I have only seen more each day to convince me of how true this is.

“Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. An entire generation, pumping gas, waiting tables. Slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly realizing that fact. And we are very, very pissed off.”

I’ve been reading “The Richest Man in Babylon”, a series of financial parables set in the Babylonian era. They’ve been around since the mid-1920’s and convey (very simply) some basic principles of finances and money management. They’re the kind of things we all know, but few of us seem to do. The highlights are the following:

1. A portion of all you earn is yours to keep. Save at least 10% of everything you make, no matter what
2. Do the above by controlling your expenses carefully with the use of a budget
3. Put those savings to work for you by investing
4. Don’t be risky in your investments
5. Buy a house
6. Plan for retirement and future generations
7. Increase your earning potential

Again, very basic stuff, but apparently the majority of people just don’t get it. For example, the average savings rate in America is now NEGATIVE. People who make $50k per year spend just over $50k per year and people who make $100k per year spend just over $100k per year. Average household debt goes up every year and the average American only has something like 15k set aside for retirement.

My company (CNET Networks) had a guy come in today from the Social Security Administration and speak to us about how Social Security works. Nothing really new. I was hoping he’d talk about some of the plans to fix SS, but he merely said that it will be bankrupt by 2040 unless we change something. Fantastic. The thing that struck me was, 1) how little money you get, even if you paid a fortune into Social Security, and 2) how jacked up it is to face a retirement of 20+ years knowing that there’s no way you can even come close to living on what you have. What person, at 66, wants to realize that they have to work until they die? How sad. The saddest part was that they actually increase your benefit if you work past 66, because they’re trying to keep people working as long as possible. Isn’t that great? We live in a country where senior citizens are encouraged by their government to work as long as possible, even well into their 70s, or until they die, whichever comes first.

It all kind of clicked for me this evening. I was reading the book again and this part jumped out. The speaker is a slave who fled his city because of debt and fell into the wrong circumstances, eventually ending up as a slave to a very wealthy lady.

“So I was turned over to Sira and that day I led her camel upon a long journey to her sick mother. I took the occasion to thank her for her intercession and also to tell her that I was not a slave by birth, but the son of a free man, an honorable saddle-maker of Babylon. I also told her much of my story. Her comments to me were disconcerting and I pondered much afterword on what she said.

‘How can you call yourself a free man when your weakness has brought you to this? If a man has in himself the soul of a slave, will he not become one no matter what his birth, even as water seeks its level? If a man has within him the soul of a free man, will he not become respected and honored in his own city in spite of his misfortune?’”

Think about it.

From an article in Men’s Health on things you should do but probably haven’t:

“Be debt-free. Compounding interest is like a sorority girl on Ecstasy. She’ll go both ways, but you get a hell of a lot more out of it when she’s going your way.”

I’ve noticed that I’m addicted to multitasking. I have a very hard time sitting down and watching something without doing anything else. I can’t have just one window open or one tab open in firefox. I feel this compulsive need to carry on 18 things at once, even though it stresses me out sometimes and I probably do each thing less well than I would if I just focused on one thing.

Why is this?

Maybe it’s because of the incredible rate that information is flooding our world. There are billions of blogs to read, videos to watch, discussions to join, friends to talk to, etc, etc. When I’m not doing those things, I feel like I’m missing out. I was missing out before the Internet, but it was such a pain to NOT miss out. Now, it’s only a click away, and if I’m signed on to AIM, these things often come to me!

I need to work harder to be more focused and more respectful of my own need for mental peace and occasional unproductivity.

Early last month, I started using a service called mvelopes.com. This is a personal finance and budgeting program that you would use instead of MS Money or Quicken. I had tried both Money and Quicken with very mixed results. I found them to be bloated, buggy, and trying to do too much and failing to do it well. So I decided to take the plunge and give mvelopes a try.

Mvelopes is basically an online representation of the envelope budgeting method, where you put cash into envelopes for groceries, spending, medical, gas, etc and then take the cash out when you need to spend it. When it’s gone, it’s gone. This can be a very effective method of budgeting, but it’s 2006, and I don’t want thousands of dollars in cash sitting in my house, not to mention the fact that I only use cash for a tiny percentage of my monthly transaction volume.

Enter Mvelopes.

Basically, Mvelopes works using the exact same concept as cash in envelopes, but online. So you setup a budget and then when your paycheck comes, you divvy it up into the envelopes, which represent budget categories. Mvelopes doesn’t move any money, it just keeps track of how the money in your checking account is allocated. Then, as your transactions come in (automatically downloaded from the 12000 financial institutions they have relationships with), you assign them to the envelopes that they correspond to and they reduce the envelope by that amount.

Perhaps an example will help. Let’s say you get paid $100 and you put that cash in the “Clothing” envelope. The balance of the envelope (assuming it was $0 before) is now $100. You buy a sweater for $25. When that transaction is downloaded from your bank, you just drag it into the clothing envelope and it reduces your balance by $25, to $75.

The service has a ton of other benefits and it takes a little bit to get the hang of everything, but it’s awesome. I highly recommend it.

http://www.mvelopes.com

Great blog post on 9 steps to effective long-term financial management:

http://www.wesabe.com/blog/index.php/2006/10/17/what-hold-you-back/

Of those, my wife and I have accomplished three. We’re hard at work on the rest. I would actually add a few more to the list for us, since we’re relatively aggressive about pursuing long-term wealth:

10. Start a business
11. Buy and hold income real estate and other cash-producing assets
12. Give back to churches, charities, and communities with your money and your time. Don’t wait on this one until you accomplish 1-11. Start today.

10 and 11 may not be for you; they’re not for everyone. I would recommend 12 to everyone, though. Don’t give people less fortunate an excuse to hate you because of what you’ve been blessed with. Share the wealth.

So my two good friends (Ben and Ben) and I are all players of The Game, which can be referenced below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(game)

Essentially, there are only three rules:

1. Knowledge of The Game is the only thing required to play it.
2. Thinking of The Game causes a player to lose.
3. A losing player must announce the loss.

So I’m trying a little experiment with one Ben where I am systematically trying to associate Adam Phillips, one of his favorite animators, with The Game, therefore causing him to think of The Game when he thinks of Mr. Phillips, which, judging by his blog, is quite often. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m still devising a strategy for other Ben, who best watch his mental back without thinking about why he’s watching his mental back.

Man, I love The Game.

PS - In case you’re wondering, I lost and then devised this strategy immediately after so this didn’t cost me a loss.

When I started this blog, I thought it would be funny and clever to pay homage to Scrubs by naming my posts “My…” Well, it hasn’t been very funny and it certainly doesn’t feel clever. Mostly, it feels annoying, like when you take a stupid position publicly without thinking too hard about it first and then you realize that it’s a stupid position but now you’ve already spent too much time and energy defending to back down so you keep defending a position that you know is stupid (no offense to my Republican readers). I find myself wanting to write my titles in a certain way, but I have rename them to conform to the “My…” standard, which almost never turns out as good. I’m sure if I was a great writer I could come up with something clever for each title, but let’s face it, I’d have a hard enough time coming up with something clever without any restrictions, but then I impose one on myself?

Yes, I’m bored, and that’s why I’m posting this.

I’ve decided to start a side blog about Christianity (or faith in general) and science, technology, and the future. I need a name. Here are my thoughts so far:

• Would Jesus Have an Ipod?

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got so far. Seriously, toss some ideas my way. Please.

About 5.5 years ago, my wife and I shared our first kiss on April 13th, 2001. Yes, I know that it’s kind of lame that I know the date, but the reason I remember is that it was a Friday the 13th and was exactly 3 months to the day from the date I was supposed to ship off to the Navy (that’s another story, though). Anyway, since we’re non-traditional and not much for lame things like Valentine’s Day (thanks a lot, Hallmark), we decided that we’d celebrate every Friday the 13th as our Antiversary.

Umm…yeah, I guess that’s it.