[Rant ON]
The more I think about this, the madder I get.
I for one am getting utterly sick and tired of hearing the financial media / "investing for the common guy" websites and the 401k management companies like Fidelity all urging us to "ride it out" with respect to the recent Utterly Bad Times in teh Market. We're looking at a disastrous paradigm shift happening in the financial sector right before our very eyes, complete with color commentary . . . and almost the whole industry is saying "Don't panic! Things will improve! Keep your investments where they are!"
Guys, I hate to break it to you, but I'm no longer going to heed your advice. I've taken a goddam blood bath in "the market" making safe, conservative investment choices, following the best conventional advice. You know what? The world on which that advice was predicated vanished sometime this summer and it is not coming back. I have ZERO confidence that this system of legalized financial rapine of the middle class they call a retirement savings program will ever recover, and for some -- like the 55 year olds in their last ten years of working -- it is is already far too late. The sharks in pinstripes told us not to count on Social Security to be there for us, while all the while these criminals were fucking each and every one of us over. Effective immediately, I am moving my retirement savings to a nice safe credit union, like this one. No longer will I particpate in this system until or unless the incoming Obama Administration completely fumigates Wall Street. Literally. As in "with nerve gas." I want to see these thieves HUNG for their crimes, alongside every deregulator, "free" marketeer, "free" trader and war criminal in that cartel of evil known as "the Bush Administration."
I do not expect government intervention in this mess; I DEMAND it. And President-elect Obama, Goddess bless you, I hope you deliver after you are sworn to our service in this Nation's highest office.
[RANT Off|
Showing posts with label finances. Show all posts
Showing posts with label finances. Show all posts
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Money and Music
There is lots and lots of scary financial and business news out there. I've been reading about folks who have lost a decade or more of market value gains from their 401ks, folks my age who looked upon accounts they established in their early working lives that have started to implode.
I started the race rather late, and right at the time when, to paraphrase Ambassador Kosh from Babylon 5: "The avalanche has already started; it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
I've done everything I can do to retrench; all I can hope to do is to ride out the storm.
On a related note: with all those bank failures out there, I am telling anyone that will listen that moving one's funds to a good credit union might be a good idea. The bigger banks like BofA, Welles Fargo andWaaahMooo are, IMHO, about as safe as an unshielded kilogram of Cobalt 60 in your codpiece.
On an unrelated note that has little or nothing to do with doomsday scenarios or radioisotopes in an uncomfortable proximity to your family jewels: Seanan McGuire is coming out with a new CD of filk music goodness, Red Roses and Dead Things. Seanan is an awesome songwriter, a poet, comic strip artist and author. You owe it to yourself and to future generations (those not roasted by that hot lump of Co-60 in your shorts) to hie yourself over to her website and preorder a copy.
----------------
Now playing: Seanan McGuire - Vampire Slayer Blues
via FoxyTunes
I started the race rather late, and right at the time when, to paraphrase Ambassador Kosh from Babylon 5: "The avalanche has already started; it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
I've done everything I can do to retrench; all I can hope to do is to ride out the storm.
On a related note: with all those bank failures out there, I am telling anyone that will listen that moving one's funds to a good credit union might be a good idea. The bigger banks like BofA, Welles Fargo and
On an unrelated note that has little or nothing to do with doomsday scenarios or radioisotopes in an uncomfortable proximity to your family jewels: Seanan McGuire is coming out with a new CD of filk music goodness, Red Roses and Dead Things. Seanan is an awesome songwriter, a poet, comic strip artist and author. You owe it to yourself and to future generations (those not roasted by that hot lump of Co-60 in your shorts) to hie yourself over to her website and preorder a copy.
----------------
Now playing: Seanan McGuire - Vampire Slayer Blues
via FoxyTunes
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Software Review: MoneyWell
Last post I mentioned this very nice piece of software I found for managing personal finances on a Mac. Macs are starting to challenge the stereotype that PCs are only for number-crunching and gamers while Macs are only for artsy-fartsy creatives like musicians, photographers, graphic artists and the like. Apple's Numbers spreadsheet, part of iWork'08, is a great start in that direction and FileMaker's Bento database app puts Access to shame for the personal user. Sadly, there have been no decent personal finance apps. Microsoft Money -- my daughter's favorite piece of personal finance software which is among the most user friendly of Microsoft apps -- is Windows only. Since for a variety of reasons I'm not going to Boot Camp my system anytime soon or resort to a virtualization solution like Parallels or VMWare Fusion, and I detest Sicken, er, Quicken -- the other most common Mac app for financial management (I'm just not Intuit . . .) because it is crippleware next to the Winblows version. As for web-based apps, please spare me. Ick on a fscking stick.
One day while checking out VirginTracker, er, Versiontracker one day on break, I found MoneyWell. Impressive piece of software. The idea behind MoneyWell is this: If iTunes and a financial app got stinking drunk one night at the office Yule party and did the nasty in a broom closet, MoneyWell could be the result born 9 months later. Your Chart of Accounts becomes a group of playlists, your bank account is like an iTunes library, etc. Budgeting is a matter of allocating money to "buckets," add in income and the proggy fills the buckets with money. Add in the graphing and analysis tools, and you have a killer financial app. In a sense, this tool turns budgeting into a RPG point allocation system, something I have a easy time understanding. As someone who designed a custom small business financial accounting system about three jobs ago with spreadsheets and QBASIC macros (don't try this at home....) for MS-DOS 5.x / Netware 2.2.x, I know how beastly these things can get. MoneyWell's learning curve is not steep, and the built in help is as good as anything I've seen in Leopard; the online tutorials are excellent, as good as those for iPods.
Unlike many such apps form VirginTracker, this one's polished and professional. No Thirst Software did a wonderful job. It reminded me a lot of Bento, another great Leopard app I make a lot of use of in my gaming. At $39.99 USD for a license -- the shareware version is limited to 200 transactions -- it beats the hell out of Quicken.
Color me impressed by this app. If you have a Mac and you have budgeting issues, get this proggy. Try it, you'll buy it.
----------------
Listening to: The O'Jays - For The Love Of Money
via FoxyTunes
One day while checking out VirginTracker, er, Versiontracker one day on break, I found MoneyWell. Impressive piece of software. The idea behind MoneyWell is this: If iTunes and a financial app got stinking drunk one night at the office Yule party and did the nasty in a broom closet, MoneyWell could be the result born 9 months later. Your Chart of Accounts becomes a group of playlists, your bank account is like an iTunes library, etc. Budgeting is a matter of allocating money to "buckets," add in income and the proggy fills the buckets with money. Add in the graphing and analysis tools, and you have a killer financial app. In a sense, this tool turns budgeting into a RPG point allocation system, something I have a easy time understanding. As someone who designed a custom small business financial accounting system about three jobs ago with spreadsheets and QBASIC macros (don't try this at home....) for MS-DOS 5.x / Netware 2.2.x, I know how beastly these things can get. MoneyWell's learning curve is not steep, and the built in help is as good as anything I've seen in Leopard; the online tutorials are excellent, as good as those for iPods.
Unlike many such apps form VirginTracker, this one's polished and professional. No Thirst Software did a wonderful job. It reminded me a lot of Bento, another great Leopard app I make a lot of use of in my gaming. At $39.99 USD for a license -- the shareware version is limited to 200 transactions -- it beats the hell out of Quicken.
Color me impressed by this app. If you have a Mac and you have budgeting issues, get this proggy. Try it, you'll buy it.
----------------
Listening to: The O'Jays - For The Love Of Money
via FoxyTunes
SotR 2008-08-20
Overview:
Two-plus years ago, I wrote down a series of goals. I was in the hospital at that time and I saw just how badly I was running my life. I reviewed those goals two months ago . . . and I'd made very little progress toward any of them.
After that review, I made up my mind that every couple of weeks, I need to spend the time in meditation on the many personal foibles and weaknesses I need to work on and what to do about them. This is entirely an internal process. Part of this process is spurred by my inching ever-closer to the age of fifty. Part of the spur is that there are things that have been part of my life for several years that simply need to no longer be a part of my life.
The most important single personal foible / weakness: I am sick and tired of dealing with the consequences of the open wounds on my legs. I'd like to be able to swim for the first time in five years . . . to go to the doctor once every three months, not every couple of weeks . . . to be free of wound odors. I'm almost there; maybe a couple more months and I'll be swimming.
To that end, I've made some adjustments: limiting my sodium consumption (diet soda mostly), drinking LOTS more ice water, elevating my legs, getting a full night's sleep, eating more salads and less meat, playing a lot less WoW and cutting caffeine intake by 75%. All of these things help the wounds heal faster.
The "reward goal" I set here is to remain wound free for a year.
My next series of adjustments is financial. So far, I've started my 410(k) at work and started researching the various funds in the plan with an eye toward understanding how they fit into a coordinated plan to make me enough money for my old age. Once I turn 55, I can accelerate my donations, since at my age the lever called "the time value of money" is a little short. My next adjustment is to finally get my oversize ass onto a realistic budget. I found some great Mac software that is NOT published by Intuit and used that to set up a budget that includes putting some cash into savings that is NOT my 401(k). I want a cushion against emergencies.
The "reward goal" here is to have $5k in a savings account for a year. Since I did not envision having the 401(k) then, I'll include 50% of that account (after all, Apple is matching my contributions!) toward the goal. I started the 401(k) a year ago or so, and as of today "my share" is around $1k.
My last "reward goal" is to lose 100 lbs and keep it off for a year. I have not done much in this area; a soon as the legs are healed, I'll be directing my efforts toward weight loss.
One year with all three goals met . . . the reward is a trip to GenCon.
I'm also working on a few other goals, namely work-related ones like "break the career stasis I've been in for three years." My manager says I'm heading in the right direction.
----------------
Listening to: Echo's Children - No Quarter
via FoxyTunes
Two-plus years ago, I wrote down a series of goals. I was in the hospital at that time and I saw just how badly I was running my life. I reviewed those goals two months ago . . . and I'd made very little progress toward any of them.
After that review, I made up my mind that every couple of weeks, I need to spend the time in meditation on the many personal foibles and weaknesses I need to work on and what to do about them. This is entirely an internal process. Part of this process is spurred by my inching ever-closer to the age of fifty. Part of the spur is that there are things that have been part of my life for several years that simply need to no longer be a part of my life.
The most important single personal foible / weakness: I am sick and tired of dealing with the consequences of the open wounds on my legs. I'd like to be able to swim for the first time in five years . . . to go to the doctor once every three months, not every couple of weeks . . . to be free of wound odors. I'm almost there; maybe a couple more months and I'll be swimming.
To that end, I've made some adjustments: limiting my sodium consumption (diet soda mostly), drinking LOTS more ice water, elevating my legs, getting a full night's sleep, eating more salads and less meat, playing a lot less WoW and cutting caffeine intake by 75%. All of these things help the wounds heal faster.
The "reward goal" I set here is to remain wound free for a year.
My next series of adjustments is financial. So far, I've started my 410(k) at work and started researching the various funds in the plan with an eye toward understanding how they fit into a coordinated plan to make me enough money for my old age. Once I turn 55, I can accelerate my donations, since at my age the lever called "the time value of money" is a little short. My next adjustment is to finally get my oversize ass onto a realistic budget. I found some great Mac software that is NOT published by Intuit and used that to set up a budget that includes putting some cash into savings that is NOT my 401(k). I want a cushion against emergencies.
The "reward goal" here is to have $5k in a savings account for a year. Since I did not envision having the 401(k) then, I'll include 50% of that account (after all, Apple is matching my contributions!) toward the goal. I started the 401(k) a year ago or so, and as of today "my share" is around $1k.
My last "reward goal" is to lose 100 lbs and keep it off for a year. I have not done much in this area; a soon as the legs are healed, I'll be directing my efforts toward weight loss.
One year with all three goals met . . . the reward is a trip to GenCon.
I'm also working on a few other goals, namely work-related ones like "break the career stasis I've been in for three years." My manager says I'm heading in the right direction.
----------------
Listening to: Echo's Children - No Quarter
via FoxyTunes
Thursday, February 21, 2008
SotR 2008-02-21: Eris' Personal Plaything
A few months ago, when my life was even more whacked than it is today, I told M that I believed that Eris, the goddess of discord and chaos, had selected me as her personal plaything (I actually used a five-letter word referring to a female cur rather than "plaything" with her, but you get the idea). She didn't dispute the idea.
Being Eris' personal bitc, er, plaything, means that both good and bad stuff happens, not just bad stuff.
This week gives me no reason to believe otherwise. A too sharp right turn and a too-rough curb blew out the right rear tire on the Vanmobile. In the rain. And I didn't have a clue as to how, where or if the beast had a spare. It took the light of day and the help of Rob at work to get the VM rolling again. In the process of changing the tire, I found the black Motorola v3 RAZR I thought had been stolen from the VM last week. This was after I'd bought a cheapass Samsung A127 plain vanilla no-Bluetooth-no-sync-with-a-Mac-model. One SIM swap later, my RAZR's operational. Finally, my tax refund check, Fed version, hit the bank along with my paycheck.
Hail Eris!
Being Eris' personal bitc, er, plaything, means that both good and bad stuff happens, not just bad stuff.
This week gives me no reason to believe otherwise. A too sharp right turn and a too-rough curb blew out the right rear tire on the Vanmobile. In the rain. And I didn't have a clue as to how, where or if the beast had a spare. It took the light of day and the help of Rob at work to get the VM rolling again. In the process of changing the tire, I found the black Motorola v3 RAZR I thought had been stolen from the VM last week. This was after I'd bought a cheapass Samsung A127 plain vanilla no-Bluetooth-no-sync-with-a-Mac-model. One SIM swap later, my RAZR's operational. Finally, my tax refund check, Fed version, hit the bank along with my paycheck.
Hail Eris!
Thursday, November 22, 2007
What Am I Thankful For?
A very partial list . . .
Physical: A great job, a roof over my head, enough cash to pay the bills, bandwidth and the means to use it.
Social: Mom, Dad, Ron, Sophia and Sam. Friends like Michelle, David, Kayla, Matt, Richard, Sammy, Duncan, Isabel, Tim, Kate, Sue, Rachael, Don, Rob, Kajir, Heather, Dave, Diane, Gene, Aries, Nika, Mystique, Harley, Rita, Bug, Shalyn and Hillary.
Other: An awesome health care team led by Dr. Nelson . . . the fact that the evil that is Shrub will be out of office in about a year . . . RT and e-Tran . . . PCJ and Panera . . .the music that helped save my life this year: Seanan McGuire, The Elders, Emerald Rose, Leslie Fish, James Blunt, Tempest, Escape Key, Flogging Molly, Roy Zimmerman, Loreena Mckinnett, Niel Young and Weird Al Yankovic.
Media: Serenity / Firefly, D&D, World of Warcraft.
Physical: A great job, a roof over my head, enough cash to pay the bills, bandwidth and the means to use it.
Social: Mom, Dad, Ron, Sophia and Sam. Friends like Michelle, David, Kayla, Matt, Richard, Sammy, Duncan, Isabel, Tim, Kate, Sue, Rachael, Don, Rob, Kajir, Heather, Dave, Diane, Gene, Aries, Nika, Mystique, Harley, Rita, Bug, Shalyn and Hillary.
Other: An awesome health care team led by Dr. Nelson . . . the fact that the evil that is Shrub will be out of office in about a year . . . RT and e-Tran . . . PCJ and Panera . . .the music that helped save my life this year: Seanan McGuire, The Elders, Emerald Rose, Leslie Fish, James Blunt, Tempest, Escape Key, Flogging Molly, Roy Zimmerman, Loreena Mckinnett, Niel Young and Weird Al Yankovic.
Media: Serenity / Firefly, D&D, World of Warcraft.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The very best thing about Leo . . .
Two words: TIME MACHINE.
Time Machine is the very best single reason for a Mac user to buy and install Leopard . . . and of you are a Windows user, the very best reason to go get a new Mac. Time Machine is a backup and restore utility. In a word, you can, at need, "go back in time" and restore your entire system or even a single file from any 1-hr increment in the last day, any day in the last month and any month thereafter. So, if in the middle of writing your master's thesis your MacBook Pro's internal HD packs it in, if you have TM and an external hard disk, you can restore the last backup (not to mention OS X, all your preferewnces, email, etc) of your thesis once the hard disk is replaced, and on you go.
You can restore a single file, your whole iTunes Library or thw whole fscking startup partition. No more need to use Target Disk Mode and another Mac. No more "log in as root, drag and drop your Home folder (c:\Documents and settings\yourname for you windows users) and HOPE you got it right." For some users, enabling the OS X "root" account is like handing a drunk with Tourette's Syndrome a greased grenade . . . only "sudo rm -R /* is capable of more damage in less time (think dropping to DOS, cd c:, then del *.*). No more Retrospect, .Mac backup 3.x (not a bad program, but it's about as intuitive as brain surgery when compared to TM) or needing to rely on a non-Apple solution.
Best of all, TM does this silently and automaticly..
Windows, by comparison, has "system restore" which is great for restoring Windows system files . . . but it does nto do jack about your master's thesis or your email, pics, music, videos or porn.
I had been looking forward to buying a new external hard drive to try this feature out once my finances allowed for it. Fortunately for me, I won a nice 250 gigabyte USB 2.0 drive today for quarterly sales performance. This is plenty of space to allow me to back up the 100 GB drive in my MacBook (currently about 40 gigs free). I'm going to put at least three partitions on the disk: one OS X for TM (I'm going to names it "HD Welles"), one also OS X (one just big enough to serve as a 10.5 startup disk, probably named "DaVinci" -- as in Leo-nardo) to install Leopard so I can boot off this drive at need and one formatted for FAT32 (Disk Utility does not speak Windows NTFS) so my good friends Michelle and David can back up their docs/music/pics/etc/omg/wtf/bbq.
Since the disk will be partitioned three ways, I think I'll call it "Gaul." Of course, people will look at me funny (not that they don't do that already . . .).
----------------
Listening to: Styx - Suite Madame Blue
via FoxyTunes
Time Machine is the very best single reason for a Mac user to buy and install Leopard . . . and of you are a Windows user, the very best reason to go get a new Mac. Time Machine is a backup and restore utility. In a word, you can, at need, "go back in time" and restore your entire system or even a single file from any 1-hr increment in the last day, any day in the last month and any month thereafter. So, if in the middle of writing your master's thesis your MacBook Pro's internal HD packs it in, if you have TM and an external hard disk, you can restore the last backup (not to mention OS X, all your preferewnces, email, etc) of your thesis once the hard disk is replaced, and on you go.
You can restore a single file, your whole iTunes Library or thw whole fscking startup partition. No more need to use Target Disk Mode and another Mac. No more "log in as root, drag and drop your Home folder (c:\Documents and settings\yourname for you windows users) and HOPE you got it right." For some users, enabling the OS X "root" account is like handing a drunk with Tourette's Syndrome a greased grenade . . . only "sudo rm -R /* is capable of more damage in less time (think dropping to DOS, cd c:, then del *.*). No more Retrospect, .Mac backup 3.x (not a bad program, but it's about as intuitive as brain surgery when compared to TM) or needing to rely on a non-Apple solution.
Best of all, TM does this silently and automaticly..
Windows, by comparison, has "system restore" which is great for restoring Windows system files . . . but it does nto do jack about your master's thesis or your email, pics, music, videos or porn.
I had been looking forward to buying a new external hard drive to try this feature out once my finances allowed for it. Fortunately for me, I won a nice 250 gigabyte USB 2.0 drive today for quarterly sales performance. This is plenty of space to allow me to back up the 100 GB drive in my MacBook (currently about 40 gigs free). I'm going to put at least three partitions on the disk: one OS X for TM (I'm going to names it "HD Welles"), one also OS X (one just big enough to serve as a 10.5 startup disk, probably named "DaVinci" -- as in Leo-nardo) to install Leopard so I can boot off this drive at need and one formatted for FAT32 (Disk Utility does not speak Windows NTFS) so my good friends Michelle and David can back up their docs/music/pics/etc/omg/wtf/bbq.
Since the disk will be partitioned three ways, I think I'll call it "Gaul." Of course, people will look at me funny (not that they don't do that already . . .).
----------------
Listening to: Styx - Suite Madame Blue
via FoxyTunes
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
I hate payday loans
Yesterday I proclaimed my appreciation for Sacramento RT and Elk Grove e-Tran. Today's bit of bloggery has to do with an industry that should, even in a free market, be run out of town like criminals. And, sadly, one I became all too familiar with during the first part of this decade.
Back when I was a kid, usury laws were on the books that forbade the loaning of money at massive rates of interest. People with wealth and property could always secure loans with collateral from federally regulated banks. Folks lacking these resources turned to "the bank of Guido and Luigi," the local shady operators, often a Family operation, who substituted the threat of pain or worse for more tangible resources and charged enormous rates of interest. Well, laws have changed and the collection specialists (legbreakers) are something of a thing of the past. Now anyone with a fixed address, a steady income and a startling lack of financial sense can score for themselves a "payday loan" from one of 22,000 such bloodsucker locations scattered across the fruited plain.
Payday loans are like the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars: " . . . once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it guide your destiny . . ." "Easy" money is soooo seductive, a quick way out of a jam that carries a tremendous cost of its own. How well I know because a few years ago, my paydays were little more than covering last pay period's payday loans and re-writing new ones . . . then taking the cash, minus a couple hundred in fees, to pay the bills.
I admit it, I knew better. I could read the disclosure statements and I winced at the 300% - plus APR interest rates. I wish in retrospect I could have learned to say NO to these loans. I'm owning up to my own weakness, accepting my share of the blame. I've completely eschewed them and stayed that way for almost two years.
It seems that the industry now has a trade association. Go figure.
Back when I was a kid, usury laws were on the books that forbade the loaning of money at massive rates of interest. People with wealth and property could always secure loans with collateral from federally regulated banks. Folks lacking these resources turned to "the bank of Guido and Luigi," the local shady operators, often a Family operation, who substituted the threat of pain or worse for more tangible resources and charged enormous rates of interest. Well, laws have changed and the collection specialists (legbreakers) are something of a thing of the past. Now anyone with a fixed address, a steady income and a startling lack of financial sense can score for themselves a "payday loan" from one of 22,000 such bloodsucker locations scattered across the fruited plain.
Payday loans are like the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars: " . . . once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it guide your destiny . . ." "Easy" money is soooo seductive, a quick way out of a jam that carries a tremendous cost of its own. How well I know because a few years ago, my paydays were little more than covering last pay period's payday loans and re-writing new ones . . . then taking the cash, minus a couple hundred in fees, to pay the bills.
I admit it, I knew better. I could read the disclosure statements and I winced at the 300% - plus APR interest rates. I wish in retrospect I could have learned to say NO to these loans. I'm owning up to my own weakness, accepting my share of the blame. I've completely eschewed them and stayed that way for almost two years.
It seems that the industry now has a trade association. Go figure.
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