Dollar dollar bill, y'all.

Earlier in the week, my friend Alma twittered, "I need to learn how to save money. And also how to make enough money to actually save it. =/." I offered to send some links her way, then figured I might as well blog it in case they would benefit someone else.

First a disclaimer: I am, by no means, an expert on personal finance. I have 800+ credit, but that's because I make all my payments. In fact, I have a ton of debt, a lot of it credit card debt, that I am still chipping away at. I have made many bad financial decisions (I bought a house in 2005, so you can guess how that's gone), just some of them not as spectacularly bad as others. But I have done a lot better the last few years, and like Jules Winfield, I'm trying. Real. Hard. To be the shepherd.

Enough chatter for now, here are the links:

• Consumer Reports Money & Shopping Blog: Hard to go wrong with Consumer Reports.
  
• Consumerist: not really an advice site, but it will let you know which companies treat their customers like crap, so you can avoid them. Entertaining.
  
• Get Rich Slowly: J.D. runs a pretty nice site about frugality. I think blogs like this are best since they offer practical, first-hand advice.
  
• I Will Teach you to Be Rich: I like this site quite a bit. Ramit targets young people, he's a bit brash but very passionate, and focuses less on frugality (he's not as extreme as some of the other bloggers) and more on redefining what it means to live "rich". He just wrote a book of the same name and I think I will check it out.
  
• NPR Planet Money: Birthed by our current financialpocalypse, NPR breaks down the financial system. Recommend the podcast, which I listen to daily, and usually just skim the blog. Won't help you balance your checkbook but knowledge is power, and peeking behind the curtain of capitalism and understanding how we got here can only help.
  
• Smart Spending by MSN Money: It's alright, not my favorite. kind of high-level for my tastes.
  
• Smart Money Consumer Action and Spending: these are alright. There's some overlap but you can pick and choose what to read. Yay, Google Reader! Yay, 'j' button!
  
• The Simple Dollar: Trent uses a lot of personal testimony in his content, and practical advice like that is always , useful. Sometimes this blog takes frugality to a level I wouldn't, but different perspectives are always a plus.
  
• Wise Bread: this blog is not bad. I like that there are a lot of different contributors, but a lot of posts about good deals make me want to spend money, not cut back.
  

(You may notice there are all personal finance links, and there's not a lot about investment. There's a reason for that: I have debt. It doesn't make sense to sink the money I have into stocks or mutual funds when I have debt accumulating interest. That said, I like The Motley Fool for investing advice, and still own piddly amounts of MVL and PEP stock.)

My advice is simple:

• Pay yourself first - sock away your 401(k) contribution or savings right out of your check, before your impulsive ass can spend it. And always, always, put at least as much in your 401(k) as to get the match from your employer. That is free money.
  
• Stop buying shit - umm, yeah. I have a wall full of books and DVDs that's very impressive when people come over. But did I really need to spend $10 on a DVD I watch once a year, because it was a "deal"? The worst thing you can do is buy something specifically because it's a "deal". Pick something you want - a house, a car, an engagement ring, a trip to Japan - and when that video game is in your hand, think about how badly you want it compared to what you are striving for. That said...
  
• Don't be a cheap-ass - you still have to live. Denying yourself everything is just going to make you miserable. Every once in a while, you have to treat yourself - you just don't want to do it all the time, or in huge quantities. Use your judgment.
  
• Compromise - I have two speeds for shopping for clothes. I either buy pretty nice clothes, name brand stuff, off the clearance rack, at Costco, or at outlets. Or I just buy functional clothes from Target or Costco. I like nice stuff, but I don't like paying for it. I like Diet Coke, but if Diet Pepsi is on sale, guess what I'm drinking. Starbucks or Peet's coffee beans are pricey, but not compared to the two bucks and twenty minutes of your life you blow because you're too lazy to make your own.
  
• Never, ever buy anything from Target that's not on sale. Everything goes on sale at Target eventually.
  

Hope that was helpful. Now it's time to go to sleep so I can carpool with my wife to work. You see how that works?

日本に行きます!

I am totally psyched to announce that we're going back to Japan. After careful deliberation and lots of soul searching (at least for me, for my wife it was no contest), I decided $550 including all taxes was too cheap to pass up.

I estimate that we're going to pay $1100 for the plane and about $1500 for a cheap hotel or apartment for three weeks. At one point when gas was at its most expensive, I thought tickets might cost that much. I think we can eat pretty cheap, maybe splurging only a couple times on meals. I am most worried about how much we will spend on clothes (Rhonda) and tech and anime crap (me).

This may seem foolhardy in a recession. Rhonda already has her pink slip, and after dodging layoffs just a couple months ago, the IBM acquisition rumors don't exactly spell job security. Trust me, that is why I took almost the full 44 hours the seats were on hold to pull the trigger.

But this is a pretty important and symbolic trip for us, for reasons I don't want to explain. It has taken on added meaning over the last two years. When you have pretty dire financial and health situations over which you have no control, and you keep having to put off your dreams, it's incredibly disheartening. I know we are not the only people in this boat. But this opportunity presented itself at a time when we were in position to take advantage, and sometimes you need to make your own luck.

Also, scoff if you will, I feel this was divine intervention. I wasn't shopping for Tokyo tickets. I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact we might never go to Japan again or, at least, not in 2009. But a system of coincidences put itself into alignment Tuesday night. I had the "1000+" article count in Google Reader, yet I decided to read from a feed that is probably not in my 25 favorites. I decided to click on a link in that article to a website I'd never heard of, on a whim. That page happened to have a story on United fares specifically from SFO (and only SFO) to Narita for $400. The fare was only available on a handful of dates but some of those dates worked for our schedule. The sale only lasts until tomorrow, and the flights have basically all sold out. We were extremely fortunate, at a time when it seems like it's been a while since we've had some good fortune.

And you can see how I felt like we had to do this.

I didn't mean to write so long about this. Initially, it was just going to be a brief "woohoo!" kind of update. But it's nice to be excited about something again. We've had some news that made us feel relieved lately, and/or grateful, but not excited. Pumped. Alive.

Sunset?

Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated. I have just been sick for about a month. Pretty sure it was a flu, which was awfully resistant to antibiotics, followed by acute allergy symptoms the last couple of days. Going through Kleenex so fast I should buy stock in KMB.

It's been an interesting week, to say the least. My wife will officially be out of a job this June. Well, unless she gets hired back. We're trying to be optimistic, partly because no one really seems in a rush to work at her at-risk school, and partly because the federal stimulus package has a significant chunk of change earmarked for education.

Of course, the big news today is the report that IBM is in talks to buy my beloved employer, Sun Microsystems. Having survived a layoff less than two months ago, you can imagine how thrilled I am about this news. Yes, folks, that is sarcasm. At least JAVA stock is up, eh?

I spent about half my day wallowing in self-pity, before I decided I can't do anything about it, so there's no point in concerning myself with it. If I've learned anything since the tech bubble burst at the beginning of this decade, it's that business is business. And while I look at being acquired by Big Blue as the equivalent of getting traded to the Yankees, it's neither a done deal nor a certainty that I'll be on the chopping block if it is.

So I guess I decided it would be cathartic to put those thoughts into words. I'm not so sure that it was, in retrospect. Rhonda is more disappointed by this than I am, because she knows prospects for our planned trip to Japan this summer are bleaker than bleak. Of course, being this is the last subject I want to talk about at this point, it will of course be the only thing my family will want to talk about this weekend when we are in Vegas for my sister's birthday. Hopefully, a few of them read this between now and then, and politely remind the others that our family's crumbling financial stability is not a jovial dinner topic.

Chinese New Year Resolutions

Gung Hay Fat Choy, interwebs! The Year of the Ox is upon us.

I am running quite a bit behind, mostly due to mad stress and uncertainty over Sun's huge layoff. I basically tabled any life decisions until after January, and now that the immediate future is secure, it's time to get things in gear.

I wanted to make some New Year's resolutions, but I was too preoccupied. But I gave it a bit of thought, and ladies and gentlemen, I give you my Chinese New Year's Resolutions, better late than never:

• Get healthy. - yes, I know I could not be more vague. I don't want to just say "lose weight" - what if I gain muscle? Essentially, these are the things I need to do: lower cholesterol. Eat better and avoid fast food. Make an exercise plan that I can stick to. Get my remaining nerve issues with my leg and foot resolved.
  
• Retire to bedroom by 10:30 - I know what you're thinking. It's almost midnight. FAIL. No, I said bedroom, not bed. Currently Rhonda spends the first hour or so sleeping on the couch because I stubbornly refuse to go to bed. This isn't altogether fair. So the plan is to get some exercises and stretches down before bed, possibly get to sleep a little earlier, and ...
  
• Read more - and not just comics and manga. Actual books with words. I have a lot of books I started and never finished, and quite a few more I have wanted to read but are just collecting dust on a shelf. and I have a library card.
  
• Improve my Japanese - 2008 was a failure of epic proportions when it comes to my foreign language skills. I need to at least get to where I was two years ago. Goal is to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) this winter. Improved Japanese skills will come in handy when I ...
  
• Get my ass to Japan - It's been five (!) years since our honeymoon in Japan. We have been planning to return for quite a while now, but our plans have been scuttled by the economy, looming layoffs, etcetera etcetera. I think this summer it can finally happen.
  

There it is; that's the list. I will be posting updates, at least partially as a motivational tool for myself. And since (C)NYR's are, well, pretty arbitrary, I reserve the right to add to the list as the year goes on.

Ganbarimasu!

A couple of weird and disparate stories from this weekend.

Instead of rolling in the Scion as usual, we took the CR-V to Stockton so I could pick up the elliptical I bought at Christmas vaca. The CR-V has no iPod capabilities (the FM transmitter broke), so my wife was fiddling with radio stations. One of the stations played Digable Planets. I haven't heard Rebirth of Slick in years. Great, right?

It was the oldies station. That song came out when I was in high school!

Went to mass Sunday morning. They got to the part where they offer prayers, and it played out mostly as usual. There was a prayer to respect the right to life, which is pretty standard nowadays. A little later, the last prayer was for (and I paraphrase): that our leaders, especially President Obama, govern in a matter to respect the rights of the unborn. Lord hear our prayers.

At which point I leaned over to my wife and said, "That's it?!?"

When did it come to this? Why is the intersection of politics and religion so narrow that there is only room for one issue? At a time when I'm not really getting along with my church, this ain't exactly smoothing things over.

(I don't want to start an abortion debate. Personally, I'm not down with it, but I'm not rabid about my position. I feel like I don't want other people shoving their religions down my throat, so who am I to do the same? An abortion is a personal choice and it's between you and your God, whoever He is. The key word there being "choice". I don't think victims of rape or incest should be required to have a baby. There are a lot of people who think that makes me a lousy Christian and that I will burn in hell, but I say this is between me and MY God.)

My point, of course, is: what about the rights of the *born*? Is abortion really that much bigger a sin than war? Torture? Suppression of civil liberties? Discrimination based on ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or sexual preference? What about capital punishment? I don't understand people who are against abortion but in favor of the death penalty. What is it with you people, timing?

I guess I should just shut up now before I make anyone else angry.

Survivor Guilt

Survived layoffs today, for the umpteenth time. I've lost count, but unlike the others, this round came during the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. So I have to feel pretty good about having a paycheck tonight.

As an added bonus, I have a new boss (my second this week) in a new division. Finally, my group is where it should have been the day I joined it.

People seem to think I should be pretty happy about these developments. Relieved, yes. Grateful, yes. But not happy. Several people that I work with closely had to leave today. So today has been incredibly difficult. Not only do we need to fill the gaping void left by their departure, but I am, of course, worried about them and how they will adjust. And I'm also left wondering why they are unemployed, and I get to continue working from home with four weeks of vacation a year.

If I've learned anything about this process, it's that I can't predict what is going to happen. What inevitably happened was so far from what I would've thought it is difficult to wrap my head around. And I don't have too much time to dwell on it, since we now have to figure out how two people are going to do the work of four. As usual, the future is wrought with uncertainty and I don't know where my path will take me. But at least I've bought some time.

"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord."

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers ... our found fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."



"So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

'Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it).' "