Last night, for the third Wednesday in a row, I ventured to the Whiteside Theater in downtown Corvallis to watch an old movie. Two weeks ago, it was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Last week, it was It’s a Wonderful Life. And yesterday was Star Wars. The place was packed! So fun to watch a favorite film in an old theater with a couple of hundred other fans.
When is the market crash coming? What stocks should I buy? How can I time the market? Behavioral Economist Dan Ariely answered with a lot of science and insight. His advice may surprise you.
The post How to survive a market crash appeared first on Cash and Kerry.
Download the free budget spreadsheet to build a simple, advanced, or household budget. A template for budgeting for families and singles too.
The post Track your money with the Free Budget Spreadsheet 2023 appeared first on Cash and Kerry.
Hello, friends. Just a quick note to let you all know that my life, at last, seems to be settling. A full two months after the death of my mother, the fog has lifted and I find that I’m motivated to pursue productive pursuits once more.
I spent much of the past several weeks doing some serious soul-searching. It’s clear to me (and to Kim) that above all else, I need to make 2023 the year of me.
2023 — The Year of Me
More than a decade ago, I got into the habit of theming my years and months. It was fun! It was also fruitful. Whenever I decided to devote a span of time to one thing, I had great results, whether it was with fitness or writing or dating. This habit of theming lasted for a couple of years, then fell by the wayside.
Well, I’ve spent too long putting myself second. Or third. Or ninth. Starting yesterday, my aim is to put myself first for the next year (or more).
A memory came to me this morning while I was walking the dog, a memory of those days when I was fresh out of college and just beginning to work for my father at the box factory.
A salesman had come knocking on our door. This was strange since the box factory was (and still is) located in a rural area. But somehow this guy had found us and he was there to make his pitch: He was a salesman who trained salesmen. (And, presumably, saleswomen although this wasn’t part of the spiel in 1992.)
Dad, amused, introduced this fellow to me. “This is J.D.,” Dad said. “He’s our salesman. Talk to him.” So, this guy sat down with me in a back room of the shabby trailer house that served as company HQ. (This was the very trailer house I’d grown up in. And trust me when I say it was a pit, a sty. It was just as bad as you’re imagining. Maybe worse.)
(This was originally published on 13 October 2022.)
I started this website two decades ago. The first time the Internet Archive captured the site was back in April 2004. I registered the domain in 2003.
Back then I was hand-crafting HTML pages in a text editor, and managing all of the links by hand. I had found a website template that gave me the sidebar, and worked from there. I composed the pages on my computer and then transferred them to a webhost via FTP to “publish” them.
Not the most difficult thing in the world to do, but certainly not the easiest.
Then I found WordPress
In mid-2005, after being on blogger.com for only a couple of weeks, I found out about WordPress, and my content creation at the time shot through the roof.
My mother died Monday night. She was 74.
Earlier this week, I began writing a memorial for her. I know I haven't talked much about Mom here at Get Rich Slowly, but she probably played the biggest role in molding me into the person I am today. After writing 2500 words, I realized I have a lot to process. And maybe Get Rich Slowly isn't the place to publish a tribute to her. I don't know.
In any event, I'm taking some time off.
For the next few weeks, I'll be dealing with the logistics of Mom's memorial service and her estate. And while I'm taking time away from Get Rich Slowly to handle these things, it feels like a good opportunity to tackle a few big projects I've been putting off — including the “de-design” of this blog.
I recently ran across a new-ish referral site called invitation.codes.
It's a site that aims to be one-stop shopping for referral bonuses. These are the extra sign-on goodies that you sometimes get when signing up as a new user on a site.
Often a website will offer a bonus to its current users for referring new users. This is usually good business practice because the current users will work for free, and only get rewarded when someone signs up. It's cheap marketing labor!
Even better when the site throws in something for the new user to help the current user get the sign-up. Generally money well spent by the business.
I am 53 years old. Never in my life have I allowed myself to buy a car I truly love…until now. This is the story of how I allowed myself to make a huge purchase just for the joy of it. And it wasn’t even a purchase I’d intended to make. Let me explain.
During the peak of the pandemic (early July 2020), I paid $35,990 for a used 2019 Mini Countryman SE All4. The Countryman — which I call a “Maxi Cooper” — isn’t a bad car, but I regretted buying it almost immediately. I’d intended to replace my 2004 Mini Cooper with a newer version of the same model, but allowed myself to be talked into a compact SUV.
For two years, I drove the Maxi Cooper and tolerated it. It wasn’t a bad car by any means, but it was a bad car for me. I’m not an SUV guy. I’m a small-car guy.
Last month, I took the Maxi Cooper for an oil change. While I was waiting, the dealer offered to buy it back from me. I wasn’t expecting that.
I’ve changed the way I shop over the past few years. And although the shift has been subtle, I’ve found that I’m much happier with the things I buy.
In the past, my approach to shopping was simple. If I wanted a new thneed, I would go to a store (or, with the advent of the internet, a website) and choose from the available thneeds. I’d look at the store’s selection (or the website’s selection) and pick the one best suited for me.
If the thneed I wanted was particularly expensive or important, I might expand my search to multiple stores or multiple websites. But usually, I stuck with the first store I visited.
The key point here is that I allowed the places I shopped to impose limits on the thneeds available to me. I think of this approach as “store-centered shopping”. Whatever the store has in stock defines my universe of options.
Finding your people is the best thing for your spiritual well-being, your personal growth … and your bank account!
A friend of mine has collected beer cans for four and a half decades. He started in his teens (yeah, times were different then!)
A little over a week ago he went to his first CANvention since the 1980s — or as the younger people say, the “late 1900s” haha!
These breweriana collectors are his people. They're people he can geek out with and not have to explain a thing to anyone because he's not a weirdo when he hangs out with these people.
It’s always fun to unearth some esoteric piece of personal finance history. I know there are only a few nerds out there who care (hello, Grant Sabatier!), but those of us who care really care.
It's Sunday morning as I write this, and my weeklong adventure at Fincon 2022 in Orlando has come to an end. I'm exhausted.
As has become customary, I didn't actually attend any workshops or keynotes or breakout sessions here at Fincon. Instead, I spent the entire week connecting with friends:
This week I'm in Orlando for Fincon, the annual gathering of folks who work at the intersection of money and media. As a result, I haven't had time to do all of the things I normally do during a week. I haven't been reading or writing about money. Instead, I've done a lot of chatting with colleagues.
We've been coming together at Fincon since 2011. At first, we were nearly all strangers to each other. Today, many of these people are my closest friends — but they're friends I see in person only once or twice each year. I value every moment I get to spend with them.
On Tuesday, for instance, a group of us booked a private VIP tour through the Disney theme parks. We had a blast. I mean, look at this wretched hive of scum and villainy…
Last week, I raved about the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. These two Stanford design professors have taken design principles and applied them to helping people figure out what they want to be when they grow up.
After advocating Designing Your Life to several friends, two of them suggested that we work through the book’s exercises together. One of those friends is Kim, my long-term girlfriend. The other is Craig, a college classmate. I thought it might be fun to share some of these exercises as we complete them over the next couple of months.
I am obsessed with the film Everything Everywhere All at Once. From the moment I saw the trailer, I knew the movie was meant for me. I was right. The film’s bizarre blend of action, philosophy, science fiction, taxes, and juvenile humor feels specifically targeted to me and my brain.
For those unfamiliar, here’s a quick plot synopsis.
Evelyn and Waymond Wang own a laundromat. Their business is failing, their marriage is fracturing, and so is their relationship with Joy, their daughter. During a meeting with the IRS, Evelyn is visited by a version of her husband from a parallel universe. He says that the multiverse — all of the many parallel universes — is under attack from an evil being named Jobu Tupaki, and Evelyn is the only one who can save it. The rest of the film is about Evelyn overcoming her skepticism and discovering her true power (and Waymond’s).
You hear the phrase “the game of life” all the time.
There are books on Amazon instructing us on how to win at the “game of life”. Hell, Milton Bradley’s “The Game of Life” from 1860 — still sold today — was the first popular board game in the United States.
In the Real World, the game of life’s rules and criteria for success are vague and never explicitly stated. But we all know what they are. To win, you need:
Today, the Get Rich Slowly summer of books concludes with an excerpt from Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away from Julien and Kiersten Saunders. Julien and Kiersten are the power couple behind the rich & Regular blog and YouTube channel.
The following excerpt from Cashing Out (published by Portfolio/Penguin) is used with permission. Copyright © 2022 by Rich & Regular LLC. This passage has been edited to be more readable on the web.
The following is from Taking Stock by Jordan Grumet with permission from Ulysses Press. Copyright © 2022 by Jordan Grumet. This passage has been edited to be more readable on the web.
I used to have a patient who was an undertaker. We had many conversations about philosophy and practicality, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that one must gain profound insights from being engaged in such a unique business. As I was often fond of saying: When the undertaker speaks, you should really listen.
Sometimes the things I spend my time on leave me shaking my head.
This post from Accidentally Retired on how you don't need multiple streams of income to become wealthy hit me between the eyes a bit.
He also tweeted:
You don't need multiple income streams to become wealthy. You ONLY need to spend less than you earn and invest. That. Is. It.
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