First off...I love football. I am not a big pro sports guy, but I enjoy all levels of football. From little kids playing Pop Warner, to High School, College and the Pro's, for me there is no better drama in sports.
Even though I am no Green Bay Packer fan (Go Cowboys!) I can't help trying seeing parallels in our own career path that we need to understand.
For those not following the story; basically Brett Favre, a future Hall-of-Fame Quarterback for Green Bay (GB), decided to retire at the end of last season. It was a shock, given that the team well over achieved expectations. It wasn't a shock though that it was coming. A 15 year veteran, he had hinted at it for two years. Brett retires, team moves on, new QB, other personnel changes...then Brett decides he made a hasty rash decision and he wants to come back...(cue record scratch sound). Team says we have moved on, Brett say fine trade me to this team. GB says nope, they are our rival and it would hurt our fan base, but you are under contract so we control that move.
It gets worse from there, now there are rough feeling etc.. It isn't resolved as of this writing, but probably will be this week.
So...how does this ties to personal finance and career advise?:
Its a sad story for a sports hero, team and fans to learn that even the best, eventually, are displaced. But it is a lesson we all should know too.
The smell of firecrackers are gone, and the first whiffs of "Back to School" are in the air. The month that was is, is was and will be is now! (say that 3 times fast!). Great month even with the Evil Ninja fair popping up and spending too much there, we still did pretty darn well with an increase of $2, 093 to our Net Worth!
Highlights:
Points to Work on:
Goals:
Baby Steps:
That's it!
Quick post today.
I have noticed something interesting since I have been back writing the Blog. The more I post and write, the lower the subscriber list goes!
It made me think about how we all react to availability.
Question: What is generally the best Rated Episodes of a TV series...Answer: The Premiere and the Finale! It is probably the reason people used to really like mini-series!
Not that I will stop posting just to get my numbers up, but it was just an interesting observation (at least to me!).
Back in January I posted about a car that was announced by Tata Motors. The Nano was to smash price barriers for the third world and sell for less than $2500.
Well Tata, which recently bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford, is having a tough time hitting the price point given the commodity price increase over the last 6 months.
Today in BusinessWeek they spotlighted the status of the little wonder and some of their prospective customers, especially in India. Based on the taxes and other initial expenses the car won't be quite as cheap as hoped. A good used car, with AC can be had for about $3000 (and if you have been to India, you'll recommend the AC!).
Will the Nano be as successful as its iPod namesake? Who knows, but I remember when dealer in the US were all worried be a car out of Eastern Europe...the Yugo!
I plan to be the first blogger in space. It would only be for 2 1/2 hours and 5 mins weightless, but it officially counts as space travel for the (very wealthy) everyman. Virgin Galactic can make that a real possibility.
OK, so I am $199,990 short on the ticket price (I have $10 left over from my allowance) and they have already per-sold 250 out of the first years 500 seats, but it still leaves 250 more :) Plus I'd like to go when all of the kinks are worked out!
OK, so personal finance would be out the window, but I am from that first generation of kids that had astronauts as hero's. I was just six-months old when Neil Armstrong made that "Giant Leap for Mankind," 8-yrs old when Star Wars came out not to mention in my teens when I realized it probably wasn't gonna happen in my lifetime, Buck Rogers or not. This really is stuff of dreams
Just a few years ago Burt Rutan changed all that. His PRIVATE company designed a ship that went into space, safely returned and collected the X-Prize. The X-Prize was a $1 Million prize to the first that could pull it off. While he spent well more than that to do it (Paul Allen of Microsoft fame was a key investor) the prize lit a spark under a great group of businessmen that went for it.
Richard Branson of Virgin fame, saw the excitement and quickly made a deal with Burt to turn his design into the first affordable space excursion available to man. Before this some very rich folk had bought $10 Million rides to the space station, but Virgin is taking it to a whole other dimension.
In the first year alone, as I said, Virgin hopes to fly 500 people into space. To put that into perspective, that is nearly equal to ALL of the people that have EVER gone into space. Pretty amazing.
Look, I get that this is a horrible investment. However it isn't dis-similar to wanting to climb Mount Everest or take a Submarine to see the Titanic. In fact the price will come down in time and with increased competition.
Anyway this is the sort of thing that is neat to at least highlight. Remember it is a curse and a blessing to say, "May you live in interesting times!"
Who's with me! Moon or Bust :)
The title is how I have always seen gasoline pump prices go. It seems like when oil goes up $1 barrel, gas will jump that day. Forget the logic that says, there is no way oil got from the Oil Derrick, to the refinery and to the gas station to be pumped into my car in Southern Oregon the next day.
However, the second part of the statement is true also. The day prices go down, do the pump prices? Nope. It can take days or weeks to fall. The talking heads (the PR people, not the band) will tell you, "OH, it takes time to filter through..."
I have to say though, this time feels different. Maybe this is due to demand actually falling this time and the oil companies trying to stoke usage. Summer is their traditional big demand month and yet in June demand was 5.2% off!
According to this article prices are going to dip up to 25 cents more by Labor Day. Cannot come to soon. Energy has been a key driver (along with cheap money) of inflation. Perhaps we can escape the "Pit and the Pendulum" one more time!
Are the prices coming down where you are as well?
