- RT @Dave_Champion Obama asks DOJ to look at whether AZ immigration law is constitutional. Odd that he never did that with #Healthcare #tcot #
- RT @wilw: You know, kids, when I was your age, the internet was 80 columns wide and built entirely out of text. #
- RT @BudgetsAreSexy: RT @FinanciallyPoor "The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money." ~ Unknown #
- Official review of the double-down: Unimpressive. Not enough bacon and soggy breading on the chicken. #
- @FARNOOSH Try Ubertwitter. I haven't found a reason to complain. in reply to FARNOOSH #
- Personal inbox zero! #
- Work email inbox zero! #
- StepUp3D: Lame dancing flick using VomitCam instead or choreography. #
- I approve of the Nightmare remake. #Krueger #
Saturday Roundup
First, the shameless self-promotion:
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Next, for the part you’re here for…
The Cute War.
Budgeting In the Fun Stuff guest-posted here a few days ago. The post was about her dog. Nicole asserted that her kittens were cuter than BFS’s pug. There is some personal risk involved for me, but my pets are cuter. The proof:
The Best Posts of the Week:
Frugal Dad discusses What to Do When Your Beneficiaries are Minors. We settled this by not making our minor children the beneficiaries. If we both leap off the mortal coil at once, my Dad gets the money. I trust him to take care of my kids with it. No, Dad, you can not work on my brakes.
Marko found a fascinating photo series of WWII war photos overlaying modern pictures of the same location. It’s kind of creepy in places.
My favorite dinosaur has a child has been reclassified as a child itself, not an actual dinosaur. That makes youthful me very sad.
Finally, a list of the carnivals I’ve participated in:
Both the Carnival of Personal Finance and the Yakezie Carnival included Selling Your Home: For Sale by Owner.
The Festival of Frugality has It’s Better to Buy a House than Rent.
If I missed a carnival, please let me know.
Saturday Roundup
- Image via Wikipedia
I’ve got a birthday party today and a class to teach tomorrow. Sometimes I think I take on too much, but it’s hard to roll that back when the side-hustles are all making a bit of money. What I need to do is make the side-hustles profitable enough that my straight job is optional.
In other news, I’m 10 days away from my first blogging anniversary(here). I’ll have to come up with a way to celebrate that.
Favorite posts this week:
GOOG-411 is shutting down, but there are alternatives. My favorites are Google SMS and Bing-411.
I’m a Zimbabwean quadrillionaire due to their version of “quantitative easing”. If you’re not pushing an agenda, QE is also known as devaluing the dollar.
I’m happy to be living in the future. When I told my wife this story, she was ready to cry at the beginning, but had to see the pictures by the end. Yay, technology!
And finally, thanks to Chris, here’s a primer on the absurdities of the security theater known as TSA:
Carnivals I’ve rocked:
Experiences v Stuff was included in the Carnival of Debt Reduction.
Thank you!
If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know.
Jobs I’ve Had
I’ve always worked. From the time I was young, I knew that, if I wanted to feed my G.I. Joe addiction, I needed a way to make money.
So I got a job.
I was the only kid in first grade earning a steady paycheck.
In the years since, I’ve had a dozen or so jobs at 10 different companies. The question has been asked, so this post is my answer: these are all of the jobs I’ve ever held.
- Paper route. Starting at age 6, I split a paper route with my brother. Initially, I made about $6 per month, which was enough for 1 G.I. Joe.
- Farm hand. I spent a couple of summers in junior high and high school doing odd farm jobs outside of my home town.
- Dishwasher. Starting in 9th grade, I gave up a study hall to work in the school cafeteria, serving food and washing dishes. It paid minimum wage for 1 hour per school day.
- Construction. For a couple of summers, I worked for my dad’s construction company. He was easily the hardest boss I’ve ever had, which was great preparation for the rest of my working life. The drunk bar owner who didn’t allow his employees a lunch break and got upset if they sat down on a smoke break was nothing by comparison. Thanks, Dad. Every employer since has been astonished by my work ethic, even when I’m having an off day.
- Dishwasher, take 2. Sixteen years old, thumped by the wisdom of “If you want a car, get a job to pay for it.” So I did. It paid a bit over minimum wage and gave me my first “Who the heck is FICA and why is he robbing me?” moment. I eventually got promoted to cook, which came with better pay, worse hours, and more opportunities to flirt with waitresses. It was grand.
- Palletizer. This is a fancy way of saying I stood at the end of a conveyor belt, picked up the 50 pound bags of powder as they came down the line, and stacked them neatly on a pallet. Rinse and repeat. 1500 times per night. By the time I left this job, I had arms that would make Popeye cry.
- Cook, take 2. I held this job at the same time as the palletizer position. I’d work 8 hours stacking pallets, then head to job #2, 5 miles away. My car was broken at the time, so I rode my bike. In the winter. In Minnesota. I was working 14-16 hour days, lifting a total of 75,000 pounds, biking 10 miles per day. I was in great shape and tough. I wasn’t tough enough, though. I could only maintain this schedule for a couple of months.
- Machine operator. During my stint with this company, I’d put a little piece of metal into a great big machine, push a button, then spend 15-20 minutes listening to the great big machine carve the little piece of metal into something worth selling. This was about when I started shopping for books based primarily on thickness. One night, I read The Stand in my spare time. I’d also pass the night by burning scrap magnesium flakes in the parking lot. What can I say? Twelve hour graveyard shifts with 3 hours of actual work are boring. I left a few months after my son was born, because I was missing too much of my family time. I took a 30% pay-cut, before overtime, to be with my wife and kid.
- Debt collector. I worked my way through college by collecting on defaulted student loans. I firmly believe that we should all live up to our obligations and responsibilities, including paying your bills, so I didn’t have a moral dilemma with the work. There are some bad apples, but I don’t see collectors as pariahs.
- Systems Administrator. After I graduated college, I got promoted and spent the rest of my time there managing the collection and auto-dialer software and the hodge-podge of other applications we needed, some of which, I wrote.
- Software engineer. This is where I am now. I’ve written a medium-scale ecommerce application that handles the online sales for quite a few companies, mostly in the B2B arena. The job also includes a large chunk of training, management, and even sales. I don’t particularly enjoy sales, but a programmer geek who can manage other programmers, coordinate with sales & marketing, and talk to customers during a sales demo is a rare bird.
To recap: I’m 32 and I’ve had 1 month out of the last 26 years that didn’t come with a paycheck. I’ve worked for 10 different companies and I start the job before this one when I was 20.
How many jobs have you had? What was the most memorable, or the oddest?
Why I Hate Payday Loans
I hate payday loans and payday lenders.
The way a way a payday loan works is that you go into a payday lender and you sign a check for the amount you want to borrow, plus their fee. They give you money that you don’t have to pay back until payday. It’s generally a two-week loan.
Now, this two week loan comes with a fee, so if you want to borrow $100, they’ll charge you a $25 fee, plus a percent of the total loan, so for that $100 loan, you’ll have to pay back $128.28.
That’s only 28% of actual interest; that’s not terrible. However, if you prorate that to figure the APR, which is what everyone means when they say “I’ve got a 7% interest rate”, it comes out to 737%. That’s nuts.
They are a very bad financial plan.
Those loans may save you from an overdraft fee, but they’ll cost almost as much as an overdraft fee, and the way they are rigged–with high fees, due on payday–you’re more likely to need another one soon. They are structured to keep you from ever getting out from under the payday loan cycle.
For those reasons, I consider payday loan companies to be slimy. Look at any of their sites. Almost none are upfront about the total cost of the loan.
So I don’t take their ads. When an advertiser contacts me, my rate sheet says very clealy that I will not take payday loan ads. The reason for that is–in my mind–when I accept an advertiser, I am–in some form–endorsing that company, or at least, I am agreeing that they are a legitimate business and I am helping them conduct that business.
In all of the time I’ve been taking ads, I’ve made exactly one exception to that rule. On the front page of that advertiser’s website, they had the prorated APR in bright, bold red letters. It was still a really bad deal, but with that level of disclosure, I felt comfortable that nobody would click through and sign up without knowing what they were getting into. That was a payday lender with integrity, as oxymoronic as that sounds.
The Obligatory Thanksgiving Post
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Tomorrow is also Thursday, and I don’t post on Thursdays, so I’ll be posting about Thanksgiving today.
Thanksgiving is a day to be thankful for–first and foremost–capitalism.
When the Pilgrims first landed, they set up a communal farming arrangement, figuring that a good Christian community could take care of its own. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, and all that. Everyone worked for the good of everyone else, so everyone benefited, right?
The Pilgrims, like every other group that has ever advocated communism, neglected to consider human nature. If you have no incentive to work, you don’t. If sleeping in and making babies still gets you fed and clothed, why work?
On the other side, if you work hard, only to see your hard work go to benefit your lazy neighbor, sleeping in and rattling the headboard, but never doing anything productive, why bother?
It didn’t take long for the Pilgrims to notice this tragedy of government wasn’t working.
The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails and cloaths, then he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter the other could; this was thought injuestice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalised in labours, and victails, cloaths, etc., with the meaner and yonger sorte, thought it some indignite and disrespect unto them. And for mens wives to be commanded to doe servise for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemd it a kind of slaverie, neither could many husbands well brooke it. Upon the poynte all being to have alike, and all to doe alike, they thought them selves in the like condition, and ove as good as another; and so, if it did not cut of those relations that God hath set amongest men, yet it did at least much diminish and take of the mutuall respects that should be preserved amongst them.
It didn’t take long before nobody was working. Neighbors resented each other, because everyone had a right to the work of the other, with no need to compensate each other. That’s a case of “I’m starving because you aren’t working hard enough, but it’s not my fault you’re starving.”
At one point, the production of the colony was down so much that the colonists’ ration of corn was just 4 kernels per day. That’s how you kill a colony.
But they learned from their mistakes before they all died.
Yet notwithstanding all those reasons, which were not mine, but other mens wiser then my selfe, without answer to any one of them, here cometh over many quirimonies, and complaints against me, of lording it over my brethern, and making conditions fitter for theeves and bondslaves then honest men, and that of my owne head I did what I list. And at last a paper of reasons, framed against that clause in the conditions, which as they were delivered me open, so my answer is open to you all. And first, as they are no other but inconvenientes, such as a man might frame 20. as great on the other side, and yet prove nor disprove nothing by them, so they misse and mistake both the very ground of the article and nature of the project. For, first, it is said, that if ther had been no divission of houses and Lands, it had been better for the poore. True, and that showeth the inequalitie of the condition; we should more respecte him that ventureth both his money and his person, then him that ventureth but his person only.
The slavery of working for the benefit of others didn’t work, unless you were “theeves and bondslaves”. Then, it was great, living off of the sweat of others.
To make a long story short, the starvation ended when the Pilgrims were given parcels of land and told they could keep what they built from it. They went from the edge of extinction to being prosperous in a short time. The old and weak were cared for, not by the governor’s decree, but by the generosity of their neighbors.
Everybody in the colony won.
