One year ago today: September 26, 2020, no sprouts.
Five years ago today: September 26, 2016, defunct plans, etc.
Nine years ago today: September 26, 2012, 4.98V is normal.
Random years ago today: September 26, 2006, pregnant dates?
Here we go again, the food service industry complaining of a labor shortage. Like poor pay, bad working conditions, and terrible work hours have nothing to do with it. Anyway, I surprised that nearly 1/3 of all workers got their first job experience in this field. No wonder so many people thing tipping should be compulsory and have such shitty attitudes.
This is Mt. Etna erupting. I thought I’d be first to point out this single eruption dumps has already dumped 10,000 times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all of mankind in history. But countless memes beat me to the punch. The point is, now you can better understand that the so-called carbon tax is just another baseless way to confiscate your money.
By mid-morning I’ve gone over several of the shakier tunes on the list. If I must sing “Memphis”, I might as well have fun with it. The unique bass line can copy-cat the guitar player’s motions. This band also tends to change keys where you probably shouldn’t, like “I Don’t Think Hank Done It This Way” from B down to A, simply because B is hard to play. But doing so changes the treatment of the song. I’ve discovered the sound can be faked on open strings, but it will never sound right.
Talking to friends, this month has just dragged on forever. I could claim it is the rapidly changing pace of things. But explain how so many got the same impression. Maybe just a lot of work done between the shed, the band, and chasing around less than average. The budget looks great, less than half as much gas, and as rehearsal is to me the same time slot and allotment as gigging, entertainment is less than $200 for the first time in this year. The highest was August with an insane $1,642 but this old cowboy doesn’t got to Tennessee to window shop.
My outstanding overbudget record is the gasoline on the Great Trek West of 2018, where there and back cost me $1,140 or if I recall, nearly 320 gallons. I had allowed only for motorcycle costs of around half that. Since October is year-end, let me check for any big changes or surprises. Nope, just unseasonal spikes that average out, like my new office expense that costs $94 per month for crappy Internet service. It’s cost me just over a thousand to run the household which includes everything except utilities. Including vehicle repairs, I’ve been hit with just under $200 per month in extraordinary costs. So far so good.
Chinese playground.
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The Reb on the phone, she’s changing my long-standing habits. The Blessing of the Pets is pending soon and I need an update of any changes. Including full names. You know Chooksie, but do you know his full name? It’s Charlie Oscar Chooks Bugsy Hooch. Don’t look at me, I don’t do pet names. Here’s my boy, what’s he doing. He’s taking a dump in the bushes, what does it look like? You come here for content you can’t get on the shallow blogs, so sometimes you get more than you bargained for.
On the topic of residual income, this is something I tackled 50 years ago. It’s a story I don’t mind telling, since it set me on the path directly to today. I had noticed the difference between a good life and daily struggle was around $10 per day. Those who got it from their parents drove cars, were never hungry, and worked only when they wanted to. I had to figure how to get $10 per day so here’s where you can follow my logic. I was young and thought the only safe investment was money in the bank.
Okay, supposing interest in the long run was 3% per year. The question is, how much money would you need to have invested at 3% to make $10 per day. I remember the answer clearly, it was $121,750 ignoring taxes and inflation. You had to double that to pay the fees and still reinvest enough to keep the nest egg growing.
Those who know me can already see where this is going. Since that sum of money was an impossible dream that long ago, you would have to sacrifice your life. I calculated a working career of 44 years, which was 528 months. For [an income of] $10 per day, you would have to make $3652.50 per year, so I took a calculator and stepped through how much would I have to put in the bank per month to reach that goal. If I’d had $10 to open an account, I would have had to deposit $111.16 without fail 528 months in a row until my 65th birthday. Back then my monthly rent was only $110 per month and working for nothing until 65 was the exact life I wanted to avoid.
Stay with me here, this was the days before spreadsheets and financial formulas, I did all 6,000 calculations on a library hand calculator. This taught me $121,750 was obviously an effort that could not realistically be made. And that’s where my “reverse” retirement calculation began to emerge. I spotted the relationship between a small amount of income and a large amount of investment, but importantly, I saw that it also worked in reverse. I’ll round off the numbers from here on in. If it took $1,200 in the bank to make $1 interest per day, then getting that $1 per day from any other source than backbreaking labor was the equivalent of having $1,200 in the bank.
At the time, I thought I was wrong. If it was that easy, everybody would do it, was my thinking. But then I took a union job. They handed me a rule book, the semi-famous rule book that had me taking three-week paid vacations just 13 months after I got there. I memorized that rule book and before long, I found the chapter on the retirement plan. They guaranteed a base pension of $350 per month. Aha, that is the equivalent of having $420,000 in the bank. Plus there was a company matching contribution with a maximum of $19.34 per payday. I instantly signed up for it.
Yes, that is the same $19.34 my long-term readers are familiar with. My co-workers scoffed at me, how I could buy a color TV for that kind of monthly payments. Who’s laughing now? There were conditions, like you had to work ten years minimum, the pension was based on 30 years service, and you had to wait until you were 65 to get it. But around this time spreadsheets began to appear and it was a snap to calculate how little, not how much, I would need to retire in genteel poverty.
I long since forget the standard paycheck deduction, but all I had to do was kick in that $19.34 per payday for ten years and a day, and at some point in the distant future, I would have the equivalent of $420,000 in the bank. You can do the math. For me, it was a leap of faith because there was nobody around me to ask or serve as an example. From what I know, I was the only guy in that huge company that took this route, and that is supported by the fact so many of them worked until they dropped.
The rest is history. Pundits of the day said you needed a million to retire. That would give you an interest income of $30,000 per year they said. In the end, I worked just over 14 years and left to go enjoy life. I drove cars, never went hungry, and worked when I wanted to, because I was only 41 years old at the time. (Reminder, any telltale numbers and dates are altered for security reasons. This is America, don’t tell anybody how much you make.)
It boils down to I achieved a major life goal by calculating how little I would need instead of how much. The minimum amount of equivalent “money in the bank” that kept me from woe. I figure this had no impact whatsoever on my chances of getting rich in this world, so pooh-pooh to anyone dumb enough to slave their lives away. Another bonus is, if you do it my way, after around a couple years you find you no longer have any use for credit or credit cards or time payments, that type of thing. Many decades ago I used to have a credit card which I never used “just in case”, but after a bit, you even figure out it is better to have your own emergency funds. That reminds me, I got a $100 Wal*Mart card, let me go find that thing.
There is an epilog to this tale from the trailer court. I’d forgotten I had also signed up as a “gold member”, so imagine my surprise when I discovered I did not have to wait until I was 65 to take full pension. This formula also works for social security, I’ll do the math for you. Work 30 years and your minimum benefit is $848 per month. From my point of view, that’s like another $340,000 in the bank. All I can say is the way I did it, I worked 15 years and have the equivalent of my million bucks in the bank. So screw you corporate America and screw the working class for having to be asked to get the hell out of the way every damn time.
ADDENDUM
Is there anything new with robotics. Yes, Arduino is now selling modules of combined sensors with their own version of A.I. In my day, it was one sensor per circuit board. A popular item is the ME, which senses the surrounding environment. It has gas, pressure, temp, motion, magnet field, and a gyroscope. Only $70. Or things like the Portenta, which I can’t really figure out what it does. An Edge controller measures crops for watering, soil, and temperature, a boon for lazy weed-growers everywhere. It says here Arduino now has stores in Europe.
There’s a developing market for “green” sensors measuring levels like carbon dioxide. I dislike the way they are plugged as a tattle on your neighbor device. Fine, monitor your own levels, but sticking your nose in the other guy’s business can get you hurt you big time.
