personal finance

When you are poor you would like someone to share your financial burdens; you want to someone to give you some tax relief; you want someone to give your kids financial assistance to get through college; you want someone to bail you out of the financial crisis; it seems logical for you that the “rich” are taxed more - you call that graduated tax; you consider it fair that there are incentives/affirmative-action for the economically and socially challenged; the growing disparity between the quality of life in the rich and the poor bothers you; the concept of “free market” doesn’t always work in your interest; you find it surprising that CEOs are paid several million dollars a year while you can barely make your ends meet; you generally don’t like that the fact that health insurance is controlled by for-profit companies; and you want the government to have some control over banks/firms who handle your retirement money; you generally envy the “capitalists”.

When you are rich you want to enjoy all your wealth by yourselves; you think “poor” people are “poor” because they aren’t working hard enough to get “rich”; you think it’s unfair that you are taxed at a higher rate than the “poor” - you call that “spreading the wealth”; for you “charity” is only a means of reducing your taxable income - you generally don’t believe that “wealth should be spread around” so the concept of “charity” doesn’t really appeal to you; you are a staunch supporter of “free market” (but you still want the government to bail you out of financial mess - I don’t know what’s up with that); you recoil in horror because some plumber who earns more than $250,000 a year will pay about $3500 more per year in taxes; you think it’s draconian to limit profits or pay of any company or individual; you don’t care about the fact that health insurance is offered by for-profit companies - because you can basically afford anything they charge; you want minimum government involvement in anything that you are associated with financially; you believe that lack of government control leads to a “self-correcting” market; you generally hate the “socialist”.

The world isn’t black and white.

It’s one of those “deep-thought” days when I switch myself into a philosophical mode. Sometimes, this results in some extreme contemplation about the things I have been generally doing in my life. This time it was all about financial contemplation. The choice of the title is obviously inspired by the book “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig.

Before I start my rant, let me give you a very brief summary of what is the concept of Zen. It essentially means going back to the basic fundamentals, starting from zero, and building your way up (Robert Pirsig’s Zen, not the original Zen). This much knowledge is sufficient for the purpose of this article. If you want to read more about this concept click here and here.

Your financial life is a big machine with a lot of odds and ends thrown into it. To maintain this beast, you require some kind of financial prudence. Now, if there is a problem with this machine, the *Zen* way is to start looking at some fundamental issues. To do that, you have to take it apart and try to put it back together. In doing so, you will realize the significance of each component. This is exactly what I will attempt to do in the following.

I have listed some potential fundamental roadblocks that defeat financial prudence. Along each factor, there is a short line of description that sort of adds financial relevance (it’s deep…you could apply this to many other issues in life). Please note that these are from my personal experiences. I will encourage readers to find some peaceful time and do this exercise for themselves at least once.

1. Greed: This is foremost cause of most financial troubles. We want more, and we just don’t want to stop. Our greed not only puts us in the holes but also makes other people’s life miserable.
2. Lack of self-control: Sometimes we acknowledge our greed, but we just can’t stop spending any how. Credit cards don’t swipe themselves, we swipe them.
3. Lack of foresight: Greed also blinds our foresight. We buy stuff, but we simply fail to estimate how much it is going to cost us in the long run. Don’t buy an elephant just because it’s being offered for zero down and no payments for 12 months.
4. Underestimation of consequences: Sometimes, we have all of the above, but we grossly underestimate the financial repercussions of our decisions. You can also term this as too much optimism or lack of proper judgement.
5. Ignorance: Ok, people don’t like to acknowledge this, but this is true. How many of us really know how credit card payments are calculated? Whether your card is a charge card or a credit card? Whether not paying telephone bills affect your credit score? What is the grace period on your credit cards?
6. Inability to recognize a problem: Sometimes we don’t realize that we have a problem. At times we don’t recognize the *right* problem. If you earn $120K a year and still live paycheck-to-paycheck, low income is not your problem, it is something else.
7. Inability to learn from previous mistakes: Ok we made that late payment once and paid for it with heavy fines and increased APR. What did we do about it? did we make changes to the way we do things to avoid making the same mistake again?
8. Lack of organization: Oh ! I forgot to make the minimum payment. Oh ! forgot to mail in the rebate. Oh! I thought this due date was for the other card that I have. Oh ! I thought I had more money in my bank when I wrote that huge check for that expensive television.
9. Sheer laziness/carelessness: Ah!..what’s the hurry, I will do it later. I have seen countless people not willing to check out more than one store for some of their large purchases…the reason: “I am bored already”. Here is another one I have heard recently, “I don’t know anything about what kind of 401K plan our company offers. I have been planning to talk to HR about it, but I find it very boring to discuss this financial stuff”. What?!
10. Overconfidence: This is really dangerous when coupled with ignorance. Leads to situations like “I can make this mess and then I will easily bluff my way out of it”
11. Circumstances: This one is tricky. There are two types of circumstances. Type 1: self-inflicted; these are due to some or all of the above reasons. Type 2: sheer bad luck; these are just out of your control: medical expenses, car trouble, job loss, failure to garner enough votes for the economic bail-out package, etc.,

Except “Type 2″ circumstances, there is a scope for improvement in all of the above. We just need to look into ourselves before point fingers for our financial mess. Once you do that, you will be an expert in the art of financial prudence, and hopefully stay out of trouble for a long time to come. This is more philosophy than practicality, but you can give it a try..it may work for some of you.

In all humility, I am guilty of some (almost all) of them at some point or other, but I am learning.

Since reading some comments on my last post, I had been thinking about what this whole deal with “personal finance” is about; is it about making the most amount of money? or is it about saving the most amount of money? or is it about spending the least amount of money? or is it about reducing stress due to money matters? or is it about this obscure concept called “financial freedom”?

The more I think about it, the less specific I get about possible “correct” answers to that question. In fact, looking back at my life, it seems that at different times, a different answer suited me depending on my financial and personal situation at that time.

What came out of this thought process was the realization that personal finance is not just about “maximizing money” - as I used to think earlier - and like most people probably think about it.

It’s not about maximizing. It’s about optimizing.

Given a financial situation, personal finance is about making the best of that situation. Sometimes it means trying to make as much money as you can, and at other times it means trying to make your money work to make you more efficient by reducing your stress, and at some other times it means that you save every penny to make sure that your children don’t inherit your burden of debt.

There is nothing wrong in trying to “maximize money”, but it is important to realize that, depending on your personal situation, there are costs (in terms of stress and time) associated with trying to do that.

Examples are numerous (but vague and difficult to explain) in this area, but a simple one would be to think of a job in which you are paid overtime. Every extra hour you work might mean that you will become richer than the previous hour, but it does not mean that you would be stress-free - or that you would be able to devote enough time to your family. If you overdo it, it wouldn’t be too hard to make yourself and your family feel miserable even with the extra money you earn.

Working your ass off for a few extra bucks might be a good idea when you are a bachelor with hardly any cares in the world, but if you are a family man, then you might be better off by working a little less in lieu of spending a little more time with your family. Now, just because you gave up that little extra money to spend time with your family or to reduce your stress, it does not mean that you are careless or frivolous with your personal finances. In other words, just because you chase every penny, it does not mean that you are an epitome of financially astute people.

In general, for the sake of the betterment of the whole universe and your own self, try optimizing your money instead of maximizing it. It also helps to reevaluate our understanding of “personal finance” in perspective of our changing personal situation and revise our money-chasing efforts accordingly.

Duh!

Since a little more than seven months ago, I made some adjustments to the path in which my career was taking me and took up a job instead of pursuing PhD. One of the main reasons for going that route was that I was so narrowly focused for so long that I forgot why I was doing PhD in the first place (of course, there is more to that story that just that, but I won’t go into that with this post).

Anyways, our household income increased by about four times after I took up the job. Initially, things were taking a deflating turn for the first couple of months - I guess this was in part because I was a relatively “newly employed” and was undergoing training without any major responsibilities (plus,  I apparently hadn’t discovered new ways of spending the increased income). However, our spending took a turn for the worse right after I published this post in early February.

Additionally, I have now started paying a lot less attention to our financial details (”details” is the key word here). There are only two fundamental concepts that I have been keeping in front of me: 1. to not spend more than what we earn (look at #7 in the linked post), and 2. to not time the market. Everything else is just falling in its place automatically.

The rest of our life is now governed primarily by convenience. Here are just a few changes in our spending habits and financial attitudes that occurred over the last few months.

1. Paradigm shift in the way I manage credit cards: I no longer have the time or the patience to follow those balance transfer offers and research/keep track of how our income would be increased by juggling such offers. I don’t care about optimizing the rewards anymore, and just use credit cards for the simple reason that I get an itemized list of where we spend our money at the end of the month.

As such, I am not using all my credit cards anymore. The fact that I have so many of them seems a bit ridiculous to me at present (this is an interesting development). Plus, I have discovered other practical problems in having too many credit cards (more on this later), so I am down to using just two credit cards at present.

2. Preferences for schedules rather than prices. We have flown thrice since February and every time, we went for flights that were more “convenient” instead of flights that were cheaper. On one of those three occasions, we had the option to drive (which would have been a whole lot cheaper), but again, the time spent in driving didn’t seem worth money saved. Interestingly, in the past, we have driven to that very location twice and at that time, the money saved seemed a lot more worth than amount the time spent in driving.

3. Buying what we “like” rather than buying what is “cheap”. Affordability is still in our minds but we don’t kill ourselves trying to save a few cents (or even a few dollars at times). For example, earlier, for cereals, it was usually “Great Value” from Walmart - now, it’s Kellogg’s or whatever brand that seems better - from a store that is closest to home.

4. Outsourcing clothes for ironing. Ironing is one activity I hate - it may be because I never ironed my clothes (over several years) when I was a student. It either took 10 minutes of my time every morning, or about an hour every weekend. Now that’s replaced by 5 minutes of detour every other week and $25.

5. Eating out more. This is again a product of optimizing convenience rather than costs. If we are too tired or not in a mood to cook, we just eat out without worrying too much about it. And, when we eat out, the choice of restaurant is usually dictated by time (and sometimes by what we feel like eating) rather than by how cheap or expensive it is.

6. Using toll roads instead of regular roads. I tried using regular roads (read as traffic-light-infested-roads) for the first couple of months. However, as the stress at work started growing, I started using toll roads more frequently. The toll costs me a lot more than I would like, but using toll roads has reduced a lot of stress in my life. I am now happy when I reach my workplace in the morning, and I am happy when I reach home in the evening, and I don’t have to bitch about how horrible my luck is to catch all the red lights on the way.

Also, the drive that used to take me 30 minutes via regular road now takes about 10 minutes via toll road. That much time saved everyday is just priceless.

7. If the market bothers me, I just don’t look at it. Out of sight, out of mind is what probably works with me in this case. I have some set investing goals this year (in terms of how much I should invest and where) and I just stick with that without really worrying too much about what the market is doing at any given time.

Come to think of it, the increased income is working towards making our lives a bit easier. Call it lifestyle inflation or improvement in the quality of life, or call it just sheer laziness (I am sure there will be different perspectives), or whatever. All we care about is that there is a lot less stress in our lives by spending a little more  money.

As long as we avoid these problems with lifestyle inflation, I think we are okay.

I guess by now nobody cares if I am around … so this would be just to motivate myself to write a little more.

Looks like the site was down for a couple of months after some screwup with Wordpress/Hostmonster/Upgrade/That-Kind-of-Crap; so it took quite some efforts to get it back on track. Now, it looks all messed up so it will be a while before it looks pretty again.

Hoping to see some old friends again.

This is rather obvious, but not much appreciated in day-to-day life, so I thought of giving it a shout-out.

Over the last couple of months, I have been in the process of eagerly seeking a change in my current graduate student lifestyle. A part of this change, would come in the form of a real-life job in an industry. Those who have been following this blog since the beginning are probably aware of the fact that I have been studying towards my PhD - and wasn’t all too happy about the way things have been going for a long time. Finally, sometime in the last couple of months, I bought an artificial backbone from Dogbert at an enormous price ( ) and that has given me the necessary courage to create my own destiny instead of relying on some general-purpose ignorant idiots. Looking for a job at this juncture is probably going to cost me my PhD degree, but I think I can live in peace even without those three alphabets.

Anyways, after I conveyed my thoughts to my superiors, it has been really interesting to observe a change in their attitude towards me. My time and knowledge of certain things (which were utterly disregarded till this point) have now suddenly become top priorities for some folks. People are now really listening to what I want to say and I am hearing a few good words about the work that I have done so far. [Either that, or it's just like people are obligated to say good things about you when you are gone (cough*eulogy*cough). :)]. All in all, it’s almost exactly opposite of what has been going on so far and it sure feels good - although it’s too late for any amends at this point.

It’s probably human nature to take certain things for granted - till those certain things become hard to come by. This happens to the best of us when it comes to money, character, relationships, and other important assets. Unfortunately, the value of such assets is almost always appreciated only near the breaking point - when you are about to lose an asset, or have just lost it and when it’s too late to regret.

In this spirit, let’s take a moment to recognize and appreciate our hidden assets (whatever they may be) - let’s do it right now … before it’s too late.

Let’s sing a slightly different tune with this post - instead of the usual debt bashing. When I say “bad” debt, I am referring to the “good debt, bad debt” terminology that’s gathering some attention in financial circles - I am not referring to it in a classic technical definition point of view as “the portion of receivables that can no longer be collected“.

To understand the significance of debt in general, it’s instructive to imagine a society in which the facility to borrow money does not exist at all. Think in terms of education, industrial development, housing “requirements”, entrepreneurial endeavors, emergencies, and other aspects of our life that involve borrowing (and lending) money in some form or other.

While you are at it, try answering these questions: Would you be willing to wait till you are 35 years of age for higher education (think in terms of advanced graduate, law, medical degrees, etc.) - at which time you could probably pay for your entire education with cash in hand? Would you be willing to wait till you are 60 before you buy a home with your savings? How would you even start setting up a promising company/small business unit (say for example, a manufacturing unit) that would probably require a couple of million dollars of initial funding?

The common crucial denominator in the above issues is time - with respect to the psychological and physical (monetary) value associated with it. There are certain things in life that need to happen at the right time - whether you have the financial resources available at that time or not. In light of this, debt should be viewed not just as financial leverage - but also as leverage against time and as such, it has an enormous value when applied correctly.

In layman terms, the correct application of debt requires understanding the concept as timely financial help borrowed in the anticipation of future earnings. Most of the times, the part that says “anticipation of future earnings” is ignored or undermined or totally miscalculated and that’s where problems start appearing. Some people probably tend forget that any borrowed stuff needs to be returned in a timely manner and then, all of a sudden, money borrowed for good purposes becomes “bad debt”.

I think it’s naive to only bring up negative connotations associated with credit card business, payday loans, and subprime mortgages when talking about debt and painting the whole concept of borrowing money with a broad “debt is slavery” brush. Debt is slavery only when we use it mindlessly.

In summary, there is no such thing as “bad” debt - there is just bad implementation, unreasonable temptation, and occasional miscalculation. Like most financial issues, debt is simply a question of affordability and feasibility - there is absolutely nothing profoundly bad about it. Just my two cents.

A few days ago, CBS Evening News ran an article titled “Caregivers Rise to the Challenge” which featured some families that were struggling to keep up with taking care of their aged parents (in terms of time and money). Here is an excerpt from the article:

Winchell’s family may be America’s new norm. An estimated 34 million Americans care for loved ones age 50 and over. A just-released healthcare study of a thousand caregivers finds half of them are spending more than 10 percent of their income on it. One in three used some of their savings to cover costs. Just like the Winchells.

When asked if they had any savings put away for their own retirement, Stacy Winchell said, “No and I don’t foresee that at this point in time that there will be any retirement.”

…. But without her own financial cushion, it might be her own children who have to be there for her, when the time comes.

People who are struggling to maintain their own financial well being, in addition to looking after their parents and their kids, are what I call the “sandwiched generation”.

Notice the sort-of-treadmill effect in the above example? Stacy doesn’t have anything saved for her retirement - which effectively means that her children will probably have to spend their savings towards her post-retirement well being - which very likely means that they will probably have less for themselves in future. It’s an interesting cycle (played out all too well in most developing countries) - one which will not come to an end unless one of the generations takes the additional pains of providing for their parents as well as their kids.

A few months ago, Jonathan @ My Money Blog voiced concerns along these lines - which effectively summarized the classic dilemma that the sandwiched generation faces:

But what if they do run into issues, for whatever reason? I know that I’d step in to help for sure. For one, I know that my parents regularly give my grandparents money. I don’t know how much or how often, it could be just spending money, but I know they do send something. I guess this is what some people call the “sandwich” problem. Young families have their own retirement worries on one side, their kid’s education in the middle, and their parents’ needs on the other side.

Do you worry about your parents’ retirement plans? Should a child ask their parents about such details or get involved? How does one incorporate this into their own financial plan?

Check out the comments below Jonathan’s post to get a feel of how some people are addressing the issue.

I guess we would all ask these questions to ourselves at some point of time - whether our parents are in a good financial position or not. With what intensity you ponder over these question probably depends on your culture, temperament, and your personal relations with your parents, but most of you will think about this for sure.

I am probably among the fortunate young (in a relative sense) people who may not have to worry too much about the post-retirement financial concerns of their parents. My dad and mom voluntarily retired when they were 49 and 46 years old, respectively. They planned their finances very well (although we barely made “middle-class” in the kind of society we lived in) and are probably set for the rest of their lives.

Although, it’s reassuring to know that my parents are taking good care of their money, I am still keeping some part of my income earmarked for them - in case of unanticipated health care issues in future. Plus, we (me and my wife) are slowly acknowledging (and preparing for) the fact that, in future, our careers and/or lifestyle decisions may be affected by our willingness to be caregivers for our parents - if and when the need arises. This is, of course, in addition to working towards our own financial well being - so that our children won’t have to worry about our financial stability after we retire.

As for health issues, there isn’t much we can do right now - except to make sure that we maintain a reasonably healthy lifestyle and to that our health care costs are not our children’s burden. As for our children (when we have them), we are not yet sure how much financial help they would need - for now, saving for their education is our only concern. It all boils down to saying that when we save about 25% of our income, part of those savings are earmarked for kids and parents.

Another thought to take home from this discussion is to acknowledge that your financial and physical health not only affects you, but also a generation before you and a couple of generations after you. If you get into trouble (in terms of health or money), whether out of sheer obligation or out of willingness, people who care about you are generally bound to come to your aid (unless you have been a total ass all your life) - and although they may not admit it, it will cause them and their family some discomfort. As such, it is up to you to make sure that they don’t suffer because you didn’t plan your finances well when you had a chance, or because you never cared about your health.

Do you belong to the sandwiched generation? How are you dealing with it?

Observe and understand.

1. In debt

2. Living paycheck-to-paycheck

3. Sucked by money leaks

4. Frugal living

5. Frugal living with multiple income streams

6. Stingy

7. Happy

Peace out.