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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-03

Misc

How come my back hurts?

Business, Finance, Relationships

My favorite book series is the Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind.  It’s a good sword-and-sorcery, good-versus-evil fantasy.

But I’m not here to talk about that series.  Rather, I’m going to talk about one particular scene in book 6, Faith of the Fallen.

There’s a scene where Richard, the protagonist, ends up in a socialist workers’ paradise, where the government controls distribution and everybody is starving.  Jobs are hard to come by, because everything is unionized and unions control access to work.  That’s a non-accidental parallel to every country that has embrace socialist principles, or even leans that way.  Go open a business with employees in France, I dare you.

So Richard goes out of his way to help someone with no expectation of reward.  This person then offers to vouch for him at the union meeting, effectively offering him a job.

This is the conversation that follows:

Nicci shook her head in disgust. “Ordinary people don’t have your luck, Richard. Ordinary people suffer and struggle while your luck gets you into a job.”

“If it was luck,” Richard asked, “then how come my back hurts?”

If it was luck, how come my back hurts?

Seneca, a 2000-year-dead Roman philosopher said, “Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet.” 

I won’t lie, I’ve got a pretty cushy job.  I make decent money, I work from home, I love my company’s mission, and I kind of fell into the job.

By fell into, I mean:

  • I started teaching myself to program computers when I was 7.
  • I worked in a collection agency collecting on defaulted student loans to put myself through college while I had a baby at home.
  • When I graduated, I went out of my way to help anyone I could, which positioned me for a promotion, getting my first programming job.  The first one is the hardest.
  • I spent 3 years studying the online marketing aspects of what I’m doing, with no promise of a payoff.
  • I launched a side business in the same industry as the company I work for.
  • I built a relationship with an author to include his books in the classes I teach.  He happened to move to the company I’m with.
  • I offered advice–for free, on a regular basis–on certain aspects of his business and his responsibilities with this company.
  • He offered me a job.

That’s 25 years and tens of thousands of dollars spent earning my luck.  How come my back hurts?

I have a friend on disability.  He has a couple of partially-shattered vertebrae in his back, but he keeps pushing off the corrective surgery because the payments would stop after he heals.   He refuses to get a regular job, because his payments would stop.  He lives on $400 per month and whatever he can hustle for cash, and he will make just that until the day he dies.   And he complains about his bad luck.

His back literally hurts, but not metaphorically.  His bad luck is the product of deliberately holding himself down to keep that free check flowing.

I have another friend who made some bad decisions young.   Some years ago, he decided that was over.  He took custody of his kid and started a business that rode the housing bubble.   When the bubble popped, so did his business.   Instead of whining about his luck, he worked his way into an entry-level banking job.

He put in long (long!) hours, bending over backwards to help his customers and coworkers, and managed a few promotions, far earlier than normal.  His coworkers whined about it.  He’s so lucky.  If it was luck, why does his back hurt?  

We make our own luck.

If you bust your ass, working hard and helping people–your coworkers, your customers, your friends, your neighbors–and you are willing to seize an opportunity when it appears, you will get ahead.   When you do, the people around you who do the bare minimum, who refuse–or are afraid–to seize an opportunity, who always ask what’s in it for them, they will will whine about your luck.

When they do, you will get to ask, “If it was luck, how come my back hurts?”

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-29

Misc

Repair Plans, Appliances, and Rancid Meat…Oh, My!

Finance, Life

Older refrigerator model, with freezer compartment
Image via Wikipedia

We recently had our annual barbecue.   (For the purists, I am Minnesotan.  Barbecue means “cooked over fire”.)   Due to massive scheduling conflicts, it was a bit smaller than normal; only about 20 people came.  At least 10 other people RSVP-ed that they were going to make it, but didn’t.  Grr.

Naturally, we had food for everyone said they would be there and enough for half of the people who didn’t say anything, since Minnesotans don’t RSVP well.  That translates to a lot of leftovers.   No problem.  After all, leftover ribs are hardly a punishment.

Sunday morning, we woke up to find that our refrigerator was happier at room temperature than the standard “cold”.  We didn’t know it at the time, but the defrost unit was borked, so the cold air couldn’t circulate from the freezer to the refrigerator.  Bye-bye leftovers.  Hello, Mr. Repairman.  We needed an excuse to clean out the fridge, anyway, but not at the price of my beautifully seared meat! (Sadness strikes.)

Monday evening, the repairman came out, worked for 2 hours and left a functional refrigerator and a $240 invoice in his wake.  Thankfully, we are on the appliance repair plan through the gas company.  We pay $26.40 per month to cover repairs to our range, water heater, furnace, drier, sewer main, and refrigerator.  The first four items are standard, the final two are options that cost extra.

We originally got on the plan for the sewer main.  We had a tree whose roots grew into the main and clogged it every year.  A backed-up sewer main is a crappy way to wake up.   Getting that snaked to the street cost $200 per year.  At the time, without the refrigerator, the plan cost about $12 per month.  One $200 call-out more than paid for the plan for the year.  That was easy math.   Now, our 20 year old refrigerator has been repaired twice in the last year, giving us $500 worth of repairs for $316.80.   I would like to take this time to thank all of the people with reliable appliances for subsidizing my repairs.

My furnace, drier, and range are all reasonably new and shouldn’t need repairs any time soon, but the refrigerator and sewer main have paid for the plan themselves, several times over.

Should you get a similar plan?  If your covered appliances are more than 4-5 years old, I would consider it.  If they are more than 10 years old, I wouldn’t hesitate at all.  Repairing quality appliances is cheaper than replacing them, especially when the repair cost is paid monthly and subsidized.

Do you use a service plan?

Charity

Finance, Life

Charitable giving is down.  Predictions have been that donations would be up this year, but the reality appears to be otherwise.

I have an admittedly low sample size;  I don’t talk to many charities and the 2012 donation amounts aren’t out, yet.  The  one I do have access to says that donations this year are among the lowest in memory.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a bit busy cleaning out a hoader’s house.   Last weekend, we tackled one of the stashes of toiletries.    We came out with several cases of soap, shampoo, blankets, towels, and sleeping pads.

For the right charity, an unopened case of bar soap is better than gold.

When our new-found treasures were delivered to Mary’s Place, I’m told the nuns wept.   Mary’s Place is a transitional housing complex attached to a homeless shelter.   They were totally and completely out of hygiene products for the residents.

Something that means nothing to me meant the world to someone else.   I was just looking for a useful place to dump the stuff we can’t use or don’t want to store, and I made a nun cry.*

People need so much, and so much of what they need is trivial to my family.  A blanket? A bar of soap?  That’s nothing…to me.

As we go through the rest of the stuff, our focus will be different.   Instead of, “Can we sell this at a garage sale, or should we donate it?”, it’s going to be “Can someone get more value out of this than we’ll get by selling it?”  We can sell a comforter for $5, or give it to someone who needs to stay warm in the winter.

I’ll forgo $5 for that warm fuzzy feeling.

 

 

 

*Check one off the bucket list.

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Tootsie – Does Beauty Have to be Expensive?

Celebrities

Cover of "Tootsie - 25th Anniversary Edit...
Cover of Tootsie – 25th Anniversary Edition

Many remember Dustin Hoffman dressed in drag in the classic film Tootsie, a movie that he now says made him realize how many women he’s missed out on meeting in life simply because he judged them by their looks. Every year women spend thousands of dollars on beauty products and cosmetics, hoping to increase their appearance and become attractive enough to the outside world. Although there are various degrees of beauty, it undoubtedly is usually determined by the amount of money spent to enhance features and upkeep the overall look.

Although natural beauty does exist in our society, it is few and far between to find a woman who needs a minimal amount of makeup and hair product to appear beautiful enough to meet society’s standards. Styled, highlighted hair is crucial for an attractive look, requiring professional services to be done on the hair by a salon. Although it may be cheaper to spend $5 on a box of hair dye at the supermarket, the hair won’t look as full or healthy without a professional technique applied. A woman’s hair is bound to look more attractive by spending the extra $100 by visiting a stylist who knows their craft.

The length of a woman’s hair often creates a more attractive look in the U.S., which is difficult to achieve with flat irons and curlers that create breakage and brittle hair from the heat. Women are now resorting to having hair extensions installed every three to five months to achieve beautiful hair that has a fuller texture and longer length, costing an average of $700. They can resort to shorter hair that saves a large amount of money, but they’re ultimately compromising a large part of their looks.

There’s a reason that celebrities appear more beautiful than the rest of the population, as their high school photos often show them to look like typical people. By spending thousands of dollars on personal trainers, stylists, and makeup artists, their appearance is immediately enhanced with the finest tools and products on the market. They are also able to have help with experts who have more knowledge on what creates the best look for their features.

Although beauty does not have to be expensive (just look at exotic women in Columbia and Brazil who are anything but high maintenance), it unfortunately is a requirement in the U.S. where rich housewives rule the reality shows and runways. True beauty is often defined by breast and waist sized, which few women can live up to, resulting in thousands of dollars spent on breast implants and liposuction, often impossible to attain otherwise.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but few men will argue that Angelina Jolie is unattractive or that Heidi Klum looks homely. The majority of men can agree when a woman is beautiful, and few women catch attention with a homemade manicure and dyed hair that came from a box. Perhaps going au natural will become a new trend in the coming years, but for now it’s expensive to be a woman, and even more costly to be a beautiful one.

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