Category Archives: Problems

Fixing The Penny Problem With A New Currency?

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In my article “Should Pennies Be Made From Recycled Plastic“, I suggested replacing pennies with recycled plastic.  The idea being that if we replace a penny with a plastic instead of metal, the benefits would be two-fold.  First, the recycled plastic version would be much cheaper to create that the metal version, and secondly we would be cleaning up the environment by recycling plastic instead of dumping plastic in landfills and the oceans!

Since the plastic penny idea has multiple ways that it could benefit our society, I still think it holds some merit.  That said, perhaps we should consider upping the ante by creating a new secondary currency system.  In this new currency system, the zinc penny equivalent would be replaced with a penny that would be equivalent to what a dime is worth in the current currency model.  Then have the rest of the coins and dollar bills flow the same proportional valuation system as today.  So a new currency nickel would be worth 5 old dimes, and 1 new currency dime would be worth one dollar in the old currency.

The two currencies could float together for some specified time period, oh let’s say 10 years, with the old currency no longer accepted at the end of the 10 year time-frame.  Obviously, the old currency could be taken to banks to be converted into the new currency at that point.

The approach of using a new version of our currency would breathe value back into the penny and make coins worth picking up once again.  I think it’s important to have the penny because it makes the money valuation system make sense.  Not having the penny would be like having a piano without certain keys missing.  After all, the currency system is based on math, and we wouldn’t consider skipping numbers in math would we?

Initially, I thought the government could implement some type of country-wide deflation, but too many clever crooked people would find ways to take advantage of such conversions.  The rolling currency idea would be less painful that forced deflation, and in a way, it would have the save benefits of deflation since the money value would jump scale 10 fold.

Perhaps this process could be performed every 100 years, if inflation make the penny not worth minting again in the future…

Well here are my two “outside of the box” thoughts on the penny problem, and I’m done thinking about it now.  What do you think, do you have any clever ideas that you would like to share other than dropping the penny altogether?

MR

Blogging While Sick

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It’s been 6 days since I posted my last blog entry, and I feel compelled to post this article even though I’m sick.

You see, for the past few days, I’ve had a dizziness that hasn’t completely gone away yet.  Slowly, I’m getting better, but I’m still sick.

Health is an interesting area for me, and I’m kind of mixed up when it comes to that topic.  Since I have an HSA, I hate to waste the money on myself, but if a member in my family become ill, I’m the first to suggest that they go to the doctor to make sure everything is okay.  This is one thing I hate about having an HSA…  I only go if it’s life threatening in my case, or I have an ailment that has lasted for months…

In some ways I even wonder if it’s worth having since we now have National Healthcare…

Right now my head is filling lightheaded, but still I blog on…  Blogging is a hobby, but also an integral part of my life, and not blogging for so long mandated that I worth through this illness and post this post.  Hopefully, by my next post, I’ll feel better and will have something better to write about!

Unfortunately, I’m tapped out now and need to go to bed though.

 

Avoiding Problems Too Long Is A Subpar Way To Live

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Sidestepping problems and letting them dwell for way too long instead of confronting them head on is a subpar way to live life.

While sometimes you get lucky and the problem works its way out, this is a bad way to handle things, as some problems linger for years and years.  Some things are complicated and will require a lot of work and even some pain to get past, but the alternative (wasting years of your life) is more costly in its own way.

When you ignore such problems, this is how a problem that starts out as a molehill turns into a nightmarish, “hard to manage” mountain, not to mention the side stress of carrying such problems with you at all times.

Let’s take debt for example, oh it start out small, perhaps you are carrying a thousand dollar balance, but soon it’s two thousand dollar, then year-end it’s five thousand dollars, and before you know it, your tens of thousands of dollars in debt.  I’ve seen this happen many time with a few of my friends.  With one in particular, he and his wife have declared bankruptcy more than once, drawing down the equity that they had built up in their house over the past ten years, finally ending in divorce.

Debt is one problem, but how about a bad marriage?  I know another friend that is dragging out his marriage because of the kids involved.  With his particular story, the marriage is sexless and he and his wife live more like roommates than husband and wife.  While both are decent people, it’s obvious that neither are happy with their situation.  If it wasn’t for the fear of screwing up their kids, they would have been divorced a long time ago.  But I have to wonder if they are mistaken on the current path.  After all, when you setup an artificial environment like this where the marriage is without passion, do the kids learn that acting like a loveless robot is the way marriages should be?

Perhaps my friend and his wife are doing more damage by staying together and teaching the kids that life has no passion and basically sucks, than good by staying together?  I can tell that my friend is hurting, but since he came from a broken home he is hesitant to let the kids go through such a painful process.

Home is a Prison

While normally such problems wouldn’t interest me, once while going out for a drink with my friend, he referred to the fact that he felt like he was in prison, doing his time waiting for death to come.  To me, it seems like this isn’t a good way to live, and the best route for him would be to scrap the marriage and look for a better companion.  Actually, I think both my friend and his wife would be better off.  A little poorer, but better off.

Lately, this has had me rethinking marriage from a fairytale perspective and now I no longer look at those guys that I know who have mistresses as the evil bad guys that society (and the movies) casts them to be.  After all, both of my top financial heroes (Benjamin Franklin and Warren Buffett) had mistresses, and if they can do it, why not someone in a painful, loveless marriage who believes that the embrace of death is something to look forwards to.

I think my friend should have file for a divorce after the first few years when he realized that his spouse wasn’t a good match for him, instead of dragging it out and having kids enter the picture.

Confront and fix your problems, don’t let them ruin your life!

Bests,

MR

 

Mistakes Made When You Are Tired!

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Today, I’m shot!  I’ve been too busy and I’ve been staying up too late at night working on side projects.

Well, I cost someone an hour of their life today!  Here is my story!

Our family drove down to our friend’s house to celebrate their two-year old’s birthday party.  It’s like a two-hour drive down and was already tired so it pushed me into zombie mode tired.  So while I was tired to start, I was barely awake when I got down there.

Zombie Tired

Okay, now that I made an adequate excuse (lol), here is what I did…  while down there I decided to take my keys and put it in my coat.  The coats were in a closet and practically all the coats were a color black .  Well, I just reached in and thought I was putting my keys in my coat, but unfortunately it was one of my friend’s coats and they left with my keys in their coat.  Luckily, they realized my mistake and called telling their discovery and volunteered to drive it back to the house.  To make matters worse, once I was outside when they dropped the keys off at the house, so I even missed profusely apologizing to them.  I’m the type of guy that will remember next birthday though, so I’ll do something nice for them next time I see them.

I’m so zombie tired today, that I’m going to recommend reading the following articles by other bloggers:

Hopefully, I’ll be less of a zombie tomorrow.

MR