Money and Financial Business

Happy New Year to all!

I spotted Mayflower on a few non-fiction bestseller lists and checked it out this weekend. Unfortunately, I got about 100 pages into it, only to find that it really didn't hold my attention. Very vivid description of the pilgrims and the reasons for their flight to the new world, but ultimately it reminded me too much of a high school history class. Maybe it would be different if I could read it while sitting on the beach, imagining a 400-year old three-masted ship coming over the horizon.

This is a question (really, a class of questions) that are often asked of people who are applying for jobs that sometimes have extreme pressures put on the employee. People interviewing you for management jobs will often ask some variant of this, and it’s also common for jobs with lots of tight deadlines. Many interviewers ask for specific examples, but another variant that is sometimes recommended to interviewers is something more open-ended along the lines of “How do you handle stressful situations?” What’s the best way to answer it?
1) Make a list of high pressure situations you’ve been in before you start interviewing. This is another one where you’re going to have to think through your job history beforehand, because it’s hard to answer the question well without a little forethought. Trying to do it off the cuff won’t work well. You should be thinking about a few kinds of situations to list: when have you had major problems at work that you’ve had to deal with? When have you had very tough deadlines? When have you had confrontations with other people (employees, customers, bosses)? These are the general sorts of thing that should be going on your list. Unless you haven’t been on the job too long, stick to situations from work. If you’re fresh out of school, then something from your classes might work as an example.

2) Cross out the ones that make you look bad. “I forgot to order paper for the copy machine, and so we couldn’t file those important papers on time, and my boss screamed at me and nearly fired me. But I breathed in a bag for awhile and slept it off - the stress wasn’t that big a deal.” Your answer should not be anything like that - the interviewer doesn’t care about how it affected you personally. They care about how it affected your work. You also don’t want to tell them about a situation where you’re responsible for the goof. Ideally, the problem will either be no one’s fault or someone else’s.
3) Pick an example where you did something productive despite the stress. If you had a really tight deadline that threatened to derail your project, and you worked overtime for a week to get it out in time, that’s a good example. If you were being screamed at by an irrational customer, and managed to keep your cool and keep him satisfied in the end, that’s a good example. There has to be some active step that you took to solve the problem in your story.

4) Don’t focus excessively on the “pressure” part of the question. There should be some pressures on you in your example. But the main priority is to show that you responded well in a previous situation, not that you’ve been subjected to the most mind-blowingly stressful situation imaginable. That means you should focus less on the worst situations you’ve been in from your list and more on the ones that have turned out well despite problems along the way.

If they just ask you some variation like “how do you handle stressful situations,” you should really be answering it the same way. It’s hard to give a good generic answer to that. Saying “I keep my cool and I’m levelheaded” isn’t going to make you stand out. A story about how you handled a previous situation will be unique and will get the point across better anyway. So just say something like “Well, I can give you an example…” and give the same answer you’d give to the question asking you to name a specific situation.

Discuss this in the Free the Drones forums.

Well, it's only hours away from a New Year which means New Year resolutions are about to go into effect. I looked at a lot of Top Ten New Year Resolution lists and I found that money related items were almost always on that list. It turns out that a lot of people decide that they're going to try to save more money or pay off debt. Both of them seem like very good ideas. In fact, the saving

In 2006 we continued our journey toward achieving financial independence by paying down a high-interest student loan, maxing out our retirement accounts at an accelerated pace, completing our cash reserve and beginning the process of aggressively paying down our second mortgage debt.

We want to continue with the same relentless pace and determination we have shown in previous years, so in 2007 we are hoping to:

• Continue to make the maximum-allowable contributions to our retirement accounts as we've done in the past - wife’s 401k ($15,500), husband’s Simple IRA ($10,500), and both Roth IRAs ($8,000). Much like last year, we want to be more aggressive with our contributions at the beginning of the year to maximize our long-term returns.
  status: not yet started



• Though we failed last year, we want to make it a top priority to find a new job for the husband who has achieved all that is possible with his current employer and is looking to make a move that will further his professional growth and better help in accomplishing our goals towards achieving financial independence. The primary requirements for the new position will be greater challenges and responsibilities, higher income and a full 401k package with an employer match which would allow us to contribute more in tax-deferred savings.
  status: completed



• Make the necessary contributions (around $300 per month) to our cash reserve to bring us back up to $13,000 after paying our property taxes at the end of 2006. In addition, we want to also begin saving for a car to replace one of our existing vehicles. We'll assume for now we will need roughly $6,000 by the end of the year (around $500 per month). So, total monthly contributions to our cash reserve should be around $800 per month this year.
  status: not yet started



• Transfer the second mortgage balance to a credit card offering a no-fee, 0% balance transfer and completely pay off the balance by the end of November. In order to do so we are looking at monthly payments of roughly $900.
  status: in progress



• Reach $238,000 in net worth by year end.
  status: not yet started

By and large we are quite happy with the progress we’ve made in 2006. As of right now we are slightly ahead of schedule according to our long-term plan.

However, this is the first year in which we were unable to complete all of our financial goals as set forth at the beginning of the year which was a minor disappointment. But that disappointment is quickly diminished when we look back and see our early progress in the paying off of the second mortgage debt, which was only expected to begin in 2007.

Below are our 2006 financial goals with comments following each:


Goal: Continue to make the maximum allowed contributions to our retirement accounts as we've done in the past - wife’s 401k ($15,000), husband’s Simple IRA ($10,000), and both Roth IRAs ($8,000). However, this time around we will be more aggressive in our contributions at the beginning of the year to maximize our long-term returns.
status: completed

Comments: Each year our first order of business is to take full advantage of our retirement account options. Just like in previous years, we were able to make the maximum-allowable contributions and were able to do so at an accelerated pace. In fact, we were able to max out the husband’s Simple and our Roth IRAs in record time.


Goal: Continue to contribute to our cash reserves each month until we reach a total of $13,000. The majority of this will be designated as our emergency fund (3 months of living expenses = $9,000). The remaining portion will be used to pay property tax on our home at the end of the year which will be $3,869.48 according to the bill we received in October. Last year saw us contributing $800 per month to quickly bring us up to speed; this year will be a more relaxed approach with monthly contributions closer to $450.
status: completed

Comments: It may have taken us a couple of years, but we were able to finally complete our cash reserve. Having the extra cash set aside has brought a certain level of financial comfortability we had never experienced before.


Goal: Transfer the student loan #2 balance to a 0% no-fee credit card and completely pay it off by the end of the year.
status: completed

Comments: Any time you are able to eliminate a debt it certainly brings a level of satisfaction. We could have paid this off sooner, but the balance transfer offer allowed us to max out our Roth IRAs and the husband’s SIMPLE IRA contributions earlier which turned out to be a major contributor in us reaching our net worth goal this year (bottom).


Goal: Build enough available credit to transfer the second mortgage balance to a 0% no-fee credit card(s) in 2007.
status: completed

Comments: This didn’t take as long as we had previously thought and we’re now in the position to transfer the remaining second mortgage balance to one of the recently acquired credit cards.


Goal: Find a new job for the husband who has achieved all that is possible with his current employer and is looking to make a move that will further his professional growth and better help in accomplishing our goals towards achieving financial independence. The primary requirements for the new position will be greater challenges and responsibilities, higher income and a full 401k package with an employer match.
status: failed

Comments: This is the first goal since starting this blog that we have been unsuccessful in completing. It will remain in our goal set going into next year and will be given the highest priority. Though the husband was able to garner a handful of interviews, the simple lack of commitment hindered our progress here. As we’ve mentioned just recently, we need to work extra hard in the coming years on growing our incoming revenue to reach our ultimate goal and this is an important step in doing so.


Goal: Reach $150,000 in net worth by year end.
status: completed

Comments: Back when putting together our financial goals for 2006 we honestly did not think we could reach this mark without the job change for the husband as described above. But, with the help of favorable market conditions, our investments were able to provide enough return to complete our net worth goal. This will probably mark the last time we will ever be able to double our net worth in a year’s time.

As we mentioned before, we wanted to make one more extra payment of $2,500 to the principal balance of the second mortgage by the end of this month to get the loan under $10,000. According to the lender website we have to include this amount with a regular monthly mortgage payment, so since we had the available funds we went ahead and paid the amount due for next month early.

So, not only did we bring the balance under $10,000 as hoped for, but we will also get the additional deduction for the interest paid on our tax bill.

The outstanding loan balance now stands at $9,797.68 and we are about ready to transfer the amount to one of the recently acquired credit cards. One of our goals next year will be to completely pay off this balance by the end of November. In order to do so we are looking at monthly payments of roughly $900.

Here are the steps we have taken thus far in paying down our second mortgage:

• Attacking the second mortgage – part 4
• New credit cards arrive
• More credit card gymnastics
• Attacking the second mortgage – part 3
• Attacking the second mortgage – part 2
• Attacking the second mortgage
• Final update on credit limits

By: Cecily O’Connor, Pensions & Investments Published: December 25, 2006 When Donald Putnam (co-founder of Putnam Lovell) speaks, people listen.  So when he brands ETFs a “disruptive technology”, you know someone is in for a rough ride.  In this case, it’s mutual funds.  Like Morgan Stanley’s Mark Baumgartner and like us at AllAboutAlpha, Putnam views recent financial trends as fundamental game-changing [...]

I was talking to my coworker, Kas a few days ago and she told me she made $18,000 in the past two months. I asked her what she was doing. She said that she had this side business in addition to her day job. I learned that she was selling Christmas ornaments in the mall. It was her friend's business, but because she had been working with her friend for a while, her friend trusted her with the merchandise and gave her 20% profit-sharing. If her share was $18K net, imagine what her friend's was. According to my calculations, her friend made $72,000 in two months.

Today we put the check in the mail to pay our annual property tax bill. Instead of drawing the expected $4,000 from our cash reserve held with EmigrantDirect, we only had to transfer $3,750 to our checking account.

Next year we’ll need to make the necessary contributions (around $300 per month) to our cash reserve to bring us back up to $13,000.

Today we paid off the last remnants of student loan #2 by making the final payment to the transferred balance on the Citi Simplicity card thus completing one of our last remaining financial goals for 2006.

As you might recall, back in February, we utilized a promotional no-fee 0% balance transfer offer on the Simplicity card to facilitate the paying down of the balance throughout 2006. Each month we’ve been quietly making the necessary payments in order to remove the debt and now we are left with one less liability to worry about.


For those interested, here were the steps we took to pay off the loan in a year’s time. We are currently using a similar approach to eliminate the second mortgage next year.

• Paying off a student loan – update #3
• Using rebates to pay down student loan – update #2
• Using rebates to pay down student loan – update #1
• Using rebates to pay down student loan
• Attacking student loan #2

It wasn’t easy, but today we finally surpassed $150K in net worth for the first time thus effectively doubling our net worth total from this time last year and completing one of our last remaining financial goals for 2006.

Back in September it looked very unlikely we’d meet this mark by the end of the year. At that time our investment returns were absolutely flat and I still needed to make a job change that would increase our incoming revenue. Even though I have yet to find a new job, a nice sustained bull run by the market during these past few months has helped us greatly in realizing our year-end goal.

We had predicted on reaching this milestone sooner, but the expected holiday bonuses were a bit of a disappointment this year.

Right now we are ahead of schedule according to our long-term plan, but we know we can’t expect the kind of investment performance we enjoyed in 2006 every year. We’ll need to work extra hard in the coming years on growing our incoming revenue to reach our ultimate goal.

Later today we’ll be publishing our financial goals for next year, one of which is to reach $238,000 in net worth by year end.


Our previous net worth milestones:

• On 11/22/06 we surpassed $140K
• On 10/14/06 we surpassed $130K
• On 09/08/06 we surpassed $120K
• On 07/26/06 we surpassed $110K
• On 05/08/06 we surpassed $100K
• On 03/24/06 we surpassed $90K
• On 02/20/06 we surpassed $80K
• On 12/03/05 we surpassed $70K
• On 10/10/05 we surpassed $60K
• On 07/29/05 we surpassed $50K
• On 06/11/05 we surpassed $40K
• On 04/11/05 we surpassed $30K

During the holiday season, the gap between Christmas and the New Year is usually a good time for quiet reflection and planning, allowing us to step back from the hustle and bustle of our daily lives and take in the big picture.

If you are in the mood for a financial assessment, then the December issue of Money Magazine offers tools and advice for tracking your financial goals and comparing where you stand to your peers.

For extra motivation to get you started, see how your net worth stacks up with others. Results are by age and income, with the median net worth for youngsters around $400 and for seniors around $175,000.

Additional tools and advice include:

How to Be a Millionaire

How to Own Your Dream Home

How to Afford an Expensive College for Your Children

How to Retire Early

How to Launch Your Own Business

If you don't start now, then it may be another year before you catch your breath and have a chance to plan again.

I got tagged from Trisha’s Blog to play a little game of “5 Things you probably didn’t know about me.”.  Thats cool, this actually gets me started back writing on my blog.  I haven’t submitted a post in over a month, call it an extended “Blog vacation”. Here goes: 1) I’m a cancer, so the topic of [...]

If you do any investing or follow the stock market at all, you will often hear a company report its earnings every quarter and also every year. Often investors are looking for a couple of indicators including revenue and net income.

I started wondering if I could judge myself the same way. So here is a base effort, to be updated once numbers are final for 2006:

Revenue - My base salary increased 9% from where it was at the beginning of the year. Once I do my tax return, I'll have a better idea of what my other revenue was including: bonuses, capital gains, interest and dividend income. I'll post an update once this is done. I also have to add my fiance's results into this.

Analysis: While 9% is not bad, I felt I could have done better. I imagine my final revenue number will actually be about 11% higher than the previous year. When setting goals this year, I would like to see this number increase by 15% or more next year.

Net Income - I don't know my own net income, but my fiance and I started the year with a combined net worth of $34,514. As of November 30th we are at $102,480. So our net income for the year was $67,966. We don't have any numbers from 2005 to compare to. But as a percentage of net worth, our net worth increased by 197%.

Analysis: I'm extremely pleased with this part of our financial picture. This was a big year for us. I think if a real company reported net income numbers like this, they would be rewarded by getting a bump in their stock price.

Now that I’m paying a bit more attention again to personal finance, I’m stumbling across more personal finance bloggers that I never read before. I’d like to occasionally share my finds.

My first New (to Me) Finance Blogger is Donna Jean of “The Weight of Money“. My first awareness of her was via a comment she left here a couple of days ago. After checking out her site, I was impressed. I’m always drawn to those sharing their experiences getting out of the tough situations; constantly reading about the already successful people preaching their advice gets old after awhile. (Yes, I realize I fall into the latter category most of the time.)

What you’ll find Donna Jean writing about - her values, goals, and struggles. I was hooked fairly quickly and have enjoyed reading through her archives. Take a look - her blog is worth it.

I’m the first to admit I have no idea how much most families spend on Christmas.  My guess is it’s more than we do. This year we spent a total of $761.  Of that, $130 was for the five kids we bought presents for via the local Adopt-A-Family.

So, that leaves $631 spent on two kids, each other, my parents, the kids’ cousins, a couple of neighbor kids, and the two members of my wife’s family that we drew.  That total also includes our annual Christmas card that we send out every year (to over 100 people!) and shipping some of the presents.

Overall I have to say I’m happy with that total, even though it’s higher than I would have expected before totaling it up. I’m glad we pay off the credit card each month; the alternative is sickening to me.

By: Robert Kosowski, INSEAD Published: August 30, 2006 Mutual fund detractors commonly cite their market under performance after fees.  But not content to blindly accept this argument, Professor Robert Kosowski of INSEAD asks how mutual funds perform in periods of economic expansion vs. economic recession.  After completing what he calls “one of the most comprehensive examinations of the performance [...]

Throughout the last 18 months I have accumulated quite a bit of cash in my piggy bank. While I do have a pretty cool piggy bank that I got from my Aunt and Uncle (even is personally engraved with Jacks’$) it doesn’t pay a whole lot of interest. In fact I lose money [...]

To read more stop by my website at JacksCash.Com

This is a random travel tip, but I wish I’d had it for the Christmas season. For those of you who travel regularly on business, it can be the difference between making your flight and missing it. There is a little tool created by the Transportation Security Administration that will let you find out the average time it takes, at any time of day, to get through all the security checkpoints in every U.S. airport. This can be a big deal - I tested several airports and found that the times could vary from a minute or two for the least used checkpoints to 18 minutes at the worst. That means if you regularly use a certain airport, you need to find the quicker ones - you’ll save yourself a lot of time waiting around, and if you’re cutting it close the 15 minute difference could determine whether you make your flight or not. Luckily it also gives you a link to a map of the airport you select, so you can go find the different checkpoints fairly easily.

Discuss this on the Free the Drones Forums.

Here’s another one of those accidental discoveries I make from time to time… While nosing around a few other SBI sites (from the I Love SBI videos), I noticed someone linking directly to the SBI Action Guide. This person had to be breaking some sort of cardinal rule since the Action Guide is a guarded [...]

----------------------------------------- Series: Beginning Investing (6th post) Section: Before You Invest ----------------------------------------- So far you have accomplished two important things - you've set your goals and also determined the amount of money you can save / invest every month in order to achieve them. It is time now to start doing the preparatory work towards creating a

Well I should have posted this 2 months ago to the day. Jodi and I got engaged October 27th, 2006 while sitting on our bench over looking the tidal basin in Washington DC. If you would like to read more about the upcoming wedding or just our plans in general please feel free to click on over to Our Wedding Website

Sorry for the delayed post but obviously things have been busy

Fama/French groupies beware, in his new book “Investors & Markets“, William Sharpe has a warning for you: the expected out performance of value & small-cap stocks may be a pipe dream.  On page 200 of his book, Sharpe concludes that “the announcement of the death of beta appears to be highly premature.” Explains Sharpe: “In recent years, some researchers have concluded that [...]

I just noticed a new Hummer commercial with a catchy Badly Drawn Boy song that I missed the first time I heard their album. The track is "Something to Talk About" and of course the commercial cuts it off right before the song gets interesting.

On another note, I really have a problem with the concept of the Hummer. I'm all for free markets and letting people choose to drive whatever car or truck they want. But from a purely practical point of view, it's supremely irritating to see people driving around in these gauche status symbols that have never hauled anything in their life. Is it hypocritical to support people's right to choose yet detest their choices?

Oh yeah, a very late and not so promising Net Worth for me.

Here’s a nice little online tool I ran across from the Social Security Administration: a calculator to tell you how much you’re going to get each month in social security. For the younger among us it’s not that useful, mainly because it’s such a crap-shoot as to whether or not it will be around, in the same form, or at the same benefit levels. Making precise predictions about what will happen 40 years from now is basically impossible. But if you’re nearing retirement, it’s very useful - all you have to put in is your age, earnings, and date of retirement if you want to retire early. If you’re over 50, this should be your first stop in figuring out a retirement plan because it’s the minimum you’re going to make on retirement. That will help you figure out how much more you’ll need to supplement your payments.

Discuss this in the Free the Drones forums.

My Plans for 2007: Move GrowingMoney blog to my own domain. This will give me more flexibility in the web design and I will also have my own web space to host files (photos, PDFs, etc.). Feel free to provide help for those with your own domain. Contribute to my SEP-IRA. I have open a SEP-IRA with Fidelity and I will make a contribute in the beginning of the year after my accoutant decides what the amount should be. Reallocate 401k Funds. I plan to shift more towards large-cap growth funds. Qualify for IPO trading.

While perusing YouTube, I spotted a video for Fidelity and thought it had an interesting melody. The video itself was a bit generic, but it led me to investigate the album: Begin to Hope by Regina Spektor. Some have described her genre as "anti-folk" (which I had never heard of before this) but I kind of like it and recommend a listen. Since then, I've noticed samples of her tracks on some commercials, so keep your ears open.

The Scissor Sisters offer a catchy (if not terribly inspired) vision of pop/glam-rock.

I first heard about them on NPR in 2004 when I was in Houston for the first time. Odd that I remember that detail.

How are some of the nation's top retailers getting rich?? They profit from unused gift cards. Best Buy reported a $43 Million dollar gain in fiscal year 2006 because of gift cards that were expired and weren't used within the 2 year limit. Most companies say that you have to use the card within 2 years. If you don't, the value of the card either decreases or isn't worth anything at all!! A

As the end of this year is approaching, what are your new plans for the new year?

A friend of mine just bought a car, and was bragging to everyone how great the deal was. He talked about the dealer's sticker price vs what he actually paid. Knowing what I know today, I didn't have the heart to tell him he could have done better or at least smarter, especially around the holidays.
Since I know he doesn't read this blog, I can tell you what I would have told him, without hurting his feelings or stealing his thunder.

My three steps to car buying:

1) Buy used. If you are reading a financial blog, you probably already know this and already own a used car, but the point still needs to be made. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why buying a new car is better than buying a new car. Its simply a consumption decision. Save yourself the 10% minimum and let somebody else drive the car off the lot.

2)Know what you want to buy. Doing your research before hand can save you down the road. A car is not something you want to buy on impulse. Check Consumerreports.org and Lemonaidcars.com and anywhere else you can fine an unbiased review of the car you are considering. Buying a car because you liked what the sales person said, or how it looked is likely to lead to a case of buyer's remorse in the long run.

3) DON'T BUY RETAIL! This is far an away the most important point (hence the all caps and the exclamation point). When you go to a car dealership and see a used car, its likely that your dealer went to a used car auction to acquire many of the cars you see there. The dealer auctions typically have returned fleet cars and cars that have just come off lease. The dealers buy cars at this auction, mark them up, and sell them at their dealership. This is a situation where getting "insider" prices is rather easy. Most autobody shops will sell cars on the side. While they may not have a fancy showroom, or the newest of cars, the owners of these shops likely have a dealers license and have access to the auctions and access to auction histories. Getting insider prices now, is simply a matter of getting your mechanic to buy a car on your behalf.

In my case, a family friend of my fiance owns a autobody shop and sells cars on the side. He goes to the deal auction once a week as part of his business and was more than willing to do this for us (he did charge us a fee for this service). Once we had selected a car make and model, he told us what the car typically sold for at auction (part of the report he receives). We compared this to dealerships and autotrader.ca and knew we were getting a good deal. In our case, we bought a current model year car (2006 at the time) with 20K kms.
Buying buying used, through the auction, we saved 30% over buying brand new and at least 15% off retail.

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy, safe holiday season.

I know I’m looking forward to the new year…Are you?

Merry Christmas to all.

I guess my boss was paying attention the day I casually mentioned that I liked pinot noirs from the Russian River Valley of Sonoma. Last week he dropped off a bottle of Walter Hansel Pinor Noir (RRV) 2003 for Christmas. Cracked it open last night with the turkey and thought it was spectacular. This is the first time I've heard of WH but apparently he has a reputation for putting out quality pinots at reasonable prices - I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for this one. And in case you don't believe me, Robert Parker has got my back.

90 Points - Robert Parker (Wine Advocate):

"Already released, the 2003 Pinot Noir The North Slope reveals attractive berry fruit intermixed with earth, smoke, cherry, flower, spice, and subtle wood notes. Fruit-forward and ripe, it is ideal for drinking over the next 4-5 years."

Wish you a very happy Christmas and best of holidays.

I would be slow in posting over holidays. Blog is also on vacation :)

I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I'll be back around Tuesday with regular new content. Until then, enjoy the holiday weekend and may all your "getting rich" dreams come true.

I hope you all have a great Holiday season and look forward to sharing the best ideas with you as we continue on this journey of financial success. It's certainly a White Christmas here in Denver, Colorado and a special Thank You and best wishes to all our military troops all over the world. God speed your journey home to your loved ones!

Steve Mertz
Peace and Prosperity to You!

I've not really been tracking IPOs much of late. The main reason for ignoring these is the fact that there is almost nothing on the table for long-term investors in IPOs today. The lack of sufficient historical information coupled with some really eye-popping valuations thanks to the bull market make me jittery, to be honest. Also, the mammoth oversubscriptions in most of these imply that the

In the last few years, brining has started to attract more attention from those who are tired of dry turkey at the holidays. The basic process is: soak the bird in a solution of salt, sugar, and spices, for up to a day before cooking. This helps draw flavor and moisture into the bird through diffusion and osmotic pressure (AP Chemistry finally came in handy) to ensure that you don't end up with parched meat. For more details, check out this guide:

Cook's Illustrated - Brining Basics

Speaking from first hand experience, I can say that brining makes a noticeable difference in the texture and flavor of chickens and turkeys. However, I learned that there's quite a difference in the "saltiness" of different types of salt. This goes back to the distinction between weight and volume that different recipes call for. A cup (volume) of table salt has about 10 ounces (weight) of salt in it. Compare this to a cup of kosher salt that contains only 5 ounces of salt. So if you used equal volumes of each type of salt, you'd end up with very different levels of salinity in your brines.

For some more ideas, I recommend following this link to the Food Network's site. I can vouch for the recipes from Alton Brown, Dave Lieberman, and Emeril, all of which are featured on the front page of search results.

FoodNetwork search for "brine"

Now is the right time to look ahead and set some goals for the upcoming year. Here are mine:

1. Complete the beefing up of the CD-ladder portion of my emergency fund. This will be done by adding $1,000 to a new CD in December. This will put about 40% of the fund in laddered long-term CDs, with the rest in short-term CDs and a high-interest money market account.
2. Either pay down $5,000 extra on the mortgage by June, or use the same money to fully-fund my spouses Roth, with the extra $1,000 going into mine. This is an either/or, since I’m not convinced extra retirement savings is the best use of our money. To retire early (age 55 for me), we will need the house paid off and have money to live off of that aren’t tied up in accounts we can’t get to until we’re older.
3. Increase the monthly contributions to our children’s 529 plans from $100 to $150 in May.
4. Put in the time and effort to develop a passive income stream. This isn’t fleshed out yet, and may or may not be related to my stable of websites.
5. Open a brokerage account to save money not needed for retirement (see 2 above) or for the emergency fund.
6. Save enough for a 2008 family cruise. We’re estimating that $6,000 will be what it takes.

Busy week with work and sick kids. Did I miss anything of importance in the news?

I read a little bit about the Miss USA contest turning into Girls Gone Wild, but I didn't care very much about it until Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell decided to mimic a fight scene from a monster movie. I suggest a cage match--two men enter, no one leaves.

Other than that, everything OK with your world?

She is pretty great. She put a lot of effort in this year to get Christmas presents accomplished and spent a ton of hours wrapping and decorating. I pitched in on decorating and Christmas cards and slightly on presents but she mostly made it happen. So kudos to her! (I'm not trying to brown nose, just honestly think she did great).

Which brings me to my problem. She didn't shop for her gifts from me. And rightly so. So I'm hitting the stores this weekend to buy her gifts.

The good news: We agreed to spend only $100 on each other.

The bad news: We agreed to spend $100 on each other, and every idea I had to get her something cost more than that.

In any event, I have some good ideas that I'm going to try to make happen this weekend.....wish me luck?

Before we take a break for the Holidays, we wanted to share with you this touching piece of reader mail received this week.  (American readers may note the uncanny resemblance to a famous letter to the editor appearing in the New York Sun over 100 years ago.) Dear Alpha Male,     I am 8 years old.  Some of [...]

Thanks to Richard Epstein for stating the obvious. Are things in the pharma world perfect? Far from it, but the cures some people would like to put in place would make things much worse. But then you get lots of political mileage from painting horns and a tail on someone easy to hate.

Critics like Angell and Kassirer are absolutely wrong to portray the nation's big drug companies as heartless, avaricious behemoths that act in whatever manner they choose and always get their way. The truth is, the pharmaceutical industry is too heavily regulated. Its big problem today is not that it's free to run roughshod over the needs of consumers, but that it operates in a hostile and excessive regulatory environment that frustrates sound business decision-making and keeps down pharmaceutical company share prices in the stock market. ...

All these developments spell higher costs for the companies. Simultaneously, regulatory attacks on the industry's pricing model, including recent proposals to have the government negotiate rates for all senior citizens covered under Medicare Part D, threaten its revenue stream. The pharmaceutical industry operates in a high-fixed-cost and low-margin environment. It costs, on average, more than a billion dollars to get the first pill to market. All subsequent pills, however, can be made and marketed for only a few additional dollars or cents. Of course, no user ever wants to pay the big bill for that first pill. Instead, each fervently hopes to pay as close to marginal cost for the subsequent pills.

The problem with that is that unless someone pays for developing that first pill, there's no second pill to take. The central challenge to drug pricing is to figure out, quite literally, who swallows (and in what proportions) that huge front-end cost. Unfortunately, no company has a precise method to fairly, reasonably and palatably allocate the cost of drug development among the varied classes of subsequent consumers — large HMOs, hospitals, full-service pharmacies and Medicaid for starters. Each buyer has a strong incentive to push as many of those costs as possible onto someone else.

The upshot is a rough-and-tumble bargaining game in which drug prices vary substantially across different market segments. But the corner drugstore doesn't have the same leverage to play one drug manufacturer off against another, so it usually pays higher prices for its wares than a large HMO. The resulting confusion leads to loud calls for equitable, industrywide price controls. But price controls would have the same dire consequences as they would in any other industry. Investment dollars will quickly move elsewhere if the regulatory system does not allow manufacturers to maximize their revenues over the useful life of the drug (which, incidentally, never exceeds the 11 or so years of patent protection).

Repeated studies, both domestic and foreign, have shown that price controls dull the incentives of pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs. Even talk of price controls depresses investment.

Because of its high-fixed, low-variable cost structure, the drug industry will never reach perfect competitive equilibrium. But in our second-best world, ponder carefully the different consequences of two strategies. The first seeks to expand supply by avoiding regulation and encouraging the entry of new companies into the business. The second seeks to hold down prices by direct controls.

The second approach leads to low prices today but systematic shortages tomorrow, while the first leads to greater innovation today and greater choice tomorrow. We must be careful not to mistake price controls for a cure when they are in fact a disease. Let our new reformist Congress beware.

For those that were decrying the lack of vaccines last year, they need to review their history of how we got in this mess and re-read what the second approach gets you.