For those of you who are regulars around here, you’ll know I’ve been trying to lose some weight over the past few months. I started at a ungodly fat 268.8 pounds back at about the end of January. Over the months, I’ve been slowly knocking off the pounds, getting closer and closer to my goal of 220 pounds. I know that all of you literally sit on the edge of your seat, waiting for Saturday to come so you can get your update on the weight loss of some guy you’ve never met.

Well, wait no more! I have conquered fatness!

I promptly celebrated by eating a giant cheeseburger, fries and hot fudge sundae. I ate the crap out of those things and they were delicious.

Now that I’ve cracked the 220 pound level, I’m ditching my glasses in favor of contacts. You can buy contacts these days that you wear continuously for 30 days, meaning they’re perfect for a lazy guy like me. Like most things, contacts are much cheaper if you buy them online, so I’ll be doing that. Maybe I’ll even treat you guys to a post about how much cheaper contacts are online.

Random Thing I Enjoyed This Week

As you’ve probably figured out by now, I took a blogging break for a week, meaning there was no link dump last week.

While you probably didn’t enjoy it, (after all, there was no me in your pitiful little life) I really enjoyed a weekend of not being plugged in. While technology and blogging and whatnot has made my life better in just about every way, sometimes you just gotta take a break from it all. I took the opportunity to spend time with my family and friends, and to eat a pretty delicious Easter dinner. So that was nice.

Random Thing That Irritated Me This Week

My fellow chip jockey has been on holidays over the past two weeks, and the company sent out a replacement guy for him. And replacement is probably the nicest word I can use to describe him.

What a lazy guy. All he cared about was doing the minimum amount of business he could, and then getting the hell out of town. Since I go to a lot of the same stops he does, I was left selling in lots of chips to make up for him. And he was actually a good guy. If he wouldn’t have been so lazy, I probably would have actually liked him. Instead, I want him to never come back again.

Song I Like And Therefore You Should Too

I just want to say I liked The Arcade Fire before they won all those Grammys. Now that they have and everybody knows who they are, I kind of don’t like them anymore. They were my little secret, the band I liked that nobody had heard of. Everybody knows who they are, so I’m not unique in liking them anymore.

It’s funny their third album was the one that won all the Grammys, since the first two are clearly better. Their first album is about as good as music gets. Stop reading this right now and go buy it.

Simpsons Quote Of The Week

Fat Tony: I don’t get it. Everybody likes the rats, but nobody likes the rat’s milk.

Blogging Snack of The Week

One of the local grocery stores has pretzels. No big deal, right?

What if I told you there was peanut butter inside? They are every bit as delicious as I would have thought. If you get the chance, I’d recommend eating them. Or, taking off your shirt and covering your chest in pretzels. I may or may not have done that.

Sports TV You Should Watch This Week

I don’t even know why anyone wouldn’t be watching sports this weekend.

There are multiple baseball, basketball and hockey games on this weekend. Both hockey and basketball’s playoffs have been pretty decent so far. How good were the game sevens between Chicago/Vancouver and Boston/Montreal? Both games were super tight, with both going to overtime.

I entered a hockey pool, picking only guys from Nashville and Boston. I’m going to finish in either last place or first. Either way, it’s gonna be spectacular.

Blogging Babe Of The Week

As soon as you guys saw the picture of Money Rabbit on the National Post’s website, you knew I was going to have fun with it.

I was contacted by the guy from the National Post. I emailed him back, and then heard NOTHING. I’m guessing the problem was that I wanted to do a email interview, and it sounds like he did phone interviews with the girls. Since I hate talking on the phone, I prefer to communicate via email, especially to someone I don’t know.

Anyhoo, here’s the picture of Money Rabbit that the Post took. Money Rabbit, call me. Oh, wait. Maybe e-mail me instead.

Creepers like me have even more clues towards Money Rabbit’s identity. But wait. What’s that in the background?

OH NO! HE’S FOLLOWED MONEY RABBIT INTO THE HOUSE! OH MY GOD! QUICK, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

Oh Right, Time For Links

Holy Potato has a great post about blogging anonymously and the brand even an anonymous blogger creates. We all have identities online, and my identity as Financial Uproar is just as important as anyone’s identity. Great post.

Echo is going to be moving soon. No word on whether I’ve been invited to his housewarming party at the new house, but I’ll probably show up anyway. Someone has to bring the chips.

Andrew Hallam is a better man than you or I. He’s not about to let a little thing like cancer get him down. Read his inspiring story about beating cancer and then finishing 3rd in a race of 11,000 people.

I haven’t listened to this podcast from PT Money about self publishing and selling Kindle books, but I’m definitely interested.

Rachelle from Landlord Rescue really knows her stuff when it comes to investment real estate. She has a great detailed post about the pitfalls of owning rental property.

Canadian Capitalist doesn’t care for Garth Turner’s advice. Garth Turner is pretty entertaining, but his advice isn’t really well thought out sometimes.

Canadian Mortgage Trends calls out a RBC mortgage rep who issued a leaflet that bashed mortgage brokers. What’s much more interesting than the actual article is the comments. I find mortgage agents in general overestimate their professionalism compared to banks. I like brokers, I used to be one for goodness sakes. I just think, like real estate agents, they need to realize they’re not the only way to get a mortgage.

Jim from Retire Happy talks about the importance about being debt free when you retire. I’d personally file that under the “well, duh” category, but the fact is that many retirees have debt these days.

Carnivals This Week

None. Did you expect any different?

Have a good week everyone.

 

I’ve been accused of being obsessed about money in the past. My sister and her husband once accused me of being a heartless bastard who cared about nothing but money. While I disagreed with the heartless bastard part, I had to admit thinking about money dominates my thoughts at times. I think about investing. I think about minimizing my expenses and increasing my earnings. I spend time on Twitter discussing money with people. I’m usually thinking of either money, sports or boobs. I quite enjoy those three things.

Is my obsession with money a bad thing? At what point should I take a step back and stop worrying about money so much?

Meet David

Like that time I talked about the old man who works at Wal-Mart, I’ve got another money story that’ll bum you out a little. If you need cheering up, I’d recommend one of my Saturday Link Dumps. They’re usually pretty funny.

Unlike Leonard though, I don’t have to hide any details of his life. David was kind enough to tell his story to the LA Times. I bet all of you twenty bucks that he’s gonna regret it once he reads the comments. Wow, people are mean when hiding behind anonymity on the internet.

Since you’re all clearly too lazy to click through to the Times’ story, let me give you the juicy parts:

Schoolteacher David Moehlman has a money problem.

He has a lot of it — more than $1 million in savings accounts and mutual funds, plus half a million or so in real estate. And he has no debt.

Moehlman, 44, didn’t amass the vast majority of this nest egg through an inheritance or other windfall. He worked hard and made some good investments.

And he took savings to an extreme. For example, he eats breakfast and dinner every day at fast-food places where he always orders off the $1 menu, and lunch is usually a 75-cent microwave burrito.

At first glance, he seems just like another cheap guy, albeit one that can’t cook. But his story gets more sad.

He has a car, but it comes out of the garage only a couple of times a year. Otherwise he rides a motorcycle to save on gas. When the weather turns rainy and cold, he dons a snowsuit for riding.

But he worries constantly about money — especially that he will not have enough for retirement — and has made saving a center of his life.

“If I had $10 million I wouldn’t live any differently because spending money doesn’t make me happy,” said Moehlman, who lives in Moreno Valley. “I don’t know where it comes from, but I’ve always been this way.”

Most people would give their right pinky finger to have a nest egg the size of David’s. Yet he constantly worries he doesn’t have enough for retirement. Apparently he’s forgotten about the generous teacher pension he’s going to get.

Moehlman’s life has been marked by family tragedies. His two brothers were killed in separate traffic accidents. His father had a stroke and requires round-the-clock care.

The schoolteacher was married at one point, but his extreme saving habits contributed to the relationship ending in divorce.

He said he had dreams of retiring at age 55 or earlier and moving to Mexico or Ecuador for the more affordable lifestyle. He thought it could mark a new beginning.

“I think it would be good for me,” he said. “It would get me out of my box.”

But now he is the only sibling left to help take care of his father.

This situation is clearly not good. I’m not a psychologist, but David obviously has some pretty serious issues going on. Most people save up money so they have the freedom to partake in luxuries. David seems to be on some sort of quest to constantly add to the pile that is his net worth.

People Don’t Want To End Up Like David

There are cheap people out there and there are frugal people. David makes cheap people look like Donald Trump.

We all know David is too extreme in his saving. His lifestyle has actually driven people away from him who once loved him. This is unequivocally bad. David’s results are impressive, we just don’t agree with his methods. He’s achieved financial freedom, but at what cost?

Now put yourself in the shoes of your friend or family member who don’t give two craps about money. They look at you making your own laundry detergent (or whatever odd thing you do to save money) and think you’re absolutely insane. To them, we’re all just a bunch of Davids.  We’d all quickly step up and say David is the crazy one, that we have balance in our lives. But do we really, when so much of our time and energy are spent obsessing about dollars and cents?

Ultimately, these types of decisions are the personal part of personal finance. It’s up to you to decide whether you take your frugality too far. There’s a line in the sand you’ve drawn at some point, and you refuse to cross it. Maybe you refuse to shop at thrift stores. Maybe you refuse to live in your parents’ basement past a certain age. Or maybe you’re not above eating from the dollar menu every day. And while that line might seem normal to you, it would repulse someone who takes money far less seriously.

Are You Normal?

When it comes to money, I am certainly not normal. I’ve tried all sorts of crazy schemes to make extra cash and to save cash.

As I get older and more mature, I realize life is about more than just the money. I want to become wealthy and to build my passive income up. I want to pay off the mortgage on my house so I have somewhere to live for next to nothing. There are all sorts of financial dreams I still want to achieve.

Yet there are all sorts of dreams I want to achieve that cost money. I want to travel. I want to meet that special someone and grab her boobs repeatedly. I want little Uproars running around, just as long as they don’t bug me while the Jays are on. While having money makes these dreams much easier to accomplish, these are definitely activities that cost money.

At what point does a saver switch and start to spend their money? Where is the proper balance between planning for the future and living for today? No matter where you are on the savings spectrum, these are questions you must ask yourself. And maybe us savers are a little closer to being David than we’d like to admit.

 

About a year ago, on this very blog, I began to pound the table on a real estate correction that I thought was imminent in Canada. All the signs were there- frothy valuations, (currently at over 5 times average income) record low interest rates, a sputtering economy, as well as two markets that are, by all metrics, ridiculously overvalued. Those markets are Toronto and Vancouver, in case you’re wondering. I’m way too lazy to click back, but I may have even called it a bubble.

A year later, my predictions haven’t exactly come true. While some markets in the west have been somewhat stagnant, markets like Toronto and Vancouver have  surged on ahead. There are more listings out there, and more buyers are waiting until they make the plunge into homeownership. The market has transformed from a seller’s market to more of a buyer’s market, but we haven’t seen many price declines in many markets. The bottom line is the housing market isn’t doing too badly.

I still stand by my prediction that the housing market will correct in Canada, especially in Toronto and Vancouver, with the condo market getting hit especially hard. Record debt levels combined with increasing interest rates cannot be good news for the average homeowner. The U.S. market collapsed with the average income to home price ratio at 4.6, below where Canada currently is.

As with any overvalued market, calling the top is incredibly difficult. Fundamentals can be out of whack for years before everybody realizes something is wrong. Often, there’s some sort of extraordinary event that serves as the catalyst for the market collapsing, like the falling of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns during the most recent financial crisis. Often, by the time the media gets around to reporting on a bubble, the bubble has already burst.

The Strategy

If I’m of the opinion that the real estate market is overvalued, then shouldn’t I advocate away from home ownership? Maybe I should take it a step further and suggest that baby boomers sell their real estate and rent for the rest of their lives. If real estate prices are bound to go down, then isn’t that just good planning? Someone can diversify their real estate proceeds into bonds and other asset classes that provide income.

If somebody isn’t willing to sell their home and uproot their family, then perhaps I should be telling them to delay buying a home for as long as possible. They should wait for the inevitable decline and then pick up a cheaper home once prices decline. Oh, if only things were that simple.

The Reality

If someone lives in a house that’s paid for, there is value in that. Somebody gets to live without having the pressure of having a mortgage or rent payment. So many people work hard for a long time to pay off their mortgage because there’s value in not having a payment to worry about every month. This is extremely important to all sorts of people. Having significant equity tied up in a home has value because it lets people live without a mortgage payment. Everyone has to pay for a place to live.

Meanwhile, we have younger folks who are looking to buy their first house. Depending on the people, some either have decided to settle down in a particular place or they’ve decided they’re going to stay somewhere for a few years. I absolutely advocate people buying a house if they’ve decided to settle down somewhere. Buying can serve as a psychological step into becoming more of a grown up. Owning a home can further entrench someone in the community they buy in, as well as causing them to take pride in owning something. When someone reaches a certain point in their life there usually becomes a desire to settle down and home ownership is usually included.

So to summarize, if someone is feeling the itch to own a home, I still think they should buy one, assuming they’re going to be in one place for longer than a few years. If someone is looking to own for the guaranteed profit, then I think they’d be better off renting.

So Who Should Sell?

There are only two groups of people I think should sell.

The first group of people are the baby boomers who are thinking of selling anyway. Their motivation isn’t usually fully about cashing out equity, rather they’re looking at simply downsizing. They sell their big house, buy a condo or townhouse and bank the rest of their equity. They reduce the exposure to real estate in their net worth, as well as getting a place that makes more sense to them going forward. This is a good strategy and I think people should do this.

The other groups of people I think should sell are those people who loaded up on investment real estate during the ride up. I cannot stress how dangerous it is to borrow money at a 10:1 ratio on a property that cash flows only a couple hundred bucks a month. I beg those people to sell as quickly as they can before something inevitably happens. Leverage increases risk, plain and simple, and if you combine leverage with a crappy market, you can be in a house of pain.

 

I think I’m one of only about 12 hardcore baseball fans in Canada. Krystal joins me as a fan, meaning there are only 10 more people in the entire country that would rather watch the Blue Jays than the Maple Leafs. Another one of those guys is my buddy, who is a little obsessed with the sport that unfolds at its own leisurely pace.

For me, one of the ways to get more out of the baseball season is to play fantasy baseball. I’m currently in two leagues, leading one (out of 20 teams, go me!) and I’m in 16th in the other one (also out of 20 teams, boo me!). I’m hoping that I can hold on to this lead, but I’m not optimistic.

While looking at players on the scrap heap last night, I started to think about how fantasy baseball can be a lot like investing. Different fantasy owners have different strategies for their teams, just like different investors have different strategies. Like in investing, it’s not always the well known sexy names that determine the outcome of the league, rather it’s the guys picked near the end of the draft that do much better than expected.

Let’s take a look at the five different categories of players/investments, with a few examples of each. This post will probably not help you be a better investor or fantasy baseball player, but you should still stay and read it all. If not, I might cry.

The Studs

Fantasy Baseball: Albert Pujols, Roy Halladay, Hanley Ramirez, Ryan Braun

Investing: Google, Apple, Wal-Mart, Coca Cola

These are the players and companies that are just about slam dunks. The players are the best of the best, often leading the league in their individual categories. Albert Pujols might end up being the best hitter of all time. Roy Halladay is the best pitcher in the National League, and might even be the best in the whole MLB. Even lesser known stars like Ramirez or Braun are great performers, they just don’t quite get the attention as some of the others because they play in places where the mainstream press often overlook.

Like the players, companies in this category are the best of the best. Their products are head and shoulders above their competition. You won’t find anybody with a bad thing to say about them, and rightfully so. They consistently deliver great results to investors. When the market sells off, these companies will always outperform the market. Investors normally flock to these stocks, which can sometimes cause them to get overvalued, but usually the stocks end up growing into their value.

The Slow And Steady Performers

Fantasy Baseball: Kevin Youkilis, Shin-Soo Choo, Adam Dunn, Jokim Soria

Investing: Reitmans, Roger’s Sugar, Kellogg, Microsoft

In baseball, these are the guys who aren’t quite as good as the stars, but are still pretty good baseball players. These players will put up decent stats for a fantasy team owner, all while doing it under the radar. A hardcore baseball fan can tell you why all these players are valuable, but for whatever reason, a lot of casual fans aren’t aware of how good these guys are.

As investments, these companies are usually in mature industries, and they don’t experience tons of growth. They make up for a lack of growth by paying generous dividends, as well as trading at lower P/E ratios and having solid balance sheets. These types of companies don’t have the sex appeal as the superstars, but are solid performers. Since they’re mature companies in mature industries, they don’t get as much attention as the newest sexy growth stock. Which brings us to category 3:

The Came Out of Nowhere Guy

Fantasy Baseball: Jose Bautista, Delmon Young, Alex Gonzalez, Brett Gardner

Investing: Amazon, Netflix, pretty much any gold company

These are the players and investments I try to avoid. The players are those guys who were mediocre players for years and then had a fantastic season last year. Some, like Jose Bautista, leveraged their one good season into a huge contract. Will these players repeat their performance? They might, but a fantasy owner will have to pay a huge premium to own them. For me, the track record isn’t long enough to pay a premium to own one of these guys.

It’s the same thing for the stocks listed. These companies may keep growing at an exceptional rate and justify their high multiples, or they might be a giant disappointment. For me, the downside is worse than the upside, so I stay away from them.

The Sexy Rookie

Fantasy Baseball: Buster Posey, Carlos Santana, Mike Stanton, Starlin Castro

Investing: Lululemon, Facebook, Twitter

These fantasy baseball players are the ones that everyone knows are coming and everyone knows will most likely be good. While there are some famous busts, most of these prospects turn out to be solid players, and a few become legitimate superstars.

These types of companies are similar. These companies have real revenue, real products and real business models. The market may overvalue them (just like fantasy owners may overvalue upcoming rookies) but there is reason to get excited about them, providing they can be picked up for a decent price.

The Beaten Up Guys

Fantasy Baseball: Adam Lind, Grady Sizemore, David Ortiz, Russell Martin

Investing: Revlon, Eastman Kodak, Nokia, Yellow Media

These are the players who used to be superstars, but for whatever reason (usually injuries) they are unloved by fantasy owners. Usually a player will have a couple of injury prone seasons to get a place in the doghouse like this. These players are usually starting players when they’re healthy, and can put up good seasons if they find a way to stay healthy for extended periods of time. These type of players usually offer a decent value, since they’ll slip down in the draft.

These types of companies are beaten down, and prospects don’t look very good. Like the baseball players, some will work out for an investor, while others will fail miserably. There will be some people who have a good track record picking these types of companies, but even they will have their share of dogs. It’s important to pick beaten down stocks in a portfolio, rather than just having one or two.

What Can This Teach You?

Each successful fantasy team owner simply cannot focus on one of these categories. There simply aren’t enough studs or slow and steady guys around. The difference between the winners of a league and the losers of a league are the guys in the other categories. How did their rookies perform? Did their scrap heap guys bounce back and have decent seasons? And if they picked a came out of nowhere guy, he probably performed well for a successful team.

As an investor, an easy way to gain access to every type of investment is to buy the index. The TSX Composite or S&P 500 have several stocks in each category. All an investor has to do is buy the index, and they have exposure to each different category. If the market goes down, the studs will protect the index from additional downside. If the market goes up, the beaten up companies will outperform, helping raise the index.

Or, if an investor chooses, they can attempt to pick the best from each category, attempting to build themselves an index of sorts in their own portfolio. This can be successful if the investor has the knowledge and experience to pick good stocks. Maybe most investors shouldn’t bother and just buy an index or three.

 

I’ve never actually been to a strip club before. I have watched strippers when they came and performed at a bar here in town once, which wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it would be. I certainly wasn’t going to pay a girl $20 to rub up against my crotch for 3 minutes while all my buddies hooted and hollered their encouragement. The allure of strip clubs continues to mystify me.

I am interested in what attracts guys to strip clubs. You’ve probably already figured out the obvious answer- there are naked girls there. And, for a small fee, a guy can pay them to grind up against his junk. Since most guys spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about their junk, the idea of pleasing it with only a minimum of effort must be appealing.  There is zero risk of an STD or pregnancy, plus the girl is usually attractive and maybe surgically enhanced.

As I dig deeper into this though, I realize everything to do with the strip club is designed to separate a horny dude from his cash. Let’s take a deeper look:

(Info is taken from this excellent paper on the business of stripping. Go check it out.)

The Dancers

What type of girl is most likely to work at a strip club? Ultimately, economic motivations are the most important. Not surprisingly, most strippers are after the money.

This makes sense. For an attractive girl with little ability or incentive to further her education, the amount she can earn stripping easily surpasses most traditional jobs for someone with her skill set. Because so much of the income is in the form of tips, she can also pad her income by underreporting her tips.

I’m sure there are girls out there who are stripping to put themselves through college. For the most part though, those girls are few and far between.

Since so many of the women come from lower income backgrounds, prostitution becomes a natural way for a dancer to supplement her income. When a girl works a bachelor party or any other event outside the club, she has the ability to upsell various sexual favors. Since she already knows the guy is aroused, this can be an easy (but very risky) way to make a few hundred bucks extra.

I cannot believe guys would be so stupid to have sex with a stripper.

The Club

If pop culture has tried to teach us anything, it’s that adding alcohol to an activity is the key to making  that activity automatically much more fun. Strip clubs are the masters of this.

Selling a patron overpriced drinks serves two purposes. First of all, the club makes money on the booze. By adding a drink minimum, the club ensures they get a profit even from guys who don’t bother to pay for lap dances. The second reason is, of course, to loosen everyone up. If a guy has a decent buzz going on, he’s much more likely to blow all his money.

The club always makes sure there’s easy access to money. ATMs are always around, and every one will accept your credit card as a payment, often taking the prudent step of making sure the charge looks much more innocent on a card statement. Like any good business should, they make paying as easy as possible.

The Customers

Customers can be divided into two groups- the regulars and the party animals.

The party animals are a bunch of guys which usually set out to get as drunk and rowdy as possible. Often, they’re out celebrating some guy’s last few days of bachelorhood before he gets married. Many lap dances are purchased, all sorts of money is spent, and a good time is had by everyone- at least until they sober up the next morning and realize how much they spent.

The second group are the guys who show up at the club every week, guys who consistently pay a particular dancer or two. These guys are more after the companionship that the stripper offers. These lonely souls seek out the attention and admiration of the dancers, who are happy to oblige in exchange for money.

The Pitch

The visit to the strip club starts with the guy(s) sitting down and ordering a drink, just like a normal bar.

As they sit and watch the act going up on stage, the girls will begin to approach them, usually asking if they can sit down and talk. They chat with the guys, laugh at anything they say that resembles a joke, and generally do a good job getting the guys to like them. After a few minutes, they offer either a lap dance right there or a lap dance in the VIP room. Naturally, privacy comes at a price. Prices vary, but a lap dance out in the open usually runs $20, while one in the VIP room starts at $100, but generally lasts longer. These fees don’t include tips.

All the while, there is a main stage, where a feature dancer will be putting on a performance for tips. She is trying to be sexy enough that guys will want her to give them lap dances when she’s patrolling the floor later.

The Sell

As mentioned above, a stripper is much more in the business of being friendly than they are being sexy.

Obviously a stripper has to be attractive. But the best strippers are the ones that are friendliest and create the best experience for their customers. Like in any industry, the best make the most money.

The girls view customers as patsies, often ridiculing them privately because they’re willing to give them money for simply looking good and being friendly. If a guy is regularly going to a strip club, it’s probably an indication of either loneliness or depression, and he seeing going to the club as the easiest way to rectify that.

Conclusion

Unlike a lot of people, I don’t believe strip clubs demean women. I think if men are stupid enough to pay, then women should be willing to take their money. Even though I don’t care for them (which is interesting, considering how much I like boobs) I don’t think their popularity will go down anytime soon.

Maybe the next time you go to a strip joint your brain will be so interested in the economics behind it that you’ll barely notice the girls. Just give it a try, your wallet will thank you.

© 2012 Financial Uproar Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

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