The Logic of a Madman - Volume 2

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There are certain advantages to being a pessimist after all. Take today for example, because I was checking out my bank account balance online and saw that Uncle Sam had left a gift in there for me. I had been keeping tabs on the whole “Economic Stimulus Package” that they had been talking about since Washington had come up with the scheme, and figured I was about as up to date as I could be. My life is regimented down to the last dollar these days as I had finally gotten sick of being poor and decided to do something about it. The first phase of eliminating my poverty was to stop whining about it. The second phase was to live at 80 percent of my income instead of living on the fringes. The third phase was to eliminate my credit card debt. The third phase was to start packing the money I would have wasted on interest and bounce charges into a high interest savings account.

Now there were phases before all of this started that are integrated into it as well, such as taking maximum advantage of my 401k at work. There are benefits in most 401k programs that go beyond the simple tax savings and the fact that your money is playing around in the stock market after all. My 401k program in particular has a company match which is 50 percent up to 8 percent of my salary, and that equals free money. I put 70 dollars a week in my 401k {which feels like about 40 since it lowers my tax rate and the taxes from it are gone} and the company puts in 35 which is a 50 percent interest rate immediately. I have been trying to explain this to all of the lunkheads at work who are complaining about a 6 percent loss this year in the market. My 401k also has a 6 week vestment period {which means after 6 weeks anything the company puts in the account is mine regardless of whether I quit the job or not} and that is better than most companies that have anywhere from 6 months to a year vesting on theirs.

This all just started the ball rolling though, because when I stopped whining about living within my own means, then I was happy to have money in savings and not in junk food and other things. It really was a lot easier than it sounds, and the over-all perspective of it all is hope. Slow periods happen and I would love nothing better than to run out and get that new widescreen television, but it isn’t in my budget so I don’t. I spend more time writing and creating things then I used to out of necessity to keep my fingers moving, but there are also things like tax refunds and stimulus packages to keep me going as well. I tracked it in my free time as well and kept my means within the conservative estimation of what I was supposed to get. It should have been enough to pay my car insurance for the next 6 months, pay off my fuel budget {credit card} and maybe even get me a couple of hundred dollars closer to my get out of New Hampshire fund.

Now this was all predicated on what I was reading in the news. According to the news reports {from all of the reliable sources that get paid to study these things} I was supposed to get 900 dollars and based on my social security numbers I was supposed to get it in late June. I lived well within this and it was part of the hope that it would all fall within this model. Well aside from the fact that I already let the cat out of the bag that it appears to be a month and a half early, it also happens to be 1500 dollars instead of being the 900 dollars I had anticipated. This was such great news that I decided to write a blog about it, and share a few points that I had noticed while tracking the money and how much I was going to get.

The most important point of it all was that most of the news media spent a rather large amount of time doing whatever they could to make me feel like I wasn’t getting as much, or getting it later than I should. That’s obvious, but they also spent a lot of time trying to convince me that it wouldn’t help anything, and in the end it wouldn’t make anyone happy other than Wal-Mart. I am here to tell you right now that it made me very happy, and if it makes anyone out there miserable then it is because they are idiots. All of the yammering against the stimulus package always seems to be based on two factors. People who don’t work, or people who don’t need it. I’m happy that Warren Buffet doesn’t feel that he needs it, but I am disappointed that he once again decides that I don’t need it. I’m not even saying that I deserved it, but I am saying that I am grateful for it, and I have decided that after all of my penny pinching and responsibility over the last year, the extra 600 dollars that was in my deposit will most likely go towards that wide screen television. I did earn that, and if Wal-Mart is going to sell me the biggest one for the least amount of money than they deserve it as well ;8o)