Learning To Save For A Rainy Day

This was so funny coming across this big bright red piggy bank in a thrift store. 

What a blast from the past!

I remember having one of these as a child. 

My parents taught me to put my allowance in to save for the future. 

When it accumulated $10, the metal door on the bottom would open and we could put the money in the bank.

It was like a game to try to get to the magic amount and get the register to pop open.

In those days, the bank had little books for your checking and savings accounts, and when you deposited the money, you’d get a line printed with the deposit and new balance printed in the dot matrix print of yesteryear. 

Again, these were all good lessons about savings and seeing the benefits in the toy register or in your bank book.

Maybe these were things that initially inspired me to get my bachelors degree in accounting.  

The discipline of numbers was great, but it was never as exciting as the promise and hope of ever new technology, but that’s what added up at the time to me. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Spending It All Down

So Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.“

The more time you have on your hands, the longer it takes you to do something. 

I find this to be so true…like on a day off, I don’t find myself typically getting any more done than on a regular work day. 

But what is true for time, also seems to apply to money. 

The more money you make, the more you need. 

And while you may get more or better quality for your extra bucks, you still don’t have a lot in net savings. 

Thus in line with Conspicuous Consumption, we spend more on luxury goods when we have more money and we spend more of our leisure time on doing the same basic set of activities when we have more time to spend.

Either way, more time and money often means more wasting of each, with people finding it extraordinarily difficult to save when they have (too) much of either. 

Perhaps, that why the big time hip hop artist, Kanye West recently tweeted about being $53 million in debt.

Or why Benjamin Franklin said, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.”

Your personal decision is what you end up spending your extra time and money on. 

The only real difference with time and money is that money you can put in the bank, but time passes whether you are busy or not.

Perhaps the best investment for both is to spend on education, experiences, on loved ones, and on helping others. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Parg)

Futuristic Highway

Some really great ideas here for the highway of the future.

These are the inspiration of interactive artist Daan Roosegaarde.

To save energy and increase safety, there are four concepts presented:

– Glow in the dark road markings (i.e. lane dividers) with photo-luminescent paint that charges during the day and lights up at night.

– Weather symbols on the road with temperature-responsive paint, so for example, when the temperature falls below a certain level, the roads show snowflake symbols to indicate that they may be icy.

– Motion-interactive lights on the highway that light up when cars approach and are powered by the draft of the moving cars.

– Induction lanes that can charge car batteries as they run along them and reenergize the cars for further travel.

Already, there is a 500 meter stretch of road in Oss, Netherlands with the glow-in-the-dark road markings–these are almost radioactive green in color and give a futuristic Tron look to the roads.

Now the question is when can we get these high-tech upgrades for I-495?

What an awesome high-tech display befitting our nation’s capital and maybe it would help with traffic as well! 😉

Living Longer, But With Worse Quality Of Life

Watching my parents age over the years has been hard–and very painful.

They are good people–they’ve worked hard all their lives (nothing was just given to them), they are devoted to serving G-d, and they are loved by their family, friends, and community.

They have lived a good life and we are grateful for every day.

Yet as they are getting older, the body like anything physical, starts to get sick and break down.

Both my parents have serious illnesses, and in the last two years my mom has become almost totally disabled and is moving from a rehab center to a nursing home this coming week.

I read this week in the Wall Street Journal, what I’ve been watching with my own eyes…we are living “longer, but not healthier lives.”

Over the last 2 decades, life expectancy has risen 3 years to 78 years, but unfortunately only 68 of those, on average, are in good health–meaning that people suffer for about ten years with various disabilities.

What is amazing is that people are being pressed to retire later in life with an increase in age to receive full social security benefits to 67 by 2022–giving the average person a healthy retirement to enjoy of just 1 year!

With the average working household having less the $3,000 in retirement savings, things are not looking too good for Americans to retire young and enjoy their healthy years either.

Additionally, despite longer living, in the last 2 decades, the U.S. fell from 20th place to 27th place in 34 member nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for life expectancy and quality of life.

The leading causes of death remain heart disease, cancer, and stroke. And disabilities are being driven by back, muscle, nerve, and joint disorders.

Seeing with my own parents, the deteriorating quality of life and true suffering as they age, I am left questioning the real wisdom of keeping people alive, when the quality of life has so deteriorated as to leave them in pain and misery.

While no one wants to lose their loved ones–the emptiness is devastating–at the same time, watching them endlessly and needlessly suffer is worse.

I see my mom clutching her wheelchair, always in various states of discomfort and pain, and less and less able to help herself, in almost any way–it is tragic.

So I ask myself is it also unnecessary and wrong?

I call it forcing people alive. We keep people going not only with extraordinary measures, but also with day-to-day medicines and care that keeps their hearts pumping, their lungs breathing, and their brains somewhat aware.

The patients are alive, but are in a sense dying a long and painful death, rather than a quick and painless one.

I love my parents and mom who is suffering so much now, and I don’t want to lose her, by does really caring for her mean, at some point, letting her go.

I tell my dad, “I just want mom to have peace”–no more suffering!

For the average person, 68 years of health is too short, but 10 years of disability and suffering may be too long.

We use advances in technology and medical breakthroughs to keep people alive. But what is the cost in pain and disability, and even in cold hard dollar terms for a nation being gobbled up by deficits, longevity, and miserable disease and disability?

People are living longer but at a significant painful price!

Is this real compassion and empathy or a senseless fight with the Angel of Death?

(Source Photo: here with attribution to wwwupertal)

See Yourself In The Future

Now seeing how you will look in the future is not just theoretical anymore. 

Merrill Edge (Merrill Lynch investing + Bank of America banking) has an online digital program that shows how you will look aged over time. 

They developed this as tool to encourage people to save more money for retirement by bringing home the message that you will not be young (and beautiful) forever. 

The Face Retirement tool asks for your age and gender, takes your picture, and then displays snapshots of how you will look over the course of your lifespan. 

I tried it and my smiling face was quickly tranformed into an old man with sagging skin, wrinkles, and more. 

My wife seeing those pictues says to me (even though we already save for retirement), “We better really start investing seriously for retirement!” — gee, thanks! 😉

And thanks Merrill Edge, you scared us straight(er) by looking at our own mortality, face-to-face. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Judy Baxter)

Getting Off The Debtor Highway

I.O.U.S.A. (2008) is the best explanation of our nation’s financial problems and the deep severity of these that I have ever seen.

This video is a 1/2 hour condensed version of the full almost 1 1 /2 hour award-winning documentary.

David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the U.S. (1998-2008) is the star of this movie.

The documentary, with Walker’s steadfast warnings, describes the 4 ominous deficits that are driving this country to Financial Armageddon:

1) Budget Deficit

2) Savings Deficit

3) Trade Deficit

4) Leadership Deficit

What is incredible is how rather than listening to Walker’s exhortation, when the National Deficit was $8.7 trillion in 2007, just 5 years later now, there is a deficit going on nearly double that of $15.7 trillion.

We are facing a financial ticking time bomb that could result in huge inflation, economic stagnation, and the undoing of our economic and national security.

Moreover, towards the end of this year, we are facing the economic one-two punch of rising taxes and reduced national spending that could easily send our economy spiraling into recession or even depression.

Add to that rising interest rates, a financial crisis in the  European Union, a continued housing crisis and high unemployment at home, and a true economic reckoning is at hand.

Watch I.O.U.S.A. and become proponents for financial discipline for ourselves and for the country.