Cub scout Den Leader - Really makes a difference cause I have a few boys whose dad isn't really around, and I get to be their male role model.
Numismatics - Expensive as hell, but can be done on a cheaper scale. I started out broad and have narrowed my focus to Mexican coinage of the first and second republic from a specific mint. The research into it may eventually lead to a book, as virtually no reference material exists at the moment. There is something pretty cool in holding a coin that is a few hundred years old and imagining who held it, the stories it could tell, and viewing the art associated with it.
Crossfit / Olympic Lifting. I started Crossfit, I found I enjoyed it but really sucked at the olympic lifting. Then my box started a class specific on the fundamentals of olympic lifting, now I'm hooked on both. It's good to get out from behind the desk, move and jump and lift. It can be bad though, I've seen bad boxes where one can hurt themselves easily. It really comes down to the coaches and you making smart decisions.
Finally Wood working - I love creating furniture most of all and am at the point where my extended family have started asking me to make furniture pieces for them. There is something about starting out with several pieces of wood and ending up with a finished product that you've made with your own hands... Although I can point out every flaw in every piece I've ever created!
Practice. Practice Practice. Also workshops, find a small wood shop in your area. We have woodcraft here, which offers various classes on the weekends. Most small colleges also still have some wood working courses.
I agree, Having a watch like that is not the good life, it's a fast track to being really broke and being deeply in debt. Granted, there are some people who can afford to buy a watch like this, Warren buffet being one... But he lives in an old modest home in the middle of no where, drives something like a 1994 Volkswagen and doesn't blow money on crap like this. Hell even the founder of Walmart drove a 1970 something pick up truck and rarely spent any of his money. I'm passing this article on to Dave Ramsey! He won't sugar coat his commentary like you did, He will probably just call this guy an idiot.
That guy is no more an idiot than anyone who's ever looked longingly at a Ferrari, or a super highend stereo system, or a supercomputer, i.e. most men.
Note that he did not, in fact, buy the $77,000 watch (which is, btw, not the most expensive watch you can buy by far).
Yeah, it's mainly a status symbol, with added collector and engineering angles to appeal to the inner geek. And it keeps time less accurately than a $10 watch from WalMart.
So what? $77k is a joke compared to what rich people blow on cars, art, yachts, and jewelry for their wives or mistresses, and it doesn't even take 1000th of Warren Buffet's wealth to be able to do that without going broke.
That guy is no more an idiot than anyone who's ever looked longingly at a Ferrari, or a super highend stereo system, or a supercomputer, i.e. most men.
or a Gucci purse, or those 50k shoes, or that massive engagement ring. Or that yacht, or that swimming suit which gives 0.05% less drag than your current, or that $500-per-plate restaurant. i.e., most PEOPLE. Why the separation of sex?
It's just middle-class trying to imitate rich-class. It happens in every culture, to every kind of person, except those intentionally keeping themselves separate from it.
I didn't just go for the most expensive parts either, it would have easily been > $20k if I had. I'm sure we all can imagine a certain bank balance at which we wouldn't think much before buying such a system.
There is nothing sadder than remembering two years later how much you paid for that 'hotrod' under your desk that is now slower than entry level systems...
When I add up what I paid for computer hardware over the year it's scary, good thing it made me more than I spent on it, I think of them as tools. But if it were for consumption only then I'd spend considerably less.
If you're a software developer you can justify such a rig as a tool and book it to expenses, for ordinary people, even the most avid of gamers it would most likely be overkill.
On another note, you tend to write much better software on a system several years old, and then to run it on modern hardware for production.
Slow machines tend to make programmers perform better :)
Buffet may not live in a Hollywood mansion, but his home isn't actually "modest". He lives in a nice part of Omaha, not the middle of nowhere, and he lives there because that's where Berkshire is based.
It also might be just a tad disingenuous to talk about the cheap car of a man who owns and makes use of a fleet of private jets.
I think that should be read as 'modest' in relation to the kind of mansion the rest of the super wealthy live in.
That said, Buffet is not exactly the most person on the planet but in comparison with the rest he comes off pretty good, and I highly doubt he'd be wearing a token of insecurity like this.
I've met some pretty rich people and the funny thing is that those that are truely wealthy and capable don't need such frippery.
I find when I wake up at the same time each day I do a lot better. Weekends completely throw me off cause I can usually sleep in until 7, sometimes at the latest 8.
I have a few methods of waking up.
1. Cell phone alarm set to 5 a.m, this is hit or miss. Sometimes I actually wake up a minute before the alarm even goes off.
2. A 2.5 year old who wakes me up with a plastic golf club or other blunt instrument on the weekends (this is the whole sleeping in part)
3. Instances like this morning, where I was up at 3:15 because I stopped breathing...
The last one is not recommended but it always wakes me up. Thankfully it does not happen too often, just now and again.
Routine is get out of bed, roll the arms around to get the blood circulating, make a nice breakfast and prepare a lunch to take into the office. Drink a bottle of water, turn the coffee pot on, knock out a set of push ups, hit the shower, get dressed, get in car, get 2 blocks down the road and realize I forgot the lunch or my pants, turn around, get item, head to office.
Weekend is fairly void of a routine with the exception of my son waking me up, and taking him to Starbucks in the morning to flirt with chicks.
Ultimately, My routine during the week is the best one for me. It make's me pretty productive, and I really enjoy being the only one in the office for a few hours. It's amazing what you can get accomplished when no one is around to interrupt you.
I am 26, I now have 1 child and another on the way. If there was anything I wished I had done right after graduation it is travel around the world. Since you don't have an immediate need to jump straight into the work force that is my suggestion. You can utilize the time to figure out what you want to do, perhaps obtain a new idea for a start up.
Once you start popping out kids, get a mortgage and everything else creeps up on you it can be hard to find the time to just go on vacation for a week let alone a month or two.
Agreed. I backpacked across europe for ~$4k in 1999. Should be a bit more right now, but really a drop in the bucket for you.
Get some guys together (the more varied the personalities, the better), and spend a month relaxing, drinking, and womanizing. Have some fun, try to break a few laws while you're there. Just do it on the last night in each country, so you can get out. (nothing major, but if you're not kicked out of a single bar, you'll be disappointed).
I see a lot of people recommending virtual pc but does anyone have anything to say about vm fusion? A buddy of mine was going to hook me up with a copy. I've used virtual PC on linux quite a bit but I was always frustrated with the lack of ability to bridge the networking.
I think it's great (trouble-free for me). No problems with networking and almost seamless. Though, I rarely use it for more than a few minutes each week. Just to test web pages out in IE. Which MultipleIE is great for:
Fusion works, but its full-screen mode is rather unfortunate—this is putting it kindly. While running full-screen, when you drag the mouse to the top of the screen, the Mac menubar appears. There's no way to turn this behavior off (please prove me wrong!). I honestly can't imagine a case where anybody could prefer this, and to have no option at all to disable it is a real disappointment. When my license expires, I'll take another hard look at Parallels.
Fusion's really easy to use. I've got Windows 7 installed on it, using the 'Vista' install option, and it's working great. It makes it so easy to get it working on the network, and to create a shared folder between the VM and your Mac (if you ask it to).
Because he is applying formula #1: go to college -> get A job -> make money
Nowhere in there does it say he can get more than one job, start a side business, etc. He's stuck using a broken ideology, but that is apparently all he was taught during those years in college. Poor soul just doesn't know any better.
But you are leaning towards a more logical, reasoned formula. Formula #2.
Practicing frugality and taking every last dollar would help the problem. He's got like 7k worth of credit card debt, which could be paid off in as little as 6 months if he really busted his ass delivering pizza at night. This is assuming he pulls in roughly 250 a week in tips and wages. and continues paying his 300 a month towards the credit card.
Continuing, once the CC is paid off he will take that pizza delivery money and the 300 he has been paying and "snowball" that into the pay off of student loans.
Listen to Dave ramsey's show and it's amazing some people pay upward to 45k in debt off in a matter of 18 months on a 24k salary. It's entirely possible if you have determination, but I don't think this guy does.
Right now, it's even hard to get a pizza delivery job.
An acquaintance of mine has been searching for an engineering (not programming) job for months out of college and was excited to get a paper boy job. (He's okay financially due to an understanding fiance, but worried that he will never end up in the field.)
Numismatics - Expensive as hell, but can be done on a cheaper scale. I started out broad and have narrowed my focus to Mexican coinage of the first and second republic from a specific mint. The research into it may eventually lead to a book, as virtually no reference material exists at the moment. There is something pretty cool in holding a coin that is a few hundred years old and imagining who held it, the stories it could tell, and viewing the art associated with it.
Crossfit / Olympic Lifting. I started Crossfit, I found I enjoyed it but really sucked at the olympic lifting. Then my box started a class specific on the fundamentals of olympic lifting, now I'm hooked on both. It's good to get out from behind the desk, move and jump and lift. It can be bad though, I've seen bad boxes where one can hurt themselves easily. It really comes down to the coaches and you making smart decisions.
Finally Wood working - I love creating furniture most of all and am at the point where my extended family have started asking me to make furniture pieces for them. There is something about starting out with several pieces of wood and ending up with a finished product that you've made with your own hands... Although I can point out every flaw in every piece I've ever created!