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.

College Gawker

Overview:
Basis of the idea comes from what we've seen Gawker do. There is a huge market for a college gossip blogs with campus reporters. There are several issues that would need researching before launching the company, mostly on the guidelines for what the reporters aren't allowed to write about (preferably nothing, I don't believe in censorship).

The Problem:
I think the best way to gather gossip in college right now is through Facebook. Gossip news is the most addicting kind of news because people are infatuated with the lives of others (instead of living their own).

The Solution:
Instead of letting Facebook decide what comes into the News Feed, why couldn't you hire a few reporters to create news feeds for each college? Although Facebook will report on only the people you let in your Friends list, this would be much more interesting because the reporting would be more unique/funnier/original/HUMAN.

Reporters:
Hire 3-4 students to be reporters. Have 1 managing editor. For the first few reporters, try hiring sophomores/juniors as they would be better for getting to know the audience (as opposed to seniors who are leaving and freshman who don't know enough people yet). Hire reporters that are well connected, have a large following on Facebook, attend all the parties. Hire from various social crowds.

Reporting Guidelines:
Minimum of 2 posts per day on weekdays. On weekends have 1 reporter make all the posts (SPIEGELMAN!). Posts of all different sizes, whatever drives pageviews. Controversial posts are good. Posts with pictures are better. Posts with videos are even better than controversial posts with pictures.

Reporter Topics:
Party Report. Fameballs. Caption Contest. Drunk People. Fights. So Indie. The Brotherhood. We Read The News So You Don't Have To. Religious Fanatics. Sorority Girls. Hipsters. Emo Kids. The 90's Called. Valley Girls. Fanboys. Nerds. Rumors. Someone Needs To Graduate. Dorm Stories. Pure Racism.

Reporter Pay Scheme:
Reporters are paid per amount of views. Every 1k PERMALINK (very important) pageviews the reporter gets $6-7 (depending on how the ad/promotion dollars come out). Also paid a base salary (at the beginning $1-200/mo), but this is contingent on having a following on the site (can't be paying reporters with a dead site).

Commenters:
Anyone with a school address would be allowed to comment on their school's blog. Anyone else that would like to comment has to audition, and if the reporters like them they can become a regular. Just like Gawker, commenters can be followed and have friends.

Technology:
Would need to program a simple blogging platform. Record all unique page views to each post. Run a cron job every 10 minutes that updates the # of page views on a post. Posts, comments, users, star commenters, followers, etc. Very simple. Could even use movable type.

How is this going to make money?
Some ideas
1) A hardcore/highly targeted audience is worth a ton of money -- more than just the ad dollars that can come from the page views. The INFLUENCE you can have on these people.
2) Using the influence you have on the readers, you can begin to promote parties/events that are going on around the school. Do deals with the event organizers saying for every 100 people that show up, certain amount of money would go to us. Could be big for concert/party promotions around campus that need a minimum amount of people show up to break even

Seeding the network:
The hardest part about this idea will be the beginning of it at each campus. How are you going to get those first 1000 that follow/comment? What's going to draw them? How will you get the word out? Several ideas
- Controversial posts that get in the news. Mainstream news.
- Be the first to break all the stories around campus, beat mainstream news.
- Post videos/pictures about popular people, promote like crazy on Facebook
- Facebook/MySpace promotion - sharing links, etc.
- Advertising in school newspaper
- Advertising around school - putting up posters/flyers in dorm rooms and apartments
- Advertise on school website (if allowed)
- Events for "elite" commenters
- Slow and steady will win. Will have a very hard time first 4-6 months I think, but after you get your initial commenting users things will start flying. More important than viewers is commenters, because commenters will make the site GREAT.

Downside: defamation lawsuits, getting kicked out of school. I'm sure there are loopholes and ways to get around these laws, would consult a lawyer about it.

Highly doubt I'll ever do something like this but if I do... Well, you saw it here first.

You can't put a price on the power to control people. Look at history up until the last few decades - the ability to influence a large group of people was very limited due to the distribution constraints. The most widespread form of media prior to TV was the newspaper. If you controlled the papers, you could have your way in that region. Then came the TV and with it a larger market to penetrate. Then came the media conglomerates who bought up networks, newspapers, magazines, and of course, MySpace. Which brings us to today where we have Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch at the healm of two of the most influential media companies that have ever existed. News Corp alone has a media reach of over 4.2 billion people - yes, that was a "B". (wikipedia this if you think I'm lying)

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the political bias the networks have - CBS, NBC, ABC are all extremely liberal. The only right wing network is FOX, which is on the extreme neo-con end of right wing (makes conservatives look like idiots). The big story this election that hasn't got nearly enough coverage is Rupert Murdoch and who he is supporting. The man that owns the only right wing network, a flurry of newspapers and - yes this will be important - MySpace.

I've been following Rupert Murdoch in this upcoming election since I think he is the only media mogul that matters in the US. He controls what FOX News gets to say, and since it is the only right wing network out there, whoever Murdoch puts his weight behind is going to get a good 50% of the vote. A few weeks ago, he threw his weight behind Obama with a New York Post article about him. The NY Post is a trashy publication, but when asked if he had influenced the editors to put Obama on it at the D6 Conference Murdoch said "yes" without even flinching. Now I'm not sure if this was meant to be a joke or of Murdoch is actually supporting Obama in the upcoming election.

It got me thinking. Murdoch has backed the Republican party for the last century (the guy's old), what would make him switch right now? It could be very simple. Did McCain block a business deal that Murdoch tried to do in the past? Did McCain go after Murdoch for something he did in the past? It could be complicated to (I wouldn't know where to start). Maybe Murdoch and Obama have an agreement if Obama becomes the next president (Obama passes some exceptions to anti-trust laws?). Whatever it was, I'm sure if Murdoch decides to back Obama it will have to do with something McCain did to Murdoch in the past.

No matter what you think about FOX news, it does have a lot of influence over conservatives since it is the only station they can turn to where they aren't constantly maligning President Bush and the Republican party. I know everyone thinks they're so smart and have the power to form their own opinions, but we're talking about middle America here. This isn't San Francisco or New York City that McCain needs (he'll lose them anyways), it's the states that always vote Republican but could flip this year if News Corp. decides to put it's money on Obama.

In the coming weeks we'll see who Murdoch ends up supporting, but if he decides to back Obama, a win for John McCain will be impossible. I will say this once:

Whoever Rupert Murdoch backs for the 2008 presidency will win.

Read it here.

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.