Advanced Personal Finance

I had an insight into my own motivation this past weekend that surprised me for its simplicity. It was about priorities in my life. My dad helped me define them, though that’s quite the opposite of what he had in mind. Let me explain.

Very recently, I quit a well-paying but not very interesting job to take one that pays somewhat less but affords me greater freedom. Specifically, I can work from a home office and have a somewhat flexible schedule. Because of the job change, we’re selling our house and buying a new one in a lower cost of living area. As a result, my wife will again stay home to raise our younger child for a couple of years, just as she did for our daughter.

This past weekend at a family event, my father asked about the new job. I hadn’t discussed it with him (or many other people for that matter) at all before quitting my former job and starting this one. He was understandably interested and asked the usual questions. But one in particular surprised me; I was even more surprised by my answer.

Father: “So, what will you be doing?”

Me: Blah, blah, blah

Father: “What’s the next step up?”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Father: “The career path. How do you move up? What are the steps to become the next CEO?”

Me: “I don’t know. I don’t really care, either.”

That brought the conversation to a screeching halt. I think I was as surprised as my father by my answer.

It was one of those times when my unconscious came out without me analyzing everything. Work, for me, is a means to an end. That’s why I found myself agreeing with a recent post by Meg at All Financial Matters about how finding personal fulfillment through vocation is overrated.

My priorities are my family and my marriage. Everything else is a distant second. As hard as it evidently is for my father (and many other people, I’m sure) to understand, I’m living my life according to that priority.

I’ll take that over being the CEO any day of the week. And twice on the weekends. Or as they’re known to my little girl, “Mommy-Daddy days.”

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Today’s announcement that Bank of America will buy Countrywide Mortgage takes the recent housing bubble/sub-prime loan mess and elevates it from bad to absolutely obscene.

As JLP at All Financial Matters reports here, Countrywide’s CEO will be paid $110M as a result of the sale.  Here’s another CEO being rewarded for destroying his shareholders’ company.  It’s a scene now so common that people don’t even react anymore.

Guess what?  You’re going to pay him.

That’s right.  You.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a shareholder in either company.  If you are a taxpayer in the U.S., you get to foot the bill.  How’s that, you ask?  Taxes.

See, companies can carry forward losses for tax purposes.  It’s similar to how people are told to sell losing stocks and mutual funds to lock in the capital loss.  It’s part of what makes Countrywide attractive to Bank of America.  BoA now gets to reduce its tax bill by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Congratulations.  You get to pay the bill for Bank of America’s purchase of Countrywide.  Or more correctly, your children and grandchildren will.

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Whilst reading the WSJ, I saw one of those class action lawsuit announcements. This one was actually useful to me, though, and I thought I’d pass it on.

If you bought a diamond (in jewelry form or as a loose stone) from January 1, 1994 to March 31, 2006, you can join a class action settlement to recover some of your money. Here’s the link. I won’t give the full details about it here. If this applies to you and you’re interested, go check it out.

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Two things recently happened that made me further lament the consumerist state of the world.

Brooke at Dollar Frugal quoted an old man she’d seen on the news who was buying crap for his grandson just ‘because.’ Brooke didn’t like that at all, and I can’t say I disagree. Buying stuff just to buy it seems to be a serious American affliction (though I’m quite sure others do it, too).

Second, and more disturbing to me, was something we saw at Toys-R-Us. We’d gone there to use a gift card given to our little girl. Now for those of your without kids who have no reason to be in Toys-R-Us (or any baby/kid store for that matter), there is a great deal of superfluous crap sold there. An astonishing amount, really.

What I saw there yesterday, though, took the cake. Then it took the cake and smashed it under a steam roller.

You can buy a baby bath spa.

That’s right. A little bath tub for your baby that provides the relaxation of thousands of tiny bubbles popping on your baby’s soft little butt.

Baby bath spa. Seriously, I think that’s one of the signs of the apocalypse.

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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my decision to just donate carloads of stuff we don’t want any more to Goodwill instead of trying to sell it on Ebay. At the end of that post, I suggested maybe there was a business in selling other peoples’ stuff on Ebay for a percentage.

Well, my streak of non-original business ideas remains unbroken. Today my wife and I were walking out of the restaurant where we ate for our anniversary (It was an all-you-can-eat. I swear I’m not making that up, but I also swear the fact that we went to a buffet for our anniversary was unintentional. But that’s another post.). As we left the restaurant, what should I see across the street but the storefront of a business that does just that. They sell your stuff on Ebay and take a piece of the action (I forget the name or else I’d tell you).

So, once again, I haven’t found my get-rich-quick scheme.

But the house de-junking is coming along nicely.

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