Finances, 10 Years Ago - Now and Then: How My Current Financial Situation Compares with a Decade Ago

I’m over a week late with this latest PF blogging trend that has been making the rounds…

I think it started with J.D. on Get Rich Slowly, but I could be mistaken…

My entire living situation in 1998 is almost impossible to compare to the situation I find myself in now. Really, 1998 was the starting line for me.

At the time, having dropped out of university in February of 1997, I was back living with my parents in my old bedroom. I was just getting comfortable at the job I still hold today and was recently made a salaried employee after an entire year of making just $6/hour.

It was an exciting time. Back then, only those on salary were offered health insurance so now I could boast that my job had more than just long hours, it had benefits too. The company had also just implemented a 401k plan and I was invited to participate. Most excellent.

My only monthly bills at the time were my car payment — $223/month for my VW Jetta loan (which my dad co-signed on) — and my auto insurance. I didn’t have the need for a cell phone, and at that time, I’m not sure our neck of the woods even had service anyway.

It was also in the Spring of 1998 that I received my first paying job for the online company I started in my bedroom late one night. It was through a consultant that had worked with my dad.

Basically, all I did was set up a website for their Oracle consulting firm — earning $100 for the task. In hindsight, they got a great deal. Sadly, they also went out of business around a year later. Can’t say I was surprised, though…

I mean, I understand that Oracle is still around to this day, but technically, so is Atari. They’re both teetering on irrelevancy. To me, the writing was on the wall back then for Oracle developers — middleware had a short shelf life and their targeted industry wasn’t large enough to sustain the initial popularity.

But that experience really boosted my confidence in what I was doing and what I was capable of — hey, if this legit company was going to use me to be their presence on the internet, I’m sure others would be willing to use me, and pay me, as well. Before long, I had another client — and another website under my control. The portfolio was growing.

I then started hosting the sites of my clients to generate a monthly income rather than couting on sporadic checks to roll in as projects came about and then used my profits to purchase numerous domain names — many of which I still hold today.

My company was a real “dot com” now. I even incorporated. I even licensed my software. Yes, I actually bought Adobe Photoshop 3.0 for the full price. Even my copy of WinZip is registered. I’m not sure I know another person who actually paid for that wonderful piece of software.

Then, proving that my company really was the real deal, my company was threatened with legal action by a Fortune 500 company for trademark infringement.

Wow, if they only knew that the company was just a 22-year old kid hogging his parents’ phone line with a 56k modem in a room with bunk beds and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle posters still hanging on the wall. It scared the crap out of me.

I stood my ground though, and eventually met up with them. I remember looking through the phone book looking for something like an internet law expert with no luck. They just didn’t exist at the time — at least not this far away from Silicon Valley.

When the time came, I walked into the fancy office of my oppressor completely unprepared, and walked out with, get this, a new client. Wow.

No longer was I pulling in maybe $25/month from this side business of mine, now I was pulling in a few hundred dollars each month and gaining traction. It was crazy. Some months I’d make more on my own that I did from my regular paycheck.

With the extra money, I wisely opened an account with Fidelity. I honestly can’t remember why I did it. Or why I even chose Fidelity. I initially put $2500 in towards a tech mutual fund (Fidelity Select Computers was the name, I think) and set up my first ever auto-payment for Fidelity to pull $150 each month from my checking account and put it towards the fund.

This move made me a lot of easy money and would eventually become the down payment on my first house in 2002 — even though its value plummeted after the dot com bubble burst. At one point, I’d say I quadrupled my money. In the end, when I cashed out after things came back to reality, I had still doubled it.

My day job was on the up-and-up, my own fledgling company was starting to take flight, and my expenses were minimal. Basically, things were pretty good.

I’d estimate that, at the time, my net worth was still positive (no student loans, thankfully). My checking account routinely held less that $1000 from month to month and with the mutual fund thrown in too, best case scenario, my net worth would have been maybe $2000. (I’m certain that I owed more on the Jetta than it was worth in 1998.)

Shortly thereafter though, it would dip sharply negative as I started abusing the credit cards (as they all started to increase my limits), going on $10k vacations, and purchasing BMW’s and, well, all of those mistakes have been well documented here already…

Posted on May 30th, 2008 at 1:29 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Life, Retro, Success | No Comments »

Product 19 — Yeah, they still make it!?

Monday night my wife and I went to the grocery store.

The past few weeks we’ve been going to a different grocery store each week, you know, to add a little excitement to the routine of, well, grocery shopping. So far, it’s been a pretty good experience.

This week, though, we weren’t able to go grocery shopping on the weekend as we were out of town. It’s thrown the whole week off to a certain degree, but to get it out of the way quickly (on a week night), we went back to our usual grocery store that’s just a stones throw from our house.

I’m not much help at the grocery store. I don’t even push the cart.

My job is generally to look at people (I enjoy this) and scan the items at the automated check out — unless of course someone is in line behind me cause then I get all stressed out and move even slower than I already do.

But this time, when my wife set me free in the cereal aisle to pick my cereal for the week, something caught my eye.

Product 19.

I couldn’t place it. Where had I seen that red box before? Hmmmm… something from my past…

Then it hit me.

Remember those single serving variety packs of cereal Kellogg’s used to sell in the 1980’s? They were essentially just a bunch of little cardboard boxes — miniature versions of the real box — shrink wrapped together. I think there were 8 boxes in each “bundle”.

(These days, I know they still have single serving sizes of cereal available but they come in their own little plastic bowl now. Totally different experience. Back then, you still needed to supply a bowl.)

Anyway, our family summer vacation each year would involve camping for a few weeks and my Mom would buy us these variety packs for breakfast during the trips.

Obviously, Frosted Flakes was the top prize. Froot Loops were right up there too. Apple Jacks were an excellent choice (though they tend to tear up the roof of your mouth). Corn Pops weren’t exactly a favorite, but a nice treat now and then. Rice Krispies and Raisin Bran, with tons of sugar added manually, were both still edible.

But when it came down to the fourth day of the trip, my sister and I would have to make a decision.

Which was worse?  Special K or Product 19.

We’d fight over this.  It was important — I mean, breakfast IS the most important meal of the day.

More often than not, Product 19 ended up being the worst of the two evils.

Product 19 was like a lump of coal.

It was like eating poisoned Frosted Flakes.

No amount of sugar could, well, sugar coat it.  We tried.  Really, we tried.

I’m not sure my parents would even eat Product 19 — and my dad is a fan of liver.

Yeah, it truly was *that* bad.

Worse, even, than Grape Nuts. (Who’d have thought that was even possible?)

I’d venture to say that the last time I saw Product 19 was in 1985 while on vacation.  It blew my mind this week to see that it was still on the market.

But I certainly wasn’t about to give it another try.  No way.

In the end, I chose Frosted Cheerios to be my cereal of the week. Sadly, they’re tearing up the roof of my mouth as well.

Posted on May 14th, 2008 at 10:00 am by Brainy Smurf
Food, Retro | 1 Comment »

Thank You, Easter Bunny!

Posted on March 23rd, 2008 at 6:24 am by Brainy Smurf
Current Events, Retro | No Comments »

All-Star on the Cheap

I got my first pair of Chuck Taylors in 1985.

At the time they were just coming back into style, and if I didn’t walk in on the first day of school with a sweet new pair of high-tops, well, I’d be destined to be an outcast for the rest of the school year.

My mom probably paid nearly 40 dollars for those in preparation for my big day entering the 4th grade.

I remember thinking I was *so* cool because mine were yellow. A rare colour at the time — those aqua blue ones were the “hot” color back then.

They were also the first pair of canvas shoes I’d ever worn, having followed a long line of leather Nike, Reebok, Pony, Puma, and Kangaroos. Remember Roos? (Seriously, you can never have enough zippered pockets on your shoes.)

But you know what? The All-Stars held up better than any of those leather shoes. I wore those yellow hi-tops right up until 5th grade, when I replaced them with a pair of off-white ones.

Anyway, they quickly fell out of style, as they generally do every 10 years or so, and their prices plummeted. I kept on wearing them and as the years went by, I generally opted for the low-top (or “oxford”) instead of the high top.

In high school, I worked in the shoe department of a clothing store. At the time, the low-top version of the Chuck Taylor was $14.99/pair. Needless to say, I had nearly every colour our store offered.

I even started wearing mismatched colours. Kinda stupid in hindsight, but I was always careful to rotate them evenly just in case, say, I ever wanted to wear two purple ones. They’d both look equally beaten up.

By the time I was in university the price on low-tops had jumped to $24.99. Still very reasonable considering I could get a good solid year out of one pair. At the time I also dabbled a bit with other brands, usually canvas versions of Vans. They just weren’t the same and I always found myself going back to Converse.

After 20 years, it’s not just a shoe, it’s a life style. (Okay, that was over the top.)

Lately though, Chuck Taylors have come back in style.

While that’s good for me — I look mildly trendy again for the first time in over 20 years — it’s really bad for my wallet. Chucks aren’t $14.99/pair anymore. Even $24.99 would be a bargain.

Nope, they top out at over $40 nearly everywhere.

That’s too much for a flap of rubber, some canvas, and a few grommets. Too much for me anyway.

I’ve been on the cheap when it comes to shoes for decades now. So now what?

Enter the knock-off…

Both Walmart and Target carry a low top version of the All-Star. Unfortunately their colour selection is seriously lacking, but the black low top is a classic and with a price tag of $12.99, well, it’s a done deal for me.

I’ve been rotating two pairs of black knock-offs for the past two years. The Target version is identical to the real thing, right down to the brown sole. The Walmart version is a tiny bit different, but unless you’re looking at the bottom, you really can’t tell. They wear just like the latest overpriced Converse.

(Converse used to last longer before Nike took over and changed the “formula” for this classic shoe.)

I’ll go out on a limb and say that the Target knock-offs are manufactured under the same roof as the real thing. They’re that similar, right down to the laces. My new casual everyday shoe of choice.

So, with that, and all the years of savings, I think I’m due for an overpriced pair of sneakers to conquer my most recent goal.

Here’s to hoping I keep it under $100!

Posted on March 7th, 2008 at 9:57 am by Brainy Smurf
Bargains, Cutting Costs, Retro | 1 Comment »

Report: Pacman accused of Striking Woman

Ack!

When I first saw the headline, I thought to myself, “Can this be true? Could one of my childhood heroes be guilty of such a thing?”

But then I clicked the link and saw that it was just some thug football player in a strip club. Phew…

And I wonder how he got the nickname “Pacman”. He looks *nothing* like the real thing…

Posted on January 15th, 2008 at 6:54 pm by Brainy Smurf
Current Events, Retro | No Comments »

Nickels, Pennies, and Dimes! Oh my!

Grant from the Corner Office Blog recently posed a question on my posting about picking up a nickel that someone had dropped — and that no one else had any interest in.

What are your thoughts on removing the penny (and nickel for that matter) from our financial circulation? There are some that argue we don’t need tangible currency at all, and can rely on bank cards entirely.

Everytime this comes up, while it’s a move in the opposite direction, it makes me think back to me time in Canada. I was already living in the States when the $1 bill was phased out in favor of the $1 coin — the loonie. Thinking back, I think that was around 1987.

Later, while I was actually back living there in the mid-90’s, they phased out the $2 bill, as well, in favor of another coin.

At the time, the idea seemed kinda neat. The coin was cool looking — two-tone!

But quickly you realized how terrible it really was. Vending machines suddenly raised their prices for the new $1 dollar (or even $2 dollar) coins. This, of course, was before you could slide paper money into vending machines.

But the biggest downside was that you ended up with heavy pockets. Let’s say you went out and broke a $20 on some pizza or something. More often than not, you’d end up with nearly $8 in change. That’s not chump change. After a week’s time, you’d be broke. But sitting on top of your dresser was $40 worth of coins.

Prior to the coins, loose change was always less than a dollar. By the mid-90’s, it was big money — but you still treated it like spare change. It added up quick — or more accurately, disappeared to the top of the dresser quickly.

A slight tangent — around the same time, a new banking feature was being test marketed on our campus by a company called Interac. The idea was just what Grant mentioned, you’d have an Interac card attached to your bank account that you could run through the Interac machines recently installed at all of the local establishments to make purchases. No need to carry any cash at all. Really, it was just a debit card. Before debit cards existed.

That experiment was obviously successful, though I never took part, with all of the debit card machines in every grocery store, and even fast food restuarants, these days. Back then, it was weird, and cutting edge.

But back to cutting out the penny, and maybe even the nickel, entirely. I happen to like the idea. It would definitely save the government a mint. But it would also likely cost the consumer more money too. Retailers, which would still accept cash, would need to “fix” their pricing so as to come out in 10 cent increments — and I can’t imagine many establishments would choose to round the number down. State sales tax would make it even a little trickier.

Another challenge is that while the actual physical currency would be eliminated, the value on paper would still exist — but there would be no way to, well, grasp it.

Being that we’re the type to bend over to pick up such small sums, I’d hate to see it considered as negligible.

I guess it’s an all-or-nothing type of situation. To me, you can’t eliminate the smallest value currencies unless you’re prepared to eliminate them all and fly with the bank card idea.

Of course, I’m totally in favor of that now.

(What I was thinking turning up my nose at it in 1994, I’ll never know…)

Posted on November 29th, 2007 at 12:10 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Retro | 2 Comments »

Making Your Mark?

From an article in Forbes last week by Steve McGookin:

With the changing nature of today’s workplace–and workforce–it’s a fair bet that there are plenty of questions you ask every day that maybe your parents didn’t.

One of them might be: “Is my tattoo holding me back as I climb the corporate ladder”?

And perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is: It depends where you work.

My answer? Well, it certainly won’t help you climb the ladder.

With surveys indicating that anywhere between a quarter and a third of all Americans under 40 now have some form of body art–what the Pew Research Center calls the “Look At Me” generation–the adornments that traditionally marked a rite of passage have increasingly become part of society’s mainstream. A 2003 Harris poll also showed that roughly the same percentage of men and women were being tattooed.

But is body art still frowned upon in the workplace? And does it work against you from a career perspective?

Obviously company policies will vary, as will office dress and appearance codes. According to a study a few years ago by CareerBuilder and Vault.com for Salary.com, 42% of managers interviewed said that their opinion of someone “would be lowered by that person’s visible body art.”

Yet about the same number of managers, 44%, said they themselves had tattoos or other body art that was not “visible.”

I love the double standard of the “Look at Me” generation. I’m a professional by day, wannabe tramp/ex-con by night. It’s almost laughable.

Attitudes will depend on your industry and on your company. The popularity of television shows like Miami Ink and its subsequent spin-off, L.A. Ink, as well as the prominence of body art among sports figures, singers and other entertainers have meant a wider ubiquity and acceptance for adornments.

So fields that encourage individuality and creativity, clearly, will be more open to personal expression. But in an environment where conformity is frequently the norm, especially in many client-focused workplaces with a high level of interaction with the public, you’d expect corporate policies to be somewhat more restrictive.

Companies have to decide what image they want to present, both externally and internally. Where they draw a line is often what they consider “offensive.” So as well as the industry and employer, acceptance can also depend largely on the art itself.

The key word seems to be “appropriate”–but it seems more true than ever that there is a tolerance in the modern workplace for personal expression through discreet body art, particularly, according to the American Society for Dermatological Surgery, where no one sees it if you don’t want them to.

“A good tip is to place it in an area that can be covered by clothing traditionally worn in the workplace. For example, a belly button piercing can easily be covered but shown off if you wish, whereas an eyebrow piercing can not.”

What if, for whatever reason–career-related or not–you experience “tattoo regret”? According to the American Academy of Dermatology, it’s not unusual for a removal process to take several sessions and cost anything up to 10 times what you paid for the original artwork. Surveys seem to suggest that in many cases removals or amendments are because of someone’s name.

Businesses like Dr Tattoff or Rethink Your Ink offer increasingly sophisticated removal techniques.

And with the growing numbers of outlets–there are now more than 20,000 parlors in the U.S.–tattooing itself is an expanding career area. You can find some tips on getting into the field and improving your skills at ExpertVillage, which–since like any other art form it’s obviously better to see than be told–features a series of videos by Arizona-based artist Rick Wycoff.

So if you’re thinking of becoming one of the many Americans every year who get a new tattoo, how your boss will react–if he or she ever sees it–is just one more thing you’ll have to think about. But, of course, the chances are if you have a tattoo already, it’s unlikely you’re going to feel any differently about it by being told it might hamper your prospects.

I dunno. Even in my 30+ year lifetime, the amount that society has spiralled downward is a little frightening. Earrings on men, make-up on men, plastic surgery for everyone, coloured hair, mohawks, facial piercings, facial tattoos, botox, cross dressing, sex changes, etc…

Really, if you think about it, guys like Boy George and Mr. T were way ahead of their time. They’d be accepted now as “normal” everyday folks. That’s downright hilarious.

In some ways though, I do look forward to the day I have to take my children to swimming lessons so I can see the regret on the faces of all of the aging parents with huge angel wings on their backs… All I’ll have to be embarrassed about is a farmer tan and maybe a little extra weight.

On the brightside, maybe the next Slim Goodbody won’t need to wear a spandex body suit! Wouldn’t that be a sight!

Posted on November 5th, 2007 at 12:27 pm by Brainy Smurf
Rants, Retro | No Comments »

Fair Season

As September rolls around, the “Agricultural Fair” season begins in New England. It’s a good inexpensive way to spend a day, that is, as long as you’re not into going on lots of carnival rides at $3 per ride.

Yesterday, we spent the day at the Woodstock Fair. It cost us $5 to park and $10 each to get in. Not exactly a cheap day, but it’s all about the quality entertainment. And did I mention the entertainment is second to none? That’s right. Second to none.

We saw Jordan Knight — of New Kids on the Block fame. Don’t laugh. I mean, in some ways it’s sad that his career has declined to the point that he’s doing county fairs and things, with the smell of cow poop and swine in the air, but I found him pretty entertaining.

He opened the performance with an upbeat song I’d never heard — probably something new — and then a couple of the slow NKOTB songs. Not exactly my favorite. I mean, being a guy, I didn’t exactly have a NKOTB sleeping bag in the late 80’s so…let’s just say it wasn’t my thing. I knew their hits though, but just because of their overexposure at the time.

The audience, well, there was a crop of late 20’s aged women singing right along and swooning through out but when he got up to the “Right Stuff” and did a snippet of the “New Kid” dance, well, he had the crowd. And only then could you tell he really was a pro and not just some crappy low budget entertainment.

The best part was that he even made fun of himself, saying things like, “This was a big hit with the honeys back in…”, then he’d pause and sheepishly say, “1988.” The women up front would scream like they would have back in 1988.

We sat a bit farther back and had some of the teenage “Paris Hilton” wannabes standing near us. You know, just kinda standing there with their mouths open in that “this is so lame, but I’m so hot” pose.

They obviously didn’t get it, understandably because of their age, but to not be able to foresee that this was just Justin Timberlake up on stage in 10 years — you know, that sort of thing just went over their heads. At that age, I would have figured that out, but then again, at that age, I wasn’t wearing blinders, err, sunglasses that covered my entire head.

And you know what? Going back to their overexposure in the late 80’s, I wasn’t really a fan, but the New Kids were bigger than the Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, and ‘nSync ever were, even all three combined. For a few years there, you couldn’t go to any department store without a full section dedicated to them. Towels, sheets, curtains, sleeping bags, underpants, toothbrushes, action figures. They even had their own shampoo. Everywhere you went, at all times, at least one pre-teen girl within a 10 foot radius had a NKOTB t-shirt on. Always. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a t-shirt, or a sleeping bag, with, oh, say Lance Bass on it? Have you?

He ended his show with “Hangin’ Tough”, which he called a headbanger from back in the day. Then he corrected himself and said, “Well, maybe it wasn’t a headbanger…” Either way, just listening to this version, if some band had the nards to cover a NKOTB song, I dunno, maybe a band like the Darkness, that one would work with a heavier sound I think.

During the last song, I think he did some of the old school dancing again, as some of the women in the crowd were doing it along with him. He got the crowd to do the “Hangin’ Tough” arm swing thing — my wife stopped me from doing it, almost immediately — but when it was all over, I was glad I’d sat and watched.

Posted on September 3rd, 2007 at 8:19 am by Brainy Smurf
Bargains, Music, Retro | 3 Comments »