Musings From Matt

Sprint Airlines imposed $45 fee per carry-on.

2010-04-13T18:35:00.003-05:00

If you don't travel frequently, you probably don't really care. Skip this post.

As the USA Today reports, Sprint Airlines is proposing a $45 fee per carry on bag. When I used to travel frequently, I made a blog post that spoke about the checked bag fees, that accurately predicted the future.

The purpose of me noting this is more because of the government getting involved and threatening to pass legislation to block this additional fee. Really? Do we need the government to protect us from capitalism and debating issues like this. Good grief - this is seriously misdirected outrage.

Get back to encouraging job growth by offering massive incentives to small businesses to hire people.

Surviving the Recession for Twenty-Somethings (Revisited)

2009-10-06T19:02:00.003-05:00

About 11 months ago I made a post about surviving the recession.

Since that time the number of unemployed and underemployeed has skyrocketed - with some people putting the combined un and underemployed rate approaching 20%.

One of the things I touched on briefly was having a re-employement plan. This is a strategy of contacting personal friends, business associates, previous customers and others to let them know you're in the market for a new job.

However, what I'd like to write about now is having a de-employment plan. Here's a checklist of things you'll want to do if you are de-employed not on your terms.

1. Don't sign anything. When you are de-employed, you're under considerable distress. Do not sign any piece of paper explaining reason for your severance and termination unless you understand every single word. You need to be thinking clearly and may be signing away your rights if you're being terminated illegally. You do not need to sign anything the day you're let go.

... except a clause about expense reports. Make sure that your employers agrees to pay the balance of your company related expenses, and get this in writing. It should state, "I will provide my company related expenses within 5 business days and will be reimbursed by (employer) in full. I estimate these expenses to be roughly XXX dollars."

2. File for unemployment. You do this through your state. For some people, they view collecting unemployment as a sign of failure or laziness. THIS IS NOT TRUE. DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIE. These economic times are unprecedented in our generation. Now is not the time to be idealistic or prideful. In Illinois you would visit the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Benefits for people that earn above $42,536 are $385 per week. For earners below that, the amount is 47% of your income. Married people with a dependent spouse earn $459 (58%). One or more children raises the amount to $534 (63.2%).

3a. Know your options with health insurance. If you lose your job, you still have the opportunity to keep your company's existing health insurance - however, you'll need to pay the premiums. Most employeers with good health insurance have costs that are roughly $700-$1,000 a month. Fortunately, the ARRA offers significant support for these payments.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provides for premium reductions and additional election opportunities for health benefits under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, commonly called COBRA. Eligible individuals pay only 35 percent of their COBRA premiums and the remaining 65 percent is reimbursed to the coverage provider through a tax credit. The premium reduction applies to periods of health coverage beginning on or after February 17, 2009 and lasts for up to nine months for those eligible for COBRA during the period beginning September 1, 2008 and ending December 31, 2009 due to an involuntary termination of employment that occurred during that period.

3b. Get a physical. When you realize the costs of premiums, especially if you're young and healthy, you may wish to forgo health insurance, depending on how much money you have saved and your cash flow situation. Having a physical that says you're healthy will help get you the lowest prices if you need to purchase individual insurance.

4. Suspend unnecessary expenses. This includes extended cable TV packages, cell phone data / texting packages, tithing, any automatic saving payments. Stop all automatic payments outside of utilities. This is not the time to calculate how long you can last "without changing your lifestyle". You've lost your job - your lifestyle should change. Your expense priorities are now shelter, food (not dining!) and transportation.

5. Don't take a vacation. This is basically a specific version of #4. I've heard of many people who think since they have "time off" it means "I deserve a vacation." You're unemployed! That is not an option.

6. Sharpen your resume. I wrote on this before.

Thoughts on Health Care

2009-09-03T18:46:00.004-05:00

"No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick."

With the health care debate raging on, I see more and more people making claims like the above.

I don't think that many people would disagree with the initial statement, but the issue is much bigger than life or death. Often the issues at hand are quality of life and length of life. When health care is claimed to be a fundamental right instead of a privilege, then cost must becomes of no consequence. You can't argue against the economic consequences of spending a million dollars to keep a 90 year old woman alive for 10 more hours, just like you can't argue about the consequences to the owners of freeing 200 slaves on their million dollar a year plantation. The issues, if viewed as a right to health care and a right to personal liberty, are above mere dollar and cents consequences.

Where all will agree that if you're 90 years old and can extend your life for 10 hours at the cost of a million dollars, and somebody else will pick up the tab (the government) it's easy to pull the lever and say, "Sure, spend it. Great Grandma is worth it" Even though from a more holistic standpoint this probably isn't a wise choice given a million dollars could feed thousands of starving children elsewhere in the world.

So while we can probably agree that no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick, I'm sure some would disagree with what this implies: Everyone should be allowed to live as long as they desire without regard to the use of resources required.

What does taking redundancies mean or being redundant?

2009-07-03T11:14:00.008-05:00

I read a bizarre article [Borderline SFW] about a company in Britain whose employes all showed up nude to improve office morale and get past inhibitions. Seems a little extreme to me.

However, this was a Britainism (British English) that I didn't understand:

David Taylor, a business psychologist, told workers at design and marketing onebestway, in Newcastle upon Tyne, that a Naked Friday idea would boost their team spirit.
He was called in to help the firm after six staff members were forced into taking redundancies at the start of the credit crunch.

"Taking redundancies" is equivalent to American "down sizing" or "being laid off".

There's an article here that talks about British fears of being "redundant."

Because I'm not cultured and no google search term came up with adequate results, I thought I'd blog about it to blatantly gain some hits off of Google with key terms since the article is pretty widely published and I can't be the only person that needed clarification.

WAMP Forbidden You don't have permission to access /phpmyadmin/ on this server.

2009-06-25T17:00:00.001-05:00

If you're like me and just downloaded the newest copy of WAMP, you'll see a problem that drove me nuts. I got a notice that said:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /phpmyadmin/ on this server.

When you see something like this, you realize that it could be a million things, and since I'm more of a hack then a web developer, I freaked out.

A lot of help forums suggested that you modify the alias information so that you allow access from localhost, like 127.0.0.1. Mine already had that setup, by default.

I was scratching my head over and over and couldn't figure out the root cause of all of this. Strangely, the SqLite manager was working just fine. This was so weird.

Then I went back and realized that the problem was that my C:\wamp\alias\phpmyadmin.conf file was just pointing to the wrong directory: it pointed to MySQL version phpmyadmin3.1.3 instead of phpmyadmin3.1.3.1. Ugh. WAMP team fail.

Check the directory and version number!

Scary Insurance Companies

2009-06-05T08:43:00.003-05:00

Policy Amount	Annual Premium	Sum of 5 Years Premiums	Implied Odds of Payout	Calculated Likelihood of Dying in 5 years
$ 700,000	$ 420	$ 2,100	0.30%	1 in 333

Questions:
Isn't this math basically correct?
What sort of margins do life insurance companies get?
How much goes to the agents, annually?

hmm....

Housing Market Perspective Update

2009-05-17T21:26:00.007-05:00

With a child on the way in less than two months, there's been a constant itch to think about buying a home. Renting, has a stigma in American culture as being wasteful. However, in this economy, I continue to disagree that it's a great time to be a first time homeowner.

There's a lot of factors in play that make taking the home ownership plunge sound appealing. There's the $8,000 housing gift if you purchase a home (which can be used as a down payment, much to my dismay.) There's all time historic low interest rates, around 5%. Most noted, however, are all the "deals" that abound in a market. With home prices in DuPage County down 23% from their peak, it would appear that now is the time to buy!

However, I would argue that now is not the time to buy unless you are very certain you will own your property for at least five years, and definitely not the time to buy if you are looking for the best price. I repeat: We are not at the bottom of housing prices.

I have basically three reasons why I'm not buying:

1. The economy is not at the bottom. Major companies who announced layoffs in the past 6-12 months have not completed these layoffs. For those that have, many of these workers were high wage earners that received excellent severance packages and are still able to pay their mortgage. With the April 2009 unemployment rate at 8.9%, and having it increase every month, it's safe to say that foreclosures will continue to rise until this rate decreases to historical norms. This is more than one year off. Hence, I can safely choose to sign one year leases and continue to rent and not put my money into a depreciating asset. I already own two large depreciating assets, our cars. No need to add more to the list.

2. Even if the recession ended today, the housing inventory is still historically too high. With 9.8 months of inventory which took nearly two years to rise from 6.5 to 10.5 months, I don't think that we're going to see a swift turnaround. As homeowners become more desperate to sell, prices will continue downward.

What I've only seen briefly mentioned (You hear it here first!) is a recently published survey from Zillow that states 31% of homeowners would be somewhat likely, likely, or very likely to put their home up for sale if they saw signs of a real estate market turnaround in the next 12 months!

With roughly 75 million homes in the U.S. per the somewhat outdated 2000 census, this means that 75 x .31 = 23 million homes could be put for sale when the housing market "turns around". Compare this to the fact that 17 million homes where sold in the year 2006, 2007 and 2008 combined! This implies we could have up to four years of shadow inventory. The high inventory will continue downward housing prices.

3. As municipalities try to make ends meet with their budget, we can expect property taxes to increase significantly within the next several years, possibly dramatically changing the expected payments of a home. This risk and the ability to negotiate rent, compared with the complete inability to negotiate taxes, makes this another significant risk to purchasing a home today.

With all that said, I'll have to take a pass on the pulling the trigger on this one, and I advise my friends the same.

Your Business Card is Crap

2009-04-14T21:46:00.002-05:00

Okay, so this is an interesting video. It's on college humor, which has some content I don't generally go for, but I found this to be great, mostly because I sort of agree with the guy.

Watch Your Business Card is Crap on CollegeHumor

Oh well.

Shameless Promotion!

2009-03-01T09:56:00.005-06:00

Time to do a little bit of promotion for people who are doing awesome things. I seem to have a lot of friends who do neat projects or are pursuing their passions in really creative ways. They shouldn't go unnoticed!

So first I want to talk about Bryant Rosenwinkel. Bryant writes music. And sings. And plays music. And... he's awesome at it. Keep in mind that I don't buy music or even really listen to music. Bryant's CD, The Western Thief (iTunes Link), is the first I have purchased in the last 15 years. It has 10 tracks and all 10 are filled with awesome folky goodness with catchy and clever lyrics that tell great stories about life, love and loss. I wouldn't hesitate to get all 10 tracks. He has a couple of sample songs on his myspace page. Do it now!

Second, I need to talk about Chris Hadley and Elisabeth O’Donnell over at CuisineMadeQuick.com. They make some great cooking videos on low cost, easily accessible meals. I really like how fun and informative they are, and the food looks great. What's refreshing is that they're very candid throughout the whole cooking process. It's a little more casual and authentic than TV, but still of high quality (not some high school kids with a camera on YouTube). Since the two hosts of the show are dating, they're fun to watch and kind of flirty with each other, (but not in the weird way like Regis and Kelly). Check them out too!

That's all for now!

Eye Glasses

2009-02-28T13:51:00.003-06:00

So my wife and I went to milk some of the vision insurance I had at my previous employeer. We went to Lenscrafts and got an eye exam, contacts, frames and lenses. We had pretty a fair discount schedule with our insurance and we paid... I'll just say too much... a week's salary.

This struck me as just wrong... and I happened to take a trip over to life hacker and saw an article about buying eye glasses online. What I've come to realize is that people in the 3rd world wear glasses. They've got to be paying somewhere between $10-$20 a pair.

Interesting things to note:

Lenscrafters, Pearl Vision, Sears and Target are all supplied by the same Italian eyeglasses manufacturer - Luxottica.
Some optomitrists can buy their 'designer' frames and lenses wholesale for $6-$10 and then sell them for up to 1,000% markup.
Lens coatings cost almost nothing to apply and charge clients up to $50 for the service.

Anyway, I think I'm going to do some shopping... Lens Crafters has a 30 day unconditional guarentee. We'll see what happens!

Term Life Insurance

2009-02-28T13:30:00.005-06:00

So this week my wife and I bought some term life insurance policies. Since we're having our first child in a couple of months, having adequate life insurance is something that I felt was important.

I'd imagine that some people my age aren't really aware of what life insurance is, or why you might want some, so I'll take a few minutes to go over the process.

Basically, there are a couple of versions of life insurance. I bought a fixed rate, 30 year term life insurance. If I die for any reason, including cancer, plane crash, on the job accident, my wife will be given the amount of the policy. Typically, you want to buy between 8-10 times your annual, pretax income. You don't want to waste your money on things like annuities, whole life, or any other type. If you're 20 something, you want 30 year term life insurance so you'll have this fixed rate protection for the next 30 years.

You might think, "Well, I have life insurance through my employer." You very well might, and it's often completely inadequate. Both of my employers offered 1 1/2 times my income. Though this will certainly be enough to bury me and pay off some student debt, it's not enough to send a child to college, pay off a mortgage or any other sort of responsibilities.

For non-smoking, healthy men, you can get a $500,000 policy for roughly $25 a month. $750,000 for around $35. Likely less than you're spending for cable TV.

You want to buy life insurance while you're healthy. As you get older, you're more likely to have something affect your health. Even if you don't have children, a spouse or someone else who is dependent on your income, you want to get this now.

I went through insure.com and bought insurance for me and my wife. The process was pretty painless. They asked about 30 minutes of questions and a few days later a medical examiner took our blood pressure, a urine sample, height, weight and a blood sample in our home. It was pretty sweet, but admittedly a little weird too.

If you're 20-something, buy some today while you're healthy and can get excellent fixed rates. I know this sounds like a commercial, and I apologize in advance. It took me well over a year to make this a priority, and I'd hate to see a family go through some unnecessary trauma because they delayed in doing the right thing.

Resume Musings

2009-02-01T13:03:00.005-06:00

I know more people who have lost their job in the past 4 months than those who lost jobs in the combined rest of my life. What is even more sad is that many of these people are highly talented individuals. As I wrote in a entry before, being prepared is key. I'd like to write a little bit on how to write a resume.

I'd bet most people haven't seen a resume besides their own. I don't think that mine is the greatest in the world, but the format worked to land me a couple of jobs.

Here's a brief copy of mine from a few months ago:

I'll try to highlight a couple of key things that I tried to do, and I recommend to others.

Focus
First and foremost, your resume needs to be clean, concise and tack-sharp focused to the needs of the position you are applying more. Every time you apply to a new position, you must refocus your resume for the position you are applying for. This was important when the economy was good, and is now critical when you're competing against more people who are equally or more qualified for the position you seek.

Keep it Simple
I kept it to one page. I'm a big proponent of this. However, it also tends to reflect my style of writing (most of the time): concise & bulleted. I also know that during interviews, the interviewer typically has the resume right in front of them. It's awkward for them to flip back and forth between multiple pages. In addition, I'm only 25. I don't have a ton of positions to ramble on about. This may force me at some point to go to 2 pages. A resume should never be more than 2 pages. Keep focused on the position and cut out what doesn't apply to the job you're doing. I have 4 summer internships in the industrial manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and machine building industries. Since they didn't apply to the job I was applying for, I didn't mention them. It's important to show you're responsible and can keep a job when you're landing your first job out college, so you can list that you served coffee at your uncle's barber shop during the summers. Once you're in the working world, those nonsense jobs need to be cut.

Fill the Whole Space
You'll probably notice the "Who is Matt Adams?" section. Honestly, I went out on a limb with that one. In college I had that space reserved for extra-curricular activities. I had to fill the space. I had a couple of executive recruiters say that they're usually not a fan of that use of space, but mine was an exception. Take that for what it's worth.

Sell Yourself
A resume is a marketing piece. Having it look polished and clean is key. It reflects directly on the impression of the brand - you!

Know What You Wrote
It's also important to have a talking point or two about every single item on your resume when you get an interview. You will be asked about it, and its even possible that you were asked to interview for a single word or phrase on your resume. On one version of my resume, I mentioned a skill I knew little about and was drilled heavily on the theory of the skill during an interview. It was awkard. Don't let that happen to you.

Have Others Help
It is important to read, reread and read again what you have in your resume before you send it off to a potential employer. Send it to friends, family and anyone that you can think of for feedback and editing. A well written resume shows your ability to communicate, pay attention to detail and understand your strengths. It's more than just a sheet of paper.

A Final, Serious Note:
We're heading towards 10% unemployment... spend a weekend soon to update your resume if you haven't updated it in the past 6 months. Email me with a copy of yours if you'd like feedback. I'd be happy to help.

Never Pay A Credit Card Late Fee!

2009-01-24T13:30:00.005-06:00

I have a quick note on how I saved myself $68.00 today.

I pay my credit cards online and always pay them in full before the due date... usually. This month I was a few days late. For random reasons, I have two credits cards, and hence got hit with double late fees. $68.00 total. Ouch!

So, I used an online form and wrote Capital One and requested that they refund me the late fees. My letter looked like this:

Hello. I am writing to request a refund for my late fee. I was a few days late to pay this month. I love Capital One and have been a very good customer. I have paid my balance in full. Thanks in advance!

Sure enough, I got a reply back that said, "Good news. Your late fees have been refunded."

Notice that I didn't need to threaten, lie or even make a phone call. I spent about 10 minutes of my time and got a $68 refund. I heard that this past quarter Capital One posted a loss of 1.42 billion dollars. I'm glad they didn't cut corners and try to hoard late fees. No rants today!

Goals, Priorities and Busyness

2008-12-28T15:58:00.005-06:00

With 2009 coming along, its a good time to set some goals. My 2008 goal was to read through a one year Bible with Jenn. Up until about April or so, I was right on track, and somewhere along the way, I lost a lot of ground - we're on June 3rd as of today.

I had events come up like travel with my job, the need to care for Jenn during our pregnancy and a whole host of other things that were not perfectly planned, but those aren't the reason for falling behind. It is plainly obvious reading became a lower priority than watching episodes of The Office and Heros, because I haven't missed a single episode of either of those programs (either watching them live or replayed on the internet). This is certainly not my proudest realization of the year.

I know there have been times when I've rationalized the excuse, "Well, I've been busy."

This is a poor excuse. I'm busy, you're busy, my mother, dentist and everybody is busy.

What are we busy doing? Whatever we prioritize.

The new year is a great chance to reprioritize. There's about 7 months of scheduled material and 6 months until the baby is due. If I over-clock our reading schedule by 16%, we can be done before our child is born. In principle, I think that it's important that if Jenn and I plan to raise our child to be a loving follower of Jesus, reading through the Bible completely before he or she's born would be a good step (among many) to prepare for that responsibility. What I especially like about this goal is that it is extremely measurable. I can measure the accomplishment (yes or no) and percent of plan (Target = 116%). Maybe I'll create some KPI metrics along the way and post them here.

I'm not going to lose sleep if our child comes early and we're not quite through, but this is something that I'm convicted enough about to put in print somewhere. That way I can have people who care about me ask me how I'm doing with it.

Though I don't expect this will happen, if for whatever reason you ask me about this and I tell you I've fallen behind, I need the response of, "What is the plan to catch up?" and not "That's a bummer, but don't beat yourself up too bad about it." Thanks in advance!

A Guide to Surviving the Recession For Twenty-Somethings

2008-11-28T22:05:00.005-06:00

Like many, I'm reading headlines that aren't too optimistic about the future of the economy. I just read an article that put the potential unemployment rate around 10%, up from roughly 6.5% now.

Unless you are self-employed, you don't have a lot to say concerning your employment status. However, there are a few things you can do to gauge your likelihood of being let go in a layoff. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Are there multiple people with the same job title as you? For example, if you're part of a 15 person engineering department, it's possible that the engineering manager could be expected to give 3 names by the end of the day. If there are 5 mechanical design engineers, 3 drafters and 4 electrical engineers and 2 programmers, the 3 names given will include at least 1 mechanical engineer and 1 electrical. The programmer is the least likely to go.

2. Could your company still function without you? This is one of the scariest realizations, that your job isn't a lynch pin the the corporate machine. If you realize that you're not critical, it's possible you may be among the first to go. Be honest with yourself and try to gain more responsibility so you leaving will cause maximum corporate pain.

3. Do you get along well with your boss? Here's a dirty little secret. Sometimes major layoffs are used by managers to get rid of merely average employees that they can't exactly fire for any really good reason. Sometimes a department might not be asked to lay anyone off, but a crafty manager might say, "Could I please give you one name?" or even negotiate a deal with another manager, "Hey, I can get rid of Average Adam in my department so you'll only need to let go of 2 people instead of 3 in yours. I'll be calling back my favor later." Don't assume this sort of thing doesn't happen.

4. Does your boss think you are critical to his or her team? Regardless of your opinion on your contributions, if your boss thinks that you're a critical element to the team, you're less likely to be let go. This is why it is critical to always be on good terms with your boss, or at the least not be on the bottom of their list. All managers have favorites (though the professional ones will not exhibit favoritism). If you're a favorite, you're more likely to hold your job.

While the point of the above questions isn't to strike fear into your soul, it should be a wake up call for everyone in Generation Y: We're not invincible. While its possible our baby boomer parents had some sleepless nights after their 401k was rocked by the dot com boom, our lifetime hasn't be scared by any sort of major recession. What we're looking at for the next couple of years is a big deal.

So what do you do? How do you prepare?

1. Make sure you have an emergency fund of liquid assets on which you can live for 6 months. I already hear the cries of twenty somethings saying that there is no way that they can save that sort of money. To which I'll say: baloney. There's no way you can't afford to have an emergency fund. 6 months of expenses should include costs like rent or mortgage, utilities, food, car insurance, health insurance and life insurance. Yes, this is a lot of money - start saving now. Having a 6 month emergency fund is more important than your 401k, paying down high interest loans or just about anything else. I'll be writing an entry on in the future about how to save more money. (But there are only ways: cut expenses or increase income.)

2. Role Play a Worst Case Scenario With a Complete Re-Employment Plan. Assume that you've been given two weeks notice without severance. Who would you contact about finding new job offers? Write down your list so if you're in shock from this unfortunate news, you've got a plan of action. Update your resume. Make contact with old co-workers and managers to find out what they've been up to. Websites like LinkedIn make this easier, but a personal phone call or email can't be beat.

3. Work smarter (not harder) to move yourself up a notch on your boss's favorites list. Revisit questions 3 and 4 above. Try to make yourself a critical part of your managers team. Find out where your manager's pain is and help him fix it. Have lunch with your manager and develop a personal relationship. Find out how your manager is compensated and help them get a hefty bonus. Be the hardest employee your manager has. Remember: now is not the time to slack off.

This is definitely a painfully practical post, but I hope that the readers can think through some of the thoughts. Comment away!

Employee Compensation & Negotiating Raises

2008-11-13T08:30:00.004-06:00

One of the interesting parts about being a twenty-something is dealing with your salary. Depending on the company you work for, the process may vary widely. Depending on the company, there may be no process at all.

If your employer doesn't have have a review process, you need to create one. Every year you need to have a discussion about your objectives and how you can measure your success in your role. The annual review may or may not discuss your salary, but it is paramount that you can discuss your performance as an employee. This will be a key tool to negotiate an appropriate pay increase.

You should expect, at the very least, to get a cost of living raise each and every year. I'll pin that number, for the sake of discussion, at 2%. If you don't get a 2% raise each and every year, your employer is giving you a pay cut -> they are taking money out of your pocket. If you honestly believe that you are over paid and can not find similar compensation somewhere else, then you don't have much room for complaint. However, if you think you're being underpaid, then you have every right and reason to negotiate.

I think it's critically important to realize that your employer needs to have a valid reason to pay you more than you are earning now. Your life circumstances can not come into play. For example, the following are not reasons why your employer should give you a raise:

You want to buy a house and need more money to get the size house you want.
You are getting married and need to cover the cost
The interest rates on your student loans are increasing.
You are expecting a child and you need to provide for them.
Your spouse is changing or leaving his or her job and you need to make up some of the difference in compensation.

These are all personal reasons. Your employer doesn't care about how you spend your pay check. They care about how you are making them money or saving them money. Your employer's #1 objective is to get the most (work) for the least (money). Your objective as the worker is the opposite.

There are, however, valid reasons why you should expect additional compensation.

Exceeding company goals, especially related to creating income or reducing costs.
Performing extra responsibilities that potentially reduce the amount of other employees needed to accomplish the tasks.
Others performing your job function at other companies are getting paid more than you.
Coworkers or those with less experience at your same company are getting paid more than you.

Another thing to mention is that employees seldom realize how much negotiating power they have.

The cost of replacing a good employee is incredible. First, the company needs to find a new employee. While they search, the position is unfilled and additional strain is put on coworkers who now have more work to do. It is unlikely the company will find someone with exactly the right skill sets, so after the replacement is hired, there is time where they are paying the replacement for less than 100% output (training). If it is a mid to upper level replacement, they might need to use an outside recruiter, who will get paid up to 30% of the position's annual salary. Bottom line: Replacing good employees costs big bucks!

Keep this in mind when looking to negotiate your next raise. A few percent isn't much when leaving will lower the moral of the office, costs the company valuable training time and the possible cost of an upfront fee of 30% of your salary. Every person in human resources knows this, and its quite possible that your supervisor does as well. If you bring up a raise, they're going to have to discuss it past HR, who will surely clue your supervisor in.

One element is not good for salary negotiation: Another job offer.

It may seem like the golden ticket, "Hey boss man, you better give me this raise or I'm going to go and work for ABC company! Look at this incredible offer they made me!"

Here are the simple facts: If you have the brief conversation above with your boss, your current employer will likely cough up and offer you whatever salary request you made, so they do not lose you. However, make no mistake, this is only temporarily. Once you mention that you are going to leave or have considered leaving, you are no longer loyal to the company. They want to keep you around only for strategic value and to possibly train your replacement. No ifs, ands or buts: your days are numbered.

Alternate jobs offers are not a card to be played, they're an opportunity you accept or do not accept.

Whew, a lot of random information on the subject here. Hope you enjoyed it. Comment away!

Terminated - Fortunately Not Arnold Schwarzenegger Style

2008-11-08T19:33:00.006-06:00

As many people may or may not know, I'm making a job change. This is a really exciting time for me. After working at at my first employer out of college for over 3 years, I was offered and accepted an exciting job at a competitor.

It's a very interesting situation to respond to as an employer: If your employee is leaving for a competitor and gives notice (2 weeks, for instance, as I did), how do you respond? Some people might not understand my question.

As an employer, you have a few options:

Let the employee leave in 2 weeks.
Terminate the employee within a few days of the notice.
Terminate the employee immediately.

I personally believe that the second option is best, assuming you have an ethical and productive employee committed working hard after they announce their intent to move on. A few days forces urgency of a brain dump from the leaving employee to coworkers without giving time for the employee to mentally 'check out' before quitting. It also allows time to methodically transfer files to coworkers, prepare projects for hand off and answer any outstanding questions directly.

However, my employer, (as do almost all employers when an employee announces they're leaving for a competitor) terminated me by the end of the day.

The concern, of course, is that your employee is no longer loyal, especially if they are disgruntled. They could potentially steal trade secrets, inventions, patents, customer lists and other sensitive information with hopes of having an advantage at their new employer.

This concern, however, I personally believe is somewhat misleading. First and foremost, company secrets are protected by law. Often when working for technology companies, you give away all rights to inventions, patents and copyrights relating to your job function (sometimes unrelated to your job function!) to your employer. I specifically have an invention (and frankly a really cool one at that) which my previous employer is probably not going to act on. However, I can't mention anything about it to my new employer because I signed away the rights to it upon taking my previous employer's offer. In addition, my new employer asked for and I agreed that I wouldn't give confidential information from my previous employer as a part of my new contract.

Bottom Line

Simply: Professional companies that deal with technology make you sign away anything valuable to them, want to make sure inventions and secrets from previous work stay with the original companies. Good companies don't want lawsuits from stolen ideas - they want original innovation.

Less Than Simply: There are gray areas. Customer lists, for example, could be considered trade secrets. However, its very difficult to legally prove a customer list is stolen.

Regardless of Simplicity: Employees who are leaving know before the employer does. They'll secure whatever information that they want before they give their notice. What they secure isn't a function of time employed after their notice, it's function of the employee's ethics and savvy.

Adolescence - A Failed Social Experiement

2008-11-02T22:29:00.003-06:00

Newt Gingrich, love him or hate him, has an interesting take on adolescence, calling it a failed social experiment of the 19th century.

I never gave much thought to this idea, but it has some merit. I had some interesting discussions this weekend with some peers about it. Many of them were steadfast advocates of a broad exposure of education.

Mr. Gingrich argues a the broad education system has had too high a cost:

The costs of this social experiment have been horrendous. For the poor who most need to make money, learn seriously, and accumulate resources, adolescence has helped crush their future. By trapping poor people in bad schools, with no work opportunities and no culture of responsibility, we have left them in poverty, in gangs, in drugs, and in irresponsible sexual activity. As a result, we have ruined several generations of poor people who might have made it if we had provided a different model of being young.

I'm not really sure that I exactly have an opinion, but I found the article very interesting. I'd be curious to see others thoughts.

Buying vs. Renting - With Current Market Data

2008-10-24T16:45:00.000-05:00

Very glad we decided to not buy a home. Check out this from the Illinois Realtors:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Illinois home sales in the second quarter improved from the first quarter of 2008 yet were lower compared to the same period a year ago. According to the Illinois Association of REALTORS® (IAR) second quarter report, total home sales (which include single-family homes and condominiums) were 32,414 in the second quarter, down 25.4 percent from a year ago when 43,438 home sales were reported in the second quarter. The second quarter median home sale price was $192,500, down 6.8 percent from $206,500 in 2007.

My strategy is very simple for buying a home. You can't time out the bottom, but you can definitely time out when it has passed. I'm willing to wait until the median home prices have increased by 3% or more over two quarters before I buy. Below you can see that the you can't guess the future, but you can view the past. Maybe prices will go down a lot more, maybe they'll just creep a bit. The key is that you shouldn't target to time the bottom, you should target to acknowledge the recovery is legitimate.

The only way a home makes a good 'investment' is if its value is growing. Owning is not a better option merely because you can deduct interest from you income tax alone. It's only a good investment because of the leverage that you can get. For instance a 1% down payment and the house increases 10% implies a profit not of 9%, but of 900%!

Rocket Man!

2008-09-26T08:10:00.003-05:00

I love inventors.

I love inventors more when they accomplish their dream.

I love inventors even more when they accomplish their dream while wearing a space suit.

Balance Billing

2008-08-30T14:56:00.004-05:00

I read an interesting article from Business Week, Medical Bills You Shouldn't Pay, referring to 'balance billing'

As health-care costs continue to soar, millions of confused consumers are paying medical bills they don't actually owe. Typically this occurs when an insurance plan covers less than what a doctor, hospital, or lab service wants to be paid. The health-care provider demands the balance from the patient. Uncertain and fearing the calls of a debt collector, the patient pays up.

Most consumers don't realize it, but this common practice, known as balance billing, often is illegal. When doctors or hospitals think an insurer has reimbursed too little, state and federal laws generally bar the medical providers from pressuring patients to pay the difference. Instead, doctors and hospitals should be wrangling directly with insurers. Economists and patient advocates estimate that consumers pay $1 billion or more a year for which they're not responsible.

What's important to understand is that often times your employer will have a 90/10 or 80/20 plan where they have a fixed, negotiated fee schedule, and they will pay 80% or 90% of it, and you are required to pay the remaining. So if the doctor sends a bill of $100 to your insurance who then negotiates it to a rate of $50 and then pays $45, (90%) your doctor is allowed to bill you the remaining $5, but not the negotiated down price of $50.

McCain's VP Choice

2008-08-30T10:50:00.004-05:00

So regardless of your politics, you just have to love the way the GOP plays the game. Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska was selected as McCain's VP yesterday, and I just couldn't help but smile.

Just when you think, "Man, the Republican party has nominated this super old guy, how are they going to win this election", they bring in a VP who can claim "I raised the taxes on the oil companies", "I distanced myself from the the old Republican establishment" and "I can make this a historical campaign for the Republicans as well."

Beautiful move, regardless of which party you affiliate with.

Your Gear Doesn't Matter

2008-08-28T17:20:00.002-05:00

Sorry that it's been a while. I was inspired a bit today and just had to post. As most people know, I'm sort of a hobby photographer. Because photography had a certain technology aspect to it, artistic photographers and technophiles sometimes blur together. I'll be the first one to admit i'm more of the second type.

I subscribe to Ken Rockwell's RSS feed, and he's always a big proponent that people need to stop worrying about their gear so much and just start taking more pictures. Pretty good gear can take really great pictures.

To illustrate his point, he posted this link today: Man Uses Barbie Fishing Rod to Make Record Catch.

It made me laugh.

I'm back!

Matt

The $7,500 Housing Credit

2008-08-28T17:04:00.000-05:00

So this is a quick one. People who are looking to buy a first home may have heard about legislation that is offering a $7,500 tax break to home buyers who haven't owned a home during the past 3 years.

On the surface this is really something to perk your ears. $7,500 can go a long way toward closing costs, down payment, etc. Frankly, I was almost ready to seriously consider looking. Then... i read the fine print.

In short: It's not a free money gift per se, it's really a $7,500 loan 0% loan. You need to pay back $500 a year at tax time over 15 years. Total interest on a $7,500 loan over 15 years at 6.5% is really $4,260.

Woha.

So I originally was going to make a post on how a zero interest loan on $7,500 really isn't that big of a deal. However, if you view the $7,500 tax credit as really a $4,260 tax credit over 15 years ($478 the first year), it's actually not that bad.

I'm glad I did the math! We'll see what happens this spring...

Cooking Advice

2008-07-25T20:27:00.004-05:00

I'm not a big cooking guy. Perhaps I have my moments, but in general, I wouldn't put cooking among my top skill sets.

Today I was making a batch of Rice Crispy Treats. As everyone knows, there's not a lot to it. I melted the butter, then melted the marshmallows, then poured in the cereal. I stired the whole thing and then put it in a pan. Then I went to get some wax paper to push it in the pan.

We had no wax paper.

At first glance I thought, "Mey, I'll just push it in with the spoon."

This was extremely ineffective. The gooey treat kept sticking to the spoon and pulling OUT of the pan. Then I thought that I'd just use my hands, except that I've learned since being married that other people don't like to have their food touched with bare, unwashed hands. I was in a horrible situation in that I basically had a whole tray of Rice Crispy treats that would just go to waste unless I innovated. My alter ego, MattGyver sprung into action.

I first found a piece of sturdy cardstock photoprinter paper. I folded it in half and covered it tightly with a pair of my wife's pantyhose (sorry Jenn!). Then I found a blue crayon and tore off the paper wrapper so I could maximize the surface contact area. I frantically rubbed the blue crayon onto the pantyhose covered paper, which absorbed a considerable amount of this (non-toxic!) wax. This paper / leggings / crayon contraption had nearly identical properties to wax paper. I pressed the Rice Crispy treats into the pan, and there was no sticking at all!

The problem, of course, is that the rice crispys were now... Smurf Cripys. Oops.

Now for those of you that are laughing at my failed prototype, you have to understand that I'm an engineer. An engineer with a sense of humor... who made that last part up. I did find a creative solution, but it was much less glamorous.

Real Solution: I had an empty bag of Rice Crispys cereal. This bag has a similar material property to wax paper - I used the bag to press the rice crispy treats into the pan without having it stick! I was amazed. I feel like this was a food hacking trick that I discovered all by myself, and this whole adventure fits exceptionally well into a blog like mine.

A Friend Quoted in Business Week

2008-07-25T17:30:00.000-05:00

So every once in a while you'll have a friend get 15 seconds of fame in a local paper or on the nightly news. Not too often do you see it in the national media.

As I was reading my copy of Business Week that arrived today, there was the article, Cash for Trash. I saw a quote by a friend of mine.

"They're Not Picky Eaters"

Wes Bolson, as quoted in the August 4th issue of Business Week, page 42, referring to the bacteria his company, Coskata, uses to digest carbon monoxide and hydrogen from wood trimmings and 'hurricane debris' and excrete ethanol.

Link to the exact page if you're too lazy to read the whole thing.

Very neat!

Talk About Your Salary?

2008-07-24T17:22:00.000-05:00

I usually look to Ken Rockwell for camera advice, but sometimes he goes a little off topic.

I found his latest post, Talk About Your Salary to be VERY interesting.

His proposal is this: Talk with your coworkers about how much you are paid. While your boss can't tell you how much you get paid, what's the problem with knowing how much your coworkers get paid. This is the only real tool you have to negotiate salary effectively. Worst case, you find out that you're the highest paid. Best case, you have a coworker who does less work than you who is paid more and you can leverage that at an annual review. The only loser is your employer.

I think this is a really interesting topic and especially important for people in their twenties. Right out of school you're essentially useless and unskilled, but after a few years you have some skill sets that have been invested in you by your employer. If you're merely getting cost of living increases in total compensation, and the new hires are getting their base raised at a similar annual amount, it's possible that a newly hired coworker could be getting paid just as much or more than you. Yikes!

The real question is, how do you break the salary taboo culture? Are their implications here that Ken and I have missed?

Oh fellow blogging friends, how do I stalk thee?

2008-07-22T21:40:00.005-05:00

If you blog at all, you'll see that I pretty much comment on just about every post you make. You might think I'm so in love with your blog that I must check it every 3 minutes. While I do love your blog, I'm not quite that obsessive.

Unless you've been living under an virtual internet rock for the past few years, you've probably heard of something called RSS feeds.

RSS feeds are a web feed format that are formatted in a very specific way. Most blogging websites provide RSS feeds for their users automatically. You probably see links for them all over the place on the internet. Finding these feeds has never been a problem, it's finding a useful tool to aggregate these posts that has been my problem. For many of my more tech-savvy friends, you'll laugh that it took me until 2008 to fully embrace RSS. Sorry!

Google Reader does a great job for me. If you use Firefox you can get a sweet little Google reader plug-in that displays the number of unread posts in the lower corner of your browser like this:

One click will get you a full displayed page of everything you haven't read.

If you want to be able to organize these a bit more, you can organize these feeds into folders and then have them displayed on custom Google page.

You can also set up RSS feeds to work on sites like Craigslist and ebay, so you can watch for things of interest, if that's your type of thing.

New Facebook Layout

2008-07-22T21:03:00.003-05:00

So facebook decided to change their layout. They're rolling it out over time. You may not be updated yet, but soon will be.

Want to see a preview?

http://www.new.facebook.com/

Enjoy... or loathe.

Quixtar / Amway

2008-07-22T20:29:00.004-05:00

So, I'm going to make this quick, just to ensure that none of my colleagues, friends or family ever get sucked into the blatant scam of Quixtar, previously known as Amway.

I see ads now on Fox News just talking about the millions of people who are "independent business owners" as a part of Quixtar.

Quixtar is a manufacturer of health and beauty products. These are then sold to individual IBOs like John and Suzzie, at a discount. Theoretically, John or Suzzie would then sell these items at full price to other people and make the difference in margin. Selling Price - Cost - Other Expenses = Profit. Very simple!

Except, unfortunately, this isn't how Quixtar works for the vast majority of participants. In most cases, you have a friend of a friend who approaches you about a "business opportunity." You are told that you won't need to sell anything, and you can fire your boss in 2-5 years if you work hard.

The Quixtar way actually promotes consuming items (buying more granola bars, soap, makeup for yourself) and then finding others to buy and consume their own items. How does this make anyone money, you ask? For every individual your recruit, you get a fraction of their sales, and a fraction of the sales they make. The more people you recruit, and the more your recruits recruit, the higher your income bracket.

To make matters worse, to keep you hooked in, you'll have weekly or semi-monthly meeting to encourage you to stick with it. You may need to drive 30 miles or more to get to these meeting. Once there, you'll be pressed to buy "positive thinking" CDs to keep sticking with the business. Often times the cost of gas, time and these tapes suck any profits you might otherwise make from your recruits below you.

So if this doesn't sound particularly appealing, it's because it isn't. You don't need to take my word for it: Quixtar Income Link

IBO STATISTICS
The average bonus and cash payments earned by a Diamond IBO in 2005 were $146,995.*
The average bonus and cash payments earned by an Emerald in 2005 were $72,241.*
The average bonus and cash payments earned by a Q12 Platinum, an IBO who qualifies at the Platinum level all 12 months of the year, were $47,472.*
The Average Monthly Gross Income for “Active” IBOs was $115.
*The following are approximate percentages of Direct Fulfillment IBOs of record in North America who achieved the illustrated levels of success in the calendar year ending August 31, 2005: Diamond .0120%; Emerald .0320%; Q-12 Platinum .1683%.

In other words, people do not make money with Quixtar unless you're one of the king pins at the top. The average person makes less than $1380 a year. You could get a part time job and earn that much in a month or two waiting tables!

Stay away!

The Second Amendment

2008-07-15T22:47:00.006-05:00

With the elections fast approaching, many issues are coming forward, as is typical. Most of the talk is about the economy and the war in Iraq. The far conservative right is still as passionate as ever about overturning Roe vs. Wade while the far liberal left wants to make sure that you can marry anybody you choose.

The 2nd amendment is a topic that hasn't received a lot of attention recently, since the other issues always seem to be more pressing... you only see people worry about gun violence when someone they know is personally affected or everything else in the country is going well.

To set the record straight, I've always been pro- gun rights. My logic has been pretty simple, even though I don't own a firearm:
If you outlaw owning a gun, the only people who will own guns are criminals, the exact same people who you don't want to own guns. The only people who will now not have guns are law abiding citizens.

I am also troubled about a created society where only the government is allowed to have guns. This seems... problematic if taken to extremes.

However, Burt Constable an article in the Daily Herald that made me pause and think about gun rights in our country. Even in junior high I would read the comics, plus Burt's article. He always has something short and to the point, and he made me think. I consider him to be a little left leaning, but you can't fault someone for having one leg a little shorter than the other.

One of the more powerful questions he asked was, "What causes more fatalities in our country, alcohol related car crashes, or suicide by gunshot?" I venture to guess that most people would say drunk driving. But when the question comes to "by how much?" I would be tempted to say maybe 2 or the 3 people die each year due to drunk driving for every person killed by suicide with a gun.

Turns out I would not only be wrong about the order of magnitude, but by which side I picked as well. As it turns out, the numbers are very close, leaning more towards gun related suicides. As Burt states, roughly 31,000 people are killed by guns each year.

Suicides are responsible for 55.4 percent of gun deaths in the U.S., while homicides account for 40.2 percent, according to the most-recent (2005) statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicides by gun have outnumbered gun homicides and gun accidents in 20 of the last 25 years.

For those of you rightfully concerned about drunken driving, more people take their own lives with guns than die in alcohol-related crashes.

I didn't believe the last sentence. I fact checked, and to my surprise Burt is right.

Here's something even more startling (sorry for the math) 100-55.4-40.2 = 95.4 percent of gun deaths are either murder or suicide. Giving the benefit of the doubt that the remaining number are shootings related to self defense or law enforcement, it implies that 22 out of every 23 shootings is for "something bad". I can't fully reason in my mind that the 1 of 23 is actually "something good" as someone is still dying.

Congratulations, Burt. I dislike guns more than I did before. But what in the world do we do about it? My logic and concerns still apply.

Comments?

Digital Photography Thoughts

2008-07-14T20:34:00.001-05:00

A few months ago Jenn began to research digital cameras, specifically digital SLR cameras. Both of Jenn's folks are talented photographers, as was her dad's father. Her father is actually a photographer by trade. The Fliehler family does photography well.

I am not an artist. I am an engineer. I love technology, so that aspect of photography was mildly interesting, but I just sort of let Jenn do the research and figure it out. I thought that Jenn getting back into photography she left behind in high school would help her scratch the creative itch she has because she's no longer doing theater like she did a lot in college (and a bit after college).

When we were buying our camera at Calumet Photo, I didn't even really pick up the camera - I hadn't touched a camera that wasn't a point and shoot for about 15 years and was totally uncomfortable with the whole thing.

Gradually though, I've been really pretty impressed with the camera and have learned a lot about photography, since going from nothing to something is a pretty long way! I thought I'd share some of this, since many people I know own digital cameras, but could get a lot more mileage out of them if they knew a little more.

We ended up getting a Nikon D80 digital SLR camera and a pair of lens, an 18-55mm and a 55-200mm. Note that one of my favorite online authors, Ken Rockwell, (guy from link above) gave a lot of interesting commentary of the position of the camera relative to the rest of the Nikon lineup, but I still think we have a great camera. My favorite article of Ken's is The Megapixel Myth. Asking how many megapixels a camera has is a n00b question in judging the quality of a camera. Don't go there!

One of the things that frustrates me most is having blurry images. I feel like I took so many photographs that came out blurry, most of the time this was due to the fact that my hand was moving while the camera was taking the picture. However, there was other times no matter how still I stood, I'd still get blurry images because the shutter was open for a long time and I just couldn't hold still enough.

There are three components that determines the exposure of a photograph.

Shutter Speed: (length of time light is exposed to the image sensor)
Aperture Size: Size of the opening through the lens allowing the light to shine through.
ISO Value: The responsiveness of the sensor.

(As a quick engineering note, I didn't fully realize the massive range of light quantity in the every day. For instance, light outside on a sunny day might be thousands of times brighter than light indoors. I knew it was a lot brighter, but I didn't appreciate that the quantity of light was so many orders of magnitude larger. Impressive!)

So here's the short story:

Speed + Size + ISO = Exposure
(Amount of time shutter is open, size of the hole allowing light in, responsiveness of sensor)

If my hands are too jiggly at a certain shutter speed and I get blurry photos, I can decrease the amount of time my shutter is open (making it open and close faster). However, then I'm only allowing less light in. My photo will be dark (under exposed)! Ugh!

Most cameras in "Auto" mode already have the aperture all the way open (small number), so in order to get away with making your shutter be open for less time, you need to find the ISO setting on your camera. Many cameras have this buried away in it, and it just might be your best friend next time you're inside at a party and want to take pictures without an obnoxious flash.

A higher ISO value lets your camera decrease the amount of time your shutter is open, and still correctly expose the photograph (not too dark or light). A typical high quality ISO value might be 100, while the other end of the spectrum is say something like an ISO value of 1600. Every time you double your ISO value, you can decrease the amount of time your shutter is open, giving you less blurry pictures due to hand jiggle. However, there is a compromise: you end up with more and more speckling (noise) on your photos as you increase the ISO value. However, I'd much rather have a slightly speckled photo than one which is blurry! This noise can be reduced in photo editing software.

Excellent, free photo editing software (though sometimes a memory hog) is Gimp. The editing tools are much like photoshop which let you do a lot touch up really well. Since my friends seem to be split 50-50 on Mac and PCs these days (oh the humanity!) I'll give both links.

PC: http://www.gimp.org/windows/
Mac: http:www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/gimp.html

However, I generally hate editing photos, so I'd rather get it right in the camera and be done!

Running of the Bulls!

2008-07-09T05:58:00.000-05:00

Every year there are short stories you'll hear on the news or read in the newspaper about the Running of the Bulls. The most famous running of the bulls is the nine-day festival of San Fermín in Pamplona.

What we typically see is a video clip of the running of the bulls, then a daily count of the number of people who were injured or killed. (Deaths are relatively rare, the last person killed was Chicago native Matthew Tassio, in 1995.) This is typically followed by a sound bite of someone saying, "The Running of the Bulls is SO dangerous, I don't even know why it's allowed. Every year you hear about some people getting hurt or killed. They should illegalize it."

I know for sure that if there was an annual tradition every July in the United States where people were hurt doing the same dangerous thing time and time again, we'd outlaw it right away! Especially if the number of people injured wasn't in the dozens like Spain, but thousands.

Down Payment Assistance Programs

2008-06-24T21:57:00.001-05:00

Inspiration for this enter comes from Seeking Alpha and the Wall Street Journal

This is going to be a quick one. I'm not sure if any of you have heard about these "down payment assistance programs" or seen signs on the road for such a thing. I never understood why a not-for-profit agency would be willing to give out grants to people for a down payment. Nor did I ever understand how they could find sufficient donations to make it work. I was puzzled.

I am puzzled no longer!

Most of these down payment assistance programs are actually sponsored by home builders. While banks are no longer providing 0% down loans, this can be worked around.

Here it goes:

Instead of marking down a $250,000 home 10%-15%, these home builders create a not for profit, "home buyers assistance program" and "donate" $7,500 to it.
They put up signs saying, "First time home buyer? Down payment assistance available! Dial 1-888-555-5555"
You call the number and they say that they're willing to give you $7,500 (3%) in assistance if you buy these homes from the builder.
Builder gets the sale, and doesn't need to mark down the remaining homes in his subdivision, keeping the prices artificially high.
Buyer who may not be able to afford the mortgage gets a government (tax-payer) sponsored loan from Fredie Mac or Fannie Mae because they put 3% down. These are still higher risk borrowers - they haven't proven they could save a dime!
Tax payers foot the bill if the borrower defaults.

Religious Tolerance vs. Multiple Truths

2008-06-24T16:37:00.000-05:00

The Boston Globe made a recent summary of the Pew Forum's study on Americans' religious beliefs and practices.

Among some highlights:

The United States is a nation of believers: most Americans say they believe in God, they pray, and they attend worship services regularly; they also believe in angels and demons, in heaven and hell, and in miracles.

But they also say, contradicting the teachings of many faiths, that truth comes in many forms. Large majorities of Americans say that many religions - not just their own - can lead to eternal life.

I find this to be really fascinating. I'm going to try to make a pitch here, and I hope you'll stick with me. It's not going to be on a particular flavor of faith, but trying to make a rational argument for absolute truth.

Something that is absolutely true is always correct, in all places, at all moments, under any condition.

Take for example, I reach into my pocket and pull out a dime. I close my hand around the dime and you can't see what the coin is anymore. If a friend of ours walks into the room and I tell him I have a penny in my closed hand, which he believes, it doesn't affect the fact that a dime, not a penny, is still in my hand. Our friend can sincerely believe it's a penny, but he would be sincerely wrong. Beliefs about things we can or can't see do not affect reality.

Take the theory that the sun and planets in our solar system rotate around the Earth. Until Copernicus came around, everyone sincerely believed this, but it didn't affect the fact that what everyone believed was wrong and it didn't change when people changed their mind about it. The paths of planets can't both be rotating around the earth and rotating around the sun at the same time, (unless of course the Earth and Sun were in the exact same location, which they are clearly not).

Now when it comes to faith, I think that it's critically important to realize that absolute truth still applies. Let's take Henry and Andy. Henry believes in Hinduism and Andy is an atheist. Henry believes in many gods, while Andy believes there is no such thing!

1 of 3 possibilities must exist here:

1. Henry is right and Andy is wrong.
2. Andy is right and Henry is wrong.
3. Andy and Henry are both wrong. (If there is only a single God, for instance, they would be both wrong.)

What is important for both Andy and Henry to acknowledge is that they can tolerate one another while acknowledging that their combined beliefs must fall into one of the above 3 categories. This shouldn't offend anyone, this is just reasoning 101.

When I see people believing in multiple truths, like the article alludes to, one just needs to shake their head. Not everyone can be right!

I'm going to leave this post like this for now. More to come later.

Re: Pink Ribbon

2008-06-16T23:02:00.000-05:00

Again, I'll be replying to one of Jaime's posts, this one about fund raising.

For those of you who won't view Jaime's blog, she asks the question: What's with needing to go on a 3 day walk to raise money for breast cancer? Can't we just give money without the walking? Does the phrase, "No pain, no gain" really apply to finding a cure for cancer?

Frankly, at first glance I was like, "Jaime and I agree! Stop shutting down the cities for days, cut out all of the T-Shirts, posters and hydration stations and just fork all of the money over to the charity! Make it a lean, efficient system!"

On the surface, that's true, but the more I think about it, the more you need a big "event" to take place. The longer the fund raisers need to participate, the more they need to train in advance, the more social events they'll need to cancel and the more stuff they need to buy all equate to more people will hear about the fund raising event. The more people hear about what they're doing, the more money they'll raise. The more money they raise, the sooner they'll find a cure. (Right?)

Breast cancer is the number one killer of women. Er wait, actually it's #6, causing only 1/8th the number of deaths of heart disease, a not-nearly-as-sexy topic. (Gee, I wonder why?)

Top Killers of Women in the U.S. (Centers for Disease Control)

Interestingly, a big 3 day walk and all of the preparation behind it could actually reduce the risk of women getting heart disease. Unfortunately, exercise has a limited impact on actually reducing the likelihood of breast cancer. Perhaps these walks are actually killing two birds with one stone... I digress...

The point of the Susan B Komen Race for the Cure 3 day walk is to find a cure for a disease that not only kills over 40,000 women a year in the United States, but causes severe, deep-cutting emotional wounds in tens of thousands of women and also deeply affects the lives of their friends and families in very serious and lasting ways. Having energy and attention around something of this magnitude is certainly worthwhile.

Question 1: Does fund raising by the public make any noticeably impact on finding cures for diseases? Isn't there enough financial incentive in capitalistic countries for private companies to research? Does all of the money raised by not-for-profits through individuals even compare to what private, for-profit corporations are pouring into research? How about what governments are pouring into research? I don't know the answer to this one. Someone should do some research for their blog. I find this to be very interesting question.

Question 2: in the U.S. Let's say that all of the fund raising by all individuals in this country to all breast cancer non-profits amounted to 0.1% of the total amount of funds appropriated to breast cancer research by the U.S. government and private U.S. corporations. Would donating to these causes by individuals for fund raisers make sense? I believe the answer would be a resounding no. What if that number increased to 1%? 15%? 50%? That's where things become a little more gray. Ahh the beauty of ethics. I have enough readers who must have an opinion on this.

Comment!

Thoughts on 401k for the Twenty-Somethings

2008-06-09T16:20:00.001-05:00

So I know that some of you might not really care much about retirement at the ripe old age of 20 something, but I know that enough of you have some sort of 401k or own some quantity of stocks and haven't put much thought into which mutual funds you invest.

To be clear, I firmly believe that it's important for people to be putting SOMETHING away for retirement, no matter what they're age. I'm not saying that you need to squirrel away 25% of what you bring in, but the number needs to be above 0%.

Don't say that you can't afford it! There may be times where it is wiser to not put money in your 401k, like if you're saving for a major investment like a home, or need to pay off significant portions of debt, or are funding the education of yourself or a spouse and it will imply taking on less debt. However, if you aren't in any of those situations and "can't afford it" then I'm adamant that you need to adjust your present lifestyle to afford to retire.

I was speaking with a friend of mine that said he wasn't too worried about where he put his money. He's just putting most of his money in an S&P 500 Index and will let it ride for a while. It's pretty safe he figured.

For those of you who don't tune into CNBC every night, the S&P 500 is a index fund that has the 500 largest public traded (companies with stocks) put together. You'll see how this index performs pretty much every evening on the news and in the paper every morning, along with the Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). For decades it's been pretty safe and stable.

What is interesting is that up until about 10 years ago, a mutual fund trying to mirror the S&P 500 was a pretty safe place to just park your money. The returns were descent and you were well diversified among 500 large, stable companies.

However, for the past 10 years, the returns on the S&P 500 are pretty poor.

A graph here shows performance over the last 10 years: (Google)

As you can see, over the past 10 years, the S&P is only up 22% - that's only 2.05% per year. I can earn more than that with zero risk in a passive savings account. Bad news!

My point here isn't to give you specific mutual fund choices, but rather to encourage you to talk with someone who manages your mutual fund (if your company is large enough, they might have an adviser come in twice a year). Take some risks while your young and plant money in the mutual funds on your plan that have the best 10 year average return. Options to plant your money in target date mutual funds aren't too bad, but typically under-perform other funds.

If your company has any sort of a match, make sure you contribute at least that amount. Danaher matches 50 cents on the dollar up to 6% of your income. If I elect to contribute 6% of my income, Danaher will put the equivalent of 3% of my income in my 401k to match. That's a 50% return - try to find any sort of mutual fund that can do that.

I would only invest in your company's preferred stock purchase plan (buying stock of the company you work for) if it is among the best annual returning option on your list of investment choices. One reason for this is pretty simple - you're already vested in the company you work for. If your company falls on hard time, the company stock price might fall, and so might the axe on your job! Then you're out of money for retirement AND out of a job. That's a double whammy I could do without!

For instance, I have about 16% of my 401k in Danaher stock because it has been a well performing stock over the past 10 years. I would never have invested in Abbott, though I did work there for a period of time.

Interesting, I've read that having a minor short position in your company could be considered a hedge, but not really something I'm interested in doing.

It's also important to be internationally diversified. Again, you're already vested heavily in the country you work in. Not everything is revolving around the U.S. anymore. Major growth is going to be coming out of emerging markets, though purely emerging market funds have probably already had their run. Get a broadly diversified international mutual fund or two and plant significant funds there. You don't want to be parking your money in bonds when you're 20 something. They under-perform stocks and are only a good place to put your money on a sliding scale as you're nearing retirement because they're less volatile.

Anyway, that's a little slice on some thoughts for now. Enjoy!

I need to apologize....

2008-06-09T16:06:00.000-05:00

Jenn and I split a 5 dollar foot long at Subway on Sunday night. Going down the list of ingredients, Jenn asked for tomatoes, to which the sandwich artist replied, "We're not serving tomatoes today."

Jenn sort of shrugged and as we were walking out asked, "Why do you think they're not serving tomatoes?"

I replied, "Either they're too lazy to cut up more (it was Sunday night) or they ran out."

Little did I know they were trying to keep me from getting salmonella.

Oops.

Sorry subway guys. You aren't lazy or poorly Kan-Baning your inventory.

Dry Drowning?

2008-06-06T16:39:00.000-05:00

Found this really wild article:

Boy Dies of Drowning After Walking Home from Pool

I couldn't believe it.

Most frightening comment in the article:

According to the latest figures, about 3,600 Americans died from drowning in 2005, said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including a small percentage that die up to 24 hours later because of water entering the respiratory system. A not insignificant number of the victims are children who died after having a bath.

Yikes!!

Re: Living with the 'Rents

2008-06-06T16:04:00.000-05:00

Jaime asks the question, "What's with all of the 20 somethings living with their parents?"

So, I did a Google search to see if I could figure that out.

Among the most interesting articles was referring to a book titled, "The Boomerang Generation." Though the article is from 2005, the statistics are very interesting:

Myth: College graduation marks the beginning of domestic and financial independence.

Fact: 63 percent of U.S. college students plan to live at home after graduation.

Myth: Boomerangers are always a financial burden on their families.

Fact: About 50% of Boomerangers contribute to household rent and expenses.

Myth: Living at home is a sign of failure.

Fact: 25% of the Boomerang population is attending a post-secondary institution, and 45% are working full time (Mitchell, 1998).

Myth: The return home is a temporary, one-time event.

Fact: Some families reported kids who boomeranged three or more times. Half of young adults return within 30 months, often with a spouse or child back in tow. (Snyder, 2000)

Myth: Parents are always unhappy with having to change their lifestyle.

Fact: 73% of parents (Mitchell and Gee, 1998) reported being "very satisfied"

Myth: The Boomeranger phenomenon will decrease over time.

Fact: As Generation Y reaches adulthood, there will be more 20- to 34-year-olds in 2010 than in 2000, increasing the number of Boomerangers (US Census Bureau).

Many people in their 20's are still living at home. The most common reasons apparently are unemployment and student debt. In just the past 10 years, the average amount of student debt has more than doubled:

Also, starting salaries vary significantly. Some college graduates earn twice as much right out of the gate. I can't expect the person earning on the bottom side of the scale with with $30,367 in student debt, a car payment and a 70 mile round trip commute in to be living by themselves. The numbers don't add up!

I guess the bigger question is - why the pressure to live on your own? Why throw away thousands of dollars in rent money when you could be paying off debt? I lived with my folks until I got engaged and it was among the smartest things I did. It definitely depends on your family life and if you can tolerate the lifestyle with your folks the second time around, but getting financially secure for a few years in your 20's isn't something I'm too worried about.

The person I am worried about is the never-really-employed 30 something still living with their parents. That's a whole different story!

Exploited Workers in Africa

2008-06-02T16:21:00.000-05:00

I'm not usually one to just pass out a link and say, "See for Yourself"but one of the areas where I really sympathize is horrible working conditions and war in 3rd world countries to meet a global demand for stuff - in this case, gold:

Mining for Bling

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been fighting off attacks from insurgents and other government funded militias who create civil unrest and cause genocide within the country. Only recently has the United Nations been able to stabilize the country.
There, once "child soldiers" have now become child miners, paying a local mining fee to warlords and earning 25 cents profit each day mining. The children take liquid mercury (you know, the stuff that had Arlington Heights all abuzz a few years back because of a possible spill in the crawlspace of a suburban home) and mix it with mud to absorb gold they find. They handle this mercury with their bare hands.

All of this is because gold is:

1. Used as an international currency and
2. Highly desired by people to have shiny things to wear.

I won't even get into diamonds and the whole joke of the Kimberly Accord.

Though dated back in 1982 - very little has changed since this fascinating article written in The Atlantic, Ever Try to Sell a Diamond?

The bottom line is, you can't. Used Diamonds don't hold their value and their value doesn't increase beyond inflation, all being controlled by the diamond monopoly, aka De Beers. They paid a $295 million fee to settle their price fixing schemes back in January.

If you bought a diamond recently, you just missed the window to claim a 30% refund off your purchase price by settling at diamondclassaction.com

To Rent or Buy?

2008-05-30T11:56:00.000-05:00

Many people in their twenties are renting, including Jenn and me.

The traditional American culture says that you grow up, graduate from college, get married, buy a house, have some kids and then retire. While I have a lot to say about all of those things, I'm going to just comment on the "buying a house" part.

Common House buying advocates cite the following as great reasons to buy a home:

Tax Deductions
Pay yourself instead of paying your landlord
Build equity (good long term investment)

What I want to do is just compare renting vs. buying for a married twenty-something who might move in say 5 years. You'll see ads for, "Own for what you're paying in rent!"

I'm going to have a quick little table on a 30 year fixed mortgage for a $200,000 home. This might be a 2 or 3 bedroom single family home with 1 1/2 or 2 baths in some parts of DuPage county (Carol Stream, Lombard, Glendale Heights) where I live. I'm not say that this is your price range or mine, but it's a nice round number and something we can use for a conversation.

Step One is that you're now borrowing money from the bank. Let's assume you're a good little saver and you put 10% or $20,000 down. Good for you! Now you'll need a loan for $180,000. Fortuantely, you have good credit, because you're not only a saver, you're good at paying off credit cards on time. You have some student debt, but hey, you're 20ish.

A $180,000 loan would make the principle plus interest equal to roughly $1,080 a month with a 6.25% loan and no points.
"$1108a month! Wow, that's not much more than my rent, might even be less than rent! Where do I sign?"

Not so fast my entitled American peer! You have to pay property taxes too. I know you knew that. Buy how much can that be? Quite a bit! I looked around DuPage county and found most $200,000 homes have about $4,800 a year in property taxes. This varies widely from place to place, but in the near Chicago suburbs, this is going to be within 20% of what you're going to pay. This nicely rounds up our total mortgage payment at this point to about ($1108 + $400) $1,508 a month.

But of course, you knew about the property taxes, and this isn't a shocker for you.

Where do I sign? Give me the loan!

Step one is to sign your checkbook for a separate check to the bank for closing costs, not just the down payment. I'm not talking about buying points (prepaid interest) I'm talk about costs like:

Lender Feeds
Appraisals
Title Insurance
Tax Services Fee
Courier Fees
Flood Check Fee
Closing/Escrow
Recording

Countrywide.com estimates a $200,000 home with 10% down in 60187 zip code would have closing costs in the $2,400 range. That's ZERO points. Just the "cost of doing business."

After you cut that check, you'll find out that since you didn't put a down payment of 20%, you'll have to pay for mortgage insurance, about $90 a month. (On top of the $1508 for principle and interest and property taxes.)

So now we're at the point where you can own your own home for the low low price of just $1598 a month. You're paying yourself, not your landlord, you have a nice fat tax deduction and your house is appreciating. You're sitting pretty!

Many calculators assume that you spend roughly 1% of your houses value on maintenance costs each year. This includes things like maintaining appliances (refrigerator, air condition, furnace, hot water heater, garage door, etc) and general maintenance on items like the roof, windows, screen doors, door knobs, the driveway, flowers and landscaping and chores like mowing the lawn, clearing snow in the winter, salting your walkways, etc. On a $200,000 home that's $2,000 a year. It might seem a little high, but I'd imagine it's close.

So let's take a look at this sort of thing and assume average house price increases, property tax increases and other elements of inflation, all 3%. Contrary to popular belief, property taxes do rise, so your mortgage does too. Depending where you live, property taxes could raise quite rapidly if you're in a still-developing suburb in the far west Chicago burbs.

Year	Home Value	Mortgage Payment	Maintenance Costs	Principle	Interest	Mortgage Insurance	Taxes	Total Deductions	Standard Deduction	Difference	Tax Back
1	$200,000	$1,598	$(2,000)	$2,109	$11,190	$1,080	$4,800	$17,070	$10,900	$6,170	$1,543
2	$206,000	$1,610	$(2,060)	$2,245	$11,055	$1,080	$4,944	$17,079	$11,100	$5,979	$1,495
3	$212,180	$1,623	$(2,122)	$2,389	$10,910	$1,080	$5,092	$17,083	$11,300	$5,783	$1,446
4	$218,545	$1,635	$(2,185)	$2,543	$10,757	$1,080	$5,245	$17,082	$11,500	$5,582	$1,395
5	$225,102	$1,648	$(2,251)	$2,707	$10,593	$1,080	$5,402	$17,075	$11,700	$5,375	$1,344
Total			$(10,618)	$11,993	$54,504	$5,400	$25,484	$85,388			$7,222

The other funny thing is that the "great taxes breaks" people talk about aren't as neat as they first sound. Sure you can deduct property taxes, mortgage interest and even mortgage insurance from your taxes, but then the standard $10,900 tax deduction goes away that you've been getting all along, so you're only deducting the difference. In our first year example, the deduction difference is $6,170 dollars! However, it's a tax deduction, not a tax credit, so you're only getting back an amount equal to your tax bracket. If you earn between about $35,000 and $70,000 a year, that's just 25%. If you earn over $70,000 a year, the next tax bracket is only 28%

So what is this telling us?

If we were to sell this house after 5 years for $225,102, subtract 6% that goes to the buyers and seller agents ($13,506) add in the tax benefits ($7,222) and principle that I paid ($11,993) and subtract out my remaining loan amount ($168,007), I have...

$33,109
Whoo hoo!

In 5 years I am sitting on $33,109 dollars! Unfortunately, if you were paying attention, you should be very, very alarmed. You actually started with $20,000 for that down payment, and $2,400 for the closing costs, and you put in $10,618 of maintenance.

Total Costs of Ownership:
$20,000 + $10,618 + $2,400 = $33,018

So the last step: $33,109 - $33,018 = $91.

So your "investment" after 5 years yielded you $91. I won't bother with the math, the rate of return is basically 0%.

Sitting in a passive savings account at 3% interest would have turned that $20,000 into $23,185.
If you had been able to rent and save just $300 a month over those 5 years ($1,300 gets you a pretty nice place!) You'd be sitting on an extra $4,173 if you just put that savings in a passive 3% yield savings account. Total extra cash after 5 years: $23,185 + 4,173 = $27,348.

Renting implies I earned $7,348, while owning means I made $91. While I was renting I had more cash flow and more liquid assets, cash just in my savings account, ready for an emergency. At best, the homeowner has a home equity loan where they can borrow and pay interest on their money.

Now you can argue that you won't spend $10,618 on maintenance over 5 years - this is quite possible, but we must agree you are spending more than $0. Think about it - you move into a house and you decide you want to upgrade a few things, maybe replace an appliance or two, fix a leaky roof, waterproof the basement, the furnace goes out, neighbor kid breaks a window, etc. These are things that have real costs associated with them. Mowing your lawn isn't expensive per say, but do you own a lawnmower? You'll need to buy one if you don't.

That's all I have for this post for now.... comments welcome!

American Airlines Makes a Dumb Move

2008-05-22T11:48:00.000-05:00

The Seattle Times has some interesting comments about how American Airlines is charging passengers $15 (each way!) for their first checked bag.

As a frequent traveler, I don't check bags when I travel for business. I have a carry-on that is stored in the upper bins of the plane and my laptop bag goes underneath my seat. This is very typical of most business travelers.

So how does this affect me? In plain terms, there is going to be serious "bin rage". Infrequent travels violate a ton of overhead bin etiquette. They put over-sized luggage up there, purses and coats, laptop bags and anything else they don't want to put under the seat in front of them. This is why when the last 5 people show up on a plane, they're always hunting around for bin space and inevitably must check their back plane-side. This causes delays and is a total pain for everyone on board.

What we have is essentially the opposite of what happened with the 3-1-1 rules a while back , where carry luggage was allowed to only have containers of 3 oz or less of liquids in 1, 1 quart size bag. Because people didn't want to go through the hassle of getting smaller containers of deodorant, contact solution and toothpaste for their carry-on baggage, the amount of checked baggage dramatically increased.

Now because of $30 being added to your fare, people will be not only bringing back all that luggage, but bringing on more luggage for those bins. The flight attendants are going to turn into luggage police for what is already a totally chaotic boarding process for the infrequent traveler.

One Last Gripe:

Flying Northwest yesterday and Tuesday, their new (to me) boarding process is:

"Northwest Executive Passengers and First Class Passengers" then
"All Rows All Seats"

So you have 100+ people standing in line to board instead of grouping them by seat location or other options. Chaos! Shame on you Northwest!

Re: Living together before marriage

2008-05-10T22:46:00.000-05:00

My friend Jaime had an interesting post about couples living together before marriage.

(Before I continue, as part of disclosure, I'm married and have been married for a little less than a year, and my wife and I didn't live together before we were married.)

Jaime hit on a couple of really logical thoughts on this. Living together before marriage is absolutely a new phenomenon, since 1960 the number of unwed couples living together has increased 9 fold. However, if you look at the way marriage has evolved culturally in the United States, it makes sense that this has become popular. And when I say popular, I mean really popular. The below image is courtesy of a study by the University of Queensland, Australia. Though this isn't a U.S. statistic, the exponential trend is similar for many western countries.

However, just because this is a new phenomenon, doesn't mean that people didn't see the writing on the wall, like this 1987 article from the New York Times, "Divorce May Be the Price of Living Together First"

Dating and marriage in the United States has traditionally been three parts:
1. Dating for a period of time and then discussing and proposing the idea of marriage
2. Getting engaged for a period of time to plan the wedding
3. Committing to marriage as long as both husband and wife live.

The major problem we have now is that the commitment part has left. Divorce rates in this country are astonishingly high. As someone who has been married for only a year, (and don't take this as a testimony of marital dissatisfaction, quite the opposite actually) I can see how some people get divorced - marriage is hard sometimes and it takes a lot of effort to work through problems! As our culture has rapidly placed greater and greater value on the individual, other values, like commitment, get squeezed out.

To take this a step further, when divorce isn't an option, you have two options if your marriage has problems:

1. Be miserable (extreme example)
2. Work it out

The problem today is that a socially acceptable third option has crept in:

3. Leave ("Upgrade" / "Get what YOU deserve")

since option 2 has become less valuable and being personal happiness has become the pinnacle of American cultural goals.

To circle back to cohabitation, because the option of leaving a marriage has become more acceptable, most people chose to cohabitate to "test out marriage" and to "reduce the odds of failure".

My thesis is that cohabitation has only risen because divorce has tranformed from taboo to a realistic option in American culture. If divorce was not an option, couples wouldn't need to "test it out" or give it a "trial run."

Though on the surface cohabitation might sounds like a logical trial period to improve marital satisfaction, study after study has shown just the opposite occurs. Couple who live together before marriage are twice as likely to get divorced as those who live separate before marriage. Michael McManus, below, states quite clearly that a "trial marriage" (cohabitation) is more likely a "trial divorce".

While my friend Jaime admittedly she hadn't done any research about cohabitation (fair enough, she's honest) and wasn't aware of data supporting or refuting the odds of cohabitation relative to a successful marriage, I'll quote this recent article from the National Review:

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What’s so bad about living together?

Michael McManus: Couples who live together are gambling and losing in 85 percent of the cases. Many believe the myth that they are in a “trial marriage.” Actually it is more like a “trial divorce,” in which more than eight out of ten couples will break up either before the wedding or afterwards in divorce. First, about 45 percent of those who begin cohabiting, do not marry. Those who undergo “premarital divorce” often discover it is as painful as the real thing. Another 5-10 percent continue living together and do not marry. These two trends are the major reason the marriage rate has plunged 50 percent since 1970. Couples who cohabit are likely to find that it is a paultry substitute for the real thing, marriage.

Of the 45 percent or so who do marry after living together, they are 50 percent more likely to divorce than those who remained separate before the wedding. So instead of 22 of the 45 couples divorcing (the 50 percent divorce rate) about 33 will divorce. That leaves just 12 couples who have begun their relationship with cohabitation who end up with a marriage lasting 10 years.

I think what's important to note is that relationships are much more than odds. I'm completely convinced that marriage isn't merely a roll of the dice (more statistically correct today might be, "flip of a coin") in terms off success or failure. Things like age, length of dating, and education of both parties also have a substantial impact on the "odds of success" for a given marriage.

All this aside, in my mind success in marriage wholly lies on the commitment of the husband and wife to make it work, even when it's extremely inconvenient, messy or otherwise difficult.

The National Review article above also mentioned something about divorce reform, though I haven't done enough research or thought about it enough to have an opinion.

However, I do have an opinion that among the most important qualities desirable in a spouse is their ability and commitment to work through difficult problems.

I'll probably write more about marriage later, but Jaime inspired me to express an opinion. (Hopefully she takes that as a compliment!)

About this blog...

2008-05-10T22:18:00.000-05:00

I was blogging before it was cool, before it was called blogging, and when it was back on AOL. Back when having graphics as a background on a web page was the de facto style and you had to learn quite a bit of HTML and markup just in order to write. I had numerous musing including (gasp!) poems, short stories, and a disproportionate amount of essays in a series titled, 'the next girlfriend'. I also had, interestingly, a lot of struggles with faith and surface level conflicts with evil's existence in a world created by a loving God.

Looking back, the reasons I wrote things like that is because I didn't have people to confide in and be vulnerable with. What I'm finding out is that I wasn't alone then in my yearning, and that society's comfort with being vulnerable is decreasing ever so gradually.

When I talk about being vulnerable, I mean sharing deep secrets, weaknesses, sins, hurts and longings that might make you appear weak, foolish, desperate or pathetic. I desperately want to have reciprocally vulnerable and authentic relationships with people I live life with.

So though the last few paragraphs might seem a little "all over the place" in terms of thought.. they allude to basically this: My writings in this blog won't be a place to be vulnerable with the world. I have a wonderful wife and great friends to do that with. Writing here will be more about ideas and less about needing an outlet. It's very freeing indeed!

Wal-Mart vs. CNN - Who's Worse?

2008-03-25T16:53:00.000-05:00

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/25/walmart.insurance.battle/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

For those of you that won't read the whole article, let me summarize:

1. Eight years ago a woman gets a job at Wal-Mart which includes health benefits.
2. Shortly thereafter she gets in a horrible car accident, racking up $470,000 in medical bills.
3. Wal-Mart's health insurer paid every dime.
4. Woman sues the trucking company and is awarded $1 million.
5. After legal fees, woman recieves $417,000 from the settlement.
6. Wal-Mart's health insurer wants their share of the lawsuit ($470,000).
7. Math doesn't work out ($417,000 - $470,000 < 0)

This is a little known but distinctly real phenomenon and law structure in the United States: If you get injuried and sue for medical bills, pain and suffering, and future lost wages, the company that paid all of your medical bills (you were suing to recover damages for that, right?) is entitled to recover what you sued for.

Now the observant reader will notice that there's a problem right in between steps 4 and 5. That problem is that $587,000 ~~disappeared~~ was pocketed by her attorneys!

What we have here is a case of corporate greed not by Wal-Mart, but by her attorneys who were supposed to be protecting her interests.

Sadness indeed. Not to mention that her husband has health problems and she lost her son within 2 weeks of serving our country in Iraq. A horrible story, and horribly skewed.

Now, Wal-Mart, whose health insurer is Blue Cross / Blue Shield, is getting another bad rap. I dislike Wal-Mart as much as the next guy, but this is just an unfair blow by CNN.