- Dora the Explorer is singing about cocaine. Is that why my kids have so much energy? #
- RT @prosperousfool: Be the Friendly Financial “Stop” Sign http://bit.ly/67NZFH #
- RT @tferriss: Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ in a one-page cartoon: http://su.pr/2PAuup #
- RT @BSimple: Shallow men believe in Luck, Strong men believe in cause and effect. Ralph Waldo Emerson #
- 5am finally pays off. 800 word post finished. Reading to the kids has been more consistent,too. Not req’ing bedtime, just reading daily. #
- Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse: morbid story from my childhood. Still enthralling. #
- RT @MoneyCrashers: Money Crashers 2010 New Year Giveaway Bash – $7,400 in Cash and Amazing Prizes http://bt.io/DDPy #
- [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-16
The Lord Will Provide
Debtors like to make excuses.
When I used to work collections, I’d try to work out a payment plan to get people out of debt, and I often heard “The Lord will provide” as their only excuse for not paying the money they owed.
That’s crap. It’s not a financial plan. It’s not a life plan.
It’s a crappy excuse to make you feel better about why your life sucks, has always sucked, and will–most likely–continue to suck.
Over the weekend, I got to spend quite a bit of time with family, including some that we don’t get to see often. One couple in particular really stands out. Neither of them are employed. She’s got some medical problems and has several major surgeries recently. I’d give her a pass for that, but she was unemployed for many years prior to that. He used to have a job, but lost it a couple of years ago, and is now milking welfare with his wife and daughter. They recently lost their house and had to move in with his mother.
Neither one is looking for work. Between the two of them, they smoke 4-5 packs of cigarettes a day. They want to buy a house soon, or rent an apartment, or something. They aren’t very clear in their planning because, “It’s in God’s hands.”
No plan, no ambition, no goals. I don’t understand how anybody can go through life with no intention of improving it. How can you try to hide behind platitudes instead of making things better?
Here’s the bumper sticker that can actually improve your life: “Good things come to those who bust their asses and make good decisions.”
It’s not the easy path, but in the long run, it’s a better path and one of the few paths that doesn’t lead to royal life-suckitude.
Vacation, Shmaycation, Staycation?
Last week was our family vacation. This year, we decided to keep it cheap, since we raided our savings a few months ago to cover my son’s vision therapy.
Here’s what we did:
Friday (Yes, I started vacation on a Friday): My wife worked a half day, then we drove to visit my parents, roughly 120 miles north of our house. $110 for gas, round-trip, and $10 for drive-through lunch. $120 total.
Saturday: We went to the county fair and Dairy Queen. $18 for admission. $30 for ride tickets. $35 for food and ice cream. The ride tickets were totally worth it. My son and I discovered that he can handle the fun rides, which thrills me. $83 total.
Sunday: We had a picnic at the bottom of Inspiration Peak, the third highest point in Minnesota, followed by a hike to the top. That evening, my brother, his wife, my wife, and I tricked my parents into babysitting and escaped for several hours of adult time. After a couple of overpriced drinks at a crap restaurant, we went somewhere nicer and cheaper. A nice dinner, a few drinks, and a round of drunken go-karts later, we spent $90 for the evening.
Monday: Back to the go-kart park for the afternoon, and the return drive home in the evening. The go-kart park included 3 rounds of go-karts, mini-golf, and a round of bumper boats. $40.
Tuesday: A hands-on kids museum, a natural history museum that was hosting a portable planetarium, and a teppenyaki restaurant. We used museum passes for the museums, so this cost a total of $160. By far, the most expensive part was the restaurant. The museums cost a combined $30.
Wednesday: We spent the day at the Monster Mall’s indoor theme park, Nickelodean Universe, where we tested my son’s ability to handle the fun rides for $70. Then we ate at the Rainforest Cafe for $116, and we got my wife’s anniversary present, a family portrait at an “old time” photo studio. We chose a 1920s theme. I must say, I look dashing in a zoot suit. $260 total.
Thursday: My wife had to work on Thursday because she was short of vacation time, so I had the brats to myself. We went to a pick-your-own apple orchard where we picked a large bag of apples, a bottle of real, locally-made maple syrup and 3 cookies-on-a-stick. Afterwards, Brat #1 and I went to a Chinese buffet and the comic book store while the women-folk went to a saddle-club meeting. $60 total.
Friday: We had a fried chicken picnic at the largest playground in the area, and otherwise took it easy. $12.
Saturday: On Saturday, my girls rode in a horse show for the saddle club while my wife put in her volunteer work hours. Registration and the food for the potluck ran $40.
Sunday: I had to teach a gun class, so I made money, instead of spending it. My wife and kids played around the house.
Total, our vacation cost us $865, for 10 days of memories. If we would have skipped the restaurants, it would have cost $465, but we wanted those experiences, too. Our vacation fund has $906 in it, so we did all right.
Counting Cards: How to Cheat At Blackjack
I don’t gamble much. I’ve got this boring kind of luck that let’s me gamble for a really long time on not much money, without ever winning big.
For example, when my wife was very pregnant with our first monster, we took a trip to visit my parents. It’s a 2 hour drive, and she needed a break halfway there. In the truck stop, we bought $5 worth of scratch-offs to pass some time. We turned in the winning tickets for more scratch-offs. And again. And again. Two hours later, we were out of winners, but had never accumulated more than $10.
Another time, we went to the casino to play slots. It took nearly 8 hours to spend $20. That sounds boring, but we had good conversation while we were playing.
I’ve never had a big win or a big loss from gambling, so I’ve always been kind of bored with the idea.
Now, cheating at blackjack, that’s a different matter. Pulling one over on the casino without getting caught…they make movies about that kind of stuff.
To be clear: counting cards in your head isn’t cheating. Legally, the worst that can happen is you can be asked to leave. To get a Hollywood-I-cheated-the-casino-and-got-caught-and-beat-by-the-mob kind of beating, you need to win a lot.
A lot.
To get started, there are a few things you need to know. One of those things is how to play blackjack, but I’m not going to get into the basics. If you don’t know how to hit, stand, or count to 21 without taking your clothes off, this guide may be too advanced for you. Come back later.
Super Basic Strategy
You don’t need to count cards to use this strategy. You will do better than most players if you follow along.
1. The dealer must hit, or take another card, if he has 16 points. If he has 17, he stands.
2. The hole card–the card you can’t see–is always worth 10. Of course, it’s not, but for the purposes of your strategy, assume it is.
That means, when the dealer is showing a 2, you’ll assume he’s got 12 points and will hit. If he’s showing a 7, you’ll assume he’s going to stand. If he’s showing an 8, your goal is to beat 18, not push for 21.
That’s it. If you do that, you’ll come within a couple of points of even odds against the house. Google “blackjack basic strategy” if you want to improve this.
Even odds isn’t good enough.
Card Counting
Counting cards sounds tough. Rain Man tough.
It’s not, but you’ll want to practice at home a bit before you try it in the really real world.
The rules are simple:
1. Cards 2-6 are worth 1 point.
2. The 10, jack, queen, king, and ace are worth -1.
3. For every card that is played, keep track of that score. This is a running score across multiple hands until the deck is replaced or shuffled, so don’t stop at a new deal.
4. Divide the running score by the number of decks remaining in the shoe. If there are approximated 150 cards in the dealer-thingy, that’s 3 decks, so divide by 3. If your running score is 18, that means the number your playing against is 6. If the casino is using a continuous-shuffling thingy, forget counting the cards.
That’s it. You’re never adding or subtracting more than a one, and you’re doing that against a number that tends to stay pretty low.
How do you use that, you ask? Easy.
When the score is up, bet higher. If it’s low or negative, bet lower. The higher the number, the higher your bets. If you’ve got a 5, a 6, or more, bet as much as you are comfortable with. If your playing score is low or negative, bet close to the table minimum.
Why does this work?
A higher score indicates that the main assumption of the super basic strategy is more likely to be true. When you’ve got a score of 10, you know a lot of lower-value cards have already hit the table, so it’s safer to assume that the dealer’s card is worth 10.
You don’t change anything about the way you play each hand, you just change the way you bet each hand. Counting cards doesn’t tell you specifically what’s going to happen during each hand, it just tackles the statistics of the game. It moves the odds in your favor, by up to 2 or 3 percent. Over one hand, this won’t help, so don’t sweat losing a hand here and there. Over an entire shoe of hands, you should be able to steadily win more than you lose.
And, as Brian Brushwood says, in the course of your life, very few things make a cooler story than getting kicked out of a casino for counting cards.
Do you play in casinos? Ever tried to cheat?
Resolutions That Don’t Suck
I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. Generally speaking, if you don’t have the willpower to do something any other time of the year, you probably won’t grow that willpower just because the last number on the calendar changed.
Seriously, if you’ve got something worth changing, change it right away, don’t wait for a special day.
That said, this is the time of the year that many people choose to try to improve…something. Some people try to lose weight, other people quit shooting meth into their eyeballs, yet others(the ones I’m going to talk about) decide it’s time to get out of debt.
Now most people are going to throw out some huge and worthless goals like:
- I need to lose some weight.
- I need to save more.
- I need to be a better person.
- I need to shoot less meth into my eyeball.
The problem with goals like that is the definitions. What is “some”, “more”, “better”, or “less”? How do you know when you’ve won.
It’s better to take on smaller goals that have real definitions.
Try these:
- I’m going to lose 20 pounds.
- I’m going to save $1200.
- I need to stop locking my children in the closet when I go to the movies.
- I am never ever going to shoot meth into my eyeball again.
But Jason, I hear you saying, where am I going to find $1000 to save? Well, Dear Reader, I’m glad you asked. Next time though, could you ask in a way that others can hear so my wife doesn’t feel the need to call the nice men in the white coats again?
Let’s break that goal down even further.
Instead of saving $1200, let’s call it $100 per month. That’s a bite-sized goal. Some people don’t even have that to spare, so what can they do?
Let’s make that resolution something like “I’m going to have frozen pizza instead of my regular weekly delivery.” If your house is anything like mine, that brings a $60 pizza bill down to $15 for some good frozen pizza for a savings of $45. If you order pizza once a week, that’s $180 saved each month, double your goal. That’s a win with very little suffering.
Now, you can take that extra $80 that you hadn’t even planned for and throw it at your credit cards. That’s a free payment every month. Before you know it, you’ll have your cards paid off and a decent savings account.
Then you can thank me because I made it all possible.
Calendaring Life
I’m incredibly absent-minded. I get involved in something and forget about almost everything else. While that makes me productive at work and helps the time pass, it means I forget to do a lot of things. On the days I am supposed to pick up my son, I have to set reminders so I don’t get wrapped up in a project at work and forget to leave on time.
My solution has been to put everything into Google Calendar. I use 10 different calendars, five of which are mine. I have one for regular scheduling of appointments, one I use to take notes for 30 Day Projects, and one that is copied from the school calendar so I don’t forget late-start days and school vacations. I also use calendars to track the wrestling team’s schedule, family birthdays, and upcoming holidays. I’ve got all of these calendars synced to my phone, I get reminders a week in advance, and I get a daily agenda at 5AM, every day. I don’t forget much anymore.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a new project–a new calendar. I’ve been reviewing seasonal home-maintenance checklists, medical checkup recommendations, car maintenance lists, and more. All of this has been added to a new Google Calendar, the Home and Life Maintenance Calendar.
This calendar is designed to remind its users to do the things we all need to do, from biannual physicals to replacing your furnace filters, checking your tire pressure to cancer self-exams. The seasonal chores happen in the right seasons, and the monthly reminders happen monthly. It is a work-in-progress and I welcome any recommendations for the things I’ve missed.
So, here it is. Use it, set up reminders, smack me for missing something obvious and enjoy.
[google-calendar-events id=”1″ type=”ajax”]
Update: This post has been included in the Festival of Frugality.