About Money Reasons

A offbeat personal finance blogger that comes from the tech world.

Flash from the past – my second financial comic strip

Wow, this past week went fast! Okay, so I’m just going to jump into my second comic strip.

The non-colorized version of the strip below was actually my first pilot (or prototype) of my idea of a comic strip addition to this blog… I like the colorized version so much better than I decided to do the rest with color and made this my official 2nd comic strip.

In such a stressful day and time, via the coronavirus problem, I hope a little humor helps take of the edge.

Not to brag, but if you notice in the comic strip below that indirectly I’m criticizing the latte effect (before doing so was so mainstream) if you don’t take other things into perspective that are more damaging to your financial well-being.

To be entirely honest, the latte factor does makes sense, and it’s not exclusive to lattes. I believe David Bach said in a few of his books that it’s not just lattes, but really anything that is preventing you from accomplishing your wealth goals. The latte factor applies to anything that you don’t need that derails your efforst in wealth accumulation (cigarettes, booze, expensive cars leased ever year, etc).

color comic
MR Color Version Comic 2

I wonder if I should recreate this comic strip series again… I did enjoy it!

Thanks,

Don

Flash from the past – my first financial comic strip

When looking for a picture from my last article, I ran across some of my old comic artwork that I was going to incorporate into my blog weekly…

Just for fun, I think I’m going to republish the very short series, just for the fun of it It was harder than I imagined, but a lot of fun too. I actually look back proudly on my shorted lived series!

The comic strip below was created a bit before Halloween on 10/22/2010. I really liked that date because of the way the numbers look, I actually created it on that date because if I added a zero at the beginning of the first 10, it would be a palindrome. In my world both 10 and 010 is still ten).

I’m the small black dot in the picture, I called my self MR (for Money Reasons and because I was a guy, so a mister… seemed clever at the time…) back then. I was slowly going to develop the black dot as the comic strip grew in popularity, but I gave up way before then, lol.

Notice in the last square I’m even running (rolling, whatever) in fear!

Thanks for letting me relive the recent (or not so recent) past, depending on your perception of time.

What if the Coronavirus was a weapon?

Disclaimer… The following is my version of a conspiracy theory. It’s fictional but is still well within the range of true possibilities. Think of the following as if I were writing a fictional (or is it data perceived non-fiction?) plot for a book or movie, below!

Update 4/7/2020: What if it was an attack from multiple countries?

Let’s say Russia and China collaborated to create a biological attack on what they perceive as their common enemies, the US and Europe. To date, both US and Europe have been highly impacted by the Covid-19 virus according to the data. We’ve heard that the Russians are using Twitter and other social platforms to create discord and confusion in the US among racial groups, social classes, and now even age groups. China may be doing the same too through tik tok and other platforms too.

Both China and Russia will emerge as a superpower in the world now. China because their impact is controlled and minimal, and Russia because they to date have a firmer control over the virus. Both have very low deaths associated with the virus.

Counterpoints: Even within the US, certain groups pit its member against other groups. Some groups that were created to advance a certain segment of the population are actually holding their members back because they are focusing on a period in history instead of what the reality is in the present. Time literally waits for no one. So it’s hard to criticize a country for taking advantage of something that the government parties are doing against each other in the open public. China and Russia will gain from the slowness of the US and Europe to recover. I have no counterpoint for Economic gains with respect to China and Russia, they will benefit.

Update 3/23/2020: Wow, to date Russia only has around 300+ total infections, and I think they said they have 1 death from it (a woman who was 79 years old).

On top of that statistic, they are spreading false information saying that the coronavirus is a biological weapon that the US, Chinese, or UK military created. Considering that their infections are trivial in comparison to the rest of the world (mostly northern countries), that makes me think of that old saying ” The lady doth protest too much, methinks “. Perhaps Mother Russia really did create this as a biological weapon, especially if you consider all of the other things I talk about below.

Update 3/15/2020: What if Russia created a mildly lethal but contagious virus as a weapon?

Let’s even say that they have immunized their citizens for the past few years now secretly? Interesting, in this hypothetical play-out, in reality, they have cast themselves as such a character by damaging the world economy by dumping oil in the market, in an attempt to eliminate other oil suppliers which in turn could have a greater impact on the world economy and deepen a potential longer-term worldwide recession or depression, during this viral crisis. What normal country would wage such a tactic unless they had already planned it out as a strategy? Think about it, Russia is not reporting their Coronavirus statistics (maybe because they are minimally impacted by design?) and they are waging an oil war against the US indirectly.

Who better to be cast as Ernst Stavro Blofeld that Putin The Brain, from “Pinky and the Brain” would be so proud of Mr. Putin efforts! All joking aside, I respect Putin in many ways… probably because folks think he’s an intj like my type. INTJ’s are often misunderstood, but that said, if he takes over the world before I do… I’ll be pissed!

While the above sounds like something out of a “Mission Impossible” movie, it does seem strange that Russia’s actions seem to communicate that they don’t really care about the world… That aside, I personally think that the COVID-19 virus is just part of living on earth, and while it’s causing a near-term panic, will be under control in a few months to a year because of the reason I specify below.

Okay, looks like I’m not as original in thinking, as I thought. I’m in good company at least 🙂

Original Post:

I think a lot of bizarre things are in the realm of possibilities that I’m afraid of communicating out because I don’t want such ideas communicated. So unfortunately for me, I keep a lot of different ideas to myself… A strategically planned stealth ware via a planned and controlled virus outbreak is one of them… Below is one such thought that I had, but it’s just an idea.

What if a Corona-like virus was actually created by a rogue country, and part of their plan was to stage a local outbreak that is mild and enables their population to build resistance, but secretly they have deployment methods in all major cities and will discreetly release a more impactful, deadly stain or strains (let’s say with a 60%+ mortality rate) in other countries (including their allies)? Such a war strategy would be that they purposely released the communicated but mild version of the virus locally that would have a small but notable effect initially and a correspondingly small mortality rate so the rest of the world says and thinks “oh well, it a virus let’s deal with it together”… all the while the rogue country would then start to deploy more deadly strains elsewhere in the world with a more damaging impact. After the mortality rate is realized, the rogue country would then claiming that the virus must be mutating into a more lethal form naturally. Then in parallel, the domestic strain in the rogue country enables its citizen to become immune to the more lethal strains, so when the lethal strains hit them, the population is not impacted.

Such a strategy could enable them to either be the dominant population on earth or at least control the world from an unchallenged stance. You could consider this a war tactic without anyone realizing the war was actually taking place.

Why wage a war this way? There is a saying “All is fair in love and war“… Such a war could stealthily be waged against the world, and all the other non-attacking countries in the world may not even realize that the battle is even taking place.

Why would a rogue country use this tactic? Many reasons actually, the viral weapon yielding country probably hopes to avoid a nuclear war, nobody (or country) that has normal intelligence thinks that a nuclear war is a win for anyone unless your society lives underground already (which has unforeseen and unpredictable challenges) because of nuclear fallout and other horrors of nuclear weapons. Another reason is that it would be a low-cost and high gain (or low risk and high reward) type of war because deployment would be cheap and grow without associated cost in other countries after the initial deployment. As the unwary countries are being attacked, their local population would implode to just a small subset of the previous population size, you now have a huge landmass to populate and that land’s natural and intellectual resources left behind. A third reason for the aggressor country would be low casualties… Yeah, there might be an initial hit to the aggressor country’s population, but even after the initial outbreak, the country would push out lesser strains to itself with practically no moralities statistically so that rest of the attacking country’s population is minimally impacted.

Things that I didn’t think of… Let’s pretend the aggressor country is China in my fictional scenario… Well, they produce a large portion of the world supply of drugs and other critical products (governments of the world should take note and act on this), there could be even more deaths indirectly caused by the virus outbreak in the target countries because of lack of supply of other needed drugs and goods.

I guess my thought on this is kind of like the movie Resident Evil, but instead of a company-created and deployed virus, it’s at the country level, and without the character, Alice…

Just to put the Coronavirus in context, the Spanish Flu (also called the Flu of 1918) had a mortality rate of 2.5%. The coronavirus statistics from China put their virus fatality rate at somewhere between 2 to 4%, but Iranian doctors are reporting that a fatality rate as high as 10% in their country. Hopefully, history will show that the Spanish Flu had worse casualties because we have techniques to fight and stop the spread of viruses and flues, unlike in 1918.

Hoping for the best!

Don

Year End Financial Results 2019

Yes, yes, I’m really late (ha, for the past few years even)!

When I looked at my results for 2019, it looks great… at least until I looked at the S&P 500 results for 2019… the S&P 500 index scored a whopping 30%, vs my mid 20s percent… ugh!

That said, I’m still pretty good overall because I did do some risk adjusting by bring my asset allocation mix back into the balance that it should be… So ouch, but it’s okay…

These past few years, I’ve accomplished a lot of my financial goals (house paid off, kids college cost fully funded, etc) and have even started played around with the idea of semi-retirement… One of the biggest things holding me back is the expense of Medical Insurance for emergencies. My daughter is a gymnist and my son a part time fire fighter (in addition to attending college), so it’s a valid concern for me. I don’t hear a lot about that in a lot of FIRE equations, but it should be considered (at least until your are a vhnwi – Very High Networth Individual).

I mentioned in my last update that I believe I have enough critical mass now and that I wanted to experiment. Instead I decided to take a break and try to live a bit of that Upper Middle Class lifestyle that I’m striving for in my wealth pyramid below. Turns out, that lifestyle is still a bit out of reach for me and also more expensive that I originally believed, so I’m still in that “think green line” area in the picture below. Another fact that is keeping me in the “Think Green Line” area, is that fact that bulk of my net worth is either tied up in my house or 401k. It’s great, but I’m definitely on the cash poor side.

Ignoring my whining, I have enough money from my dividend funds (I’ll post about them in the future) to at least dip my toe into the entrepreneurial pool… So perhaps I’ll try and find a rental to buy or maybe start a low startup cost business… idk… Lately, I have the urge to find someone with the right characteristics to work on ideas and strategies. It’s surprising how hard it is to find anyone that is interested in thinking outside of the box on wealth accumulation! Then again, I’m not the best conversationalist… so perhaps the fault lies with me.

After taking a hit at the end of 2018, my secret wealth goal has improved to the highest level that it has been yet (79.63%) in 2019. Sadly, my percentage has fallen a bit these past few weeks… I’m not sure how this year will play out, but I’m hoping I break the 80% barrier at the end of year 2021. We’ll see…

Financial Pyramid

Okay, onto health! For the past few years I’ve been working out pretty hard to accomplish two goals.

  • Benchpress all the weight in my basement and do three 45 plates on each site for at least 1 rep (this I accomplished). I was going to three gyms and working out like a fiend. I have to say I was quite pleased with the results!!! See picture below of my arm.
  • The Second goal is to focus on my body aesthetics and optimize my health. I wanted to hit my strength goal first, now I’m doubling back and taking on this challenge.

So to summarize, it’s smooth and steady for me so far.

Thanks

Don