Financial Samurai

I’ve decided to dedicate much of the rest of this month focusing on graduate schools, specifically the much loved and vilified graduate degree, the MBA.  The deadline for round 1 applications is fast approaching, and I’ve come up with a $1,000 giveaway that any aspiring MBA applicant, online PhD applicant, or grad school applicant for that matter may be interested in receiving.  Hence, feel free to spread the word and stay tuned!  For now, let’s start off with a layup as to why getting your graduate degree is a good idea, if you want to make more money.

Many personal finance publishers use Net Worth IQ as a way to track their financial progress.  NW IQ managed to gather a bunch of good data to digest and analyze.  A lot of it is just common sense such as the older you are, the greater your net worth tends to be.

This is the chart that stood out most:

Read more…

Forbes came out with a fun article highlighting the 5 ingredients helpful for reaching billionaire status.  Shockingly, 3 of the ingredients pertain to me, yet I’m far from big bucks wealthy.  The only time I ever made a move towards Warren Buffet status was last November when he lost $9.6 billion on paper and I lost less.

Maybe I'll wear the tie on Monday.

5 Key Ingredients For Becoming A Billionaire

1) Have parents with math-related careers.

2) Born in September.

3) Dropped out of college.

4) Member of a secret society like Yale’s Skull & Bones.

5) Worked a stint at Goldman Sachs.

I remember sitting next to Steve on a plane ride from Shanghai to Hong Kong 5 years ago.  The first thing I thought was, why is he flying commercial?  The second thing I thought was, I guess he really did have a lot of acne growing up!  Sorry Steve, I’m just being honest.  He was hosting a big Forbes-sponsored conference and he started going on and on about the emergence of growth in Asia.  He gave me a pep talk and said, “FS there’s no stopping what you want to do, so just go out there and grab it!”

We exchanged business cards, his saying “CEO, Editor in Chief of Forbes Magazine,” mine saying “Waterboy At Your Service” and we went about our separate ways.  Eight months later, I get an unceremonious Christmas present in the mail with a tie that says, “Corporate Tool.” Thanks Steve, what a trip!  At least you got me thinking about your flat tax mantra that generated so many comments this past week.

There’s a 6th ingredient for becoming a billionaire Steve forgot to mention.  That’s simply to be like Steve and inherit it!

Hope everybody is having a good weekend.

Related Post:

“The Less You Have The Less You Have To Lose”

“Bank of Mom And Dad: Should We Spoil Our Children?”

Keigu,

Financial Samurai – “Slicing Through Money’s Mysteries”

Follow on Twitter @FinancialSamurai and sign up for our RSS feed.

One of the points I write in “Party Like It’s 1999 – 10 Takeaways From This Recession” is that people have short memories.  Back in the first quarter of 2009, there was massive populist outrage over Wall St. bonuses.  Who could blame the people, when folks such as Andrew J. Hall collected $100 million despite Citigroup taking tens of billions in assistance from the government and is now 1/3 owned by us.

The Wall Street Journal reported that 2009 Wall Street compensation will breach 2007 levels, and Goldman Sach’s average compensation per employee will reach $734,000 vs. “only” $364,000 last year and 12% higher than 2007 peak!  WOW!  Sign me up!  I almost spit out my Honey Nut Cheerios when I read the news.  Yet, after scanning over 200 blogs yesterday not one decided to highlight this story.  Meanwhile, take a quick search of posts 10 months ago and you can see the outrage that populated the media. Read more…

In the past 10 years we’ve come full circle and finally re–re-breached Dow 10,000 yesterday!  Bust out the party hats and call up your favorite car dealer, because money is now raining from the sky!  I fully admit that being defensive so far this October has been wrong.  Instead, I should have taken the illusory $400,000 in home equity increase Zillow told me, dumped it in my E-trade brokerage account, levered it up to $1.2 million and bought 35,000 shares of DDM (Ultra Dow30 ProShares ETF)!  Too bad, I’m too conservative and not smart enough to realize the world has changed.

This year’s rally has been outstanding, and the more I get to know the personal finance community, the more I realize that A LOT of you are making a lot of money.  From one PF blogger who writes his site helped lead him to a job earning  50% more, to another’s proclamation of a 10% net worth jump in September, it’s clear that a lot of people are doing very well in this recovery.  I’m watching all of you, especially those who provide such transparent net worth updates!

I rarely hear negative anecdotes about job losses and foreclosures anymore.  Instead, there are a bunch of you who are buying new homes (congrats and good timing), steadfastly paying off debt, and finding new wealth.  The bus is like a can of sardines every morning, and I can no longer walk into my favorite restaurants without a reservation.  If that’s not the best indicator of a bull market, I don’t know what is.

10 TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS RECESSION Read more…

GTGTTBR (Got To Go To....)

For some reason, I generally get stuck in a middle seat close to the bathroom every time I go on a business trip.  It’s probably because I leave so little time between take off and check-in that I usually end up screwed!

The worst is when you’re just about to fall asleep and you get nudged by your neighbor for hogging the arm rest.  Come on neighbor, I’m stuck in the middle, the arm rest is mine!  The second worst thing is inhaling the lovely toilet aromas every time someone walks in and out.  Finally, add a crying baby next to you, and air travel is just lovely.

Despite my constant bad fortune on airplanes, the one thing I do recommend is sitting close to the bathroom at work. We discussed strategic seating in business school one day, and if you think about it, sitting closest to the bathroom, whether you have a cubicle or office is the absolute best place to be.  No matter how senior or junior someone is, they must go to the bathroom and walk by your desk at least a couple times a day!

Unlike the mysterious guy sitting in the corner who everybody thinks is surfing the internet all day, you get a constant stream of opportunities to develop relationships with your colleagues and bosses if you sit near the loo.

“Hey Jim, how about Mark Sanchez of The Jets the other day huh?”

“Hey Pete, so sorry Colt got injured against Alabama.  You still owe me lunch sucker!”

“Nancy, I just love your new hairstyle!  Where you get it done?”

“Susan, want to grab a coffee this afternoon?  I have something to share.”

“Christine, any tax consultant suggestions?  I can’t for the life of me figure these numbers out!”

BINGO!  All easy lines to develop your relationships internally.

The biggest risk for employees during recessions and promotion season is to be out of sight, and therefore out of mind. By sitting near the bathroom, you are unavoidable and everyone must acknowledge your presence.   Just don’t stop folks who have visible pains on their faces!

Readers, how is your work environment set up and can you think of any other strategic, no effort office strategies to keep up your profile?

Keigu,

Sam Samurai – “Slicing Through Money’s Mysteries”

Follow me on Twitter @FinancialSamura and sign up for our RSS feed.
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I had one mission this weekend, and that was to “high-five” as many famous people as possible.  You see, The President’s Cup descended on San Francisco and I was determined to watch America’s best golfers tee it up against the rest of the world, less Europe (that’s the Ryder’s Cup).

Did I succeed in my mission?  It depends on whether you count: Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Anthony Kim, Freddie Couples, Greg Norman, Condoleeza Rice, Gavin Newsom, and Michael Jordan as famous people!  For if you do, you’ll understand why I’m never washing my hands again!

In “Revenge of The Nerds: Golf & Tennis Are #1″, we write that if you want to make a lot of money, you should think about picking up either golf or tennis. As the 30,000+ patrons at Harding Park showed me today, there’s a darn lot of different types of folks interested in golf!  All along the signature par 4, 468 yard, 15th hole you saw corporate tents with names such as: Charles Schwab, PG&E, and Mastercard filled with rich looking patrons sipping their Chardonnay’s.  Ah, to gain access to one of these tents.  Except for Citigroup, it’s good to know there weren’t any government bailed out entities partying it up on our dime, so score one for the common folk! Read more…

Can someone please give us a rational argument why implementing a Flat Tax system in America is not fair?  We don’t know if we can continue posting without thoroughly understanding this issue first.  From a percentage basis, each person pays an equal amount of their income towards taxes, and from an absolute basis, richer people pay more!

Why don’t we just start taxing people according to height?  The shorter you are, the more you have to pay!  Brilliant idea, thanks.  Here’s a commentary from a site that really got me thinking about the word “comrade” and the phrase “melt your pots for bullets.”

Those of you rich folks in the top 35% tax bracket (~$380,000 and higher) need to stop whining. You don’t get to whine. I hope this administration taxes the beejesus out of you all…it’s time you paid your fair share and get with the program. It’s only fair the wealthy pay more out of their millions and billions of dollars to subsidize the rest of us who need it the most. We are struggling in this recession and it’s time to fix the problem – by taxing the rich!

Gee whiz, last I checked, we live in America not North Korea.  Why people believe it’s fair to tax one class of citizen a higher percentage than another confuses us.  Is this not a pure form of discrimination?  Fine, let’s agree that anybody below the poverty line of $25,000 for a family of four ($10,000 for a single person) are exempt from all income taxation. Read more…

GGB By Mrs. Samurai

According to the Wall St. Journal, the Top 5 “youth magnet cities” are:

1) Washington DC – Didn’t realized that’s how they spelled San Francisco.

1) Seattle

3) New York

4) Portland

5) Austin – Washington DC

My main question is: “Where is San Francisco?!” When I can walk over to the headquarters of Twitter and ask the VP of development why my Twitter account name can only be @FinancialSamura and not @FinancialSamura(i), grab a bite to eat with Googler‘s across the street at the Water Bar, and then go drink some beers with some marketers at Facebook, how can San Francisco not be one of the Top 5 magnet cities for youth?  Yes, the city is a little bit expensive ($500,000, 600sqft studios anyone?), but these young guns all make a lot of money, and they are going to make a ton more once they get acquired or go public!  Oh yeah, ever heard of YouTube?  They’re based here too as I was reminded one day checking out a $2.5 million open house for fun.  The agent told me the young 28 year old lady and her husband were selling to move back home to Iowa!

San Francisco and Silicon Valley are the absolute meccas for social media, venture capitalism, and the internet.   Every single management consulting firm and major financial institution (a populist “boo”) are here too.  If you’re in college, or are thinking about transferring to a new city, think about San Francisco.  Take it from a guy who has lived in DC, New York City, and has been on countless business trips to Portland and Austin, San Francisco rocks! Read more…