Financial Samurai

One of the best things about running your own blog is that you can write whatever you want, whenever you want.  There’s really no pressure to do anything really, and I don’t understand why some would feel otherwise.  Several blogging buddies have gone straight up cold turkey, not writing anything for months.  They tell me they can’t keep up with the schedule of writing great content.  Who says content has to be great?  They say new jobs lead them to not have the time.  Are you working 100 hours a week?  I’m sad because I miss their posts and our interactions. Read more…

Elephant > Moon. Eh?

One of my graduate school friends recently found himself out of a job.  It was a tough slog, but at last, he and his co-founders decided to shutdown their startup and start something new.  Nobody is really going to feel sorry for Greg, as he joined Google the year they went public and cashed out on a couple million dollars in stock options over the next 4 years.

His $180,000 a year salary was nothing to sneeze at either, but also nothing too spectacular in the land of $1 million dollar starter homes.  In a nutshell, Greg is the typical Silicon Valley success story who busted his butt to get ahead, networked like no other, and fell victim to a downshift in the economy these past couple years.

There are literally thousands of millionaire 30-somethings in the San Francisco Bay Area who are underemployed or just not working because they haven’t found that great idea, or that premium company fit yet.  Why should they bother wasting a companies’ time and enlist only to quit 6 months to a year later when something better comes along?  That’s not fair to the company and so they do the right thing and wait.

When I asked millionaire Greg about his thoughts on the government extending unemployment insurance to 99 weeks he let out a big “YIHAW!“  You see, Greg has been collecting unemployment insurance for the past 16 weeks via the solvent state of California, and he is worried that Obama will crack down on people like him once Federal care starts kicking in.

A MILLIONAIRE’S TAKE ON COLLECTING UNEMPLOYMENT AS A MILLIONAIRE Read more…

"Carried By The Wind" by Veronika Nagy

My nose plugs up and I can hardly breathe when I’m around cats too long.  I don’t know why I’m allergic, I just am.  One time I stayed over a friend’s place with three cats, and I woke up with red hives.  It was a surprise that I was able to fall asleep at all, because I could have sworn I sneezed over 100 times until the underside of my nose bled.

One of my best friends invited me over to visit her childhood home this fall.  Her mother lives near Boston, and unlucky for me another downside of East Coast living is the enormous pollen count.  I remember countless days when I couldn’t go to work because my allergies were so bad.  Ever since moving out West, my reactions have been much tamer.  The San Francisco Bay acts as a natural filter, sucking out stagnant air to sea.

In addition to being out East, my friend’s mother also has a couple of dogs and cats!  She sees this trip as a fun homecoming to introduce me to where she grew up.  To me, I have no attachment there and it’s like going to a gas chamber for vacation.  Imagine only being able to breathe through your two front teeth.  That’s how I feel sometimes when allergies attack.  You can’t get enough oxygen, so you aren’t able to speak.  You lose energy and let sleep take over even though it’s in the middle of the day.

THE QUIET PLEA Read more…

Thanks to the invention of blogs and social media, you can intimately feel the summer malaise upon us.  To participate in the change in moods, I’ll be lightening things up a little bit.  I’ve always been kind of a joker and all this structured writing with beginning, middle and end is oh so well….. structured!  Also, to invoke Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from AP English class is going to the extreme of stiffness, right?  I’m not sure many really connected with the reference at all.

Who wants to read about the struggles of an African American man in the oppressive 1950s when everything is so hunky dory and harmonious nowadays.  I do, but I think most others don’t.  Does anybody even read the classics anymore?  A little Slaughterhouse V by Kurt Vonnegut or Crime & Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky anybody?  Yeah, maybe 20 years ago, but not now.  Now, all we read are gossip magazines and blogs with bad punctuation (yours truly) that tickle our guts with spurts of information.

Hence, from now until the end of August I’ll be throwing a little wasabi on the teriyaki as they say in Japan.  I just made that up, but thought it sounded good.  You might read a little more rambling and a lot less structure as I attempt to change writing styles.  The Yakezie.com project is well underway and now is my time to goof around a little bit.

HIGHLIGHT POSTS OF THE WEEK Read more…

Any rational person would agree that living on the West Coast is better than living on the East Coast.  Anybody who tells you otherwise probably has never experienced West Coast living long enough to understand the difference.  I’m rational, and I’ve lived on both sides for many years and I don’t believe there’s really much of a debate.  Who doesn’t want to live in more moderate temperatures where the sun is always shining?  Unless you like super cold winters and uncomfortably muggy summers, the East Coast isn’t for you.

When your family and friends are on the East Coast, it’s hard to leave I understand.  We’re afraid of change.  I know I am.  But, this is not a post to bash the East Coast.  This is a post to understand what truly makes the East Coast and other uncomfortable climate zones special.

You see, a friend of mine is thinking about relocating to New York City or Washington DC for a little bit of adventure.  I think she’s a little nuts leaving our California sunshine behind and I’m trying to understand why, and maybe even a why not.

EAST COAST POSITIVES Read more…

Young or old, amateur or veteran, know there are rocketships in your midst ready to be ridden.  The rocketship is someone who is going places, and hopefully, through his or her shear power, you can hop aboard and increase your own success as well.

Look around the office and see if you can identify the rocketship.  The person is likely a hard worker who is respected by almost everyone on the floor.  If you were to view each person like a stock, you would buy the rocketship because there’s just something about them that tells you they’re going places.  The higher they fly, the more likely they will promote you along the way.

The same thing goes with social media and the blogosphere community.  Don’t count out the little guys.  Instead interact with those with an unusual amount of dedication and creativity.  Sincerely get to know them and help them out.  One day they might be the next Pete Cashmore from Mashable, you never know.  Expect nothing in return because if your relationship is sincere, things will just come.

A lot of folks talk a big game.  Beware.  The more one needs to talk about their successes, the less likely they are the rocketship.  It’s likely they are insecure, craving constant reassurance to justify their own relevance.  Remember to watch what they do, rather than what they say.  There are too many empty promises that never get delivered.

Everybody likes to win.  But first, you must identify the likely winners.  Once you do, it’s only a matter of time before you’re surrounded and soaring towards the moon!

Readers, do you have enough fuel to be a rocketship?  Have you benefited from others through their own success and initiatives?

Regards,

Sam @ Financial Samurai – “Slicing Through Money’s Mysteries”

Follow on Twitter @FinancialSamura and subscribe to our RSS or E-mail feed.

Do you hit the snooze button multiple times in the morning because you just don’t want to work?  While at work, do you daydream of being somewhere else?  Well too bad!  You’ve won the lottery and you don’t even realize it!

Let’s say you make $50,000 a year.  Divide your income by the current 4% risk free rate of return and you get $1,250,000!  In other words, if you have $1,250,000 sitting in the bank right now earning a 4% rate of return, you’re making your current salary of $50,000 a year.  Not bad winning $1,250,000 huh?  Now take your income, and divide it by 4% (0.04) and let me know how much you’ve won!

It doesn’t matter what job you have now.  Just know that the job you do have is coveted by a tremendous amount of people.  This includes my first job mopping McDonald’s egg bits at 6am.  My manager told me I was lucky to wear the purple and black (colors of the uniform) because he turned down 8 other candidates over the past month.  I just felt lucky I could stuff my face with as many FREE apple pies when he wasn’t looking!

WHINE AND CHEESE Read more…

A Sliced Heart

With Valentine’s Day coming up, I thought it’d be nice to dedicate some of this week’s posts to relationships.  Few things are as rewarding as finding the one you want to grow old with.  I can be stranded somewhere in Kabul, and so long as the one is beside me, I am happy.

That said, does true love have a price?  If a genie gave you the option of having $100 million dollars but never finding the love of your life, or finding that special someone but always living just above the poverty line, which would you choose?

Before answering the question, think about all the fun times you had in your prior relationships, some that could have been.  Not all bad right?  Now think carefully whether after a certain point, more money can really bring you more happiness.

My theory is that “love” will be the landslide victor, however, at the margin men will have a greater tendency to choose money over love, while women will gravitate towards love over money.

The Samurai Fund: -3.13% YTD vs. the S&P 500 -4.4%. Lenar +15%, Berkshire +11%, GE +4% and STE +6.15% continue to be stars. While MWW -18% and Toyota -11.3% are the biggest dogs.  If Toyoda-san didn’t apologize on Friday, I would have sold the stock in a heart beat.

Samurai’s Alexa Ranking Challenge: Is growing strong!  I’m very happy to see so many people progress and support each other.  Forget about all about SEO, link ratios, and yourself.  Keep up the content and the promoting of others!  If you would like to join, read the post, let us know in the comments section with your rank so Daniel-san and I can track.

HIGHLIGHT POSTS OF THE WEEK Read more…

After a long week, the last thing either of us want to do is cook.  We don’t go out because of the rain, and delivery for the 3rd time this week is out of the question.  Inglorious Basterds arrives in the mail, and we just seek something sufficient and efficient to eat.

Unfortunately, as we raid through the cupboards all we find is peanut butter, with no bread and spaghetti with no sauce.  We also find stale crackers, and a pound of dried pumpkin seeds, but that’s it.  Drats!  Good thing I keep looking, because I find my canister of protein powder which I forgot I had.  The filthy drink contributes today.

We pour stale crackers onto our plates, along side two heaping spoons of peanut butter.  To wash it all down, a lumpy and not so delicious vanilla protein shake each.  It was nostalgic, eating like college kids again.

FIVE KEY TAKEAWAYS Read more…

The Rock Of Gibraltar, Only Backwards

Anybody want to guess what happened on Wed, January 19th right before the market fell off a cliff?  If you guessed Obama delivered a politically charged speech to rally for his own support and crucify others, you’re right!  On Wed, January 19th, Obama went on national TV to tell the world, “we want our money back” and “if they want a fight, a fight is what they’ll get.” The “they” of course, are “greedy rich” people.  The markets immediately started to sell-off and the S&P 500 is now down about 6% since.

Good old fashion class warfare is never good for the economy, neither is continuous political jibber jabber.  Do you ever remember a president being on TV as much as our current president?  The risk of overexposure is very real, and the record low approval rating for any president at this point in his term shows this.  The State of The Union address is supposed to be an opportunity to unify the people.  Besides the typical feel-good rhetoric, what I heard was a continued attack on others, protecting personal interest groups, and maintaining giant silos.

YOU SO CRAFTY NEBRASKA Read more…

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a recovering car-aholic.  Funny enough, the way I deal with my addiction is to go to the BMW dealer!  I also go to the Audi, Mercedes, Honda, Land Rover and Porsche dealers too, but only the BMW dealer is on my way home and has an easy parking lot to leave Moose unattended.  I wonder if they cut out the free popcorn and diet cokes because of me.   Hmmm.

Over the past 3 years, I must have visited the BMW dealer at least 65 times to the dismay of the sales people.  They must have a code word for my type, “cheap bastard” or “stop wasting my time you poor SOB” maybe, but I don’t care.  Nothing thrills me more than sitting in a brand new, over-priced automobile and inhaling that unbeatable new car smell!  After every experience, I deftly try and avoid the salespeople and pick up a new brochure so I can extend the enjoyment at home.

In fact, as a joke I wrapped up the latest Land Rover LR4 brochure for Christmas and gave it to my wife.  I told her she should expect a nice shiny black on black beast when we get back to San Francisco.  She was kinda amused, not really.

If the salespeople insist on going for a test drive, who am I to argue?  But, I make it a point to only waste the time of the most eager of sales people beavers.  The fun of gunning a $80,000 BMW M3 every other month is such a thrill!  Besides, I hear they get a little commission for every test drive anyway.

NEW OBSESSION Read more…

Have you ever woken up one day and asked yourself, “Where did all the time go?” We look at old photos and sometimes surprise ourselves with how young, or how good we looked back then. Not to worry, I still say we look pretty good today.

Time is like an oil field which eventually gets depleted. And sadly to say, the depletion rate accelerates! If for simple math’s sake, we were to live till 100, the first year of our life takes only 1/100 of time. Yet, the 51st year of our life is takes 1/50th, and our last year is takes up 1/1, or 100%.

Today’s challenge is to simply accept the fact we only have one shot at life, so we might as well do the best we can. If we have an urge to put things off until tomorrow, just finish it today. If we want to learn a new sport and get better, hurry up and practice! Don’t let your guitar gather dust and that rose go unappreciated.

I strongly believe that financial stability is achieved through a mindset and a way of life. Like trying to lose weight by just going on a temporary diet, it just won’t work in the long run. It takes many simple steps to change one’s mindset. The first simple step is just reading as much as you can about the various situations on the many different blogs here: http://www.wisebread.com/top-100-most-popular-personal-finance-blogs/.

Readers, have you achieved financial stability through a change in mindset? What are the main differences between the new you and the old you?

Keigu,

Sam @ Financial Samurai – “Slicing Through Money’s Mysteries”

Follow on Twitter @FinancialSamura and subscribe to our RSS or E-mail feed.