Once upon a time, an 8-month-old baby girl was born. She was 7lbs, bald and had a bright red dot in the middle of her forehead. Years later, she would be told by her father the mark was from the Doctor's thumb during delivery. And as a seventh-grader she would be told that had she been born an Aztec, such an obvious birthmark would have been worshiped by her people and then sacrificed to the Gods after about 15 years. She would have been sacrificed; not the birthmark. Or rather, they would have gone into oblivion together, you know what I meant to say.  


At some young age, knowing it would be there for life she decided neither to embrace nor ignore it and--wait--this isn't a story about a birthmark, dammit. Already I'm deviating off course. If you want know how it turned out for the red dot, I'll tell you. Just fine. It was a lot less obvious once the girl grew to regular adult size and most people thought it was left over from falling asleep with her head down on her forearms. Or didn't notice it until months after they met her, by which time she'd won them over with her sparkling personality making the mark of very little consequence.

Moving on, she cried. A lot. She may have been the most cryingist baby of all time. She was up all night long and asleep during the day. Her circadian rhythm was off from the rest of the world, much to the chagrin of her parents. She didn't like to be rocked to sleep either. She would cry and cry if you sat down with her. She must be walked. She was a god damned self-aggrandizing princess if there ever was one. Even at a mere 10 or 11 months (from conception).

Sitting on a park bench with her mother when she was 13, she heard the story of how she came to be: Her Dad came home from a business trip and wanted to have sex. Her mom didn't want to. He begged and begged. The problem was, her mother had a yeast infection and they were using this birth control method called foam. The foam would have irritated the infection and sex would have been risky. Eventually her mother gave in to her father and on their sofa they consummated their love. One night without birth control and mom was pregnant. It was probably the “What The Fuck!?!” heard round the world. The girl wouldn't know, for at the time she was a zygote.  

I Submit To You Exhibit A

I couldn't insert the chart (bummer), but here's a link to a nifty little article about compound interest on the Motley Fool. (Click on the pic, yo)

Damn The (tax)Man

Hiya!


I'm just going to get into it. When I quit my job, I had a little bit of money in a 401K account. My older brother told me over the holidays that he'd invested a couple thousand and doubled it in approximately six months. His investment strategy? Well, my bro isn't a finance guy, he's a graphic artist. He put his money into netflix, let it sit for several months and then sold shares to buy into Apple and Amazon. No rigorous prospectus analyzing, no algorithms to beat the market. Just, sound common sense. Someone in finance might say there are better ways to go about investing. And they might be right. But, in my book doubling your investment in under a year is a great return.


Now let's switch over to 401K accounts, these supplements to retirement income that every financial adviser will say should never, ever be touched until you're 106. These "safe" fund investments, that grow incrementally over decades upon decades, shouldn't be touched b/c they need umpteen years to amount to any kind of decent number. But, what financial advisers won't tell you is that index funds and mutual funds historically don't beat the market. If you monitor yours, you'll see that a "diversified" fund portfolio comes up short and then ahead and yes, theoretically, over 30 years it balances out and you have tidy sum and have made a profit. 


But, I ask, does it make any sense to let your money sit and gain (if you're lucky) 10% per year, when you can invest in stocks of successful, growing, companies and make a 100% return in one year? No. It does not.


And did you know the government penalizes you for withdrawing from your 401K before you're 59.5!? It's for your own good. Because you're an idiot. And mutual funds are what's best for you to build a nest egg outside of meager social security. And a 10% surcharge for withdraw is a big enough incentive to deter idiots from early withdraw, especially if they need the money, as is a 20% federal tax. Oh wait, no, no it is not. Because someone who doesn't know anything about investing, who thinks they're utility will be maximized for withdrawing it, will withdraw it anyway.


Not only do I find it a personal insult to my intelligence to be charged this 10%, but I find it unfortunate that people take it for granted that a 401K is sacred, especially when in the medium run, considering the opportunity cost of a lower return, it's not a good investment. 


So, for the 2.5 people who read this blog....I think you know what to do.

Damned If You Do

This is a great little video with a lot of good information about how unfair the US is to everyone else. A point I have absolutely no ground to debate; it's true. But, it's interesting the contradictions that are presented in this extremely liberal video with well known liberal ideals. It's hard to straighten out what you're after when you want something impossible: a single entity to create and manage a utopian society in which there are no trade offs, there is no suffering, there are no mistakes and everyone is entirely crime-free, stress-free, guilt-free and fat-free. This entity is supposed to maintain absolute freedom of choice, but limit everyone's potential for messing up by...controlling their freedoms. I sound like anti-liberal douche bag, and of course conservatives have contradictions too, but it just makes me wonder...


My favorite part is when the host derides "government" for creating a society in which childbearing-age women are "forced" to work in a factory handling unsafe materials. The poor woman has no choice. And it's the government's fault for not providing a better job opportunity. But, isn't one of the major democratic platforms to deride the government for allowing these factory jobs to disappear overseas? So, which is it? Is the government to blame for factory work's existence and then to blame when factory work disappears? Is factory work good, bad? It's bad when it's there and good when it's not. Hmm...food for thought. Let's not take any wooden nickels boys and girls and take some personal responsibility for our own day-to-day choices.


On another note, yeah, the food industry needs to be regulated a lot fucking more than it is.