Blog Master G

On Saturday Jordan recommended that I read a book called The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. I picked it up on Sunday and finished reading it yesterday. It’s a really good and motivating quick read that I’d strongly recommend everyone should read — especially those of us in our twenties and thirties.

The book covers a lot of material and principles that I already know and live, but it really drives home some basic points that are tried and true and can literally make you a millionaire over the course of your working life (and can even lead to an early retirement if you’re aggressive with how much you save). Those concepts are simple:

• Automate everything
• Pay yourself first

It’s all about automating the flow of your money so you don’t have to think about it. In fact, Bach even encourages that you throw away your budget after your system is in place. I think he’s right. Once you’re investing enough (10 to 20 percent of your gross income, depending on how much wealth you wish to accumulate and how soon you want to retire) and have built up your “rainy day” or emergency fund (rule of thumb is three months’ expenses; start saving 5 percent of your net if you need to build one), then what’s left over is the money you use to live on (you can even automate paying all your bills). It’s simple but it makes sense. If you don’t see the money — if it’s building up in an investment that’s earning you money — then you don’t have to think about it.

The other basic concept — paying yourself first — is great. Calculate how much you earn on an hourly basis and how many hours you worked last week. Then figure out how much you invested or saved for yourself as a measurement of hours in your working week. If you worked 40 hours last week, how many hours did you work for you?

Please do yourself a favor and buy The Automatic Millionaire. Then act on it. It really is that simple.

If anything should put things into perspective, it should be the multi-continent tsunami that has struck 11 countries in Southeast Asia and even part of Africa. The death toll has risen to 40,000 and the situation doesn’t seem to be improving. Just let that sink in for a moment: 40,000 people killed.

That’s bigger than the population of my town. That’s more than 10 times the number of people killed on September 11. It’s the bigggest devestation the world has seen in more than 120 years. That’s staggering.

40,000 confirmed dead in tidal waves; Aid groups begin historic relief efforts:

The death toll from the epic tsunami that rocked 11 countries rose to 40,000 people Tuesday, and food and supplies poured into the region, part of what the U.N. said would be the biggest relief effort the world has ever seen. Millions remained homeless.

Rescuers struggled to reach remote locations where thousands more were likely killed by the deadliest tsunami in 120 years. Bodies, many of them children, filled beaches and choked hospital morgues, raising fears of disease across the region.

My heart and my wallet go out to the thousands of people affected by this tragedy.

Soft, light, fluffy. Not too cold. Not too wet.

The perfect snow fell over night and continues to come down this morning. There’s nothing that energizes me more or gets me out of the bed with such enthusiasm like a good snow. Perfect skiing snow. Perfect stand outside and stare up to the heavens while it coats your person snow. Perfect put on your boots and run around snow. Perfect snowman building snow.

I love this stuff.

If you haven’t noticed, there’s some good discussion going on in my Buh-Bye, MBNA post. Someone who calls herself Kalora started the debate by slinging insults my way (telling me “get a clue” and to “grow up”) because she seems to think that my eyes are not “wide open,” like hers apparently are. I shot back with this, to which she replied by quoting her husband, who thinks I am a “pinko Commie Neo Clintonite.” Awesome.

Then she started speaking in code, I think, in writing this: “PPS IOW U B A ‘TARD. Here’s your sign.” Anyone know what that means?

In my latest response, I’ve broadened the playing field, citing many of the battles I choose to fight in support of causes I support. Your move, Kalora.

[ Mark Morford: Amazon.com Is For Republicans / Attention, liberal shoppers! Next year, screw those GOP-supportin’ companies, and try buying blue ]

Not too long ago I read a book called The Millionaire Next Door. It really struck home with a number of chords, and among the many lessons learned, one was to constantly monitor your budget and track where every penny goes. Outflow is equally, if not more so, important than inflow. There was also mention of something called a budget calendar, which wasn’t something I ever had before, but whose concept intrigued me. Sure, I’ve long had a monthly budget, that generic spreadsheet that outlines and estimates bills and expenses, but never before last weekend did I really take the time to develop a predictive calendar based on standard inflows and outflows.

The thing that’s nice about my new budget calendar is that it doesn’t contain any of the clutter from Quicken; it’s only the accounts that Jen and I use for spending on bills, mortgage, gas, groceries, etc. It allows us to look ahead to any point this month or all of 2005 and see how much money we would have without any of the variable expenses. That’s right — it deliberately only includes forward-looking fixed expenses (utilities, TV, mortgage, insurance) and not the variable expenses so that we can better control outflows.

With this project also came the realization that we haven’t really been very good about using the money market account linked to our checking account for its intended purpose: savings and emergency fund (it’s been more of a fall-back checking account and an excuse to make purchases that we don’t necessarily need to make). So I hit The Fool and started to see a trend: Everyone had an e-fund with ING Direct. And now we do, too.

What’s nice about the ING Orange Savings account is that it’s not really a bank account or even a money market account in the traditional sense. It’s linked to up to three of your checking accounts, so you electronically transfer money in and out. Many Fools use it as a way to move money between accounts without the need for the post office or leaving the comfort of home. I plan to do the same.

But here’s the key: 2.25% interest rate (far better than just about any savings or money market account out there). And it’s an account that’s truly separate from your active checking account (except for the electronic link, of course). You can even create ING Direct “sub-accounts” to separate your funds for various purposes (e-fund, travel fund, home repair fund, etc.), which I think is great.

So, if you’ve read this far, now you get to reap the benefits if you open your own ING Orange Savings account: $50 free. And that’s with only a $1 minimum initial deposit, no monthly fees, no catch. Just use this link to open your account. The only incentive I have in sharing this link is knowing that I’m doing my part in spreading financial freedom and encouraging savings over spending. (There is a referral program, but you’d have to contact me directly for that, and you’d only get $25 while I’d get $10, so I won’t be offended if you opt for the $50 sign-up bonus. That’s what I did.)

Happy holidays! Don’t buy into the commercialism of the season. Save often and spend sparingly. Your future self will thank you.

Update (1.13.2005): The above link to get the $50 from ING appears to have been shut down. But you can still get $25 free if you contact me with your first name, last name, and email address (I can refer you).

(Thanks, Jen, for the photo.)

Dear California Friends: Aren’t you jealous that you don’t get to partake in the ass-cold Northeast winters like I now do? My treemometer reads 8 degrees this morning and the Weather Channel tells me it’s -1 degree (maybe my treemometer froze?) and feels like -26 degrees. That’s right, my friends: Feels like minus twenty-six degrees after wind chill.

Last week I wrote about how 20 degrees is significantly colder than 40. Let’s just say that this morning is a hell of a lot colder than that. And my hands, snug inside my big ski gloves, still got cold while walking the dogs. It may soon be time to bust out the inner Goretex glove liners. It makes this post, wherein I wrote about its being a “chilly 44,” seem laughable.

This weekend was marked by the kindness of friends. Saturday Nat helped me (well, “help” is a stretch since he did all the work aside from a few cranks of the jack on my part) change my oil on the Scoob. The mileage, which I forgot to note in my obsessive ways, was around 50,300. Mobil 1 5W-30 synthetic oil 6-quart pack from BJ’s is about 24 bucks and a genuine Subaru for-turbo-cars oil filter is about 7. Requiring nearly 5 quarts of oil and 1 filter brings the do-it-yourself total to about 27 bucks, nearly 20 less than what I normally pay for a synthetic change at the shop. Thanks again, Nat!

Last night we went to Justin’s house for hours of PS2 entertainment, including classics like Britney’s Dance Beat (at which I’m strangely unbeatable), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Champions of Norrath, which Jen fondly dubbed Elfin Dressup. Having purchased the new, slim PS2 over the weekend, Justin kindly bestowed upon Jen and me his old PS2, my first “new” game system since my Super Nintendo (which, by the way, is currently hooked up in my living room). Thanks, man. You rock. (And now Jen can’t blame me when the PS2 interferes with our marriage.)

Friday night we went down to Albany to see Finding Neverland with Alex. We all agreed it was a bit too much on the sweet side, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless. I even felt a tear or two. After the movie we grabbed some drinks near Lark Street.

As many of you who read my blog know, Alan, an old friend of mine from Sacramento, has a blog that he encourages those of us with differing world views to read (recently re-branded as The California Conservative).

Though I haven’t engaged in direct dialogue as much with him lately, Jen has certainly risen to the challenge. There’s some pretty intense debate in this post (be sure to read all the comments) on everything from Scott Peterson (Alan’s support of the death penalty, though not soon enough for Peterson) to tax cuts (Alan doesn’t believe that the Bush tax cuts benefit the wealthy any more than they benefit him) to religion (as Jen points out, would Jesus really have supported the death penalty, seeing what happened to him?) to the environment (sorry, Alan, but I grew up in Sacramento, too, and you can’t determine whether a city is polluted or not by how blue the skies are).

One year ago today I wrote a pretty comprehensive blog entry about my first impressions of Saratoga Springs. I had just returned from a three-day trip to the town that’s now been my home for nearly a full year. Time really flies when you’re having fun.

Everything I wrote in that post about having a good feeling about moving here has proven true. Saratoga Springs really is an awesome town and the perfect place to live.

The past year has brought not only a plethora new friends, new jobs, time with Jen’s side of the family (all things we hoped to achieve when we relocated here), but the opportunity to reach our financial goals quicker than we had imagined (buying a house, paying off debt). And those are just the tangible things that have come with our having moved here.

San Francisco aside (and for its own, very unique reasons) — we miss terribly all our California friends and family — there’s really no place like Saratoga. We’ve had way more fun over the past year than I could have predicted. It’s a relaxing lifestyle. Not spending our days commuting in the Bay Area traffic has surely added months to our life expectancies.

All in all, life is very good. We are fortunate. I could ask for little more (aside from the ability to teleport between coasts and enough time and money to travel the world at will).

I’m flattered. Not only has Dan put me side by side with Tom Tomorrow, but he’s referred to me as “famous to (my) readers.” This is the second time I’ve been accused of such a thing in a public forum (that I know of).

I read Dan’s post today, the same day that Jonty IM’d me the following:

(10:29:13) jyamisha: ya know… i’m not one to criticize, but i’ve noticed this week that your posts to your blog aren’t there first thing in the morning like they used to….
(10:29:17) jyamisha: you’re letting me down, man
(10:29:20) jyamisha: i need my daily fix!

I also happened to come across this accusation from Alan, who calls me “author of the best liberal blog on the net.” A new tag line?

Here I’m called “an experienced consumer.” Yeah, baby.

And Megan, oh Megan. You’re often as guilty as the others in telling me how much you enjoy reading my blog.

This is starting to go to my head, Dear Readers. But please, don’t stop. I love the love.