In the field of manufactured spending one of the most common metrics is “cents-per-mile-earned.” The idea here is that if you’re doing manufactured spending, there are always some costs associated with the exercise, and those costs can be quantified if you divide the total cost of the manufactured spending in cents by the total number […]
Archive | December, 2013
Political Capital
You don’t need to pull a brain muscle to come to the conclusion that our political system has some serious issues. It’s not exactly an original thought that our politics are corrupted by money and special interests. But the fact that a point is obvious has never stopped me from making it before. So here […]
Cold Comfort
Luxury is a two-edged sword. On one hand we crave it. The most expertly prepared food. Elite wines. Performance cars. Soft hotel feather beds. Pampering vacations. On the other hand luxury can be a bit of a golden cage. Once the best is tasted, the ordinary can become unpalatable. Our world can shrink. One runs […]
Stop Being Active!
The most central message you can glean from my posts on early retirement is that you should save more of your take-home pay. Why? Because small changes in your spending and savings patterns will work out to dramatic changes in your future financial freedom. Both in terms of time and money. But if there’s a […]
The Fork in the Road
From the time I was three I wanted to be professional baseball player. I don’t mean that in a sentimental sort of way. I literally wanted to be a professional baseball player for the San Francisco Giants. And I would stand outside in the rain throwing tennis balls against the wall of my house creating […]
The Anatomy of a Lame Award
One of the most common metrics for determining the value of an award redemption is the so-called cents-per-mile measurement. The idea here is that the more the award would’ve cost you in cash and the less miles you need to use, the more valuable the redemption. This is why the common logic of the miles […]
Tail Wags Dog
If a teaspoon of medicine does you good, are 10 tablespoons necessarily better? Can’t too much of a good thing be a bad thing? In pharmacology there’s a term called the “therapeutic index.” This is the range at which at which a medicine does more good than harm. If drug levels are too low the […]
Conflictualization
One of the standard first slides in medical PowerPoint presentations is the conflict of interest slide. It goes something like: I’m on the payroll of Medtronic, St. Jude, Boston scientific, Biotronik, ELA, and Biosense Webster… Please enjoy the following educational presentation on sudden cardiac death. I’ve noticed that the same goes for online travel blogs, […]
A Universe of Options
If you’re looking to open a new investment account, in order to invest all of your additional savings from your newly frugal lifestyle, there are a multitude of options. There is no chance that I could give a complete picture of all brokerage options. I’m not going to even try. What I will do is […]
Butterfly Effect
Life is unpredictable with its own rhythm and logic. Which is why the self-help genre is inevitably so disappointing. Self-help strategies seem to assume that life is shaped by the conscious mind. In my experience, it largely isn’t. Instead, life rolls along chaotically, each seemingly unrelated event shaping the next. Each subsequent human move percolating […]
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