Monday, January 05, 2015
Happy 2015! Or....
Man did the second half of 2014 suck....
It's been an interesting year, with highs and lows nearly in the same week. Nevertheless, it's time to look at the new year and see where the economy is going, where my finances are going, and what I plan to do in the new year.
First, the economy is supposed to be improving, but the improvements aren't evenly distributed. America seems to be creating a permanent underclass with no hope of escape. The Millennial generation has the lowest percentage of business ownership in nearly 26 years. It's like the early 90's without the promise of the Internet boom. The strange thing is that government benefits are so generous that if you manage the situation properly, being poor doesn't have to be painful. Nevertheless, situations like this cannot last. While having breakfast with Scott this morning, he snapped at me while I was discussing my overtime for next week. Truthfully, I'm quite sick with the flu, and that's after getting bronchitis, combined with a particularly nasty cold, and all within two weeks. I've had 3 days of feeling good since before Christmas. Ergo, if it was not registration, I'd call in sick. Unfortunately, it is registration, and doing so would cost me a ton of money, around $595. He proceeded to explode when I came close to telling him how much I'd lose. Obviously, my friends are a little sick of hearing about my good fortune, but I wasn't trying to rub his (or anyone's) face in it. In fact there were many times he said I should get more money to collapse the system sooner. Here in lies the rub: the system is much more resilient than he understands, and the process of getting to collapse will be much harder on the productive class than he realized. He's no longer so sanguine about my (or any other civil servant's) salary. Part of the problem is that some sections of the economy are, in fact, improving. The price of oil, while not good news for many parts of the world, is a huge boon to Americans, especially those with high gas taxes, like New York. The dollar is kicking ass all over the globe, if only because other currencies are falling faster. Wall Street is booming, and as I mentioned in a prior post, some of those billions head straight to Westchester tax coffers, and eventually into my wallet. So long as foreigners keep investing, the system will have some fuel to keep going. While the system still stands, the reaching into Americans' pockets will get worse and worse. He and all other members of the private sector are in an abusive relationship with no method of escape. Does this mean the collapse won't occur? No, but there's no idea when it will happen. The Senate and House are strongly Republican (and election night 2014 is worthy of a blog post itself), so there's a chance the pain could lessen. I'm unconvinced.
As for my personal finances, I'm taking the same tack I took in 2014: pay all my bills ahead of time and use the rest of the money to pay off my car and my retirement loans. I've typed this before, but I'm doing pretty well in this regard. All the overtime helps quite a bit, naturally, and there's plenty of it at the moment. The goal is to have all my bills paid (disclaimer: all the bills I know how to pay early) by the end of March or early April. Thanks to Google Docs, I've been recording my spending via an online journal (now at 22 pages and counting), for the past two months, and I've been pretty good. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but I'm only two months into the effort.In other news, Simon black is having another conference, and I signed up for it the moment I received the web link. It sold out in 15 minutes, but I have my seat. The best part is that I paid for the event and the plane ticket as soon as the charge went through. It's part of the reason I'm a little behind in my bill-paying plan, though I did budget for it. I just wasn't sure of when I'd need to pay for it. I was right about the price, however. In dovetailing with the previous paragraph, I give myself 3-5 years before things fall apart for me. This timeline is separate from the system at large. I could be gone prior, or last a bit longer as the system cannibalizes any source of wealth to keep going.
Concerning my goals, a large one was just listed: pay off my car, retirement loans, and start paying my 2016 bills around Dec. of '15. The overall goal is to be out of this dump of a co-op soon. I'm also going to the next Simon Black event, and that completely makes me damn near freak out. The main mission is to get some sort of green card for another nation (probably Panama) either when I'm there, or by the time I get there.There are other, smaller goals, like learning to sail, getting an EMT certification, taking foreign language classes and the like. I've detailed this in another
Google Document dedicated to how I spend my time. At the ripe age of 44, the value of my time is greater than money. That being stated, my money paper is 22 pages and growing while my time paper is presently 6. Anyway, the turning of the calendar shouldn't mean this much, but it does. We all need a push, and this flipping of the odometer is as good as any other.
It's been an interesting year, with highs and lows nearly in the same week. Nevertheless, it's time to look at the new year and see where the economy is going, where my finances are going, and what I plan to do in the new year.
First, the economy is supposed to be improving, but the improvements aren't evenly distributed. America seems to be creating a permanent underclass with no hope of escape. The Millennial generation has the lowest percentage of business ownership in nearly 26 years. It's like the early 90's without the promise of the Internet boom. The strange thing is that government benefits are so generous that if you manage the situation properly, being poor doesn't have to be painful. Nevertheless, situations like this cannot last. While having breakfast with Scott this morning, he snapped at me while I was discussing my overtime for next week. Truthfully, I'm quite sick with the flu, and that's after getting bronchitis, combined with a particularly nasty cold, and all within two weeks. I've had 3 days of feeling good since before Christmas. Ergo, if it was not registration, I'd call in sick. Unfortunately, it is registration, and doing so would cost me a ton of money, around $595. He proceeded to explode when I came close to telling him how much I'd lose. Obviously, my friends are a little sick of hearing about my good fortune, but I wasn't trying to rub his (or anyone's) face in it. In fact there were many times he said I should get more money to collapse the system sooner. Here in lies the rub: the system is much more resilient than he understands, and the process of getting to collapse will be much harder on the productive class than he realized. He's no longer so sanguine about my (or any other civil servant's) salary. Part of the problem is that some sections of the economy are, in fact, improving. The price of oil, while not good news for many parts of the world, is a huge boon to Americans, especially those with high gas taxes, like New York. The dollar is kicking ass all over the globe, if only because other currencies are falling faster. Wall Street is booming, and as I mentioned in a prior post, some of those billions head straight to Westchester tax coffers, and eventually into my wallet. So long as foreigners keep investing, the system will have some fuel to keep going. While the system still stands, the reaching into Americans' pockets will get worse and worse. He and all other members of the private sector are in an abusive relationship with no method of escape. Does this mean the collapse won't occur? No, but there's no idea when it will happen. The Senate and House are strongly Republican (and election night 2014 is worthy of a blog post itself), so there's a chance the pain could lessen. I'm unconvinced.
As for my personal finances, I'm taking the same tack I took in 2014: pay all my bills ahead of time and use the rest of the money to pay off my car and my retirement loans. I've typed this before, but I'm doing pretty well in this regard. All the overtime helps quite a bit, naturally, and there's plenty of it at the moment. The goal is to have all my bills paid (disclaimer: all the bills I know how to pay early) by the end of March or early April. Thanks to Google Docs, I've been recording my spending via an online journal (now at 22 pages and counting), for the past two months, and I've been pretty good. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but I'm only two months into the effort.In other news, Simon black is having another conference, and I signed up for it the moment I received the web link. It sold out in 15 minutes, but I have my seat. The best part is that I paid for the event and the plane ticket as soon as the charge went through. It's part of the reason I'm a little behind in my bill-paying plan, though I did budget for it. I just wasn't sure of when I'd need to pay for it. I was right about the price, however. In dovetailing with the previous paragraph, I give myself 3-5 years before things fall apart for me. This timeline is separate from the system at large. I could be gone prior, or last a bit longer as the system cannibalizes any source of wealth to keep going.
Concerning my goals, a large one was just listed: pay off my car, retirement loans, and start paying my 2016 bills around Dec. of '15. The overall goal is to be out of this dump of a co-op soon. I'm also going to the next Simon Black event, and that completely makes me damn near freak out. The main mission is to get some sort of green card for another nation (probably Panama) either when I'm there, or by the time I get there.There are other, smaller goals, like learning to sail, getting an EMT certification, taking foreign language classes and the like. I've detailed this in another
Google Document dedicated to how I spend my time. At the ripe age of 44, the value of my time is greater than money. That being stated, my money paper is 22 pages and growing while my time paper is presently 6. Anyway, the turning of the calendar shouldn't mean this much, but it does. We all need a push, and this flipping of the odometer is as good as any other.
