From time to time people email me all sorts of things from news stories to questions to funny pictures to something they heard on the street (you can reach me via email, Twitter, or bargainr on AIM, I love interacting with you all on a personal basis). This morning, a friend of mine sent me a story that I thought he read off the internet. Except he didn’t, it actually happened. At first I didn’t believe him and if I didn’t know him in real life, I probably wouldn’t have posted it… you’ll see what I mean:

A manager in my group, Jim, is on the board of his local swim team. The board wanted to raise all the coaches salaries by 5% this year. Jim replied back and said, “I’m not sure if this is a good year to raise salaries. We don’t know if there will be drop off in attendance this year or if the monies made from the snack bar will be as high as in the past. I fear that people won’t have the disposable income this year.”

To which a woman responded….”Why would people be throwing out their money this year?”

(Photo: nsharper)

When I was younger, I remember fiddling around with Rubik’s Cubes and was reminded of that when Jason Kottke blogged about speedcubing with the Fridrich Method. I could never solve the Rubik’s Cube and my friends who knew one of the algorithms, of which there are more than fifty, used to brag about how they could solve it in such and such a time.

Well, none of them came close to the world record holder. Yu Makajima can solve a Rubik’s cube in 8.72 seconds when he has two hands:

The dude can solve it in 14.56 seconds when he has to do it one-handed:

The most amazing part is that there’s no rushing, no sense of panic as time elapses, just calm and collected twisting of the edges.

(Photo: farnea)

Meg Marco of The Consumerist posted this hilarious clip from Current TV where Sarah Haskins makes mockery of jewelry, jewelry advertising, and the whole concept of shiny carbon and pretty rocks in a wrapped 3 minute, 31 second robin’s eggshell blue box. Just some background, the clip is part of a recurring feature called Target Women on a show called infoMania. Target Women makes fun of something that media or marketing targets towards women. All this is hosted on Current TV, which bills itself as “the world’s leading peer-to-peer news and information network” and it has a ton of great content on it (like great smart content, not just videos of monkeys smelling their fingers and falling off trees).

I need to find myself a woolly mammoth (and a HUGE red bow) because I’m tired of jewelry face. Haha, wonderful video. (This one about Lessons for 2008 is great too)

Want to get hooked on Current? This is what got me hooked. Check out this video where Kaj Larsen and Christof Putzel go to a gun market in Mogadishu, Somalia in search of AK-47s. Yes, you read that all correctly… a gun market… in Mogadishu (site of the Black Hawk Down incident)… to buy an AK-47. If all that wasn’t insane enough, they brought a video camera. Actually, that’s not a bad idea… I should buy an AK-47 for my wife for Christmas!

As a New Yorker and a product of television in the 90’s, I got a heavy dose of Seinfeld. If you watched any television in the 90’s, chances are you saw a fair amount of it too. Whether you were a fan or not, one of the show’s many topics leeched out of TV land and into normal society – the Costanza wallet. For those who don’t know what it was, it was the receipt-packed wallet that was so full, George Costanza had to even it out by sticking napkins in his other back pocket. If I didn’t clean out my wallet every once and a while, it would certainly grow to a size that rivaled Costanza’s. (by the way, if you need a rubber band to hold your wallet together, you have way too much stuff)

That being said, the holy grail of wallets now is that of a thin wallet. A wallet that doesn’t burst at the seams and carries only that which you absolutely need on a daily basis. Let’s be honest, you don’t really need to carry all those cards, receipts, and a fat stack of cash every day. Why not invest in a thin wallet?

Why You Need A Thinner Waller

By carrying less, you force yourself to plan. Thinking about going to lunch this Friday at your favorite restaurant? Better plan for it by putting that frequent diner card in your wallet. Need to buy a shower curtain at Bed Bath & Beyond? Snatch up one of those 20% off coupons. By thinking about what you’re carrying, you’re forcing yourself to plan your spending. By forcing yourself to plan, you reduce the number of impulse decisions. By not carrying everything, you give yourself an excuse to avoid making those impulse decisions. In the end, you save a little bit of money in the process.

Thin wallets might help your back. I’ve never had a wallet that was as wide as Costanza’s so I can’t claim that carrying a thin wallet will help it, but it’s certainly more comfortable. There are times when I feel like I’m sitting on a small book, so I take it out and stick it in my jacket. A thinner wallet really is more comfortable to sit on.

Thin wallets can fit in your front pocket, making them more secure. When we went to England, I pulled a lot of non-essentials out of my wallet. There’s no reason to bring extra credit cards (I brought the Capital One card I deemed the best international credit card and an American Express) or any of those frequent dining cards either. With a thinner wallet, I could easily put it in the front pocket of my jeans, a harder pocket to pick.

How To Slim Down Your Wallet

Have I convinced you? If so, here are some tips on how to slim down your overweight wallet:

• Get a smaller wallet: This seems obvious but it’s often not the first thing people think of. The less space you have, the less stuff you can carry. You can always jam pack the billfold area with receipts but with fewer pockets, you carry fewer cards. Your former fat wallet may not take kindly to being thinner, much like rapid weight loss leaves a little extra, your wallet may have become irreparably stretched to the point that fewer cards means the ones that are left slip out.
• Clean it out regularly, like every day: Whenever you get home, open your wallet and clean it out. By keeping it clean, you ensure it will have a nice long thin life. Once you get into a habit you won’t consider it a chore (it can’t take more than a few seconds).
• Carry less cash: Carrying a lot of cash might make you feel powerful (it’s a proven psychological fact) but it’s riskier. If you lose cash, there’s no recourse. Credit cards offer protection (and cash back). They also take up less space.
• Carry only those credit cards you need: You don’t need more than a couple credit cards, the rest is just a waste of space. This is where you need to decide if you prefer the maximum cash back, or a thinner wallet. This is also where you can do a little extra planning too.
• Skip photos: I’m sentimental and keep a photo of my wife and I when we were “my girlfriend and I.” I still have it but you might consider removing the photos you have, how often do you look at them? This may be risky to admit, but I don’t look at it all that often.
• Recycle receipts: If you reconcile your receipts, you should put them in a pile next to your computer and not leave them in your wallet.
• Get keychain reward cards: A few years ago, stores began to put your reward or loyalty card’s barcode onto little tabs you can attach to your keychain. Use those instead of the card itself and save some extra room in your wallet.

The mythical thin wallet has many strong suits and very few weak ones, give it a try for a week and see how much better your back feels!

(Photo: shareski)

Sometimes, in talking to people, I refer to Blueprint for Financial Prosperity as BFP. It’s just easier and some people know what I’m talking about. Unlike many other personal finance blogs, BFP doesn’t coincide with a stock ticker. (In a quick Google Finance search, the only result that comes up is for the British Property Federation, a lobbying firm)

However, many popular personal finance blogs’ acronymed names are tickers… and here are some of them:

• FCN (Five Cent Nickel) – FTI Consulting, Inc., a ” global consulting firm to organizations confronting the critical legal, financial and reputational issues that shape their futures.” It’s traded on the NYSE and is down around 14% YTD.
• SBC (Stop Buying Crap) – Brompton Split Banc Corp, a Canada-based mutual fund corporation (it’s a mutual fund) traded on the TSX. It is down nearly 55% on the year.
• CC (Consumerism Commentary) – Clinton Cards plc, a specialty retailer of greetings cards, plush merchandise, and related items in the United Kingdom. Traded on the London Stock Exchange, it has fallen a whopping 87% YTD.
• GRS (Get Rich Slowly) – Gammon Gold, Inc., a company engaged in the exploration for and exploration and development of gold and silver deposits in Mexico and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s down around 69% on the year.
• TSD (The Simple Dollar) – Tsodilo Resources Ltd., a diamond exploration company traded on the TSX Venture Exchange, the Canadian Stock Exchange. It’s down about 65% on the year but is very minimally traded.
• AFM (All Financial Matters) – Alphamin Resources Corp, a mineral resource mining company traded on the TSX Venture Exchange. It’s another thinly traded stock down 50% on the year.
• MBH (Mighty Bargain Hunter) – MBF Healthcare Acquisition Corporation is an AMEX-traded “development-stage blank check company.” In other words, it’s a company that exists only to serve as a acquisition vehicle. It’s up 2.5% but that hardly counts.
• DL (The Digerati Life) – China Distance Education Holdings Ltd. is a NYSE-traded online education provider in China. If you owned this stock at the start of the year, you’d be down around 51%.
• GXF (Generation X Finance) – iShares Financials was an ETF focused on the financial industry.
• MTD (My Two Dollars) – Mettler-Toledo International Inc., a Switzerland -based global supplier of precision instruments (think: precise lab equipment) and traded on the NYSE. It’s down only 34% YTD.

As you can see, almost all of them are down… which means if you owned shares of BFP, that is, shares of nothing, you would’ve come out ahead over every other personal finance blog out there so keep reading my blog. If you’re comfortable with that logic, excellent, we can be friends!

I couldn’t get every blog I know involved (some didn’t have tickers, like myself) so if you weren’t included, feel free to look yourself up and leave a little recap in the comments below!

(Photo: rodluvan)

… where would you go? And why?

I’d go to the future by about two hundred years so I could get try one of those super-dehydrated pizzas like in Back to the Future. I’d like to know if that stuff was really possible or was it just Hollywood magic!

(Photo: f1rstborn)

This is a guest post by Cap at StopBuyingCrap.com, where Cap rambles on about personal finance, life, the universe, and everything. If for whatever crazy reason you liked this post, feel free to subscribe to his blog – supposedly you’re guaranteed to at least two worthwhile post per year.

Do you want the quickest way to mountains to debt, poor investment returns, and years after years of tax audits?

Ignore your finances.

Ignore the bills, ignore the secondary notice, ignore the warning signs that your investment allocations are too risky — ignore them all.

Having trouble making your credit card payments? Hey, it’s all good, open a new card account and ignore the old one! Falling short on your mortgage payments? Hey, it’s all good, let’s worry about the upcoming holiday vacations first!

Sounds ridiculous? Probably not.

We’ve all had those moments when we’re too stressed out to deal with the finances; when there’s too many things on the plate and too many other issues to take care of.

Procrastination? Apathy? Lack of proper financial literacy? What the case, there’s one simple solution to avoid failing miserably in taking care of your finances.

Start paying attention!

Here’s some starting steps if you’ve been ignoring parts or all of your finances:

1. Build that workable budget. It’s not impossible to build a budget that you can stick to. Here’s a quick tip: make realistic goals. Don’t try heroic measures like cutting $1,000 per month from the budget unless you’ve drastically changed your financial outlook. If an entire budget overwhelms you, try specific categories you can hit. Build a grocery budget or an entertainment budget, and get whoever else that’s part of the household involved! Need a hand to get started? Try this making a budget guide for some tips and tools.

2. Revisit your investment accounts. Whether it’s your retirement account or the college funding for your child, now’s the perfect time to reassess your asset allocation, risk tolerance, and investment goals. No idea where to start? Try Beginner’s Guide to Asset Allocation and An Intro to 529 Plans.

3. Get a close loved one involved. As with going on raids in WoW, better do the whole financial responsibilty thing with support than going solo (ignore the lame MMO reference). Ask your friends or family member to give you a helpful reminder to take care of specific parts of the finances. Setup a savings goal with a friend, or a debt reduction contest with loved ones. It’s always easier to face life’s challenges when you have the right support.

4. Use the latest tools to keep you updated. Most major financial institutions have online banking capability, with means for you to do automatic bill pays, transfers, and alerts. They can be extremely convenient and time savers. If you’re comfortable with bringing your finances further online, check out online tools such as Mint.com, Quicken Online, and Yodlee. Many of these services provide text based alerts for budgets, bills, and changes to your investment accounts — all to keep you on your toes.

If you have tips on paying attention to your finances, feel free to share. Take it from someone who has ignored their finances for almost a year and paid dearly for it — don’t do it! Make some time for your future, just a few days out of the month can go a long way towards financial stability and independence!

Taxes suck. We all understand why we need taxes, but they still suck. Everyone hates them. We hate them every time we go to the store (unless you’re in Alaska, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, or New Hampshire – states with no states sales tax), we hate them every time April 15th rolls around, and homeowners hate them when that real estate assessment or property tax bill shows up in our mailbox.

So, here are five infallible ways to lower your income taxes (you’re on your own for anything else), you’ll thank me later.

(Click to continue reading…)

Business Pundit had a great post last week on 25 Well-Paying Jobs that Most People Overlook (and Why) meant to “spotlight jobs with stigmas attached to them that pay more than the typical person would think.” The headline job was that of crab fishermen and a shout out to one of my favorite shows, The Deadliest Catch. If you’ve ever seen the show, just one episode, you’ll know that those men earn every penny of the tens of thousands they earn in a short period of time. They get the crap beat out of them by the ocean, by the boat, by their captain and their crew mates. I totally understand why Alaskan King Crab is as expensive as it is.

Which job surprised me the most? Probably a dog walker:

Dogs can be scary enough without putting several of them on leashes and hoping they’ll behave for a complete stranger as you walk them around town. However, the undesirability of the job is precisely what makes it high-paying. In a busy metro area, a reputable dog walker can rake it in to the tune of $50 per hour. As one article points out, “that’s more than the average salary of a mid-level manager.”

If things don’t work out, I could always walk dogs.

The Washington Post story today, discussing the findings of Nobel Prize-winning (2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences) behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, confirmed the classic joke of an American businessman and a Mexican fisherman. You’d think that the more you earn, the more out of life you’d be able to enjoy; however that isn’t the case. More and more studies are showing that happiness has less to do with money and more to do with other factors. First the (not so surprising) findings, then the ironic joke.

Findings

Kahneman found that wealthy individuals, those earning more than $100,000, spent less than one-fifth of their time in passive leisure. Those earning less than $20,000 a year, spent more than a third of their time in passive leisure. The rich spent more of their time doing the required things, such as working, and less of the optional things because they’re trapped in a mental illusion. They focus on getting rich because they believe that when they are rich, they can buy some cool electronics or get daily spa treatments… therein lies the joke. If you want more Kahneman, here’s more goodness on the aspiration treadmill.

Living the American Dream

An American businessman was standing at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

“How long it took you to catch them?” The American asked.

“Only a little while.” The Mexican replied.

“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The American then asked.

“I have enough to support my family’s immediate needs.” The Mexican said.

“But,” The American then asked, “What do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, señor.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds you buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.”

“Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own can factory. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But señor, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then, señor?”

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions, señor? Then what?”

The American said slowly, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos…”

###

Touché.

How Rich People Spend Their Time [Washington Post]

(Money by Tracy O, Fishing by xul)