(Guest post by Matt Alden S.)
We all want to save a bit more money, but it’s not particularly fun trying to pinch every penny. Life shouldn’t be about a list of things to avoid and not do- it should be entertaining! Knowing when and where to spend money, and when not to, is a deeply personal thing, but here’s a really simple “rule” to keep in mind when you’re buying anything.
Instead of keeping a formal budget, this is basically the only frugal rule I follow for myself:
The Ten Rule
Due to the time value of money, and the opportunity cost, the ten rule is this:
Anything you buy today, your future self is paying 10x as much for. So add a zero onto the price tag, and ask yourself if it’s still worth it. If it is, buy it and enjoy it. If not, then forget it!
The math behind it is fairly straightforward. The historical rate of return of the S&P 500, the most common benchmark for the stock market and index funds that follow it, is around 9% per year. Equities are a decent investment to stay ahead of inflation over the long term, since the rate of return is generally superior. This is primarily because when prices rise, it’s those companies that are the ones raising their prices while also using their profits to grow their businesses and pay dividends to shareholders. Jeremy Siegel, a professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Stocks for the Long Run, has argued that stocks consistently return around 6.6% per year after inflation over a long period of time. Of course, there will be volatility over the short and medium terms.
If we round down, and suppose that stocks offer a rate of return of 9% while the inflation rate during that period is 3%, then we’re looking at a real annual rate of return on our purchasing power of 6%.
For every dollar you have today that you let compound at a real rate of return of 6% per year, you’ll have slightly over ten dollars in 40 years. This is according to the historical performance (which we can never be projected into the future for certain), and is adjusted for inflation to represent a real tenfold increase in purchasing power.
The opportunity cost of every purchase is that you could have invested it in an index fund or another investment. Every dollar not invested today, is ten dollars that is missing from yourself 40 years from now. If we take care of our health, and live past the average life expectancy, we’re talking a life of 80+ years and still active. (I don’t know about you, but if I’m not skydiving and doing crazy-ass things when I’m 80, then something went terribly wrong.) So 40 years isn’t as long as it sounds.
If you bump the time period down to 20 years instead, then it’s the “Three Rule”- everything is three times as expensive because over a 20 year period of 6% real annual returns, the purchasing power of an investment more than triples.
For a person with a decent income, these decisions throughout a lifetime result in a seven-figure difference in the wealth you’ll have as you grow older.
How Not to Go Crazy
According to the Ten Rule, if you buy a new car today for $20 grand, then your future self is paying $200 grand. That $800 computer is $8,000. The $50 dinner for two is $500. Karate lessons for $150/month are $1,500/month.
This arguably makes everything look like it’s not worth it. It’s easy to see how someone who takes this to heart a little bit too well could go a bit too far over the crazy line into hyper-cheapness.
This is the kind of internal math that wealth-builders do compared to those that never seem to really accumulate a high financial net worth. But wealthier people are not necessarily happier, so it’s important to have the right balance of priorities that fits your goals.
Do a Satisfaction Audit
Figuring out what makes us happy before a purchase can save a lot of money over the long term. Before applying the Ten Rule (or the Three Rule) when making buying decisions, it makes sense to do an audit ahead of time.
For at least one whole week, keep a journal. Personally, I’m not much of a journal-type guy, but I can do anything for a week. So for seven days each evening, write down the happiest parts of your day. What were the peak moments? What were you doing and who were you with? Were the driving forces of that moment material possessions or experiences? During the audit, use an eighth journal entry to look back and write down the happiest dozen or so moments of your whole life. Ask yourself the same types of questions- who, where, what, etc. Were they material things, experiences with friends and family, or personal accomplishments?
Having this all down in writing gives something quantitative to work with. You’ve got hard proof now of what really makes you “tick”. For most of these peak experiences on the list, especially the lifetime ones, they’re experiences you probably wouldn’t undo even if they were more expensive, within reason. Price basically isn’t an issue then. The time you traveled to another country and it changed your perspective on everything- probably totally worth 10x what you spent. The first date with your partner- I doubt you’d eliminate that if it cost 1000x as much, let alone 10x. The guitar you bought and learned how to play on- basically priceless right?
These vary based on your interests of course, but the point is, there are essentially priceless things that blow past the Ten Rule. Looking forward, those are the things that will likely continue to pass the Ten Rule test. If there aren’t a lot of material possessions on these lists, then apply the Ten Rule hard to scrutinize them in the future.
Define “Enough” and Clarify Goals
As you read personal finance blogs and try to save and invest more money, what specifically are you looking to do with the rewards? Retire 10-15 years from now? Become a millionaire?
There are experimental banks where the interest generated from the savings accounts is pooled together and used to offer prizes to a subset of the savers. In other words, rather than earning a 1% return on your money, the bank pools the interest together and says, “three people win iPhones this month”. The goal is to emulate the popularity of lotteries to try to get people to save more. It’s a “no lose” lottery in the sense that their savings are safe; it’s just that the miniscule interest is pooled together in an offer that psychologically may increase savings rates among people.
The way to apply this concept to your situation is to think on the big side. You could just go by the numbers and realize you could be wealthy, you could have more freedom, you could travel more, but these answers are like the 1% compound interest since they’re predictable but maybe not acutely motivating. Another way to look at it is that if you had enough excess capital, you could do things like open your own business, live in another country for a year without thinking twice about the money situation, start your own charitable organization, and big changes like that (the “iPhones”, bigger events). Any of these things can be accelerated based on your risk tolerance or dedication, but having a healthy buffer of liquid wealth and cash flows makes them easier.
By thinking big about your potential opportunities several years from now, it can alter priorities and allow the Ten Rule to work its magic.
What about you? If you do the Satisfaction Audit, or you’ve already known the answer, what are your results? What things are priceless to you?
———-
Matt is the publisher of Dividend Monk, a blog that focuses on dividend stocks, as well as personal finance, index funds, value investing, and general economics. He’s also working on a new project called Stoic Insights, a personal development blog with an analytical focus on practical things like eating healthy, becoming more fit, enhancing productivity, and building wealth.[Photo by Cappellmeister]
Do you want to know why women have sex with men with tiny little feet? I am stroking a book called Why Women Have Sex. It is by Cindy Meston, a clinical psychologist, and David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist. It is a very thick, bulging book. I've never really wondered Why Women Have Sex. But after years of not asking the question, the answer is splayed before me.
Meston and Buss have interviewed 1,006 women from all over the world about their sexual motivation, and in doing so they have identified 237 different reasons why women have sex. Not 235. Not 236. But 237. And what are they? From the reams of confessions, it emerges that women have sex for physical, emotional and material reasons; to boost their self-esteem, to keep their lovers, or because they are raped or coerced. Love? That's just a song. We are among the bad apes now.
Why, I ask Meston, have people never really talked about this? Alfred Kinsey, the "father" of sexology, asked 7,985 people about their sexual histories in the 1940s and 50s; Masters and Johnson observed people having orgasms for most of the 60s. But they never asked why. Why?
"People just assumed the answer was obvious," Meston says. "To feel good. Nobody has really talked about how women can use sex for all sorts of resources." She rattles off a list and as she says it, I realise I knew it all along: "promotion, money, drugs, bartering, for revenge, to get back at a partner who has cheated on them. To make themselves feel good. To make their partners feel bad." Women, she says, "can use sex at every stage of the relationship, from luring a man into the relationship, to try and keep a man so he is fulfilled and doesn't stray. Duty. Using sex to get rid of him or to make him jealous."
"We never ever expected it to be so diverse," she says. "From the altruistic to the borderline evil." Evil? "Wanting to give someone a sexually transmitted infection," she explains. I turn to the book. I am slightly afraid of it. Who wants to have their romantic fantasies reduced to evolutional processes?
The first question asked is: what thrills women? Or, as the book puts it: "Why do the faces of Antonio Banderas and George Clooney excite so many women?"
We are, apparently, scrabbling around for what biologists call "genetic benefits" and "resource benefits". Genetic benefits are the genes that produce healthy children. Resource benefits are the things that help us protect our healthy children, which is why women sometimes like men with big houses. Jane Eyre, I think, can be read as a love letter to a big house.
"When a woman is sexually attracted to a man because he smells good, she doesn't know why she is sexually attracted to that man," says Buss. "She doesn't know that he might have a MHC gene complex complimentary to hers, or that he smells good because he has symmetrical features."
So Why Women Have Sex is partly a primer for decoding personal ads. Tall, symmetrical face, cartoonish V-shaped body? I have good genes for your brats. Affluent, GSOH – if too fond of acronyms – and kind? I have resource benefits for your brats. I knew this already; that is how Bill Clinton got sex, despite his astonishing resemblance to a moving potato. It also explains why Vladimir Putin has become a sex god and poses topless with his fishing rod.
Then I learn why women marry accountants; it's a trade-off. "Clooneyish" men tend to be unfaithful, because men have a different genetic agenda from women – they want to impregnate lots of healthy women. Meston and Buss call them "risk-taking, womanising 'bad boys'". So, women might use sex to bag a less dazzling but more faithful mate. He will have fewer genetic benefits but more resource benefits that he will make available, because he will not run away. This explains why women marry accountants. Accountants stick around – and sometimes they have tiny little feet!
And so to the main reason women have sex. The idol of "women do it for love, and men for joy" lies broken on the rug like a mutilated sex toy: it's orgasm, orgasm, orgasm. "A lot of women in our studies said they just wanted sex for the pure physical pleasure," Meston says. Meston and Buss garnish this revelation with so much amazing detail that I am distracted. I can't concentrate. Did you know that the World Health Organisation has a Women's Orgasm Committee? That "the G-spot" is named after the German physician Ernst Gräfenberg? That there are 26 definitions of orgasm?
And so, to the second most important reason why women have sex – love. "Romantic love," Meston and Buss write, "is the topic of more than 1,000 songs sold on iTunes." And, if people don't have love, terrible things can happen, in literature and life: "Cleopatra poisoned herself with a snake and Ophelia went mad and drowned." Women say they use sex to express love and to get it, and to try to keep it.
Love: an insurance policy
And what is love? Love is apparently a form of "long-term commitment insurance" that ensures your mate is less likely to leave you, should your legs fall off or your ovaries fall out. Take that, Danielle Steele – you may think you live in 2009 but your genes are still in the stone age, with only chest hair between you and a bloody death. We also get data which confirms that, due to the chemicals your brain produces – dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine – you are, when you are in love, technically what I have always suspected you to be – mad as Stalin.
And is the world mad? According to surveys, which Meston and Buss helpfully whip out from their inexhaustible box of every survey ever surveyed, 73% of Russian women are in love, and 63% of Japanese women are in love. What percentage of women in north London are in love, they know not. But not as many men are in love. Only 61% of Russian men are in love and only 41% of Japanese men are in love. Which means that 12% of Russian women and 22% of Japanese women are totally wasting their time.
And then there is sex as man-theft. "Sometimes men who are high in mate value are in relationships or many of them simply pursue a short-term sexual strategy and don't want commitment," Buss explains. "There isn't this huge pool of highly desirable men just sitting out there waiting for women." It's true. So how do we liberate desirable men from other women? We "mate poach". And how do we do that? We "compete to embody what men want" – high heels to show off our pelvises, lip-gloss to make men think about vaginas, and we see off our rivals with slander. We spread gossip – "She's easy!" – because that makes the slandered woman less inviting to men as a long-term partner. She may get short-term genetic benefits but she can sing all night for the resource benefits, like a cat sitting out in the rain. Then – then! – the gossiper mates with the man herself.
We also use sex to "mate guard". I love this phrase. It is so evocative an image – I can see a man in a cage, and a woman with a spear and a bottle of baby oil. Women regularly have sex with their mates to stop them seeking it elsewhere. Mate guarding is closely related to "a sense of duty", a popular reason for sex, best expressed by the Meston and Buss interviewee who says: "Most of the time I just lie there and make lists in my head. I grunt once in a while so he knows I'm awake, and then I tell him how great it was when it's over. We are happily married."
Women often mate guard by flaunting healthy sexual relationships. "In a very public display of presumed rivalry," Meston writes, "in 2008 singer and actress Jessica Simpson appeared with her boyfriend, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, wearing a shirt with the tagline Real Girls Eat Meat. Fans interpreted it as a competitive dig at Romo's previous mate, who is a vegetarian."
Meston and Buss also explain why the girls in my class at school went down like dominoes in 1990. One week we were maidens, the following week, we were not. We were, apparently, having sex to see if we liked it, so we could tell other schoolgirls that we had done it and to practise sexual techniques: "As a woman I don't want to be a dead fish," says one female. Another interviewee wanted to practise for her wedding night.
The authors lubricate this with a description of the male genitalia, again food themed. I include it because I am immature. "In Masters & Johnson's [1966] study of over 300 flaccid penises the largest was 5.5 inches long (about the size of a bratwurst sausage); the smallest non-erect penis was 2.25 inches (about the size of a breakfast sausage)."
Ever had sex out of pity and wondered why? "Women," say Meston and Buss, "for the most part, are the ones who give soup to the sick, cookies to the elderly and . . . sex to the forlorn." "Tired, but he wanted it," says one female. Pause for more amazing detail: fat people are more likely to stay in a relationship because no one else wants them.
Women also mate to get the things they think they want – drugs, handbags, jobs, drugs. "The degree to which economics plays out in sexual motivations," Buss says, "surprised me. Not just prostitution. Sex economics plays out even in regular relationships. Women have sex so that the guy would mow the lawn or take out the garbage. You exchange sex for dinner." He quotes some students from the University of Michigan. It is an affluent university, but 9% of students said they had "initiated an attempt to trade sex for some tangible benefit".
Medicinal sex
Then there is sex to feel better. Women use sex to cure their migraines. This is explained by the release of endormorphins during sex – they are a pain reliever. Sex can even help relieve period pains. (Why are periods called periods? Please, someone tell me. Write in.)
Women also have sex because they are raped, coerced or lied to, although we have defences against deception – men will often copulate on the first date, women on the third, so they will know it is love (madness). Some use sex to tell their partner they don't want them any more – by sleeping with somebody else. Some use it to feel desirable; some to get a new car. There are very few things we will not use sex for. As Meston says, "Women can use sex at every stage of the relationship."
And there you have it – most of the reasons why women have sex, although, as Meston says, "There are probably a few more." Probably. Before I read this book I watched women eating men in ignorance. Now, when I look at them, I can hear David Attenborough talking in my head: "The larger female is closing in on her prey. The smaller female has been ostracised by her rival's machinations, and slinks away." The complex human race has been reduced in my mind to a group of little apes, running around, rutting and squeaking.
I am not sure if I feel empowered or dismayed. I thought that my lover adored me. No – it is because I have a symmetrical face. "I love you so much," he would say, if he could read his evolutionary impulses, "because you have a symmetrical face!" "Oh, how I love the smell of your compatible genes!" I would say back. "Symmetrical face!" "Compatible genes!" "Symmetrical face!" "Compatible genes!" And so we would osculate (kiss). I am really just a monkey trying to survive. I close the book.
I think I knew that.
via guardian.co.uk
via io9.com
I introduced my 5-year-old and 2-year-old to startx and xmonad. They’re DELIGHTED!
June 20th, 2012
Two years ago, Jacob (then 3) and I built his first computer together. I installed Debian on it, but never put a GUI on the thing. It’s command-line, and has provided lots of enjoyment off and on over the last couple of years. I’ve written extensively about what our boys like to do, and the delight they have at learning things on the command line.
The looks of shock I get from people when I explain, as if it’s perfectly natural, that my child has been able to log in by himself to a Linux shell since age 3, are amusing and astounding. Especially considering that it is really not that hard. Instead of learning how to run an Xbox, he’s learned how to run bash. I like that.
Lately, Jacob (now 5) hasn’t been spending much time with it. He isn’t really at a stage where he wants to push his limits too far, I think, but yet also gets bored with the familiar. So I thought it was time to introduce a GUI in a limited fashion, perhaps to let him download photos and video from his Vtech toy camera (that takes real low-res photos and videos which can be downloaded over a USB1 link). He’s familiar with the concept, at least somewhat, having seen GUIs on Terah’s computer (Gnome 2) and mine (xfce4 xmonad).
So last night, Oliver (age 2) and I went down to the basement on a mouse-finding expedition. Sure enough, I had an old PS/2 mouse down there that would work fine. The boys both helped string it through the desk up on our play room, and were tremendously excited to see the red light underneath it when the computer came on. Barely able to contain the excitement, really. A bit like I remember being when I got my first mouse (at a bit of an older age, I suppose.)
I helped him them in as root for the very first time. (Jacob typed “root”, and I typed the password, and provided the explanation for why we were telling the computer we were “root”.) Jacob and Oliver alternated typing bits of some apt-get command lines. Then while we waited for software to download, I had to answer repeated questions of “how soon will the mouse work?” and “what does ‘install’ mean?”
Finally it was there, and I told Jacob to type startx. I intentionally did not install a display manager; more on that later. He pressed Enter, the screen went blank for about 5 seconds, and then X appeared. “Excited” can’t begin to describe how they acted. They took turns playing with the mouse. They loved how the trash can icon (I started with XFCE) showed trash IN the trash can.
But they are just learning the mouse, and there’s a lot about a typical GUI that is unfriendly to someone that isn’t yet proficient with a mouse. The close buttons are disappointingly small, things can be too easily dragged on and off the panel and menus. When I sat down to think about it, the typical GUI design does not present a very good “it always works the same” interface that would be good for a child.
And then it occurred to me: the perfect GUI for a child would be simply xmonad (a tiling window manager that can be controlled almost entirely by keyboard and has no need for mouse movements in most cases.) No desktop environment, no file manager in the root window. Just a window manager in the classic X way. Of course!
So after the boys were in bed, I installed xmonad. I gave Jacob’s account a simple .xsession that starts a terminal and xmonad.
Today, Jacob informed me that he wanted his computer to look “just like yours.” Playing right into my hands, that was! But when he excitedly typed startx, he said it wasn’t just like mine. Uh oh. Turns out he wanted the same wallpaper as my computer uses. Whew. We found it, I figured out that xli(1) loads it in the root window, and so I added a third line to .xsession. More delight unlocked!
Jacob mastered the basics of xmonad really quickly. Alt-Shift-C to close a window. Alt-Shift-Q to quit back to the “big black screen”. Alt-Shift-Enter to get a terminal window.
We launched thunar (the XFCE file manager) and plugged in his camera. He had a good deal of fun looking at photos and videos from it. But then I dropped the true highlight of the day for him: I offered to install Tuxpaint for him. That’s probably his favorite program of all time.
He watched impatiently as apt-get counted down 1m30s for tuxpaint and its libraries. Then we launched it, and he wanted to skip supper so he could keep playing Tuxpaint on “my VERY OWN COMPUTER!”
I’d been debating how to introduce GUIs for a very long time. It has not escaped my attention that children that used Commodores or TRS-80s or DOS knew a lot more about how their computers worked, on average, than those of the same age that use Windows or MacOS. I didn’t want our boys to skip an entire phase of learning how their technology works. I am pleased with this solution; they still run commands to launch things, yet get to play with more than text-based programs.
At bedtime, Jacob asked me, very seriously:
“Dad, how do I start tuxpaint again?”
“First you log in and type startx. Then you can use the mouse.”
Jacob nods, a contemplative look on his face..
“Then,” I continue, “you type tuxpaint in the terminal, and it comes right up.”
Jacob nodded very seriously a second time, as if committing this very important information to long-term memory. Then gave a single excited clap, yelled “Great!”, and dashed off.
Categories: Children & Computing, Family
via extremetech.com
I do not wish to reiterate the emotional responses that most women I have spoken to have felt about the rape and the subsequent death of the 23-year-old girl. The sorrow, devastation and anger are all there. But beyond that, there are things that need to be urgently understood.
First, that women are not asking for safety. They are asking for freedom. The same freedom that men have when they walk on the streets of a city or a village at night. We have every right to that fearlessness, and we claim that. We refuse patronage and patriarchal protection both on the streets and at home, because the other side of that is control, oppression, un-freedom. The rape is being used as an excuse in several homes to impose greater restrictions on women and young girls, to instill fear in their hearts and minds, and this is exactly what we wish to condemn. The way the Delhi Police especially has acted with female protesters has the same aim: to instill fear. And in that sense the state is no less patriarchally oppressive than families. We refuse fear. We want to assert our right to fearlessness. The streets are ours as much as the men's and we will claim them at whatever hour of the day or night we wish, in whatever clothes we wish. And the men better behave themselves.
Second, we wish to declare zero tolerance for violence against women anywhere in the world - at home or on the streets. The men who are screaming out for the death penalty are doing so in order to declare themselves 'good men' and the rapists as 'aberrations', pathologies of this society. But for a woman in a patriarchal society such as this, the whole world is an aberration. Men who have harassed women on the streets, eve-teased, sexually harassed and otherwise insulted women in the workplace, beaten up their wives and girlfriends these men have no business protesting against rape. We have zero tolerance for this hypocrisy and wish that the continuum of violence against women in this society, from the home to the streets, from verbal to physical abuse, from domestic violence to rape, be recognised. We need to pledge never to be silent again and ostracise men who participate in, or collude with, any kind of violence against women in this society.
Third, this is, from the first to the last, a women's movement. While we welcome the participation of our male comrades, who feel strongly pained and angered by these horrors, we must also refuse the so-called solidarity of the right-wing political forces in this country who have been forever the most hostile to women's liberation. We do not require their hypocritical patriarchal protection. We are not protesting as mothers, sisters or daughters - we are protesting as women, and that is good enough.
Lastly, while I am glad that voices have been raised to this unprecedented (in recent years) extent about this particular rape, this is also the time to remember the rapes that have been denied legitimate justice and have been forcibly silenced. The rapes by the Indian army in Manipur and Kashmir, the rapes of lower caste and tribal women all over India, all the names that haunt us at this juncture: Thangjam Manorama, Soni Sori, Radharani Ari, Tapasi Malik, the woman on Park Street and many, many others.
Also the death penalty would achieve nothing, even if we claim greater rates of conviction, speedier legal proceedings and a sensitised police force. If widespread consciousness, gender sensitisation at all levels, education in new norms of gendered behavior, and a policy of zero tolerance about crimes against women is cultivated from now on, perhaps something could be achieved. This should stretch from homes - where women need to stop being insulted and beaten up and raped by their near and dear ones - to police stations - where custodial rapes are a dime a dozen. We must also remember that rape is not a question of modesty or 'izzat' but of serious violation (emotional and physical) that needs to be addressed as such. There is life after rape. It is not a fate worse than death and not a condemnation of the woman for all time to come. We have to begin to speak of rape 'survivors', not rape 'victims'. Women who are the most marginal in society are the most vulnerable to rape - sex workers, migrant labourerers, lower caste and tribal women, women in Kashmir and the North East, amongst others. We must also not forget that male sex workers, transgendered people and intersex people, as well as children on the streets and elsewhere, are also routinely raped - and this should be taken into consideration when we speak of sexual violence. The continuum that exists between 'eve-teasing' and rape needs to be recognised. Moral guardianship of the state and greater surveillance is not the answer, but true gender-sensitisation and a consolidated women's movement for gender justice needs to be reformulated in this country.
by via ibnlive.in.com
