Greg and Kat's blog

A lot of people seem to be talking to me about money recently. Like, a lot. I don’t know what’s up with that but, like questions from my class, I assume that if 3 people have asked, 30 have the question. So, here is everything you need to know to be financially secure. Seriously.

1. Start an investment account. My advice here is to go to one of the investment things in a bank: CIBC/Wood Gundy, BMO/Nesbitt Burns, or whatever. These have the advantage that if you move across the country, you can just move your account to a different branch. If you’re just starting out, they’ll probably put you with some schmuck that handles you and a thousand other accounts, but don’t worry about it.

   The investment advisor will do a little general financial planning: financial goals, risk tolerance, etc. To my mind, it’s worth it to have them do this kind of stuff.

2. Invest 10% of your income. Have the investment guy/gal set up a monthly or bi-weekly withdrawal of 10% of your income from your bank account to your investment account. You’ll never notice it’s gone. Really.

   If after six months, you think “boy I really feel poor without that 10% of my income,” I’ll buy your poor ass lunch.

3. Invest in mutual funds. Pick two mutual funds with as few adjectives as possible. That is, you want the “Growth Fund”, not the “Pacific Rim Manufacturing Fund”. All you’re doing by buying a more limited fund is limiting what your fund manager can do with your money. The fund manager knows what he/she is doing. You’re buying their expertise as much as anything else. Let them do their thing.

   The only other thing you need to worry about is risk tolerance: high growth and high risk generally go together. Your financial advisor should point you to funds that match your risk tolerance. (Basically, go high risk over the long term and lower risk for short term investments.) Edit 11/2007: Watch the fees on mutual funds too. A fund that gets 1% better return, but charges a 2% fee is a loss.

4. Paying off debt is the best investment. Since lending rates are typically higher than investment earnings, it makes sense to pay off any debts (say, by doing the 10% thing) before you invest elsewhere.

   If that’s going to take you a little time, first convert any credit card debt into something with a less-stupid interest rate.

5. Increase the 10% to cover your RRSP contribution. Have a look at what you’re allowed to contribute to your RRSP (it’s on a slip that comes back after you’ve filed your taxes). Get that amount into a registered investment and the taxman gives you 30–40% of it back. (Yay free money.)

   If you’re reading this, you probably want the retirement money in a high-risk/high-yield fund since you won’t be touching it for several decades.

6. Don’t shuffle investments. The whole point of the mutual fund is that somebody smarter than you is doing the buying and selling for you. Do you know what Russian textile companies are going to be up to over the next decade? Do you care? No? Then piss off and let the mutual fund manager to his/her job. Don’t let your investment guy/gal talk you into selling one investment for another unless they have a damned good reason.

   The only good reason I can think of: going from high-risk investments to lower-risk because you’re going to need the money in the medium-term.

7. The scary future. Get home/renters insurance for your shit. If you’re child-free and debt-free, you probably don’t need life insurance. You likely need long-term disability insurance, though. Your job may get you some of this for free.

   Come to think of it, get yourself a will too.

8. Do whatever the hell you want with the rest of your money. Liquor, hookers, fast cars, whatever. Fuck budgeting, we’re all too stupid for that. Make sure there’s enough for rent and food and don’t go into debt.

9. Read The Wealthy Barber. What I just wrote there is basically a distilled version of The Wealthy Barber. It’s a fast read and has better explanations and more details than I have here. I’ll lend you a copy if you want.

Okay, that might seem like a longish list of stuff, but until you have kids or edge up on retirement, that’s just about all you need. The time needed to maintain this is like 2 hours/year.

In fact, if you only get steps 1–3 down, you’ll probably be fine.

The only other things I can think of: Buying a house shifts some of your investments from mutual funds to real estate. If you get married and have dissimilar incomes, you need life insurance and can shuffle some things between you to save on taxes.

The magic here is, of course, compound interest. Try the calculator on that link: starting at $0, contributing 10% of your income per year, enter the number of years until you expect to retire, and a 6% return. Six percent is pretty reasonable over the long term, taking inflation into account.

Remember: that 10% is in addition to your basic retirement plan. That’s “I’m retired and want to live it up” money. That calculation also assumes you’ll never in your life get a raise beyond the cost of living.

They say money can’t make you happy? Bullshit. I look at the investment summary they send me every month and giggle to myself.

I recently (either through Digg of StumbleUpon) found an article 10 virtually instant ways to improve your life. Now, I don’t usually go in for self-help douchebaggery, but this one made some sense to me. For the impatient, the ten things are:

1. Stop jumping to conclusions.
2. Don’t dramatize.
3. Don’t invent rules.
4. Avoid stereotyping or labeling people or situations.
5. Quit being a perfectionist.
6. Don’t over-generalize.
7. Don’t take things so personally.
8. Don’t assume your emotions are trustworthy.
9. Don’t let life get you down. Keep practicing being optimistic.
10. Don’t hang on to the past… let go and move on.

It’s amazing how many people come to mind when reading this: colleagues, questionable supervisors, ….

Of course, the elephant in the room is actually noticing that you’re doing these things when you are. That seems to be the tricky thing.

Hmmm… Maybe I should just concentrate on one at a time and make real sure I’m not doing that one. Fuck… that’s being a perfectionist! 🙂

So, I haven’t blogged for a while. I guess I have been too busy.

The busy time started with Lisa, a friend of ours from North Carolina coming to Vancouver for a conference. Since she had some downtime, and it’s a damn nice city to be in, her partner Brian decided to come with her and make it a light-work vacation. Since they were coming, Kat decided to come to town herself to hang out with all of us.

So, it was a full house for a little while: Kat stayed for 4 days, and Lisa and Brian for 3 more. It was nice to take a mini in-town vacation.

Last Friday, I took Lisa and Brian to the airport, and hopped on a red-eye myself to go and see my parents in Ontario for a quick five day visit before having to return. I haven’t been back to see my parents at home for about two years. The four days I actually spent at their place was long enough to spend some time with them, and they got high speed Internet since I was last there, so the border would be under control.

The day before I left, their Internet connection went down at around noon: some problem at the ISP’s end.

You know when you’re walking around the house at night and the power suddenly goes off and all you can think is “fuck, now I’m in the dark.” Well, that’s pretty much how I felt. “Fuck, now I’m in Toledo and have to face that with no Internet to distract me.”

I’m not really sure how I got through my teenage years without going nuts or developing a chemical dependency. I suspect that Jeb and I managed to enter a balance of stupidity: stupid enough to entertain ourselves, not stupid enough to hurt ourselves.

Although, the time we made water burn came close.

Anyway, I’m back. Ready to face the end of the semester.

So, I wasn’t particularly inspired for lunch today. I decided to satisfy my unholy love for the Burger King Veggie burger.

As I was waiting for my food, I thought I was going to be annoyed by the three women who were all cooing over the infant spawned, presumably, by one of them. Honestly, it was like nobody had ever procreated before. “Oooh… you managed to get knocked up and have the minimal life skills necessary to not have the government take your child away… I’m so jealous.” The child, to its credit, was well behaved.

So, I sat as far as possible away from them at sat down to raise my sodium levels.

As I was finishing, a group came in with a stupid little lap dog. The two guys sat down with the dog while the girls were ordering, and proceed to put the dog on the table.

First of all, anybody who thinks it was acceptable for us, as a society, to have bred a wolf into that should be kept away from sharp objects and not allowed to vote.

Second, I don’t think restaurants are a place for anything except homo sapiens and properly trained assistance animals (guide dogs, and such). I’m willing to admit that this is informed by the fact that I’m allergic to dogs, but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here. I believe the time Suyoko and I saw a similar dog take a nice wet shit in the middle of a liquor store contributes to this feeling as well.

Third… on the table!?!? Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket! People are going to put their food on there! Here are some of the things I worry about when I put my food on the table at a fast food restaurant: whatever was on the hands of the last person that sat there; the skanky rag that they employees use to wipe the table off; old spilled food. Did you see “maybe a dog rubbed their ass on it” in that list anywhere? No!

As I left, the three women with the kid were taking turns glaring at the dog-on-table crowd, while the others continued to dote on the child. So, maybe they weren’t all bad.

So, I started off my long weekend with a bang yesterday. Unfortunately (and as I said in my Facebook status), I have nobody to blame but myself.

Part 1: tow truck drivers and drug dealers

I started off the day by going to Metrotown, which was relatively uneventful. When I got home, I decided to finally get rid of a box of stuff that I wanted to take to the Salvation Army. I went to the SA store just down the street to find that they no longer take donations there, only at the New Westminster store.

So, I swore a little, but figuring I didn’t have too much else to do, I’d go down to New West. Down I drove, parked, grabbed my jacket, and got out of the car. Now to get the box out of the trunk… no keys. I had locked my keys in the car.

The Salvation Army is in kind of an armpit part of New West. After phoning BCAA, I walked around, declining offers of drugs, and finding myself unable to help some guy find a prostitute. After maybe 20 minutes, the nice BCAA man came and opened the car. All was well.

Part 2: cheap glassware and an owie

Then I came home and decided to do some dishes. What could go wrong?

So, I was washing a glass, with my hand in there washing the inside. The glass chose that moment to break, just as my hand was turning. The broken edge caught my pinky finger between the two knuckles, and cut it pretty bad.

I sat around for a while, waiting for the bleeding to stop and making sure any shock had passed. Once that was done, it was clear I was going to need some stitches. Hardly an emergency, but no clinics are open at 6:00 on a Saturday, so to the Emergency Room I went.

It took about two hours from the time I got to the hospital until I was out. Honestly, I don’t think that was too bad considering the rightful priority of people with owies in the ER.

Three stitches, but no notable nerve or tendon damage.

I took the dressing off today and cleaned it up a little (that was my first good look at it). It’s pretty gnarley looking: a triangle of flesh a little bigger than the nail on the finger was peeled back.

Gross. Anybody want to see pictures?

So, I was just driving home from Kelly and Paul’s place along Hastings. There was one car driving in the manner we all know: the guy that thinks “if I change lanes 8 times per block, I might get a few car lengths ahead.” This is a particular driving annoyance of mine: it creates potentially dangerous situations with little payoff, and close lane changes can easily cause traffic waves in heavier traffic.

So, I watched this guy fly across two lanes from the 3rd to 1st lane (with no pause in between lanes, of course). Then halfway back to the 2nd lane before realizing that the car in front was changing lanes and quickly cranking back. This left him in the curb lane to do the little zip past traffic at the light.

Hmmm… isn’t that car beside him at the light an unmarked police car? Yes, it is. I wonder if he knows that.

After the light, it became clear that he saw it too: suddenly the speed limit was limiting. I LOLed, figuring the guy was probably shitting himself.

All of my psychic abilities were dedicated to one thought: “You saw it too! Pull the bastard over!”

About a block later, the lights came on. It was awesome. I actually thought about pulling over I was laughing so hard.

I’m sure the guy was past the bar for “erratic driving” and probably got to do a field sobriety test. Huzzah, VPD!

As most of you know, I just spent 5 days in North Carolina.

The only course I’m teaching this semester is a three-hour block on Thursday nights. I took a red-eye out on Thursday, and came back today. This was part of the reason I wanted an evening course for the summer, and it worked out pretty well.

Kat and I spent the weekend in Wilmington, NC with Lisa and Brian. For those who don’t know (that includes me a week ago), Wilmington is on the Atlantic, near the South Carolina border. We spent Saturday on nearby Topsail beach. Major thing I learned: I don’t get beaches. “So, I’m just supposed to sit here, slowly getting skin cancer? No really… what are we going to do?” Maybe I’m a little more Type A than I thought.

I did learn an excellent group-vacation strategy: I refused to make any decisions. “Where should we go for dinner? I don’t care: you decide.” “When should we leave for home? Whenever.”

It was awesome. My input would have lengthened the discussion and contributed very little. I just blissfully followed along and enjoyed myself. I chose my own meals from the menu, but that’s about it.

Other than that, the trip was pretty uneventful. Air Canada successfully got me there and back. That might qualify as a notable event by this point. Canada Customs didn’t believe my $0.00 declaration, but they relented when I explained I go regularly and didn’t have anything else to bring back.

Oh, and I really like frozen custard and am annoyed I can’t get it in Vancouver. And being able to update your Facebook status by text message is a nice, lightweight, realtime travel blog.