at Old Chicago.  2) Learning how to do more on the slopes than look stupid.

Nay:  1) Shit-tiredness.  I'm one of the thinnest fat guys you'll meet.  2)  Democratic party.  They finally decide to show some nads, by making a stink over the Bushies' firing of eight federal prosecutors.  Gee, howsabout we investigate something that fucking MATTERS.  Manipulating intelligence to orchestrate war against Iraq, for example.

3/23:  More skiing.  Took the wrong lift and ended up about a thousand feet higher than planned.  Hung out at the lodge at that lift's end; awesome panoramic view of the Continental Divide.  Also awesome view of the other patrons.  Hundred or so people either with money or the means to spend it, all sweaty and gross and walking in a sort of half-swagger, like cowboys in jumpsuits.  Checked out Breckenridge proper, good stuff.  Home of the wealthiest beatniks in America.

Entrepreneurial spirit amazes me.  Man has conquered nature for the simple glory of making a buck.  We found ourselves deposited near a wintry mountain summit, but the choice was not life or death.  It was Bud Light or Arizona Green Tea, club sandwich or chicken wings.  

Drove back to Denver 'burbs since flight to KC is at ass-crack of dawn.  Same route as we'd taken 3/21, but in daylight.  Old mining equipment abandoned alongside the road.  Eisenhower/Johnson tunnel was impressive before, but it's more sublime when you realize it's 1.7 miles under probably 1,000 feet of solid rock.

FTW:  1) iPod Nano batteries--two days of constant use, including on the slopes (bad place for Tom Waits), and mine finally needed recharging.  2) Breckenridge.  Spiffy architecture, convenient street layout, good stuff in shops.  Like the Plahza in Kansas City, but without licking balls.  3) Coffee.  Shitloads of coffee.  Even Starbucks makes the list, despite my past animosity.  Although they may exploit poor Colombian farmers, it beats refining blow for drug cartels.  4)  Rome.

FTL:  1) Crappy California weather causing surfers to travel.  Too cold for a surfboard, so they snowboard instead.  I've never heard "dude" said so often in my life.  2)  Ski lifts that swing around at 10 mph and give you five seconds to reach the all-important yellow line.  Being clipped by one such and thrown sideways into my nephew.  Ouch.  3)  Busted hotel television set that dies during Rome.

3/24:  Woke up at 4a mountain, 5a central.  Other than vacations, only reason I've ever been up at that time was because I hadn't gone to bed yet.  But made it to the airport and eventually back to KC.  Apartment smells funny, but no way to tell if it's spoiled food, mildew, or dead cat in the basement.   Nothing new, anyway.  At least the power's back on.  Need to replace my perishable foods due to the outage (no way to tell how long it lasted), which amounts to milk, a pound of ground beef, some frozen noodle dinner, and coffee creamer.

Kickass:  1) Nap.  2) Smokehouse Barbeque--birthday dinner for my sister and her husband.  3) Got my Mooby hat in the mail.  I'm a consumer whore!  4)  Beer doesn't go bad if it warms up.

Lickass:  Early morning flights.

Okay, we can stop pretending now.  Time for a drink.

300

At Jeremy's kind invitation, I saw 300 last weekend. For once I have an opinion.

Key to any good movie-watching experience is the atmosphere. AMC, drawing on decades in the industry, did their best to comply. Wasting no time, their age-checking flunkie asked for one friend's ID but not mine or Jerome's, stating it was "pretty obvious you're old enough."

Once inside the theater, we were flummoxed by the lack of contiguous seating. The blame was shared: us for going on opening weekend; seated patrons for not filling in one-seat gaps; and the staff, for not sending an usher more authoritative than a teenager with a flashlight.

Luckily for me, AMC was gracious enough to furnish my cousin, his girlfriend, and the empty aisle seat next to them. This included a bonus eight-year-old who merrily kicked the back of my seat. He stopped mysteriously, however, after I leaned around my seatback and scowled in appreciation.

The opening reel dazzled with its intellectual and philosophical depth. But at the end of its cautionary "Someone paid millions of dollars so you'd watch this piece of shit, so kindly shut up" public service announcement, I was momentarily distressed. Because at the end of it, a teenager brayed laughter in obvious mockery. My cousin chuckled and muttered, "Dumb teenagers."

As I said, I was distressed. Ten years ago, that laughing contrarian would have been one of my friends, or me in their absence. Ten years. A decade. That's two people making me feel old. Screw you, ID-checker and anonymous teenager.

Then the movie started. It wasn't long before I realized what it reminded me of: Sin City. Not that I've seen Sin City, beyond a few seconds of sex, Bruce Willis in a car, and a stairwell. But it had the same feel. Later I learned this was exactly correct: the same guy wrote the source comic books for both.

Also readily apparent, and wholly expected, was the over-the-top ambience. Everything from dialogue to costumes pushed the envelope in some way.

* Surprisingly accurate phalanx combat. Astonishingly unlikely solo combat.
* Guys with abs. EVERYWHERE. Something for the ladies?
* Gratuitous sex scene. Bonus.
* Elite, evil fighting force with fabulous TragiComic masks. And samurai gear. Oh, and they're apparently orcs.
* Every other bad guy.
* Oracular chick who wandered off the Only You video.
* More abs.

But what the producers did, they did well. Great sound, amazing visuals. I could almost smell the sweat and gore of battle. Or maybe that was the guy in front of me.

Dialogue deserves its own section. My impression was that, fearful of missing any major motifs, the author opted to rehash every epic film speech ever made. Paraphrasing:

* "I made my son go to battle and he died. You bastards!"
* "We bow to nobody, biznatch."
* "FREEDOM!"
* "Bloody women."

Curiously, although 300 is based on a real event, the name "Thermopylae" came up not once. I don't get it. I mean, even Brits can pronounce it right. The writers seemed to downplay its very historicity. As John noted, it'd be interesting to know how many people left the theater wondering aloud, "Man, that'd be AWESOME if that happened in real life!"

I was sorely disappointed in the lack of demons flying out of pits. The online trailer led me specifically to believe the movie would have demons flying out of pits, and I was looking forward to it, damn it. Stupid trailer.

Another niggling point was a core premise: At age 10, or whatever, every Spartan boy was sent into temporary exile and forced to live in the wild. When Leonidas' time came, he killed a cheesily rendered CG wolf and triumphantly returned home from the winter snows. This of course came as a complete shock to the community, most of whom had "given [him] up for dead." But presumably not only he was born during winter, so lots of other kids would be in a similar position. Were all of them assumed to be deceased? For a thriving, enlightened culture, that's a lot of dead children.

But given the rest of the movie, that's rather immaterial. What's one more cup of silliness in a keg of lunacy?

Sure, Moses parted the red sea. Raised his staff or commanded a legion of water spirits, what's the difference? We already know Queen Guinevere was a dirty hoebag since she bumped uglies with Sir Lancelot. Who's to say her Cameliard friends didn't call her "Finger Cuffs"? Noah built a ship and put two of every animal on it and survived a huge flood and...well, nevermind.

Immigrate This

Disclaimer: this contains a couple snippets from my former Myspace blog. Normally I don't like to recycle material, but Jeremy kinda-sorta-not-really asked. Please, think of the Jeremy.

In last week's State of the Union address, Bush reiterated his desire for meaningful immigration reform. From the speech:

...we cannot fully secure the border unless we take pressure off the border -- and that requires a temporary worker program. We should establish a legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis.

The immigration debate has been a biggie for the past year, with several pieces of legislation introduced and different advocacy groups protesting, petitioning, and doing all the other stuff that makes democracy fun. Depending on who's talking and who's paying them, it's described variously in terms of economics, racism, security, population growth, and so forth.

Economics: Immigrants/workers are either bolstering the economy or stealing jobs. Or both. We do know that fruit is cheap.
Racism: Yeah, that's bad. But the language thing? Learn to speak English.
Security: Important stuff here. Regardless of what policy is followed, gotta know who's crossing the borders and why.
Population growth: As of this writing, the U.S. population is estimated at 301 million, 11 or 12 million of whom are thought to be here illegally. Trim federal farm subsidies and maybe this won't be so bad.

Rather than the above, average Chuck Schmuck worries most about who might take his job. And here's where I think we ignore something vastly important: Here in the world's richest country, we have millions and millions of native-born citizens who are so abysmally uneducated that their jobs are in constant danger, from people who don't even speak the same language. Does anyone else see a problem with this?

Seriously, we have an influx of people willing to take crappy jobs for crappy pay, because for them it's an improvement. We're trying to stop this? Crappy jobs have been the lot of immigrants in the U.S. for two centuries. Society advances not by having its members work hard, but by having some members work hard so others can focus on more valuable endeavors. Those who work hardest might as well be people who may not even want to stay.

Instead we should back off and focus on improving education so that full citizens can find better work. There's certainly room for improvement. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in The Condition of Education 2006:

“While our younger students are making progress on national assessments and are ahead on some international measures the same can not be said at the high school level,” said Mark Schneider, NCES Commissioner. “U.S. students do relatively well in reading literacy when compared to their international peers, but they are outperformed in mathematics and science and our 15-year-old students trail many of our competitors in math and science literacy.”

In the 2006 SotU, Dubya asked Congress to increase spending for high school math and science programs, to "ensure that America succeeds in the world." Great, maybe that and No Child Left Behind, once its primary flaws are worked out, will help somewhat.

Too bad Bush's 2007 budget, submitted to Congress shortly after, included cuts to college financial-aid programs. As technology improves and automation spreads, more and more jobs require advanced knowledge. These can require years of study at colleges or vocational schools. Last I checked, you don't get such skills by sleeping through high school trig.

Sensible education policy extends to other areas. As any politician knows, the best way to influence behavior is to add some sugah. Require beneficiaries of aid programs (food stamps, etc.) either to have a high-school diploma/GED or to work toward one. Give one-time, refundable tax credits to people above a certain age who get a GED. Grant tax breaks to companies with formal internship or apprenticeship programs. Basically add immediately visible incentives to the implicit benefits of continuing education.

As long as we're the "land of opportunity," immigrants will be a fact of life, legally or otherwise. Thus any reform package should include provisions to minimize their drawbacks. Rather than trying to hold down the other guy, why not take the opportunity to improve ourselves?

Misattribution

For a long time I wondered how intelligent, gainfully employed people could have persistent money problems. Well, the answer is simple, and it's all around us: intelligent does not mean rational.

Yeah, so we all know that. But the core of economic theory is that people will usually act in their own self-interest. If we have cash, supposedly we'll use it for whatever provides the most utility.

But it doesn't always work that way. Rather than a means of exchange, money becomes symbolic for security and fulfillment. Instinctively we feel that by having more stuff, we'll be better off.

Taking human history into perspective, that makes perfect sense. For eons, very little could be classified as "wealth." People had homes, and some had items like jewelry, but otherwise most things (food, tools, etc.) didn't last long. If folks wanted to enjoy their wealth, they had to eat it or wear it or use it fast.

Today that behavior makes little sense, thanks to durable wealth and liquid currency, but it happens anyway. A lot. Economists call it the "wealth effect": when people feel richer, they spend more.

Examples abound. The dot-com bubble brought huge paper gains in equities. The subsequent housing bubble brought not only large profits, but increased access to cash by borrowing against inflated home values. People spent like crazy.

It happens on an individual scale as well. Although increasingly many people don't expect Social Security to support them in retirement, nearly half cash out their 401k plans when changing jobs. And despite reams of financial advice, millions of taxpayers increase federal tax withholdings as a means of forced saving, since having more money in their pockets would cause them to spend it. So what do they do when they get a big tax refund at the end of the year? Spend it.

Ordinarily I wouldn't care about this sort of thing, but a) I see it happening to personal associates, and b) as an unmarried middle-class male with no kids, I have to pay for the consequences.

One friend, whom I'll call Scott to obscure his real name, recently became a father. Thanks to the bouncing baby tax deduction, not-Scott gets a nice fat Earned Income Credit. And a nice fat Pell Grant. And shortly prior he started a reasonably fat job. This is a great opportunity to straighten out their finances, salt away some cash for future expenses and Junior's college fund and so forth. Except...hello, wealth effect. First Daddy needs some musical gear...and computer equipment...and a brand-new car....

Another, whom I'll call Scott for that is his real name, changed jobs and residences some months ago. With all sorts of nasty debts and alimony outstanding, he settled on cashing out his 401k for solvency's sake. Okay, tough deal, but it makes sense. Fresh start, yadda yadda. But wait a minute: rather than putting the few remaining thousands into an IRA, he bought a U-Haul truck.

Not that he or anyone else has a use for it. Right now it's just rusting next to his house. By Scott's own admission, he just always wanted to buy one as proof that he was doing well. This of course required liquidating his retirement, which I tend to think demonstrates the opposite. Although a year ago all I had was my humble Escort and about $500, I now have more assets than he. Wouldn't matter, except he's in a committed relationship with one of my close family members--who has her own similar problems to contend with.

So many people need only rethink what money means to them, and realize that it cannot provide fulfillment, only the outer stability necessary to find meaning within oneself. I hate to be the atheist who points this out.