Earth seen from 4 billion miles away, photographed by Voyager 1 on June 6, 1990.

Of the “pale blue dot,” astronomer Carl Sagan said, “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there €” on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Thanks to Futility Closet for posting this quote.

1. Excellent Mass Transit Options. I can jump on the subway just a few blocks from my house and be at my friends house in 5 minutes. Yes, I know that driving in smaller cities is just as convenient in some ways. But there’s just nothing like taking the subway. It’s like magic.

2. Parts of the city are still buzzing at 1am. Granted, it’s not NYC, but it’s nice to know that you can find something to do at midnight on pretty much any night of the week.

3. People here are crazy and very entertaining. I watched a woman try to parallel park in a space twice the size of her car today and it seriously took her like 5 minutes. Even after she was all the way in, she kept backing up and pulling forward. There’s always someone on the sidewalk screaming or singing or whatever. And there are street performers and musicians on most of the corners in our area.

4. You know how the best stores in the world always list the cities that they’re in? Like this: “London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Rome, San Francisco” Enough said. There probably isn’t a clothing store or fashion label that doesn’t have a store within 10 blocks of where I’m sitting. And the stores they have here are the flagship stores, so you get the best selection and the sweetest sales.

5. Companies do the best new test programs here. Things like car-sharing, free wifi, grocery delivery, and 24 mbps internet were made for San Francisco. I haven’t been in a grocery store in months. I pay $10 and the guy from Safeway.com knocks on my door and drops off my $200 of groceries. How can you beat that?

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki
When I was about 19, this book changed my entire outlook on money and finances. Looking back, and reading through the book now, I see a lot that I disagree with, but it sparked my thinking about how to manage money, and what financial freedom truly means. Not a practical book, but definitely a good start if you have no “financial motivation.”

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley
This book, which I read recently, is the result of years of research of America’s millionaires: how they live, what they wear, what cars they drive, how they made their money, etc. It was definitely inspiring to me, and also got me thinking about the impact of wealth on future generations, both good and bad.

Cashflow Quadrant by Robert T. Kiyosaki
This book builds on Rich Dad, Poor Dad and goes into detail about how to build multiple streams of income and gradually reduce your reliance on earned income. It contains overviews of the impact on personal finances and income of things like real estate investment, entrepreneurship, and investing in businesses.

The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason
This is a deceptively simple book that contains a series of financial parables that teach the importance of always saving, the power of compound interest, investment, insurance, and other time-tested financial truths. Easy read and a good reminder of some very basic lessons. Again, good to read if you find yourself lacking that “financial motivation.”

Today, I spoke at length with a man whom I see almost every day. He frequently stops me to engage in conversation, and a friendlier person can’t be found, especially doing his job. He works as a security guard, making probably no more than $15 / hr, though I can’t be sure. What I can be sure of is that he is older (late 50s to early 60s), lonely, and trapped in a life beneath him. We spoke today and he imparted to me his visions and grand plans for his future and how he plans to make his fortune. He spoke of his hero, Richard Branson, and how the only difference between them was that Branson managed to get some things done. He went on and on about how he was just going to go for it. Like so many others these days, his plan was to build an internet company of some kind.

I mean this man no disrespect, and should he ever read this, I apologize for what I’m about to say. The entire scene filled me with a deep sadness. My greatest fear in life is insignificance. I want my life to count. I want to make a difference. I have a gift for entrepreneurship and a vision for building organizations and helping others fulfill their own dreams and visions. That is my calling. There are other things I’d like to do along the way, but if I can accomplish only one thing with my life, that would be it (other than remaining true to my faith, but that’s another story). This man’s story will end, almost certainly, like millions of others. He will die with little to his name, his dreams unfulfilled, and his story forgotten. That sounds so incredibly harsh that I’m going to save this as a draft for a few days to ensure I actually want to post this. But the sad reality is that outside a handful of those who know him best, this man’s life will likely make very little difference in the world in any kind of tangible way. I can’t imagine a sadder end for a human life than to miss your purpose, your calling.

The one inspiring thing was his overwhelming optimism, even in light of his naive outlook. I certainly would encourage him to try and try again, as genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, and it’s never too late to start something. However, the odds are overwhelmingly against him now, much more so than if he were 40 years younger.

There is no yesterday; there is no tomorrow. There is only today and right now; what we do with this moment is ours alone to choose. Choose wisely.

I’ve decided to start reviewing books on my blog. As I blog mostly about personal finance, real estate, entrepreneurship, and other business topics, the books I review will also fall in those categories. I’ve been reading a lot of real estate books lately, so don’t be surprised if you see more of that topic here for a bit.

In an upcoming post, I thought I would list a few of my favorite real estate and finance books. All of these books can also be found in my LibraryThing profile. Books that I recommend will also be available on the Recommended Reading page (coming soon).

Everyone always says that money can’t buy happiness. I’ve always liked to say that money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy relief from certain types of misery. Perhaps an example will be helpful.

Every time I fly commercially, about the time I’m shuffling through security with my shoes in one hand and my recently-torn-apart bag in my other, I think about the indescribable joy that private air travel would be. My feeling escalates as I’m herded onto a plane that is probably older than I am, and sit down between two enormous women who both have toddlers that are vying for the title of the World’s Most Annoying Child. By the time the beverage cart creaks by at the express speed of .00756 mph and the Flight Attendant informs me that the last of the orange juice was just given to the grubby little urchin screaming his head off next to me, I’m ready to kidnap the little bugger and sell him on the black market to finance the purchase of my jet.

Relax, I’m not in the business of peddling children. Yet.

Anyway, the point is that flying commercially is miserable. Absolutely terrible. Could money buy relief from that? Certainly.

However, even I’m willing to admit that this is a rather unproductive example. Most people will never set foot on a private jet, so it’s not really a viable alternative to commercial travel.

A more representative type of misery that most people go through is financial slavery. In fact, to say that most people go through this is misleading, because the majority of us will spend most of our lives mired in financial slavery, “working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.” (Fight Club)

Let me give you a few examples of more common types of misery that characterize financial slavery:

• Not being able to spend time with your family because you have to work two jobs
• Not being able to provide adequate food, shelter, clothing, medical care, etc for your family
• Constantly being stressed about how you’ll pay the bills this month
• Getting stuck in a job or city you hate because you can’t afford the risk of trying something new
• Being a burden on someone else for financial care
• Seeing your marriage torn apart by the stress and anxiety that money problems cause

The number one cause of divorce in America is money problems. Is divorce miserable? You betcha. It’s a special type of misery that almost always gets passed on to your kids and, if you’re lucky, your grandkids. If the number one cause of one of the most destructive forces in our society is money problems, how can people say that money can’t buy happiness?

I was pondering this today as I walked to work (yep, I walk to work. City living rocks.). In terms of deciding whether money itself buys relief from certain types of misery, the relevant question becomes this: For most of the people experiencing the types of financial misery that I described above, would more money really solve the problem? I think that in most cases the answer is no. Let me explain.

It’s always helped me to think about money not simply as as solution to problems, but as a multiplier of both problems and solutions. If you’re responsible and able effect positive changes with a little money, you’ll likely be responsible and able to effect even greater positive changes with more money. Conversely, if you’re unable to manage small amounts of money without getting in over your head, and you’re constantly thinking that if you just had more money, your problems would be solved, then the reality probably is that more money would only exacerbate your financial problems in the long term. We need only look at Lotto winners, a high percentage of which are bankrupt within a decade of their winnings. Here’s a great article from MSN Money about the subject.

The point is, if you’re not responsible with a little money, you aren’t going to suddenly become responsible with a lot. I think I’m going to have to revise my saying to be the following:

“Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy temporary relief from certain types of financial misery. However, unless the root cause of that financial misery is dealt with properly, the end result of injecting money into the situation is often worse than the problem was to begin with. Ultimately, the only long-lasting paths to relief for financial misery are death, an infinite supply of cash, or learning proper financial stewardship. Your call.”

Hmmm…definitely not as catchy.

I’ve been putting together a list of recommended books for this blog and I decided to take a few minutes to play around with LibraryThing.com. I’m very impressed. LT is a site that helps people track their personal libraries. You can quickly and easily enter the books you own, rate them, tag them, etc. They also provide RSS feeds and widgets so you can push your data out to your blog or feed reader. I especially like the ability to view my library by cover. It’s so much more interesting to look at than a list of text titles.

If you love books, give LibraryThing a try. You’ll like it.