SMB Capital – Trading Education
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When you’re facing a giant mountain of debt, it feels almost impossible to overcome it. When your total debt exceeds your household income, it can feel like debt is just going to be a part of your life. It can seem as though, in order to live your life, you’re going to have to constantly hand money to the banks until you’re old and grey.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Sarah and I paid off more than $ 10,000 in credit card debt, two car loans, several student loans that totaled more than $ 30,000, and a home mortgage over the course of about five and a half years, taking us to complete debt freedom. We did this with three children and with a car replacement cycle right in the middle of that five year period.
Snowflakes were a big part of that success. What are snowflakes? Well… let’s step back from that a bit first.
If you’re facing a big pile of debt, the first and most important thing you can do is to build a debt repayment plan. This comes before anything else.
The process is pretty easy. You simply take all of your debts, seek ways to consolidate them and reduce their interest rates, and then order them by interest rate with the highest rate first. Then, you make a minimum payment to all of your debts, then strive to make a big extra payment to that debt with the highest interest rate.
For more information, read my detailed guide to making your own debt repayment plans.
The idea of a debt repayment plan was in part popularized by radio host Dave Ramsey, who modified the idea a little bit (by encouraging people to sort their debt by balance size) and referred to it as a “debt snowball.”
Snowflaking is just a cute term for an idea that works well in conjunction with any debt repayment plan.
In simplest terms, snowflaking refers to any little action you take that immediately saves money, then that money is directly applied to the debt on top of your debt repayment plan.
Here’s a simple example. Let’s say you usually spend $ 5 buying food from the food cart outside of your workplace. One day, instead of spending $ 5 at that cart, you heat up your leftovers from the night before. Boom – there’s a $ 5 snowflake. You then add $ 5 to your next extra debt payment.
The real trick with snowflakes is to make sure that you actually use that money for extra payments. There are a lot of ways to do this.
One approach is to immediately make a money transfer (on your phone) each time you make a “snowflake.” In other words, you sit down at your desk and immediately execute a $ 5 extra debt payment. Most banks will allow you to make several small payments like this to the same company each day.
Since that meant stopping for a few minutes each time I had a snowflake, I used a different approach during my own financial turnaround. I kept a pocket notebook and whenever I had a snowflake, I wrote it down in that notebook. At the end of the week – I usually did it on Saturday – I’d sit down, add up all of my snowflakes from the past week, and then make a single extra debt payment for that total amount.
I don’t really advocate waiting longer than a week to take some kind of action on that snowflake. If you wait longer, you’re greatly increasing the chances that you’ll forget about the snowflake or that you’ll find that you have “extra” money in your checking account and spend it on something else.
Our lives are chock full of spending decisions. Not only do we have lots of situations where we open our wallets to spend money, we also make tons of choices where we choose not to spend money or when we choose to use a resource that we’ll have to pay for later.
Thus, we have tons of opportunities to choose to spend less. Sometimes, those choices won’t affect our life quality at all. At other times, it might not be worth it and we’ll choose to spend money anyway.
The real key here is mindfulness. The more aware we become of our choices and what we would do if we weren’t focused on paying off debt, the more snowflakes we’ll see and accumulate.
For example, some people might be so caught in the routine of heading to the food truck and spending $ 5 for lunch that they don’t even think about it or consider it a moment where they could make a different choice. They’ll buy little things at the checkout or leave lights on when no one is awake or home, never thinking about how a slightly different action could save them money without affecting their quality of life.
You have to be mindful of what you’re doing all the time in order to get the most out of snowflaking.
For me, the benefits of snowflaking went far beyond the money. The psychology of it was just as valuable.
What do I mean by that? Snowflaking made it feel like I was truly taking action on my debts several times each day. This left me feeling in control of the situation. I wasn’t just hoping for the future for this problem to go away. I was doing something right now to make it better.
Need some ideas for getting started? Here are thirty six ways in which you might find snowflakes in your own life.
1. You can save aluminum cans. In states where there’s a nickel or dime refund, you can turn ten or twenty cans into a dollar. In other states, you can still recycle your cans and make a few pennies per can.
2. Try having a yard sale. Go through your closet and find the things that you don’t really use any more. Then plan a yard sale where you put up a few advertisements and then sell all of those things right in your driveway or front lawn, putting all of the proceeds toward your debts.
3. Alternately, sell that stuff on Craigslist.
4. Make several identical meals in advance. This lets you take advantage of bulk buying as you’ll be able to buy the large container of noodles or sauce or cheese. Put the saved money from those bulk purchases toward your debt. For example, if buying in bulk causes you to buy a big container of lasagna noodles for $ 5 when the smaller packages would have cost you $ 8 for that many noodles, put the saved $ 3 toward your debt.
5. Air up your car tires, then put 1% of your fuel costs toward your debts for the next month. Most Americans keep their tires underinflated and each PSI that you’re lacking eats up 1/8th of 1% of your fuel efficiency. If you add just two PSI to each tire, your fuel efficiency goes up by 1%. If you spend $ 100 on gas thanks to commuting each month, then there’s an extra dollar each month toward your debt.
6. Make a bunch of bottled coffee at home so you can grab a drink and go each morning instead of stopping at the coffee shop. Just make a big batch on the weekend and pour it into five individual bottles, then warm one up each morning just before you leave. If you can make a $ 2 latte at home when it normally costs $ 5 at the coffee shop, that’s $ 3 a day.
7. Keep your eyes on the ground and pick up change. Save your extra change in a change jar and then cash it in every few months, putting that cash toward your debt.
8. Skip a regular meal you’d eat out and make something very simple at home, like spiced beans and rice. You’ll save $ 10 (or more) on your meal which you can immediately snowflake.
9. Talk to your physician about generic medications if you have a regular prescription. Switching to a generic medicine can save you a shocking amount each month.
10. Shop around for insurance. If you can save $ 100 a year on your insurance costs by shopping around and finding a more cost-efficient provider, you can apply that savings as a snowflake. Just use the amount you save on each subsequent insurance payment.
11. Skip a beverage and drink water instead. If you typically drink a soda each day, skip that soda and drink some water instead, then bank the money you saved by not drinking that soda.
12. Buy store brands as much as possible. When you actively choose to buy a store brand instead of a name brand, you can put the difference in price directly toward your debt. Generic ketchup can make a surprising difference.
13. Make convenient snacks in advance. For example, you can make microwaveable pockets quite easily at home for less than a dollar’s worth of ingredients. Make a bunch and put them in the freezer, then “snowflake” the money you saved compared to buying that number of convenient foods at the store.
14. Don’t smoke. Every time you smoke a cigarette, you’re essentially burning a quarter (or more). Whenever you’d normally light up, avoid the temptation and drop a quarter into your snowflake jar.
15. Do a careful price comparison and find the best grocery store bargain. Make a list of the twenty five most common things you buy, then see how much those items cost at different grocery stores. Switch to the cheapest one and then each time you buy a week’s worth of groceries, bank the difference between the prices of those items versus your old store.
16. Make some bread. Try making a loaf of bread from flour and yeast. It’ll be at least a dollar cheaper than a loaf from a store, so put that dollar in the kitty and enjoy some truly delicious bread.
17. Shop used when you need an item. For example, does your son or daughter need a hockey stick? Instead of buying online, hit a secondhand sporting goods store and see if anything meets your needs there. If you can save $ 10 by buying something used versus buying the new version, that’s $ 10 that goes toward your debts.
18. Buy holiday supplies right after the previous year’s holiday. For example, buy all of your Christmas decorations and wrapping paper for the next year on December 28th of the previous year. Everything will be on sale, so bank the amount you saved for your next extra debt payment.
19. If you get a magazine or newspaper that you rarely read, cancel that subscription. Then contribute that $ 10 or $ 20 (or more) each year toward your snowflake payment.
20. Create some low cost snacks around your house. Do you like munching on those little “100 calorie” packs? Use a bunch of small Ziplocs and a big bag (or box) of that treat to make your own 100 calorie packs (by weighing the snack). It’s way cheaper to buy the big container and make your own little packs and you can save the difference.
21. Get into a brown bag lunch routine. Take leftovers to work each day and, if that doesn’t work, take a very simple lunch that you like. For me, my “default” lunch is two poached eggs and toast, which costs less than a dollar and can actually be reheated really easily. Compare that cost to the cost of your normal lunch and put the difference toward your debt.
22. If you have kids, try a babysitting swap. Rather than hiring a babysitter, talk to friends that also have children and see if they will do a “swap” with you where you watch their kids one evening, then they watch your kids for an evening. That eliminates the cost of a babysitter, which you can then bank toward your debts. (Of course, don’t turn this into a more expensive date!)
23. If something’s broken, like a toilet or a toaster, try repairing it yourself. If you succeed, you can turn the money you saved by not needing a repairman into a great extra debt payment. If not, then you’re stuck calling a repairman anyway.
24. Replace your incandescent light bulbs with LEDs. Modern LEDs have amazing light quality that’s comparable to normal incandescents. They also use only a fraction of the energy. So, whenever you replace a regular incandescent with an LED, your energy bill should see a little dip. You can capitalize on that with snowflaking by contributing the difference between your most recent energy bill and the one from the year before (or the month before) to your debt repayment.
25. Move. This might seem like a stiff life change, but it’s one that can really make a difference with your debts. If you can save $ 100 or $ 200 a month on rent or house payments just by moving, you can push all of that straight toward your debts.
26. Try out a free community event instead of going out. If you’re tempted to go out to the movies or do anything that costs money, look at what’s on your local community calendar instead. Are there any free activities going on that would be quite fun, too? If you choose the free one, you’ll still get to have a ton of fun while also putting some money toward your debts.
27. Hit the library. A book checked out from the library is one that you didn’t buy, so you can apply that savings toward your debts. The same is true for the DVDs that many libraries provide – checking out a DVD instead of buying one is pure savings.
28. If you’re about to go on a road trip, pack food and water. If you can stow away $ 2 worth of food and water and it replaces a $ 10 or $ 20 stop at a fast food restaurant or a gas station, then you can easily put that $ 10 or $ 15 toward your debts.
29. Spend some time parsing your bills. Look for line items that you don’t understand, then call up your cell phone provider or your energy company (or the provider of whatever bill you’re looking at) and ask to have those fees and charges removed. If they drop even one charge, then you have an amount that you can contribute each month to your debt repayment.
30. Practice good razor usage. Make sure your razor is dry after every use and sharpen it every once in a while using a RazorPit. If you can move from buying ten razors a month to buying three or four, you’ve suddenly found more money for your debt payments.
31. Make your own household supplies. Make your own window cleaner by just putting vinegar in an empty spray bottle. Make your own homemade laundry soap by shaving a bar of soap and mixing it with half as much borax and half as much washing soda. There are countless recipes out there and each will shave a little bit of spending out of your life.
32. Don’t speed when you drive. In general, fuel efficiency decreases rapidly over 50 miles per hour, reducing your efficiency by 1% or so for each additional mph. On top of that, braking and accelerating devours your fuel efficiency. If you can keep your speed below or at the speed limit and maybe reduce your braking and accelerating in town, you’ll easily be able to save 5% of your fuel bill.
33. If your home is drafty at all, air sealing your home can reduce your energy bill by 20% or more. It’s a simple process (well explained by this guide) that just eliminates those drafts and keeps your heat (and your cool air) from simply vanishing out the door. That means your furnace or your air conditioner doesn’t have to work nearly as hard.
34. Alter your commute. If you can find a different route that uses a bit less fuel than your previous route, then that’s going to be a daily savings. Start by trying to figure out the shortest possible route to work and then figure out how much gas you’re saving.
35. Try reducing or eliminating your cable bill. Not only will you find a bunch of additional free time, you’ll also have a nice healthy lump of cash to save each month. Still want television? Over the air signals are free and Netflix is only $ 9 a month.
36. Refinance your debts. If you can get a lower interest rate on your debts over the same term, your monthly payments will go down with no drawback. Then, you can take that savings and apply it to whichever debt has the highest interest rate, double dipping on your savings.
Snowflaking is valuable in so many ways.
First, it gives a very direct sense of “taking action” on your debts, usually several times a day. Your debt isn’t some nebulous thing you encounter once a month. It’s something that you actually get the chance to reduce over and over each day.
Second, it’s flexible in that you can decide whether a particular snowflaking tactic is “worth it” right now or not.
Third, it can establish new patterns in your life. You might discover better ways of doing things which will reduce your spending permanently and make it easier to escape debt and never go back.
Finally, it directly eliminates your debt. A single snowflake directly means a reduction in your debt, no doubt about it.
Yes, these steps are little, but that’s the point. They’re simple choices you can make without completely altering your life. Instead, it empowers you to make better choices every day and really take charge of your debt.
Plus, it also works for saving for any goal. Trying to build up an emergency fund? Snowflake. Trying to save for vacation or for a car purchase? Snowflake. The only difference is you dump money into a savings account instead of into a debt payment.
Don’t let those little moments slide by. Take action. You’ll feel great and your debt will shrink a little. What’s not to love?
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The Simple Dollar The Simple Dollar
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Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog
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Recently, one of my family members gave me a copy of the wonderful book The Nighttime Novelist. It was a little more than an obvious hint – this family member really believes that I have some interesting novels inside of me and she wants to read them.
While the book has a lot of good writing tactics, the part that really made it stand out for me was the overall sense of career encouragement. After all, many of the people who would read a book like this one are people who dream of becoming writers but find it difficult to make room for it in their busy life. The Nighttime Novelist focuses quite a bit on that problem – I mean, the title itself is a big hint – but the advice goes way beyond merely being a novelist.
Let’s start by looking at the core problem and then move on to solving it.
The problem is deeply related to the idea of “lock in.” As was discussed a few days ago in the discussion of Jacob Lund Fisker’s book Early Retirement Extreme, many people reach a sense of “lock-in” after a certain point in their professional lives.
Typically, people go to college after high school and complete a degree in some area of study, usually accumulating student loans along the way. At such a young age, it’s often hard to really know what you should be studying, but you have to choose an area of study, so you’re “locked in.”
At that point, you have training for a career path that offers better pay than what you could get otherwise and you’re burdened with student loan debt (and maybe credit card debt), so you go into that career path.
You then find yourself a few years later working in a career path you find that you don’t really like (because you were forced to choose it when you were too young to make a good choice). You’re still facing debt. The only strong professional contacts you have are in your current career path. Your resume mostly only has value in your current career path.
Basically, you’re “locked in.” It is quite hard at that point to change gears and go elsewhere (unless a job loss or something forces that to happen).
Still, people have dreams. They dream of a different career. They dream of having a side business – or a full-time business – doing whatever it is they’re truly excited about doing.
This almost perfectly describes me several years ago. It also almost perfectly describes quite a few people I know ranging from folks in their mid-twenties to people in their fifties.
How do you go from that state of “lock-in” to building a side business or a path to a new career? There are three ingredients you really need above all else: time, focus, and a plan.
For most people, time seems like the real obstacle. Where can that time possibly come from? Let me just throw two facts your way.
The average American watches five hours of television a day.
The average American spends more than three hours online a day.
Add those together and you have eight hours per day that’s used just surfing the web or watching television.
I’m going to argue that most people only need two hours a day to start building a side business or a second career, so the average American would only need to lose a quarter of their television and internet time.
My solution to this problem, back when I fully committed to the dream of writing full time, was to basically eliminate television from my diet. The only television I watched was commercial-free television series and movies watched with Sarah. Honestly, since then, television has never really returned to the picture in a large way.
That simple change has given me plenty of time for all kinds of personal projects. I generally spend my evenings working on personal projects rather than watching television and I don’t really feel like I miss a thing.
Alternately, you can try waking up two hours earlier than before and then spend those two hours in the early morning working on your project. This will likely force you into an earlier bedtime in the evenings, which can work just fine for some people.
So, you’ve found space for two hours a day. For those two hours to be useful, you need to use those hours in a focused way.
I have a “working” desk at home that, when I’m there, I’m working. I usually turn off all distractions such as my cell phone and my internet connection and I close the door leading to that room. I don’t want distractions during that time.
During that period, my goal is to slip into a “zone” where I lose track of time because I’m so engrossed in what I’m doing and, if that happens, I stay in that “zone” for as long as it lasts. If I find that I’m not quite clicking today for some reason, I’ll stop and vigorously exercise for about five minutes. It seems to work wonders for my focus.
But what am I focusing on?
When I’ve decided on a project – say, writing a novel – I’ll usually spend several evenings working on a plan for that project. I don’t just sit down and start writing. I create an outline, some character sketches, and so on.
This is true for almost any project. What exactly do you need to do to reach the goal you have before you?
The first step is research. Spend some time figuring out what actually needs to be done to achieve your goal. What’s involved in writing a novel? What’s involved in making wooden rocking chairs? What’s involved in training to become a nurse? What’s involved in becoming a contract-based computer programmer?
What skills do you need? What education do you need? What things do you need to accomplish? What are the milestones you’ll need to reach along the way?
Once you know those things, assemble them into a plan. Figure out the steps you need to follow and list them in a sensible order. If a step seems really big and kind of overwhelming, chop it down into smaller pieces – a list of smaller steps that result in the completion of that bigger step.
That list is your checklist. It’s always telling you what to do with those two hours of focus.
If you focus on building your skills and creating good stuff, profit will eventually be a natural side effect. People will always pay for skill and talent and quality.
Generally, you build skill that people want by doing. That means, as soon as you can, you should be applying the skills you’re learning to real projects that produce some sort of product – a blog, a book, videos, whatever.
Another useful strategy is to start sharing the products of your skill once you start producing quality results. If you make an excellent drawing, share it. If you make an amazing web app, share it. If you make a beautiful rocking chair, share pictures of it.
Similarly, share your own skills as they grow. Use your new skills for a volunteer project. What you’ll find is that not only do those skills help out that project and the project helps you exercise your skills, this experience becomes the first lines on your resume for your next career.
In my experience, if profit isn’t coming easily, then you just need to keep honing your skills, work on projects of your own design, and volunteer your skills for good causes. When your skills reach a high level, people will start coming to you in a trickle and, when that happens, you’re ready to turn this into a real business.
It’s simple. The best path out of a “lock in” situation is to build your skills in a new area and use those skills to launch a side business. Sometimes, that side business will blossom into a new full-time career; at other times, it’ll just be a new income stream which complements what you’re doing.
In either case, it helps knock away many of the shackles that are around you. You’re no longer solely reliant on your current job or even on your current career path. You’re also earning more than you were before, making it easier to eliminate debt.
All it takes is time, focus, and a plan. Are you ready?
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By lifestyle consumption I mean seeing lifestyle, which is a pattern of behaviors, as a product to be consumed. This product can be a book, celebrity shows and magazines, clothing, and so on.
Effectually, the lifestyle is idolized and people then flock to the given lifestyle and buy into its associated behaviors.
What is happening here is simply people invent another concept to consume. You can be “a millionaire next door” which is appealing to people who are into careerism and frugality, or you can be a “lifestyle designer” if you’re young at heart and like to travel the world on a budget. You can even be “un-something” together with thousands of other people. Read the blog. Buy the book.
Much as I try to insert caveats even this blog seems to have acquired its own brand called ERE. I suppose it aptly summarizes what I’m trying to say even though what I say is not particularly novel. However, there are several ways to relate to this (see book, end of chapter 4 ;-P ). The simplest is to copy what I do. This is not what I intend because only the simplest actions can be copied with the same benefit. Copying complex motivations and actions usually fail. This is why I am very reluctant to give out too much info about my investments fearing that my portfolio will be copied and I consequently will be blamed for poor performance regardless of whether I in the meantime bought protective puts, covered with calls, or outright sold positions.
Fortunately it is possible to relate to information in many different ways. I am primarily interested in “causing” knowledge which is an understanding of the information. Information itself is not useful other than as a source of knowledge generation. I submit you can have a huge library, of for example, peer reviewed scholarly journal papers. However, if you don’t have a horde of professors and grad students able to understand these papers, the papers are essentially worthless. First, the papers are often written in a special language, but worse, they can not be boot strapped. What this means is that the knowledge does not exist exclusively in the papers. You actually have to be an expert to understand what is written; often what is not written is as important and you have to be aware of this. In particular, send 3 generations of academics to the plow fields and you might as well burn the libraries for fuel. Written knowledge exists only in a context.
This is the same reason why it is practically impossible to write a book with “actionable” items if the action requires deep understanding or even understanding. It is impossible to write a book which will turn anyone into a super investor. Likewise, it is impossible to become an investor by reading a book.
A lifestyle is by definition a way of life. It is much more than a book. Unfortunately, we have become a society of the quick and easy. It is subconsciously presumed that by buying a product like a book, we can become whatever the book or blog or t-shirt tells us it represents.
It is not so though. It is said that the written word is powerful. However, this is only the case if you can understand it and no understanding can come from the mere act of consumption. Production in the form of thinking must be present.
For more info: The danger of lifestyle consumption
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via Greenbang:
There is little doubt that utilities today face a major challenge in maintaining sustained access to energy and in safeguarding its long-term delivery to consumers. In light of this inescapable reality, it is encouraging to see the Technology Strategy Board show support for local clean energy generation with its latest program, through which it will invest up to £11 million to support research and development to stimulate innovation in localized energy systems.
While currently geared at stimulating innovation among small businesses, the initiative could very successfully be adapted to drive progress across the entire country. With the smart meter rollout imminent and the smart energy market expected to grow by roughly 30 per cent each year across the EU, innovation in this space is most welcome, and quite frankly necessary for any economy looking to keep up with this fast pace of innovation.
Grid operators, who are already tasked with ensuring the safe, secure, reliable flow of power to consumers, will face many new challenges as the grid gets linked to a growing number of localized energy networks. To overcome these difficulties and successfully manage the integration of new technologies onto the grid, energy retailers will rely on smart-grid technology, and on the network management systems that will allow them to balance demand and supply more effectively.
An intelligent grid
As dynamic, intricately connected webs, utility networks present unique engineering and safety challenges that make them particularly complex to manage. To facilitate the move toward localized power generation and help support the accelerating adoption of renewable energy sources, grid operators will need to adapt their network infrastructure and IT resources to keep networks running smoothly even as new energy sources are added to them.
For energy utilities, the key to modernizing their network management systems lies in the data they will collect and analyze from the smart grid. This will include not only consolidating the vast amount of information that next-generation grids will provide them, but also quickly converting this into valuable network insight.
With the heightened awareness of network behavior they will gain with the smart grid, operators can then take a more proactive approach to managing energy flow and deliver a more stable and reliable service to their customers.
Applied to localized power generation sites, this means that the grid can provide utilities with data-driven insight into network behavior that will allow them to accommodate flow disruptions caused once these new energy sources are added to the grid. To add to this, data analytics tools can help energy retailers optimize distribution to keep wastage to an absolute minimum.
Putting data to good use
As the smart grid rollout takes form, utilities will begin collecting and analyzing information from a growing number of data points to better understand how voltage is being distributed throughout their networks. Modern network management systems can help utilities make the most of the information they collect from charging stations by allowing them to automatically adapt demand response to network conditions in near real-time.
With the ability to automatically balance power supply and demand in the grid, utilities will be able to tailor their energy distribution strategy to match real-world network behavior, and open the door to new levels of power efficiency. Once they can redirect flow as required in this way, energy retailers can drastically reduce the risk of localized overloading or outages. This level of control will help utilities avoid overburdening transformers to the point of failure, and preclude the significant damage to network assets that these malfunctions can cause.
Ultimately, network management systems will allow energy utilities to unite complex processes across the grid to optimize load distribution, which will in turn help them accommodate the addition of major new energy sources such as localized generation centers and renewables. These solutions can also provide utilities with continuous updates on the status of their network assets, and therefore give them a valuable head-start on crucial maintenance and repair works.
Making a meaningful change
The search for more affordable and sustainable forms of energy production such as green power initiatives and renewables will continue to gain momentum. As the energy gatekeepers for the general public, utilities will need to facilitate change while maintaining a high standard of service.
An intelligent energy management strategy will be vital for grid operators as they work to achieve this. The data analytics tools and cutting-edge IT applications that support their smart grid operations will help them make sure green technologies integrate seamlessly with the national power infrastructure and provide the public with a meaningful and reliable energy supply.
This was a guest post and an exclusive from Mike Ballard, Oracle’s senior director of utilities strategy EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
The post Local generation, better data boost energy security appeared first on Greenbang.
For more info: Local generation, better data boost energy security
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One of the cornerstones of consumerism is the development of desires. Insofar that marketing and product developers can not think of novel products a good strategy to keep consumers buying is to engage them in a cycle of upgrading.
Upgrading can be a competition both with others but I think it works more effectively when compared to oneself.
Ideally one would choose to buy a product that is accurately and deliberate chosen to just satisfy one’s needs (see graph), no more, no less.
However, it can be hard to ignore one’s wants, especially given the brochures and advertising about all the shiny new features of the next model.
The best way to step out of this cycle is to avoid taking turns incrementally buying the next level up for all one’s consumer categories.
Instead consider piling all that money into the one superior product.
In other words, buy the best of the best.
This has two effects
Now buying the best of the best is an expensive proposition when it comes to large scale items. Start with small items.
In particular, start with items which are in semi constant use: small consumer durables, like kitchen utensils and appliances, sun glasses, tools, …
Note that this is not the hard core cold turkey way of getting out of consumerism but it will work quite well as a soft way, particularly because it steers consumerism in a slightly different direction, namely durable luxury goods, which eventually makes the disposable consumption lifestyle obsolete.
Personally I am reaching a state where I got several items in constant use which are between 10 and 15 years old. I expect this is strictly a function of when I acquired them and I see no reason why I wouldn’t be using them when they are 25 years old a decade from now.
Don’t forget to combine this second step with the first step out of consumerism. You can read the story of how I got out of consumerism and how it is possible to spend very little and be happy.
For more info: The second step out of consumerism
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via Environmental Management & Energy News:
For more info: Ecova’s Blueprint for Energy and Sustainability Management Success
Environmental Management & Energy News
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I just got introduced to the brilliant game ProgressQuest which along with Bartle’s observations of the online gaming world is rich in applications for understanding the real world, which in many ways can also be compared to a big game.
Perhaps, a designed game?
ProgressQuest is a spoof on the MMORPG habit of “grinding” for experience points, that is, engaging in a non-entertaining behavior (killing non-player monsters) to achieve some other end, specifically an increase in levels, wealth, special weapons.
Just stop me, whenever you get the point of this analogy 
ProgressQuest requires very little interaction from the player. If it does require interaction, the interaction is meaningless. For instance, you can choose an affiliation—it doesn’t matter though.
In the game, which plays itself (the spoof is on the autokill function which relieves the player from going through the self-similar repetitive motions of trivial combat), you head out to the “killing fields”. Here you slay monster after monster (serve customer after customer, write report after report, take phone call after phone call, …) each time collecting a small reward (something the monster drops (an affiliate bonus, a sales commission, a mark on your resume or publication record). Once you have enough rewards, you automatically head back to town to sell them for a level upgrade (career rise, home upgrade, …) or a special weapon (vacation, new car, … ). Then you go right back to the killing fields.
I’ve been playing it for half an hour now. I can’t help to admit it’s kinda fascinating in a comatose kind of way—like watching TV—to follow along. It’s “engaging” to watch what you’ll kill next or what kind of “level” you’ll advance to or what “special weapon” you’ll be able to purchase.
Much like real life…
Bartleby divided online gamers into four categories: achievers, explorers, killers, and socializers.
In short…
ProgressQuest is a spoof on achievers. Achievers care mostly about advancing in the system. Most people are actually achievers, and so most online games, computer games—and dare I say the real world—is designed with achievers in mind. You can get them to do anything (specifically, hand over their time in the real world, and/or hard earned money in the gaming world) simply by making up titles, small rewards, special things, stuff that they can hold out demonstrating to the world of their achievements.
Try to click on the link and play it for while. Now, suppose you got $50,000 per year just to watch it or maybe it wasn’t fully automatic, but you had to click A to attack, and occasionally go back to town to convert loot and experience points into status symbols, that is, do something mentally unstimulating on autopilot. Would you take the job?
Have a red pill
What is most fascinating to me is that this grand piece of social engineering works beautifully. I am an ‘Explorer’, which I suppose allowed me to figure out how the game works and adequately ‘hack’ it to get out the back door. I “retired”—looking for ways to spend my time that does not involve “achieving” and “being all I can be” by collecting levels, gold, and trinkets.
Using the Gervais analogy, the Killers are the Sociopaths, the Achievers are the Clueless, and the Socializers are … well, the analogy kinda breaks down—or at least I don’t see it anymore. In the gaming world, Killers frequently attract followers who look up to them. I do in some sense look up to Killers (maybe because they kill achievers… muhahaha 
Here the system we know is that of a college degree followed by 40 years for 9-5 jobs followed by a retirement home. This system is but a part of the world. Luckily, there’s still much of the world left to be explored. The tricky part, from an early retirement perspective, is how to explore it. Much of the world is built around achievement in the sense of amassing experience points. Been there, done that; life is too short. The challenge, now, is to find a different quest.
For more info: Progressquest your career
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Progressquest your career
via Early Retirement Extreme:
I just got introduced to the brilliant game ProgressQuest which along with Bartle’s observations of the online gaming world is rich in applications for understanding the real world, which in many ways can also be compared to a...
Read More: Progressquest your career
#Achiever, #Early-Retirement, #Eloi, #Gervais, #Mmorpg, #Morlock, #Philosophy, #Strategy, #Work
If you are serious about your trading and want to build an enduring edge the Stockbee Member site might help you. Members tell me they have tried lot of things before coming to my site and it has offered them the most extensive and detailed methods to swing and position trade.The member site is one of the most recommended site for learning to trade by other traders and bloggers. No advertising, no hard marketing, no promotions, no free offers, no affiliate marketing, no incentive to other bloggers to promote the site, no constant twits self promoting the site and no tall claims, every member comes through word of mouth recommendation.As a member you will learn the basics of swing trading, momentum investing, growth investing and …
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As a trader your task is to find some structural phenomenon to build your edge around.
It should exists in the market and not figment of imagination.
What are some of the structural things in the market:
1 Market moves in momentum bursts
2 Momentum stocks outperform non momentum stocks
3 longer term momentum is mean reverting
4 Surprisingly good earnings leads to rallies
5 News leads to immediate moves
6 small cap/small float outperform larger stocks
7 lower priced stocks outperform higher priced stocks
Now if you know any of these you can build your trading around it.
For more info: Find something that is structural
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If you are serious about your trading and want to build an enduring edge the Stockbee Member site might help you. Members tell me they have tried lot of things before coming to my site and it has offered them the most extensive and detailed methods to swing and position trade.The member site is one of the most recommended site for learning to trade by other traders and bloggers. No advertising, no hard marketing, no promotions, no free offers, no affiliate marketing, no incentive to other bloggers to promote the site, no constant twits self promoting the site and no tall claims, every member comes through word of mouth recommendation.As a member you will learn the basics of swing trading, momentum investing, growth investing and …
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For more info: LGIH the kind of setup I like
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This is a guest post from Zev. Many of you may know him from the forums and some of you may recognize the name from the copyright page in the book. He contacted me out of the blue earlier this year offering to correct the book manuscript for me. Knowing that my English is not perfect, I took him up on the offer and we spent about three or four months passing the manuscript back and forth getting rid of 99.9+% of my errors—I’ve never seen so much red ink on any of my papers. During that period he chose to become financially independent himself. You can see the steps he’s already taken in his journal.
I had the privilege of being one of the first readers of the ERE book, and, having balked at actually pursuing ERE earlier this year after discovering and poring over the blog–”I live in New York City; I don’t want to be an urban hermit; I fail to see the miser’s contribution to society”–the book gave me a broader outlook, ultimately leading me to decide to become financially independent–nothing resembling “retirement” really enters into it–within five years; my ERE/FI date is 7/15/2015, and so far I’m running about a year ahead of schedule.
The primary reason for my decision, to put it in extreme terms, is to resolve the tension in my life between greed and passion.
Like many in the labor market, I have mostly based my decisions about what sort of work to do on what will provide the maximum return on my time. This has led me to be self-employed in the same transcription business for my entire adult life (I’m 32). I’ve become steadily more productive, savvy, and reputable in my business, and my income has risen accordingly. I am one of those “rational economic actors” that economists like to presume in their theorizing; I have “followed the money.” So far as I can see, this puts me right in the middle of the pack of the American workforce, albeit with a lot more control of the fruits of my labor: I sell my labor to the highest bidder, with the usual considerations of legality, ethical standards and safety–if there’s a black market for transcription, I haven’t heard of it. 
Also like many people, working full-time has crowded out the activities I feel most passionate about, which, as is typical, are far less remunerative–reading, writing, playing music, making films. For someone with a middle-of-the-road constitution, at best–I sleep nine hours a night–”work-life” balance realistically translates to giving my best hours to my business and doing mostly passive activities and errands during the rest of my waking hours. This pits my social life, passionate interests and day-to-day upkeep (not to speak of downtime) against each other for the scraps of my schedule.
Truth be told, I’ve had a number of false starts in pursuing other careers–music/songwriting in my mid-20s, filmmaking a couple of years ago–and while the poor compensation didn’t scare me off, the opportunity cost of not maximizing my income, and the prospect of not ever having meaningful savings, did. Ironically, I never socked away so much as a dollar until setting my ERE/FI goal a few months ago. This lack of savings also puts me right in the middle of the American heap–”I must be rightfully compensated, so I can spend spend spend, because I deserve it.” This “because” has actually been more mysterious to me than that–”Why? To what end?” do I earn what I earn, do I maximize what I earn? I paid lip service to my neglected passions–”My income allows me to buy the gadgets with which to compose music and make films; my flexible work schedule gives me time to pursue them”–but as Jacob writes in the ERE book, the gadgets largely became tokens of my interests rather than tools to execute on them, and I would haul them from this closet to the next. My free time I have overestimated, both in quantity of hours and quality of focus.
So, while I guard against seeing ERE/FI as a panacea, I do see it as a potentially transformative opportunity to be freed from “maximizing profit” as my raison d’être, as well as a compelling answer to why I currently pursue it. I have the nagging feeling that this pursuit of maximization is more neurotic and deeply, culturally embedded than can be cured by a modest dividend-paying portfolio, but I feel an equal urgency to give myself the gift of the best 40-50 hours each week, freed from all anxiety about making a living INDEFINITELY, and see what creative output comes out of that.
For more info: Guest post: Why I’m pursuing ERE: greed vs. passion
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If you are serious about your trading and want to build an enduring edge the Stockbee Member site might help you. Members tell me they have tried lot of things before coming to my site and it has offered them the most extensive and detailed methods to swing and position trade.The member site is one of the most recommended site for learning to trade by other traders and bloggers. No advertising, no hard marketing, no promotions, no free offers, no affiliate marketing, no incentive to other bloggers to promote the site, no constant twits self promoting the site and no tall claims, every member comes through word of mouth recommendation.As a member you will learn the basics of swing trading, momentum investing, growth investing and …
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Look for extreme earnings growth (just starting out to grow). Look for first major earnings acceleration.
Look for extreme sales growth (just starting out and of magnitude likely to make the company a billion dollar company in a year). If that happens stock price explodes.
Look for extreme price strength ( just starting young trend with explosive first leg). Look for stock up 80% plus from their 52 week low and find out why they are going up. There must be some catalyst.
Look for extreme neglect (multi year , low float, low volume, no analyst, low number of funds ownership). Neglect+surprise= big move
That is where big opportunity is in earnings season….
is this a game changing earnings
is this first or second major earnings acceleration
is this earnings right at the beginning of a new trend for this stock
is this earnings growth likely to continue for 2 to 3 quarters
You do not need to be analyst to do it. Just use simple public knowledge to make these decisions.
You can use free sites like Finviz to do this.
The key is to develop a process for doing this daily during earnings season.
2 or3 good earnings idea in a quarter can do wonders for your returns.
For more info: During this earnings season become an extremist
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If you are serious about your trading and want to build an enduring edge the Stockbee Member site might help you. Members tell me they have tried lot of things before coming to my site and it has offered them the most extensive and detailed methods to swing and position trade.The member site is one of the most recommended site for learning to trade by other traders and bloggers. No advertising, no hard marketing, no promotions, no free offers, no affiliate marketing, no incentive to other bloggers to promote the site, no constant twits self promoting the site and no tall claims, every member comes through word of mouth recommendation.As a member you will learn the basics of swing trading, momentum investing, growth investing and …
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Stocks move in momentum bursts of 8 to 40%
The momentum bursts move from start to finish can be over in just 3 days
Lower priced stocks tend to make bigger moves of 20 to 40%.
Lower float stocks also tend to make bigger move.
A combination of low price and low float can be dynamite.
For example look at ERB
What is the float on it 4.8 million
in 2 days it is up 50%
For more info: ERB up 50% in 2 days
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If you are serious about your trading and want to build an enduring edge the Stockbee Member site might help you. Members tell me they have tried lot of things before coming to my site and it has offered them the most extensive and detailed methods to swing and position trade.The member site is one of the most recommended site for learning to trade by other traders and bloggers. No advertising, no hard marketing, no promotions, no free offers, no affiliate marketing, no incentive to other bloggers to promote the site, no constant twits self promoting the site and no tall claims, every member comes through word of mouth recommendation.As a member you will learn the basics of swing trading, momentum investing, growth investing and …
via stockbee:
WUBA is a recent example of kind of swing trade I look for. It is based on the principle of momentum bursts.
Stocks move in momentum bursts of 3 to 5 days. During this 3 to 5 days period stock would go up 8 to 20% ( lower priced stock can even have bursts of up to 40%). Higher priced stocks above 40 tend to move in momentum bursts of 5 to 25 dollars.
Such bursts may or may not have clear identifiable catalyst. You need to know nothing about the company to trade this kind of burst. This is a pattern and probability based trade.
All such momentum bursts start with a range expansion. The first day of the move is range expansion day. Often there is also volume expansion along with range expansion.
The price moves in the direction of range expansion. When there is range expansion it attracts breakout traders, it attracts other momentum players, day traders, quants and so on. That results in continuation of move for few days.
Range expansion basically means a day which is up bigger than last 5 to 10 days bars. A range expansion preceded by series of range contraction days is good candidate in this setup. Moves preceded by orderly range contraction can be explosive.
A successful momentum burst will lead to immediate follow through. Say a stock breaks out in the morning, it will continue to go up through the day and will have immediate follow through in next 2 to 3 days. And the follow through should also be of big 4 to 5% plus magnitude on second or third day.
In most cases the momentum dies down in 3 to 5 days. If you keep holding after the 3 to 5 days period, you would often see the stock ends up giving up all the burst gains and may not have another momentum burst for several weeks or months. Sometime the burst gains vanish intraday itself.
Depending on price of the stock such momentum bursts can be of 8 to 40% magnitude. Lower price stocks tend to make bigger moves. For a stock trading below 5 dollars a breakout day move itself might be of 10 to 20% magnitude. For traders with small accounts that offers good opportunity.
Lower float stocks make bigger moves. Low float and high demand creates explosive moves. If you see in any year the most short term explosive moves will be on extremely low float stocks. For those with smaller account size there is distinct edge in trading low float stocks.
No specific catalyst is needed for these momentum bursts. Why do these moves happen. ?In some case there might be a specific news catalyst on day of first range expansion day , but in vast majority of these kind of momentum moves, there is no clearly identifiable catalyst. However tracking news on daily basis might help you enter some of these momentum bursts very early and magnify your profit.
During bull moves in overall market such momentum bursts have been observed for over 100 years. This is structural nature of market. Stocks seldom run up or down smoothly. A 30% move in stock over 3 months in a stock might be completed in 2 momentum bursts of 10 to 15% in just 5 to 6 days. Rest of the time te stock might retract or go in range. In a year you will probably find 5000 to 10000 such 3 to 5 day setups when both bullish and bearish setups are combined.
Momentum burst kind of swing trading allows you to grow your account with very low risk. For a mere 3 to 5 day exposure to market you capture the most explosive part of the move and you are not seating in dead periods holding stock waiting or anticipating a breakout which may or may not come.
Trading this kind of setup requires extremely good ability to ruthlessly cut losses if a trade does not work immediately . It also requires skill to exit when things are still in explosive phase and not wait for reversal.
Per trade profit on these kind of trades will be on an average just 5 to 10% as you are only going to get part of the 8 to 20% move. By the time you enter on breakout day the stock might be up 4 to 10% , so you will not be able to capture that part of the range expansion move.
To trade this kind of setup you need to be willing to do 200 to 1000 or more trades in a year. You make money by compounding these small gains. So this is high frequency and low per trade profitability method. But for a skilled trader this can lead to explosive returns.
For more info: Stocks move in short term Momentum Bursts
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I was inspired to post the following by a recent mail from T. and some earlier writings on the ecology of society. I would like to draw your attention to The Gamesman by Michael Maccoby. In this book, which I have not read yet but I got a summary from Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by Jim Stockdale, Maccoby identifies four types of people. These types should perhaps more accurately be identified as traits in that a person encompass all these traits in varying degrees.
The four traits are
The current world is dominated by gamesmen. Hence the importance of sports rather than having served in the military (war does not allow time-outs and it requires performance under the worst conditions rather than the best conditions of Gatorade and Under Armor, think about it!) as a career ladder asset. Hence the long books on exactly how to behave during an interview, what to say, what to do, and even where to sit at meetings in detailed analyses. The oldest culture, the craftsman culture, is hard to find. If you want to see the difference try to contrast and compare an popular science magazine of a hundred year ago, full of information and requiring a solid foundation to understand (if you can get your hands on old copies, get them!), and a present popular science magazines with it’s glossy pictures and prose written to entertain rather than inform.
Ecologically speaking most species will naturally tend to feed on another species and in turn be fed upon by the next species. It is exceedingly arrogant to think the humans or their culture is the one exception to this rule. At the frontier, the craftsmen rule. They deal with nature and as such are used to dealing with problems that don’t care about the man. For instance, being on a small boat in a storm, the storm does not care if you are seasick – it will kill you regardless. Craftsmen will colonize barren land. They will set up government where there is none. The will invent tools where there were none. The jungle fighters will then move in and capitalize on these tools using them to fight each other until the domain has been conquered. When there is nothing more to fight for and no places to expand into, the jungle fighters can no longer expand. They have reached their population density. Hence they are gradually replaced by more social creatures, the company men. This allows the population density to overshoot. In other words, there are now more people providing essentially the same functions. In other words, productivity per person decreases. Having a fully formed environment with redundant assets to be terminated, the gamesmen will sweep in and start discarding people. In this sense, the gamesmen are like trees that cover the bushy undergrowth of their predecessors.
It is important to note though that the gamesmen are not self-sufficient. This will be a problem that will be realized by the next generation. Interestingly enough it is also inevitable and unavoidable. The gamesmen, which are actually net-negative contributers (this interpretation fits exceedingly well with the focus on appearance and their belief that everybody wins), will eventually cause their own downfall. For instance, it is apparent that as companies eliminated their jungle fighter loyalty to their employees, the employes eliminated their company man loyalty to their employers. This makes the structure less more skill based but less solid (much like a modern bicycle helmet is less bulky and thus less safe while still skirting the standard – yacht racing is an even worse example of this problem, here computer programs design yachts not according to sea worthiness but according to race regulations). I see this problem playing out fast. The main question is, who will be the next type to replace the gamesman. There is a suggestion in Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot. I am not sure I agree.
For more info: The Gamesmen
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If you are serious about your trading and want to build an enduring edge the Stockbee Member site might help you. Members tell me they have tried lot of things before coming to my site and it has offered them the most extensive and detailed methods to swing and position trade.The member site is one of the most recommended site for learning to trade by other traders and bloggers. No advertising, no hard marketing, no promotions, no free offers, no affiliate marketing, no incentive to other bloggers to promote the site, no constant twits self promoting the site and no tall claims, every member comes through word of mouth recommendation.As a member you will learn the basics of swing trading, momentum investing, growth investing and …
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Rotational kind of action continues and money was rotating in to new sectors like financials and home builders. IPO ‘s continue to do well.
All in all good year end action so far.
For more info: Santa Clause rally is here
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