My 2009 Economic Stimulus Package
2009 is here and amidst all the talk of another federal stimulus package, I’ve decided it’s time to give myself a way to save money in these hard times. Near the end of 2008, my spending got out of control: I spent over $1000 on cabs in the year; I blew through another few thousand eating out at restaurants; and I threw loads of cash out the window by investing in the stock market last year. That last one I think almost everyone did, so I don't feel too bad. In 2009 I’ve decided to cut back. A lot. Here is some of the new legislation which recently passed in the Congress of Sam Purtill’s head:
Put $500/month into my Roth IRA
Last year I was an idiot and put all $5000 into my Roth at once, at the same time buying the S&P500 index fund, VFINX. After losing 30% in that deal I’ve decided to rethink my Roth account investing and will begin to dollar cost average, after years of reading about it from people like Ben Graham. Since the maximum contribution limit for 2009 is $5,000, I'll take the last two months of 2009 and put the $500 into a personal investment account (which I'll be putting extra money in throughout 2009 anyways).
Take Muni unless splitting a cab with someone else
Face it: spending $13 on a cab to get from my house to some place in the Mission, and another $13 on the way back ($15 if the driver sucks), just isn’t worth it. Plus San Francisco has a great muni system that can get you within two blocks of almost any destination in the city.
Only leave the pennies when dropping the change into tip jars at cafes and restaurants
I’m getting really stingy on this one. By the end of 2008 I was dropping all coin change into the tip jar except quarters (saved for buses). This was dumb because 1) you already gave the place money for your food/drink and 2) nickels and dimes add up, and are great to use in emergencies (the bus!). I remember several times in 2008 when I would dig through my pockets only to find one quarter and a few dollar bills; if I had been saving my nickels and dimes I would have gotten on the bus a few more times instead of taking a cab. Probably lost $100 or so in that deal. And yes, I know that sounds ridiculously lazy.
A new budget of $800 a month for food and entertainment
I have no idea how much I was spending in 2008 on food and entertainment. I know there were a few months where it was well over a thousand. I came up with the 800 number for a few reasons. Average cost of food per day is around $20 for me in the city - $4 for breakfast, $7 for lunch, $9 for dinner. I’m going to try to cut that to around $15/day, but I’ll put myself on the high side for now. That leaves me $200/month for entertainment, or about $50 per week. This seems kind of high, but it really isn’t when you budget in ski trips to Tahoe and weekend trips to Monterey or Napa Valley. I think $800 should do the trick. Also: this is the first time in my life I’ve given myself a budget. I think this will be hard to stick to, but I’m up for the challenge.
Learn how to do personal and corporate taxes
Ok. Maybe not all the loopholes and minuscule details of the tax code, but it’s about time I learned how taxes worked in this country. It will be invaluable down the line for me to have this knowledge – I can use it to save money by filing my own taxes (my grandpa kindly does them for me now, so this isn’t a big problem), and with learning how to file corporate taxes will be a big help to any startup I work at or start that needs help filing taxes. Plus taxes have always intrigued me, so why not learn it? (Hey if you're an accountant and reading this, or if you have a friend that's an accountant, email me! sdpurtill at gmail dot com)
Remember: faithful in little, faithful in much
All these little things ended up costing an extra 500-1500 in overhead every month, which could have added up to almost $10,000 by the end of the year. This could have been saved and/or invested had I been wiser. At least I am learning my lesson while still young.
Wising everyone the best of luck with their finances in 2009, it’s going to be a rough year, but we’ll all make it.
If you’re giving yourself a “Personal Economic Stimulus Package” in 2009, leave a note in the comments below about what you’re doing – I’d love to hear about it.
Explosive productivity
I think I have a condition of sorts. In the last few months I've noticed that I am either really motivated and get a lot of stuff done, or have no motivation at all and am useless. I see it now more than ever because one of the guys I work with is really consistent with how he gets work done. I like to think of my condition as "explosive productivity".
Take the following example:
I try to consistently do a weekly review on Sunday night or Monday morning and write a todo list for everything that needs to be accomplished in the upcoming week. The weeks that where I do these weekly reviews I always cross everything off the list and have extremely productive weeks. But there are weeks where I have no motivation to do a weekly review (it's about 1 in 4 now, used to be 1 in 3 so I'm improving). In these weeks I have no direction and am generally pretty lazy about everything - work, communicating with people, even making my bed. I call these my recovery weeks where I realize I'm still 19 and not a machine (yet). They're quite humbling.
I've noticed similar behavior in a lot of people that I've gotten to know in Silicon Valley. I feel like there is a perception about a lot of entrepreneurs that says you should be working 24/7 to make a startup successful, but everyone is wired differently. Myself? I can't work for more than 4 weeks straight without having a "recovery week". As time goes on I've been able to build up more and more stamina, but I have a hard time seeing myself becoming a machine. My logic behind this is as follows: If I can get done in 1 week what takes most people 2 weeks, I should have an explosive 3 weeks and then take a 1 week break to recover and get ready for the next 3. I am tossing the word "recover" around without defining it - by it I mean a week where you're not at your productivity peak. Maybe you're at 1/2 of your normal productivity. Whatever it is, this week should be spent planning what the next 3-4 weeks will be like.
I've read a lot of books on productivity. The best one I ever read was How To Get Things Done by David Allen. Halfway through the book I slipped a bookmark in it and threw it under my bed, never to pick it up again - kind of ironic. How to get things done eh? :) I've come to the sad conclusion that no matter how many productivity books I read, none of them are made specifically for me. They're made for the "general public". I think these books are similar to health diets -- they last for a few months but aren't sustainable in the long term for people with strong patterns (like myself).
I have applied methods that the books have taught here and there -- one of my favorite is the 2 minute rule that David Allen talks about in his book. If you can get the task done within the next 2 minutes, just get it done and out of your system. Another one is writing everything down (I have a habit of sending myself emails via BlackBerry when I'm not around a computer). I've found that this takes a lot of my perceived stress away, because I know if I write something down I won't forget it. Thinking that I forgot something is where a big part of my stress always coems from, so I'm glad I've solved that. But by and large none of these productivity books have boosted my productivity more than methods that I've found myself (the recovery week being my best example).
I hope that one day I will figure out how to work non stop for several months at a time - until then I'll need my recovery weeks here and there.
What are some of the things that make you productive?
I need your opinion!
Everyone comment on this!
I can't tell you for what, but I have two domain names that I am deciding between for something I am doing:
tastychurro.com
mychurro.com
It's down to TastyChurro or MyChurro. What do you like better? And if you can think of something with the word "churro" in it that is better than both of them, I'll give you $20.
Comment away, thanks!
Smart people can be so irrational sometimes…
I like reading Dave Winer's blog, but today he announced that he bought 300 shares of Apple (AAPL) stock (approx. $50k). I rarely ever click through to the sites from Google Reader, but this was the only one I clicked through today to see if I could comment on it. Let me quote what he says about the stock:
I decided, after giving it much thought, to buy 300 shares of Apple. I think it's a good long-term investment.
The only thing I had to look at was their P/E of 47.42. Ok you could go over hundreds of future earning potential scenarios for Apple, but it is SO ridiculous to justify a PE of 47.42 for a company that is already HUGE.
But then again, maybe everybody sees something that I don't? I'm just not buying into all this BS hype; MS is trading at a steady P/E of around 21, seems like a much better buy than Apple. Apple is a great company, they make awesome products, but the irrationality of the market seems so absurd to me.
Google's P/E of 52 doesn't look as bad to me, because I think Google is about to become the biggest telecom and ISP the world has ever seen, so they still a massive market to capture.
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Ahh! All this stock market BS is making my brain hurt, people are just a bit crazy sometimes when it comes to the whole castle-in-the-air hype. Bleh.
Oh by the way... having a great time in SF, moved into my apartment and living on my own. More on that at a later time, I'm just mad at the market right now.
A great view of risk
I just came across this article on Digg. It's an interview with Peng Ong (I've never heard of him until a few minutes ago, but he sounds like a big Silicon Valley guy). This is an excerpt from the interview that I thought was great
SM: I am an entrepreneur’s daughter as well, and it is a risk taking propensity that I think kind of gets built in if you are from that type of a family.
PO: Let me try and pose this slightly differently because I think this helps some folks even if it doesn’t help everyone. I am actually not a really high risk taker. I will explain why. It is how you look at risk. Most of us, when we think about risk we thing of dollars and cents. Now flip the situation around and think about something else; in my case I invite people to think about the time they have. You can always make money here and there later. If you don’t make some now you can make some later. You get a little bit smarter and you can figure out different ways to make money.
Time just keeps marching on. Most of us that I know of have a limited supply of it. The biggest risk to me is not that I loose money but I do not make use of the time I have as effectively as I can. When you look at it from that perspective it is very risky to get a regular job, not learn anything and not to experience very much. From that perspective, losing all of my money is lower risk to losing all of my time.
Buying Music on iTunes — My Experiences
Recently, I've been buying all my music off of iTunes. I used to buy the CDs from Best Buy when they came out, but wow, after using iTunes, I'll never go down to the store again. Talk about convenience! The only thing that I don't get from iTunes is the little booklet that comes inside CDs you buy at the store. I kind of miss those, but in reality, I usually just look at them once and never pick them up again (especially the ones that don't print the lyrics). I've bought over 100 songs on iTunes now (not much compared to a library of 1000+) and I am "hooked" on it, if you will.
Most kids my age don't bother to pay money for their music. They do have legitimate reasons:
- I make minimum wage -- $8/hr
- LimeWire and BitTorrent are always free and easy
- Artists already have enough money, there's no point in me giving them more
- I have ANTI-CAPITALIST tattooed on my arm! (I've seen a guy with this)
- I am so original that the bands I listen to aren't on iTunes (only good excuse here)
- I like the band, but they aren't worth my money (I used this excuse forever)
So here is my rebuttal to those excuses:
- You should have learned Ruby on Rails when you were in 8th grade. You would be making upwarsd of $80/hr now :p. No but seriously, learn a skill and charge money for it.
- I have downloaded hundreds of songs from LimeWire -- almost all of it Rap music. I really don't feel the need to support people that shoot eachother for "turf"... Hahaha
- They have a lot of money because they are talented, a lot of people like them, usually MTV made them, and I respect the fact that Viacom took the risk of making them. I'm not going to lie, I don't have what it takes to build the next Viacom... Gotta respect "the man" ;)
- For everyone out there that is "anti-capitalistic", I really pity you. Money makes the world go 'round, I've said this a million times over. You have to eat to live, and food doesn't come out of heaven like it did in the days of Moses (manna :p)
- This is actually a good excuse. I don't know what to say except... Those bands suck hahaha
- Quick solution to this problem: if they aren't worth your money, they aren't worth your time. The saying goes "time is money", hence my reasoning behind that statement. I only buy music that I deem "worthy" of my money and [listening] time.
The reason why I prefer buying music to downloading it is because:
- Quality of paid for content always trumps illegally obtained content
- The Album Artwork is always right... Haha, I hate when Album Artwork is wrong
- When people at school are talking about all the songs they have been downloading, you can tell them how superior you are because you buy your music (hahaha juust kidding)
- YOU FEEL GOOD about the songs that you've bought when you listen to them. You aren't thinking... Wow, I could actually get thrown in jail because I have this illegal content on my computer (I know, I know, chances of that are one in a billion). But, it's a good feelinggg ;)
Moral of post: Buy Music on iTunes.
I absolutely love this weather
Winter officially trumps summer. Forever. In Narnia, it would have been better if it was always sunny and never snowing :p. Anyways, I have a post about the seminar last night that I'll be posting later.
I don’t post when I’m angry
I have about 10 drafts that I've saved from the rest of the world. Why ? Because I don't post when I'm angry.
A few reasons
#1- You'll feel differently about the situation tomorrow.
#2- You may not know all the details behind the situation which is making you angry; therefore, until you know all of the details, there is no point in writing about stuff that may be wrong.
#3- Mark Cuban does, but he's a billionaire. That's 100% justified. A high school senior that doesn't have a penny to his name, now that's not.
#4- No point in smearing someone's name on the internet. If you don't like them, tell it to their face; posting something online about them is the pansiest thing ever. Kind of like people on Myspace trashing each other on those stupid bulletins... Get a life :p
#5- Because it's public information. And that's not something to take lightly.
#6- What goes around comes around... Karma's a bitch. And those aren't just sayings, they're facts.
The reason I write this ? I've had quite a few posts that have gone unpublished in the last few days... And sadly, they will never see the light of day.
:)
Ok, going to see Will Ferrel's new movie tonight with friends. I can't wait -- Will Ferrel is the funniest guy alive. Elf is by ffffaaaaarrrrr the greatest Christmas movie on the planet.
Diddy’s new CD…
Is TERRIBLE. It is the worst CD I have bought in the last 2 years. Alpha Launch of Monvia's first product this Thursday, so we're working like crazy to get everything perfect. My schedule will be freed up to blog more next week.