When I Dip, You Dip, We Dip

So it's already February, which means we're enjoying the best weather we'll see in 2016 in Arizona. The windows are open all day and night, we can walk around in bare feet and t-shirts and rolled up jeans, and summer is a distant fear on the horizon.

But on the investing front, the start of the year hasn't been nearly as enjoyable. The S&P500 is down nearly double digit percentage points in just the past six weeks, and the bull run that we've been on since the depths of the financial crisis has, at least, stalled. If you're invested in American markets, you've probably lost a good bit of money in the past month and a half.

Money Won

It's the week of Christmas, and instead of deciding on thoughtful gifts for my friends and loved ones or contemplating on the birth of the world's savior, I am agonizing about which runningback to start in the flex position. Yes, it is another fantasy football post and, yes, technically this is still a personal finance blog, but just barely. As long as I somehow connect these ideas to money in the next five minutes, I think I still get to attend FinCon next year.

The Upside of Spending

So we are in Paris, as I type up this blog post on my phone like a putz. It is foggy and raining and to a soft punk Arizonan, pretty cold, too. I shouldn't complain about any of this, either the typing on a tiny computer that fits in my pocket, the weather, or the supposed danger of going to Paris or Brussels. How can you be sad in a place that is so beautiful and where all the food is cooked in butter? I am ridiculously lucky and I intend to roll around in my good fortune, slathering it all over, enjoying as much as I can of it.

As I Accelerate Towards the Earth

"What are you thinking right now?" asked the man with the ponytail and the GoPro on his head, and the parachute on his back.

"I'm thinking, 'Why is my seatbelt unbuckled, and why is the airplane door open, and why I am not strapped to the guy with the parachute yet?'"

He gave me the double thumbs up, obviously not listening.

When a Sprinter Hits the Wall

I promised myself when I started blogging that I wouldn't be one of those writers who started out every piece the same way, apologizing for not writing in so long, and promising never to do it again. But here we are, with over a month between posts. I can at least be good enough not to give you some flimsy apology. I know what happens during times of procrastination, and you do, too.

Let's just move on.

The Miracle of the Commons

It is hot in Arizona right now. Every day, the temperature creeps up from its balmy low in the mid-eighties, as the sun pours its terrible heat down upon us, and punishes everything that still has the audacity to live here. Before we know it, it's above 100 and stays that way until the sun gets tired of beating our poor, dumb asses, and takes the night off. There is no escaping it. I walked Mrs. Done by Forty from our car to her building on campus this weekend, when our car thermometer showed a temp of 115. Delirious, I pondered our situation as we took shelter in the shade for a bit.

Football is Coming

A little over a month ago, our long time renter moved out. It was time. We'd been sharing a house with her since 2011, and at the four year mark we'd found the space too small for all of us. The quirks we found endearing about each other for the first year or so turned out to be annoying in the end. It's the way of things. But we parted as friends. She still comes over on Sundays to hang out, catch up, and play board games.

Oddly, I don't mind missing out on the $400 of rental income. I know this makes me seem like a rich jerk, but we make enough that we don't really need the money. Especially since we have the mortgage paid off, the rent was always seen as 'extra'.

A Defense of Price Optimization

A while back, I heard about insurance companies using price optimization for the first time. This is when an insurance company strategically raises prices on only some of its existing customers, hoping that the price hike is not so large that the consumer picks up and leaves. The rub is that the price increase in, say, auto coverage, is not actually based on how risky that particular driver is. The higher price is based on the kind of consumer the company thinks he is: whether he's likely to shop coverage and switch if hit with an increase.

Linear Assumptions are Bullshit

I have a good buddy from college that I still keep in touch with. We went to the same school, during the same years, and we even had the same major: English. Obviously, we also had the same crap judgment when it comes to our education. We both taught for a while English, too. (Well, I did for a short time, while he foolishly refused to sell out and chase money, instead pursuing "passion" and "meaning".) We both love football, enjoy some of the same hobbies...you get the idea.

Recently, he lost his job. In a climate of shrinking education budgets, this sort of thing can happen regardless of how good of a teacher you are. Even though we graduated over a decade ago, we still talk regularly. And these days we chat about the different directions his career might go in, now that he has this transition moment.

Being self-centered, the next thought I had was about how this sort of thing might affect me.