Date: 2008-04-09 16:06 Subject: Being nostalgic makes it hard to be productive Security: Public

Ack, one day I will remember not to kill my post as I'm just about to make it.  I think we need to turn this into a bad joke:  Expect Rob to eat his well thought out, heartfelt post at least once before each bi-weekly or longer post.  I feel so livejournal stupid right now it's not even funny.

Someone please point me to the icon that most represents ineptness.  I need to add it to my list.

I'm suffering a terrible disease of nostalgia right now.  I want to blame it on the catch-all fact that I've turned 30 recently, but I don't know if that's what I can attribute this feeling to.  I've been thinking about a lot of people, all clustered in these unique stages of my life, that I don't have any kind of contact with anymore.  And the shame is that many times, none of those people ever had contact with anyone I do interact with now.  So, once they start to slip away....they're just gone out of my life.  No powers of google-fu, or my creation of a facebook, or this livejournal, or anything else has so far helped me bring them back into my circle.

And I'm scared that maybe it's because I can't handle having the size friend's circle I want to have.  I'm about five years overdue on an email back to Leigh.  I managed to track down Jonathan Megginson and drag him back into my life - and for what? - I didn't email enough and I lost him to the ether again.  Natalie deserves a really good, long-written email that is five months behind and will probably push further than that.  I've not exactly been the poster child for upholding my end of the relationship.  But I want this - I may not have ever shown it, or said it, but there are a lot of people that stay in my thoughts...that I wish were more represented in my life.

I haven't been really good about putting the personal stamp of my touch on things.  Not here in livejournal, not in email, through the phone, or in letters.  So, if I want this I need to make changes.  Life is busy, but (albeit a bit longer after being eaten by my elite posting skills) this post only took a few minutes.  I need to get away from the screen of work and life being too busy.  Yeah, it f'ing is, but that's no excuse for good friends.

Lj-friends, all of you, I think about you and keep you in my thoughts.  Even when I don't post and I don't comment, I try to keep track and wonder how you're doing.  Yates, I really wonder how you're doing man.  Nyssa, did I read it right that you're engaged?  Dare I say I haven't sad congrats? Shame on me for that.  Everyone, don't think you're not important.  You are very important, and dear.  Thanks for reading this. 

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Date: 2008-03-21 13:30 Subject: 3-2-1 day Security: Public

Okay, so it's not as glamorous as Pi day.  I'm a bit behind.   Perhaps I should add an....'of course'...to that.

Birthday!

Okay guys, apparently I am the most clueless and gullible person on the planet.  You would not have to try hard to get one over on me.  At least, that's what I've come to realize after megansmommy and chioubacca teamed up to get me out of the house so my birthday could become the surprise variety.  It was really awesome to see a lot of old friends like Yoni and Aaron, and I'd just been lamenting a few weeks earlier that it had been a long time since I'd gotten to see pi216 or wattage.  The whole thing was really cool though, and save for a little intrafamily flap, I think everyone had a great time.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Yes, it's tax time again.  You know, for the first time in my life, we will actually be paying federal taxes back.  I guess it came as somewhat of an initial shock to me, but considering our housing mess last year we didn't have quite the deductions we've had in the past.  In all, I think it's going to be about $2k that we'll pay, which after the initial shock of payment, wasn't all that bad.  For the record, it didn't diminish my love for doing our taxes just because we have to pay this time.  Sometime in the next week I'll get to do two more sets of taxes, and then it'll be a whole year before 2nd Christmas comes again.

Man, I love crunching numbers.

Anything else?

Well, I think a lot of my day to day rotuines have been fairly mundane recently.  However, it's pretty easy for things to be mundane when the kids are doing well, life with Lissa is like a dream, and our house is really coming together.  I don't think my stress levels have been this low in years.  It feels good - I'd like to keep that up, okay?

It must be because I turned 30, but I've been feeling very nostalgic at times now.  Lissa and I have both been talking about our pasts and falling out of touch with friends.  It wasn't my new year's resolution, but I'm thinking that belatedly I want to try to reach out and get back in touch with my favorite people from high school and college.  I've been VERY tempted to get a facebook and myspace pages.  I think it would be fun, but the tradeoff will be giving up a bit of the internet anonymity I've cultivated.  Then again, who am I kidding?  It's hard to have any anonymity when there's only one Wyrrlen out there in the world.  So I guess I should just go ahead and do it.

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Date: 2008-03-04 09:45 Subject: Higher Ground Security: Public

I'm still alive...it's just been a crazy month with work, and I'm starting to suffer burnout.  Great updates won't come today, but three weeks ago I did have an amazing surprise 30th birthday party that I'll want to tell you more about.  Soon.

Also, Emily has said her first fully enunciated five-word sentence:  "Thank you my sweet Daddy."  *melts*

Pony, anyone?

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Date: 2008-02-08 10:14 Subject: Walking the Mile Security: Public

Just so you know, for my last day as a twentysomething...

I started with cake for Breakfast followed by Reese's cups and candy bars.  I'm going out with a bang, baby.

 EDIT:  French fries eaten.  What a rebel. ;)

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Date: 2008-02-06 13:16 Subject: for Lissa Security: Public

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

 

megansmommy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Lissa
Happy Birthday to you

How old are you?
How old are you?
Right now I'm just guessing
But you look like 22. :)


Have a great day, sweetheart.

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Date: 2008-02-05 09:41 Subject: It feels so empty without me Security: Public

Hooray for Science and Medicine!
In a devastating blow to the anti-vaccination community, another study has been released showing no linkage between vaccinations and autism.  This follows a previous evaluation that found that mercury-based thimerasol is also not the autism culprit.  It is tragic that so much energy has been wasted on proving that the MMR vaccine was a smoking gun instead of focusing that time on more autism research, and that in the process parts of the world had to experience new breakouts in measles, mumps, and rubella.

I won't be surprised if the spectrum refutes these new findings and continues to discourage vaccination, and I find that likelihood so disheartening.  Yet there has never, ever, been a causal relationship shown between vaccination and autism.  I hope that the latest information will start to convince people that vaccination is both safe and medically necessary - not just for themselves, but for everyone.

And now....for some Meganisms
Megan has been cracking us up recently with the things that come out of her mouth.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that she's still only three years old.  Some of the latest gems have included:

- After being told she couldn't have playdoh because she'd gotten in trouble with it...."Mommy, I want something squishy to play with, like Playdoh."
- When trying to tell us she was hungry..."I want something healthy that's an eater thing."
- Her new description for the Noggin channel..."I want to watch kids tv."
- Out of the blue, after I'd gotten her a nighttime drink..."Thanks, Pops."  (so I'm Pops now?)
- A recent conversation:
Megan: Those two princess dresses are similar.
Mommy:  Did our child just use the word similar?  You're right Megan, those two dresses look alike!
Me: Who knew our child understood similes?
Megan:  Not similEEEE, Daddy.  SimilARRRR.

Not to be outdone
As much as I forget that Megan is only three years old, I have an even harder time remembering that Emily is still just 19 months.  The teachers at school had at one time started referring to Emily as Baby Einstein, and I can certainly see why.  She's been working on potty training for over a month now, and while she has a bit of a ways to go, is getting to be very consistent with using a potty at home.  I think it's caught her current classroom off guard as they don't typically teach potty-training to the kids until their 2+ class.  Some of the other parents have been trying to encourage their kids to catch up, but we keep trying to tell them it's not a development race.

Emily has also gotten to be very advanced verbally.  Her afternoon teacher has told us that she is the only child that is enunciating the word "Yes" instead of yeah or yah or even less intelligible responses.  As far as words, I know there are plenty she doesn't know the meaning of yet, but she has decided that she wants to parrot every word I say.  Let me tell you, Daddy has to be very careful with the things that come out of his mouth when everything is repeated back at him.  My favorite part about Emily being so vocal is the singing.  She is a big fan of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "The Wheels on the Bus" - both of which she loves to sing along with Mommy and Megan.  I die of cute any time the three of them sing in unison.

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it, but a few years back a friend of the family gave us a wonderful gift of an upright piano.  My own personal talent with the piano is limited to a half-speed version of "Heart and Soul" that Lissa taught to me, but then again, I've never been much of a musician.  That's how I know that Emily has gotten her musical inclination from her Mother.  At nearly every opportunity, Emily pulls out the piano bench, climbs up to the keys, and treats us to her own little concerts.  What I find so fascinating, again based on the fact that my musical ability is nearly zero, is that despite not knowing how to play and without any instruction, Emily has figured out how to make melodies.  I mean, I'm fascinated by the fact that she taps the keys with her fingers and creates something that sounds good.  Sometimes she will want me to sit on the piano with her, and she will grab my hands to have me push down the keys for her; directing my fingers to each note so that I create the song that she wants to hear.  I get such a great thrill out of that father/daughter time, as the tone-def bumbler and the prodigal maestro create a touching role reversal.

It seems like more and more often, I can turn to face Lissa at the end of the night and honestly tell her, "We've done alright with these two kids."  Dang, I'm lucky.

Aren't you unemployed yet?
You know, I rather expected to be, but I'm not.  It hasn't been noise-makers and balloons, but I continue to be employed for the time being.  The company "demoted" me to operations and engineering, so now I work under one of the guys that I used to have a role over.  From a status perspective it's been a hard hit, but it is strange because my demotion requires a salary increase to stay in the current salary range.  It seems that the demand for engineers has gotten ridiculous of late, and so the salaries are increasing at an exponential rate.  Now that my title has been changed back to engineer, my salary was too low for my experience and qualifications.  So, demotion and massive raise.  It's bizarre.

That's not to say the company has necessarily become significantly more stable of late.  There are still some big question marks for the long term, but I haven't gotten too down about it because of the opportunity that has come with it.  First of all, the time "in the trenches" of doing real engineering again has already paid off in a month by teaching me a lot about control systems that I didn't know before.  This was a common complaint I had about my experience and background when working in consulting, but now I'm starting to get the fundamental experience that I was lacking before.  I also work for a licensed engineer again, and he's willing to sponsor me to get my license in the fall.  I've been talking about wanting to get my professional license for....let's see now....oh, eight years.  It's pretty thrilling to have the stars align just long enough to get that opportunity.

I think if I can get a year of experience with control systems engineering and my license in the process, I will have come out ahead on this demotion thing.  That is, of course, unless I find something better along the way.  I guess I'm just saying that the situation will be good for me if I don't find a newopportunity out there, and if I do find something that's a step up, even better.  That takes a lot of stress off me and the family.

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Date: 2008-01-31 22:19 Subject: More than 20 questions from lipbylipby Security: Public

I'm feeling very inquisitive tonight, so If you have the patience, I'd love to know the answers to these:

1)Are you currently in a serious relationship?
A.
2) What was your dream growing up?
A.
3) What talent do you wish you had?
A.
4) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
A.
5) Favorite vegetable?
A.
6) What was the last book you read?
A.
7) Do you have a nickname?
A.
8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
A.
9) Worst Habit?
A.
10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
A.
11) What is your favorite sport?
A.
12) Do you have a Negative or Optimistic attitude?
A.
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
A.
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
A.
15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
A.
16) Do you have any pets?
A.
17) What if i showed up at your house unexpectedly?
A.
18) What was your first impression of me? (hmmm...careful!)
A.
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
A.
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
A.
21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
A.
22) What color eyes do you have?
A.
23) Ever been arrested?
A.
24) Bottle or can soda?
A.
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
A.
27) What's your favorite place to hang at?
A.
28) Do you believe in ghosts?
A.
29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
A.
30) Do you swear a lot?
A.
31) Biggest pet peeve?
A.
32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
A.
33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
A.
35) Do you believe in God?
A.
36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?
A.

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Date: 2008-01-30 13:09 Subject: Money Management for the Middle Class: Investing Security: Public Tags: money

You're going to be working for a long, long time if your plan for having money at retirement is based on putting leftover cash in a glass jar under the bed.  Yet, many people don't look at what they could be doing with their money to help grow wealth and achieve a state of financial certainty (ie. all bills paid) without having to maintain employment.  The key is to be able to gain a return on investment of money.  Just as everything else works in finance, investing will ultimately be as successful as your risk tolerance and ability to hold true to a dedicated plan.  If you decide that the best way to grow your fortune is to buy and sell baseball cards, figure out how to do that and stick to it.  Just...don't really expect me to think that's the best thing you could be doing with your money.  Here are a few tips and ideas about investing that could help the average person better manage their financial growth.

Debt is the Same as a Negative Investment
It would seem like the best choice in a given situation would to be to always choose the investment opportunity that has the best Risk:Reward ratio, but what happens when you have debt, and possibly significant debt?  You have to consider interest on debt to be the same as interest on an investment.  If you are in a situation where your debt rate is significantly higher than your investment rate (and for most credit cards, this is very true), paying off a 22% loan will save you more money than investing in a 10% interest investment over the same period of time.  I can't argue with the fact that delaying an investment to pay off debt will impact your time-value of money (also known as your future worth);but, I must stress that debt always comes with a defined window.  You will have to pay off your debt at some point, and unless money pops out of the air for you, paying it off early will control your loss.  Yes, your earnings will not be as great as they could be, but your loss will also be mitigated while you also avoid entering a situation where your debt is greater than your capacity to pay it off.

For low interest items, and particularly debts that have tax advantages (such as your house and school loans), it is not as critical to pay off debt before investing; therefore, you will need to make value judgements regarding your ability to gain on positive investments versus your ability to pay off negative debt.  For credit cards, store loans, and the like, always attempt to pay these off prior to making investment choices.

Of Course, a 401k is somewhat of an Exception
The key to a company or government sponsored savings plan is that most will give you a matching contribution for money that you set aside before you pay income taxes.  A 401k or 403b investment account gives you two financial benefits in one package: free money and a lower tax amount (and possibly lower tax rate!).  Always, ALWAYS, contribute to a 401k type plan at least the minimum required to receive your employer's full investment match.  If you have additional funds available to save, strongly consider increasing your 401k contribution up to the pre-tax maximum before investing in other places.  There are worse strategies than maximizing your tax benefit, but bear in mind that you are only as diverse as your 401k options should you choose to do this.

Why does a Roth IRA make me think of Van Halen's golden years?
If and when you do decide to diversify your types of investment, a strong candidate for additional investment is a Roth IRA.  The concept of the Roth is basically the opposite of a 401k account - instead of delaying tax until the point when you withdraw from the account, a Roth is taxed when deposited while it is untaxed on withdrawal.  This means that a Roth account does not get taxed on any of the interest that you earn over the life of the account.  If that life is...say 30 years, you can have a substantial amount of investment growth that is tax free.  

The drawbacks to a Roth account are that the amount you can invest is currently limited to a smaller amount than other investment accounts and because it is taxed on entry, your principle amount that will grow interest is going to be less than if you invested an equivalent amount in a tax-deferred account.  At the current taxation rate, this is somewhat a wash of which is better between a tax-deferred acount and a Roth account with a slight edge to the tax-deferred acount.  However, most financial advisors agree that there is no way we can continue on the current taxation rate for investments; it is almost guaranteed to go up in the future.  As the taxation rate increases, a Roth account will become far more attractive than other investments.

Should I "Just Say No" to Stocks?
Well, the answer is not necessarily.  Single stock picking has its own challenges, not the least of which is volatility (that's a big word for "your investment can lose value") in the market.  Typically, a single stock is going to greatly outperform a Fund, but that applies both to it's gains and losses.  If you have a stock that you OMG, MUST BUY, go ahead and do it, but consider it to be the same or worse than your riskiest fund picks in the rest of your portfolio.  I'd urge you to consider not making stocks your full portfolio, of course.

When picking stocks, choosing stocks that have consistently paid dividends should be strongly considered.  Dividends will give you investment money (which you can either withdraw to spend or re-invest) without decreasing the number of shares you have purchased.  Because share quantity is as important if not more so than share value, keeping your quantity of shares stagnant while increasing your investment value will be of great benefit to you.  This becomes even more of a positive factor in a retirement scenario.

Allocation
The very first time you setup an investment portfolio, you will want to diversify the type of investments you make to protect yourself from negative impacts.  These could include decline in dollar value, increased cost due to regulatory issues, market changes, recessions, etc.  If you have all of your money in real estate funds when something happens like a sub-prime mortgage collapse, your investments will feel the full negative impact of the losses realized by those funds.  If you were only invested in government bonds at the time, you may not take heavy housing losses, but you aren't exactly burning down the bars with great interest returns.

The key is to put yourself into enough risky situations for your tolerance level without exposing yourself consistently to the same type(s) of risk.  If you want some oft-ignored areas to include in your risk portfolio, consider Gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs), international ETFs, global allocation, small-caps (target companies with low capitalization - 250M to 1B), and at the time of this post, large-cap equity funds (since they've tanked for so long, the odds of their value increasing in the future is great).

Re-allocation
One of the worst things you can do with your investments is to leave them alone.  Untouched, your worst investments will continue to not make as much money as you'd want (or even lose money) while your best investments will grow more than your other investments and change your market exposure.  After a period of time in this mode, you will become heavily leveraged only in your best investment areas.  Should the market change or new negative impacts come up, the impact to a heavily leveraged account could be very costly.  

By rebalancing the allocation back to your original plan for your risk tolerances, you will lock-in profits gained in overperforming accounts and increase your share value in underperforming accounts.  At the same time, you will experience no greater risk than what you signed up for in the first place.  Bear in mind that your risk tolerances should also change while you get closer to retirement, and therefore rebalancing will be a good way for you to evaluate how much risk you want as you go through your career.

Try to rebalance your allocation at least once a year, but no more than quarterly.

What else is there?
Well, the more I go through writing these, the more things I find I want to talk about...things like Paying It Black, Emergency Funds, and how to lower insurance premiums.  I have missed just putting up simple mundane posts, though.  I rather felt like I needed to get all of this out of my head before I talked about the latest Meganisms I've enjoyed.  From here forward I'll probably intersperse normal life posts and posts with the MMMC header (and money tag) for anyone that might want to follow or track this.  Thanks if you found any of this useful, and ask questions if you have any.  I don't have all the answers but I do so love to talk.

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Date: 2008-01-22 13:38 Subject: Money Management for the Middle Class: Insurance Planning Security: Public Tags: money

I know insurance is very important for a middle class family, but personally I’ve never really liked having to own it for the simple reason that it is a loser’s game.  That is, in order to make your money off insurance, things have to go wrong (and in some cases, very wrong).  Would Lissa rather have me beside her or a million bucks?  See, not a fun choice.

 

Despite its dark and morbid nature, insurance does have its uses when planned for and applied correctly.  There are a lot of different types of places where insurance can apply, but the most common types of insurance people experience are medical, life, disability, and AD&D (accidental death and dismemberment – woo, what a title!).  Do you need them all?  Well, just remember that insurance is setup as a fallback security.  So you need to couch everything in this post with your own risk behaviors and tolerances.  Smokers, sky-divers, and drag racers all need more insurance than your average desk jockey – granted they will also have to pay more for it.

 

At some point in time, your employer communicated to you just what, and how much, they offer as insurance benefits.  Factor this amount into how much insurance of each type you should purchase.  If your company provides $100,000 of insurance and your spouse would need $190,000 of supplementary income were you to die today, you need to buy $90,000 in life insurance.  If the cost of supporting you and supplementing your income would be $250,000 if you were to become disabled, and your company provides $150,000, you would need $100,000 in disability insurance.

 

I guess I should stop and say another important rule to remember about insurance.  Insurance companies are, by and large, in the business of making profit.  Note that this does not at all go well with handing over lots of money to you.  You will either be paying out the nose for it upfront, or in some cases - particularly on the medical side - they will delay or resist payment.  None of this makes insurance any less necessary, but it’s a fact to bear in mind.

 

MEDICAL

There’s not much to say here about medical insurance.  There are very few applications of medical insurance that can be considered a future investment other than medical savings accounts (MSA) and health savings accounts (HSA).  My understanding of MSAs is that they are being phased out into HSAs, and since they weren’t very common in the first place, I’ll take license to assume no one that will ever read this has one or wants advice about one.  The way an HSA works is that you have two pieces to your insurance: a savings account portion that accrues tax-free interest and a high deductible net to keep your medical expenses from hitting an excessive amount (say, $2,000 or $4,000).  If you are young, do not have a family history of sickness, and find yourself to be reasonably healthy each year, I recommend you considering an HSA as your medical insurance choice if it is available to you.  The key to success is to build your savings portion sufficiently in the early years to cover your costs with interest in the later years when you will need more medical care.  This is not necessarily a good plan to have with kids, but it is possible to be successful with it.

 

Outside of the savings account options, I think it’s important to stress having some kind of medical insurance.  Middle class families are typically not rich enough to support all of their medical costs alone, and can be bankrupted by unexpected or serious conditions.  I disagree with a lot of the way the insurance industry with medicine has gone, but I also don’t want to see someone lose everything because they need chemo treatments or develop a serious food allergy.  Coverage with an employer is the best way to go, but if you are self-employed (or your employer does not provide coverage) look closely at becoming self-insured.

 

DISABILITY AND AD&D

These two types of insurance are more commonly provided by a corporation than owned by an individual.  The key to remember with both disability and AD&D insurance is that the key to need is risk.  If your career and lifestyle are low risk, the need for these types of insurance goes down dramatically.  You don’t necessarily need to own them, and more often than not I steer away from saying anything about them.  Of course, as your risk increases your cost to purchase also is likely to go up.  In short, if you truly need to buy either of these, they probably aren’t going to be cheap.  If it is cheap, you may want to re-evaluate your risk tolerance.

 

LIFE

The ultimate of the loser’s game: you win the lottery as soon as you can’t spend it anymore!  However, as you grow your family, the people that are left behind will have greater loss than the already devastating loss of your presence in their lives.  You must consider your debts, unrealized retirement investments, paying for college, weddings, cars, homes, and any other expenses you had or were soon to realize when evaluating just how much life insurance to purchase.  Consider life insurance as a ripcord for your loved ones to subsidize your lost income, and consider it only as that.  Your money is better invested in “living” sources than it is in insurance for your death.  While it might be great to say you’ve got a million dollar Term plan, for example, if your need is $200,000 you will be overpaying for your insurance each payment.  If your plan is to make your loved ones richer than they currently are by your death, you may want to evaluate your outlook on life (and perhaps consider therapy – don’t be so in love with death that you want to make it an enterprising opportunity).

 

There are three main types of life insurance: Term, Whole, and Variable.  Term Life is set for a fixed period of time of contribution to insure that at any time during that contribution period (or other, pre-set period) a payout will be guaranteed.  At the end of the period of time, both parties walk away from the agreement; if you haven’t died by the end of the Term, they keep the money and congratulations, you’re still alive.  Whole life is exactly like term in its contribution period, but the contribution amounts will be much greater.  At the end of the contribution period, a whole life plan will then make an annuity-like periodic contribution back to you.  In most cases, Whole Life covers a payout for an extended period of time after contribution.  Typically, your contribution amount for Whole Life does not increase over time like the other two life insurance types.  Variable insurance has a Term Life period and an after-contribution payout like Whole Life but at a cost somewhere in between the two.  It’s somewhat of a hybrid of the two other types of insurance.  HOWEVER, variable insurance requires that the purchaser (that’s you) manage an investment account to grow the final payout amount.  Variable insurance also gets more expensive as you age, which will probably have an impact on your final investment account dollars.

 

If your savings in other places (investments, 401k, and savings account) are already significant, and you can afford it, consider purchasing Whole Life insurance as a supplementary retirement account.  Most likely, you cannot afford Whole Life and make significant investments as a member of the middle class.  Most insurance advisors recommend against purchasing Variable insurance.  The cost is somewhat significant and all of the risk of gaining a financial payout at the end is on the purchaser.  So basically, purchase Whole Life if you can afford it and are already fat with investments, purchase Term Life otherwise.

Like disability and AD&D, many companies will also provide optional supplementary insurance.  Before purchasing an independent insurance plan, evaluate whether your needs would be met through this supplementary insurance.  Typically, rates will be significantly lower through your employer than privately AND many times your deduction from your pay for supplementary insurance will be pre-tax.  However, most employers do not supply Whole or Variable life options – only Term.  If your plan is to purchase Whole Life, you will probably have to do this on your own.

Insurance for Your Kids

You should not buy life insurance for your children.  If you are looking at this issue from the perspective of  income subsidy, you have to ask if your children are bringing income into your family.  If the answer is yes, the odds that you are actually middle class are low and this post probably does not apply (and you will need a different sort of help on financial planning).  Since we’ll assume the answer is no, what is it you are doing when you buy children’s life insurance?  Too often I hear that people do it because the cost is low and they buy an add-on investment package (through a children’s Whole or Variable plan) to a term plan.  Cheap is not a good answer for whether or not it’s unnecessary.  The reason it is cheap is because the risk of a child dying is incredibly low, and therefore an insurance company rarely has to pay out.  As for an investment, there are many ways you could be better investing your money for your children.  Not the least of which would be a Roth IRA.  Honestly, I don’t have any other way to put this – is $10k or $20k really going to make you feel any better if you did lose your child?  Are you going to miss the hundreds of dollars you spent on insurance when the child moves out of the term life phase still living?  If you really take the time to think about these questions you'll probably see the ansewr is just don’t buy it.

 

What’s next?

So as you go through the process of making your financial plan, you will hopefully have figured out your income and cost of living, and now the amount of money you will spend to secure your finances from problems and/or catastrophes.  The next step is to look at Investment Planning.  I need to think about how much I want to say about company plans and social security, so I may break it up into two posts.  I guess I’ll see as I get there.

 

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Date: 2008-01-14 17:10 Subject: Money Management for the Middle Class, part 1 Security: Public Tags: money

I've been putting this series of posts I've had about managing personal finances on the backburner for at least six months now, in no small part related to my efforts to find a new place of employment instead.  Well, since I just got my latest rejection letter, I figured I would go ahead and get started on writing them down.  The first thing I discovered in writing this post is that putting down the minute details of building a financial plan would hands-down be the most boring thing I ever put in my journal.  So, after a major post overhaul, this is mostly just a few tidbits that are important to consider.

So, I'm guessing that most people think of preparing a budget when, or even if, they decide to go about managing their money.  Unfortunately, there's really so much more that should go into a financial plan than simply how much money you will spend in the next year.  Alas, I'm jumping about; I guess the first thing we should talk about is “Why make a financial plan?”  Well, there are many reasons, but the best one is that making a plan gives you the knowledge of where your money is now, where your money will be in the future, and along the way between now and death (or retirement) what income or expenses you will have that you need to account for.  At the end of the day, it is a useful tool for evaluating the financial decisions you are making today and how they will impact you over the course of your lifetime.

How to Create a Financial Plan
Well, the stupidly easy answer is that you don't do it yourself.  You can, and I am really going to stress the word can here, go to one of two types of financial consultants to get it.  The first type of consultant wants you to pay them a large sum of money now, perhaps a few thousand dollars, but will supposedly give you impartial advice on your finances.  The second type of consultant performs a financial plan for free, but will try to hook you into using them for any financial purchases you will need to make based on the outcome of your financial plan.  The argument typically made, and expect it if you use a "free service" is, "Well, you're going to have to get those services from someone, so why not the person that helped you?"

There should probably be tons of disclaimers about good and bad financial advisers and which of the above professional services is better.  If you want to create a financial plan on your own we need to assume a few things here: you are reasonably good at excel, you have the ability to pull together a year's worth of expenses, payroll stubs, and current balances for investments, life insurance, and other assets, and you have a general sense of accounting or know how to build a budget. 

Ultimately, the financial plan is going to be looking at the goal of getting to retirement in the black (cash positive) and then some, and predicting the amount of money you need to live off of for the period you think you will survive after retirement.  Grim but true, the accuracy of your plan is directly related to your accuracy in predicting the age of your death and the age at which you would like to stop working.  If you are unsure of your family's history or your career path, good places to start are Age 65 for retirement and Age 85 (90 if you are Female) for death.

Now you, or your financial advisor will layout a map of all your annual incomes and debts from your current age to that magic retirement age you determine. 

Things to Keep in Mind

- One of the major pitfalls you may run into, and financial advisers will likely overlook or gloss over is that most people find their wages are capped close to retirement.  Since a lot of the time retirement costs are based off the last few years of employment, escalating during this period can force you to think you need to save more than you actually need.  A conservative assumption would be to assume all salary gains after age 55 are capped.  A more general approach would be to assume it is capped at age 60.  Other professions also have wage caps – such as an hourly worker hitting their maximum hourly wage – so be sure these are accounted for in your timeline.

- You have to be careful that you also don’t over-escalate investment contributions from your 401k.  Currently, the contribution maximum is $15,500 per year for 2008 unless you are over fifty years old (in which case you may take an additional $5,000 catch-up).  The government has been steadily increasing this amount year to year, but it is entirely possible, and probable, that you will hit this investment cap for your tax-free savings in the tail end of your career.  Failure to observe the cap could give you a false sense of how much tax-free savings you can make near retirement.  I couch that by saying that hopefully during your last few years of working your savings will not hinge on tax-free 401k contributions.  There are similar investment limits for a Roth IRA; however, these are after-tax investments.

- Most other after-tax investments allow unlimited contributions.

- You also want to factor in inflation in your earnings and expenditures.  Inflation will increase your cost of living by somewhere between 3-5% each year.  If you are getting help from a planner and they are recommending a number outside this range or near the border, be advised that they are likely too risk-prone (<3%) or too risk-adverse (>5%).

- You may want to think about how you could change your spending to create annual surpluses.  It is very critical to financial planning (and really, your financial future) that you have an annual surplus from your current wages in and your current expenses.  If you are already overspending your budget on an annual basis, it is imperative that you get your finances under control.  This will lead you down a path where you cannot gain financial independence, and you will quickly lose the ability to retain your assets.

Your Financial Map

So now you have a financial map, which looks like maybe just a few dozen columns and rows of financial data.  What is it that you do with that?  I’ll start with Insurance Planning and how that affects your financial plan in Part 2.

 

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Date: 2008-01-03 11:02 Subject: Time, Stand Still Security: Public

Job
I don't tend to talk about the current job so much, certainly not in unfriended posts...but since I don't write many posts that are friend's only anymore this will be somewhat different.  First of all, the company CEO is - eh, how to put this gracefully? - vengeful and litigious, so I'll try to stick as factual here as I can.

There are better than good rumors that the company has overextended and overleveraged its assets and resources.  The company did not go public in the past year and no private investments were made.  At this point, there is an extreme cash flow problem, and the company has been looking for ways to slow cash from flooding out the doors.  I keep wanting to draw out the explanation, but the basic situation is I show up as a cost on the balance sheet that cannot be directly charged to any customer.  It's not a matter of if my head will be chopped, but rather when they will do it.  Rumors are merely that, but increasingly they point to my time in terms of weeks, perhaps days, not months.

My search for the next opportunity has taken too long, but hopefully my winged escape will still come in the nick of time.

Getting old?
In just about one month I will be leaving my twenties and becoming a thirty year old.  It's funny that most of the time I just laugh it off as a milestone, just an age...no, I'm not all that different than I was yesterday.  Sometimes though, when I'm driving home from work or still up in the middle of the night, the thought of turning thirty bothers me for no reason I can point to.  It just feels like a general sense of unease, but it's not something I can resolve just by pointing at it and reassuring myself.  In fact, I think I'm bothered even more by the fact that it's always lingering out there in the back of my thoughts than I am by the fact that I'm growing old.  Please come and go, 30, so that I can stop thinking about you and go back to feeling settled, stable, and young.

Christmas is about Presents!
Well, maybe not really, but this post is about presents.  There is nothing like seeing your daughter open a gift to find a box of dress-up clothes from her Grandpa AND having her scream out to the room, "It's just what I wanted!"  Similarly, Emily received a riding winnie-the-pooh train that has been a huge hit for her and every little one that has come to the house.  She likes to have Megan climb aboard and then push her around the house on it.  Or vice-versa.  We may have to teach the kids driving lessons sooner rather later to avoid any further chaotic collisions around the house.  Megan and Emily picked out sock-like slippers for Lissa's gift from them.  They were very adamant that, Oh my god, Mommy MUST have these, and I've been just tickled watching Lissa put them on.  Oh, and even Megan has tried them on a few times just to see how cool they are.  Pretty simple thing, and I'm not even sure Lis knew she needed them, but it's been fun to watch how big a deal it is for the kids.

As far as loot goes for us, we kept it pretty simple up until the day after Christmas, when we purchased a nice high-def TV and a playstation 3 and Rock Band.  So far, I have to say that, yes, with component or HDMI cables I can really tell the picture difference on that TV - it is stunningly different from coax or composite.  Two, I love being able to watch HD basic channels on tv, though I wish we got HD for the sporting channels since we get them in our basic service package.  Three, while Rock the 80's and/or GH II may have been my favorite music game to date, Rock Band easily eclipses them all by a wide margin.  Let's see, I get to play with a group of people in a band, I like the songs more, there are tons of songs to download, for the most part there aren't a bunch of stupid who-cares solos, and if I get tired of the guitar I can play the drums or sing (but trust me and be thankful, so far have only attempted Here It Goes Again).  I thought the drums were going to make that game, and I was right mostly, but there's so much more to this game that has me enjoying it more than the Guitar Hero series.

Oh yeah, Ratchet and Clank Future is great, too.  Just maybe, in the shadow.  That one does feel like you are interactively watching a Pixar movie, though.  The other oh yeah is, jeez, I wish I'd known the day after Christmas that job collapse was so imminent.  It wasn't until yesterday that I got more confirmation.

I hope everyone else had great holidays and as much fun with their gifts.  Not so much a resolution, but this year I want to post more so that large gaps, like the six week variety, don't leave holes in my journal of what was going on and why.  A few more mundane entries might be a good thing....not so much with the "oh my god, this happened!" and "oh my god, that happened!"  Happy New Year.

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Date: 2007-12-12 10:35 Subject: Drug-induced post? Security: Public

I mean, if you can call 20oz of coca-cola (oh how I wanted to just type "coke") and two sudafed a drug induced post.  It probably doesn't help that I'm a little spacey from a head cold anyway.  So I figured that this has got to be the best time to post!  It's got all of the benefits of seeing a crazy drunken post, and yet none of the drunken booty call hangover.  At least, I hope so.

The House
So...where to start on houses?  The one we were going to buy we didn't buy, and there's fun language in the contract we signed about the builder basically having unlimited means to sue and screw us - even talking about them negatively can get us in hot water (and oh gods of the internet, notice I'm not using anyone's name here?).  The money we'd invested has been kept and used as part of the threats against us...while it's survivable without, it was on the order of thousands.  Last we know the builder sold the house we were building to another family despite their threats that the house was unmarketable because of our changes to their design.  Technically, that breaks our contract, but...I'm just kind of hanging out at the moment in case they get a wild hair to pursue legal action.

The OTHER House...or The NEW New House 
It's very nice to be in the 180 degrees different new house.  Which is bigger, is closer to work/school/friends/family, has an extra bedroom, and has an infinitely better layout.  Lissa has already blogged about it a bit herself, but the short story is that we had total chaos moving in there with a nice GE dishwasher disaster that initially wiped out the use of our kitchen.  It's all fixed now, but that was a good month-and-a-half delay on all of our unpacking.

Why I shouldn't be allowed to sing Xmas songs
I seem to have developed this problem where I'll start changing the words to christmas songs as I sing them.  That tends to create such gems as:

Last Christmas, I gave you fine art
but the very next day you sold it away
this year to save me from tears,
I'll sell it myself on eBay.

or, So this is X-com, and what have you done?
Another turn's over, and the Aliens' has begun.
And as very hairy plasma rains down from above,
Let's hope you brought psi amps for mind control love.

or, Oh there's no fae like gnomes for the holidays.
For no matter how far away they roam,
If you want to be happy for a million miles
for the marching song you can't beat ol' Hi-ho.

And oh yeah, Fantasy Football
Well, I can pretty much blame my multiple week absence on Fantasy football.  Again.  I think I've got this thing figured out now.  I spend so much time each week writing about fantasy football in the league message board, when I could just as easily tweaked a few posts and just double posted them here.  I mean, I don't think anyone on this friend's list really wants to read much about fantasy football, but most of my posts have less to do with fantasy football and more to do with making me laugh.  So next year I think I'll quit with the more egotistical predictions posts (that wouldn't make as much sense to the casual reader) and more reaction stuff where I can really throw in some jokes.  That way I can just double post, save some time, and not appear to completely disappear for a while.  Plus, if I need to throw in important information...oh, say like the crazy house stuff, it's not too hard to throw it in on the end of a line.  We'll see how that goes.  Oh, and one more song bastardized, since it was my favorite re-write of the season while I had Steve Smith of the Carolina Panthers on my roster:

Ain't no touchdowns when he's gone.  It's not warm when Jake's away. Ain't no touchdowns when he's gone, and he's always gone too long , when they say it's just a sprain.  Wonder this time where Carr's thrown.  Wonder if he throws to King?  Ain't no touchdowns when Jake's gone, and he's always gone too long any time he goes away.

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Date: 2007-10-24 16:49 Subject: Coddleston Pie Security: Public Mood: Interested Music: Aaliyah - Try Again

I thought the concept was too good to not steal this meme.  I'll even go so far as to add a twist - I'll gladly answer anonymous comments provided you leave an email address or other reasonable means to get a response back to you.  Is that not anonymous?  Go get an Ima Pseudonym gmail account.

One question...
One chance...
One honest answer...
That's all you get...

Ask me one question.
Any one question, anything,
No matter how crazy it is.
An honest answer.

No catch.

Except one: All comments will be screened so your question stays private between you and me, and only you will get to see my answer to your question.

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Date: 2007-09-25 07:14 Subject: Just once in a very blue moon Security: Public

 I'd made a pact with the Lj section of my brain that I would hold off on posting anything negative or doom and gloom in the near future, and so far I've been very successful at not going into any details about things I might otherwise be contractually obligated not to talk about (seriously, but it's got a finite window, so I'll tell you at some point).

On the other hand, it seems like the busy switch has been set to high most recently, again partly due to stuff I can't talk about - and also the kids and life in general, so it's not like I've been posting about anything fun the last few weeks, either.  There have been some great things recently.  In no particular order:

1.  Megan had her birthday party in a world full of inflatable bounce houses.  22 children under the age of 5, most under the age of 3.  Her class at school still hasn't stopped talking about it.
2. Fantasy football 2007.  The bad news is my team is losing.  The good news is that my smack talk is at an all-time high.
3. Heroes season 1 on DVD.  The only possible downside to watching the whole first season in such quick succession is that last night Lissa and I both wanted to skip commercials and then couldn't get the next episode to start after 2.1 ended.  Well, also a little lack of sleep, but I'll take it.
4. Groomsman duties.  One of my best friends, horror24fps, will be getting married on Saturday, and I will get the honor of standing with him at the ceremony.  I don't have a lot of time for words this morning and it kills me, because being a groomsman in his wedding is something I've really looked forward to for say the last thirteen or fourteen years.
5. Something else I really can't tell you about until later this week, though I consider it to be very big news.

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Date: 2007-09-04 01:12 Subject: Oh, what a night Security: Public

Yikes, this is not the kind of night we needed tonight.  Megan threw up about an hour ago, and Emily has been threatening to do the same for the past half hour.  I think it's safe to say there cousin that's been sick the last few days is still contagious.

I don't think I ever realized how hard the parenting gig could be before I signed up for it.  Trying to care for Megan and Emily tonight has often given me a surprisingly helpless feeling.  Right now with weak stomachs there's not a lot I can do for the pain and discomfort, so it's mostly just emotional cheerleading to let them know that it won't last and they'll feel better soon.

I wish I could give them more, and I really wish they didn't feel so bad.  Here's hoping they feel better in the morning.

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Date: 2007-07-30 20:29 Subject: Long Hiatus Security: Public Mood: disappointed Music: Fuel - Bad Day

Gah, my computer just reset itself when I hit the post button - blue screens of death do not give me a warm cozy feeling.

I'll sum up what I wrote so eloquently before:

Been working long, late hours.  Pretty much straight for two months and it's been wearing me out.  Well, today they closed up shop on my division and moved me to another division.  Not sure if I'm relieved or sad.  It sure was a lot of effort that got us nothing, though.

The dream house is in full-on nightmare mode.  There's a chance we'll have to sue, and suffice to say the house you saw in the past is not the one we'll be buying.

Took a week vacation recently.  Boy, I'd forgotten how nice those could be.

Sorry I haven't been writing, reading, or commenting much.  Now that the game's changed at work I wonder if that will change as well.

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Date: 2007-06-23 08:13 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

Work is really taking its toll on me right now, with at least 1 to 3 major projects per week through mid-august.  There's been a lot to say but no time.  Lots of stress, not a lot of sleep to boot.

We've had some trouble with the construction of the house, and there's a chance that the contract may fall through.

E turned one year old.  There are great pictures, but they haven't hit the flickr account yet.  It's high on the to-do though.  Interestingly, she's not a cake smashmouth baby - very daintily ate her cake in fact.  This is not M's clone.

My parents are selling their house.  Since they've owned it since I was 9, this has the strange feeling of losing part of my childhood.  Luckily for pi216 they are only moving a block away (I'm not saying that they didn't say "There goes the neighborhood!" when you moved in, though *wink*).

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Date: 2007-05-10 10:07 Subject: Current status of the house Security: Public

This is what the new house looks like so far.

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Date: 2007-05-09 10:30 Subject: Rugrat Attack Security: Public

I haven't updated on how the girls have been doing recently, but a few things have stuck out over the last few weeks that I'd be neglectful not to mention.

First of all, Megan is now singing "I like to move it move it!" at totally random moments pretty much every day now.  I'd like to blame Reel to Real for this...well, for it ever being made, that is....but I'm not sure who to blame for where this came from.  My force-powers in the Google tell me that it was part of the movie Madagascar, so I'm wondering if she watched this at school one day.  Cuz we don't own that movie.

The teachers at school have now named Megan "Little Einstein" and Emily as "Baby Einstein."  I mean, the teachers that we don't even know.  Periodically random people come up to me in the morning and tell me about long conversations they have with Megan.  Emily is content not to be walking yet, but she's saying a few words (Hi!, Bye-bye!, I love you!, Dizz! [er, the dog's name], Da-da!, and every once in a while, Ma!....all said with great inflection).  She also has a certain unbreakable determination once she sets her mind on something.  We've quickly discovered that moving toys out of sight or into cabinets does not even begin to stop her.  As Lis commented just this morning, "Daddy, do you think a simple cabinet door is going to stop me?"  I better get myself up to speed.

It's also nice to see the girls starting to interact more as they are getting older.  Last night Megan and Emily had a pony ride on Megan's purple elephant (What? You think I'm going to start making stuff up now??) while Megan sang her riding song and Emily bounced.  Emily was falling off the back of the elephant so Megan told her to get in front, and then put her arms around Emily's tummy and head on her shoulder so that E wouldn't fall off.  Too cute.  I am dead from the cuteness.  Megan will also sing to Emily now if Emily gets upset to try and cheer her up.  It may not be in tune, but I rarely hear Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star sung with such heart and determination.

I'll try to bask in the glory days of them getting along now so that the memory will be fresh down the road when the two of them try to kill each other.  Teenage years, I cannot wait for thee.

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Date: 2007-05-07 14:53 Subject: It looks like Monday but still feels like Sunday Security: Public

We've Moved!
Now that project:Move-into-Rental is complete, we will soon be issuing change of address cards for our temporary location.  It appears that construction on our new house is finally starting to come together, but as yet all we have to show for it is a grid of trenches full of concrete.  Supposedly it will take 120-150 days before our dream house will be in place.  That puts an estimated date of feeling settled again being somewhere around Christmas.  Contingent on figuring out how to post pictures in this supposedly newer, easier format, I will try to show you the action as it goes along.

Feeling Faint...
I had a follow-up appointment with the cardiologist to make sure that Yes, Absolutely, Positively, I do not have Marfan's.  A doctor will be double-checking the scan results of my echo-cardiogram, but it looks like I'm in the clear.  Allow me to take a big Megan-and-Emily-sized sigh of relief.

However, did I mention this whole fear of needles thing?  Okay, that's probably not exactly right, because I don't really mind needles.  I can watch needles inject things until the end of time.  I really have a problem with drawing of blood, and not the type with crayon or paintbrush.  So, a Wyrr walks into an injection room...stop me if you've heard this one...sits down and within 10 minutes is swooning.  I'd credit it to my wife, but, erm, sorry honey....she swooned too.  Right there in a small 6 x 8 shot room we have Mr. and Mrs. W laid out with three or maybe four nurses checking on us.  I can't speak for Lis, but I think I went wrong after about the first 20 seconds of she-who-calls-herself-a-lab-nurse digging for the vein in my hand.  Yuck.  I've definitely learned a lesson here, though.

And that lesson is, never, ever, let anyone take blood from my body.  I'm just fine keeping it, thank you.

A Striking Resemblance....or.....how to ruin the acronym MILF
We're pretty sure the echo-tech mistook Lissa for my Mom.  She was getting confused about whether some of the conditional indicators were mine or my fathers and then asked if I was the youngest child.  I've been hoping Lissa will think of this as a compliment - clearly the woman believed she was my father's trophy wife.  If nothing else, this is the ever-present reminder that you never make assumptions about relationship, pregnancy, or political party affiliation.  It's just two years difference, people!

Screw You, BOA!
My money is free from the tyranny that is inherent in the system!  Or, eh, technically it soon will be.  Bank of America, you have officially lost my business for, well, forever.  I don't know how many times and how many ways to tell you that your mortgage offer sucks in comparison to just about everyone I've looked at, and the fact that you hold my large sum deposits for 15 days has finally done it.  I can get free checking and online billpay anywhere.  Between you and Wachovia, I'm convinced the banking industry secretly hates having customers (ah, if only people could just be sweet blessed cash).

What did Wachovia do?  Oh, there was just this one time, still unforgiven, when I was told to leave and never do a teller transaction because I have an ATM card.  Seriously, the Teller said to me, and I will never forget, "I don't want to see your face in this place ever again."  Well, I got the leave and never do teller transactions part right....at least with Wachovia.  Jerks.

Next bank in the queue is USAA.  They seem friendly, like they actually care about me with my money, not just my money.  They now reimburse ATM fees, too, so I don't have to worry about driving all over town for the once in a blue moon times I need cash.  Sweet.  Oh, and they have interest on checking as well as currently 5.25% on savings.  I think I'm home.

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