Two quotes from Abraham Lincoln:

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
- Abraham Lincoln

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed.
- Abraham Lincoln

I feel that Abraham is dead on with what he said (no pun intended), describing what is happening and what will happen, perhaps soon, in the American society.

What do you think?

J.D. from Get Rich Slowly wrote the post, What Developing Nations Can Teach Us About Personal Finance

Trent from The Simple Dollar wrote a related post, The Backlash Against Frugality about someone promoting frugality in an article and in return received some “flaming” comments, sadly. If only people are more opened and receptive to new ideas…

It’s hard to talk about personal finance without ever touching on the subject of frugality. I have talked about taking responsibility and making choices, and such are we do in personal finance, such are we do in frugality also. Let’s not forget about the “personal” part of this whole idea, so at the end of the day, it’s your own choice.

You don’t HAVE TO get rid of your TV, but you can CHOOSE TO.
You don’t HAVE TO wear all used clothes, but you can CHOOSE TO.
You don’t HAVE TO drive a crummy 2nd-hand car, but you can CHOOSE TO.
You don’t HAVE TO live without an iPhone, but you can CHOOSE TO.
So on and so forth.
You choose to live frugally.
You choose and find ways to be frugal based on your preferences.
Just like you choose your lifestyle.

Oh btw, I choose to not have an iPhone because I cannot guarantee myself I will never drop my cellphone (as I had too many times already), I prefer “pure” mp3 player of another brand with better sound quality, and I don’t think $400 + the monthly upkeep is worth it. Anyways…

Those articles are merely suggesting ways to be frugal, which serve to provide others to think about frugality. But alas, how many really use their brains and think these days.

With that, I leave you with the comment I left for J.D.:

Thanks, J.D., for the thoughtful post, and I am sorry to read all the comments from people who find it offensive.

I believe the article is meant to be a thought provoking piece that can get us to find ways to be more frugal ourselves and find ways to change our life to be better (happier), with “change to be better” echoing with my own values. And not with the intention to argue that Americans should be just like these 3rd world countries, which is the reasoning a majority of the people used in their comment to refute this post.

No, we shall not have to live in a 200sq ft apt, or some shed in the middle of no where, but neither shall a single person live in a 4000sq ft mansion.
No, we shall not have to eat crap food, but neither shall we spend $1000 eating out per month.
No, we shall not live like a miser so we can retire at 45, but neither shall we live as pure hedonists.

Anything taken to extremity is a bad thing. Find your own way to live simpler and happier, and not live a life that is bloated and driven by consumerism and capitalism.

MSNBC has this article: Pricey student loans sow seeds of trouble.

While scholarship, grant money and government-backed student loans — whose interest rates are capped — have taken up some of the slack, many families and individual students have turned to private loans, which carry fees and interest rates that are often variable and up to 20 percent.
…
Consumer prices on average rose less than 29 percent over the past 10 years while tuition, fees, and room and board at four-year public colleges and universities soared 79 percent to $12,796 a year and 65 percent to $30,367 a year at private institutions, according to the College Board.
…
Meanwhile, complaints about marketing of private loans — like ads promising to approve loans worth $50,000 in just minutes — are on the rise. The complaints have made their way to lawmakers, who see a need to regulate the highly profitable and diverse group of companies and the loans they make to college students.

In other words, available government loans is not able to keep up with the increase in student tuition in the past years, forcing students to turn to private loans that have some very hefty interest rates.

“College students, you need a large sum of money for school? And have little to no credit? No problem! We will still give you the loan. (But we will take back a lot more from you later, in the form of interests, yeah!!)”

Wait…have I heard this before? I think this sounds similar to what they did in the subprime mortgage sector. Not only will students carry a bigger amount of debt out of college, they will also carry those debt at a much higher interest rate. This will clearly bring their monthly loan payment to double, triple, quadruple… than what their previous generations had to pay. And since I doubt future salary can increase at such a joyous rate, this gives birth to the question on how the future generation can afford their loan payments graduating from college. If they cannot afford them, they are going to start to default… oh crap…

And wait…have I heard this before? I think this also sounds similar to what’s going on in the subprime mortgage.

Despite this being pure speculation that I draw and agree with such a comparison from the article, I really wonder what are these people thinking? Is making instant or quick money all they care about now?

In short-term definitely, they will reap some heavy profits with the high interest rate, and probably packaging these loans to sell as collaterals also.

Now in long-term, I don’t know if it looks so good anymore, and I would say worse than what may happen in the mortgage sector because the people they screw over this time will be the whole future generation. Not only will all the investment and hedge-funds base on these student loans crash. These are the people who will be future consumers, the entire or majority of the population, unlike the subprime population that makes up a much smaller percentage.

So what these private loan companies will end up doing is crippling the future population’s spending power with these loans and probably destorying a good portion’s credits. Without spending power and credits, they can’t buy houses, they can’t buy services, they can’t buy consumer goods… Let’s see such a economy will work out then.

Again this is pure speculation and albeit pessimistic, I can’t help but see the resembling occurrence between the student loans and subprime mortgage. It seems like these people are just moving sector to sector aiming only to make a quick buck and to get instant gratification with no caring about other people’s lives. Where is their sense of decency and compassion? I don’t see any. They are now targeting 17-20 years old with little life experience and will probably make their life experience a sad and painful one before they have a chance to start it. I would rather live poor than having to sell my children’s life away like that, but actually in my standard, I would consider myself living rich the way I choose to live.

I sure hope they are ready for such a future.

I rent, as most of you had figured out by now, and had been renting for about 3 years now. While I fully enjoy the convenient location, decent neighborhood, and reasonble cost of my rental, the biggest gripe for me is its lack of insulation. It can sometimes be hotter and colder than the outside in summer and winter, respectively. A side effect of that is then a very costly energy bill for me during the few months when bay area gets quite cold.

Well, I decided I have had enough of the coldness and wallet-sucking energy bill in winter, so I stopped by Home Depot on the weekend and bought myself some caulk, a caulking gun, and some high-density self-adhesive foam strip.

After that, I went through and check all the windows, the sliding door to balcony, and the front door. How did I do that, you may ask? And I will answer, “Very primitively! Using my naked eyes and feeling with my bare hands!”

Because autumn is approaching and bay area cools down a lot in the evening, I waited until the evening to perform the inspection. Using my hand, I went through and check every cracks and corners for wind draft and cool air flowing in. One thing that helped tremendously is to wet your hand, which makes it much easier to feel the cool air. Another thing you can do, that I knew but didn’t do, is if you have the help of another person, ask him to use a blow driver, portable fan, etc. to blow at the cracks and connecting points to make it really obvious where the outside air is leaking in.

In the end, I used mostly the foam strip to block off the non-insulated areas and had to use very little caulk. I taped them where the bedroom windows hit their frame, around the front door on the inside, and at top and bottom of the sliding door.

Now is 2 nights after my insulation effort, and I can already tell the difference in temperature before and after. The self-adhesive foam strip is about $3 for a 17′ roll, rendering them very cost-effective and me in love with them right now. If they can lower my energy bill drastically this winter, I am going to love them even more!

I hate to say it, work has gone crazy lately and taken over much of my time, leaving me little to no time for piano, gym, reading, and many other things I enjoy doing outside of work. This is not desirable but one has to do what he has to do to make it and bring bread to the table. I’m sure you can relate.

Then it makes me think, is it really worth it to take on a job for the monetary compensation that will consume all your time and add insurmountable stress to your life? (i.e. investment banking…)

I guess it all depends on one’s preferences and priorities. For me, I like maintaining a balance beteween work and life because if I only know work and career, it’s like throwing away myself because there are many things that are important to me, and only if they’re together makes up the entire me. If I am 100% work, I am no longer myself and I’m throwing myself away for money.

What about you?

On the other hand, I caught a glimpse of a new NBC series called Life, which has a very intriguing character, Charlie Crews. All his dialogues contain very deep zen philosophy and messages, like “being in the moment” and “you don’t have to understand here to be here”. It is also because of his zen understanding that he has this imperturbable calmness, in most cases. Remember how many times I have made reference to calmness in my posts and when I talked about having a calm, compsoed, and still mind. Now you know why I’m interested :)

So if anyone is interested in or is studying zen, I encourage you to watch Life and pay attention to the dialogues. The show is on during “off-time” from 10:00-11:00pm, unfortunately. I contemplate the main reason being that the general audience will not watch Life due to its “confusing” and “boring” dialogues. My 2 cents. You can look up the background and details of the show online.