Today in Terrible Job Ideas
“If I tell you, you’re not going to believe me,” Torres said. He was crying as he told them an incredible story about being recruited by the Defense Intelligence Agency to participate in a secret operation testing the security of Washington-area banks. He said he’d been assigned to rob a half-dozen banks over four days. And he told them about Theo, the man who hired him and gave all the orders—even though Torres had never met him.
Living Alone in Indonesia
Nina Bhattacharya just finished teaching English in Indonesia on a Fulbright scholarship, and we emailed about it a few weeks ago.
Edith Zimmerman: Was there a moment when you realized that you were making such a huge change to your life? And then just said, “yeah, I’m doing that”? Essentially — what was it like to decide to do this?
Nina Bhattacharya: Oh god, did I agonize about making the commitment. Even though I had been to Indonesia before, my brain could not process the length of time I would be away. Nine months? It seemed unfathomable. While I publicly announced my decision to go almost immediately, it took many long conversations with my parents before I felt certain enough to accept the grant.
I distinctly remember the day when I signed the papers to accept the Fulbright grant. I even made a housemate take my picture as I was signing.
Now I laugh a little when I think about how difficult the decision seemed at the time. The last eight months have flown by, and it’s starting to hit me that I’ll have to leave in four weeks. I don’t feel ready to leave just yet. Which is not to say that living here has always been easy, but the decision to come here was one of the best I’ve ever made. READ MORE
Step Down From That Money Panic Ledge It’s Going to Be Okay Probably
Talking about my debt and having a plan to pay it off has helped me be a lot cooler about it. The frequency of STRESS ATTACKS during which I suddenly remember HOW MUCH MONEY I OWE AND HOW I’M NEVER GOING TO PAY IT BACK have really gone down. I’m just a human, with a large amount of debt, NBD. No one owns me I own me, and I have 1 plan. Cool. Chill. Namaste. I rarely panic about my credit card debt anymore. But I do still have moments when I’m in bed and my entire body seizes and my stomach drops because I remember about TAXES. Ways 2 deal:
• Immediately think of literally anything else
• World annhiliation still a real possibility in this lifetime
• Maybe next wave of Republicans will be so anti-taxes that they’ll cancel all taxes owed by anyone ever?
• Or maybe there will be a coup or bloodless revolution and THEY’LL push the reset button
• It’s not like I’m adding to my tax burden with every dollar I make!!!!!!!1 READ MORE
No Longer Just for the Moneyed, Financial Advisors Are Coming After All of Us
Ric Edelman has been named the number one independent financial advisor in the country by Barron’s three different times. He heads up a $10 billion practice, with 20,000 clients, that manages more money than nearly any other financial advisor in the industry. And, he hosts a popular syndicated radio show and a TV show on PBS. Among independent financial advisors—known as Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs)—Edelman’s a legend for his ability to attract “the mass market,” or those of us who wouldn’t consider ourselves wealthy enough to afford a financial advisor.
The only problem? You’ve probably never heard of Ric Edelman.
“We’re an open secret,” joked Edelman, though he acknowledged that lacking the marketing or name recognition of a Schwab or Fidelity or eTrade makes reaching the average American a challenge.
Until this past January, Edelman’s client minimum was $50,000—still lower than most minimums in the industry. In January, he launched Edelman Online, which allowed him to reach more of the mass market by scaling with a higher degree of efficiency. Anyone with $5,000 can now be a client, paying a 2 percent fee up to $150,000 in assets (or $100 a year for $5,000 in assets), with the fee decreasing above $150,000 in assets. READ MORE
Find The Next David Karp And Make Him Your BFF
This article from Harvard Business Review—”Six ways to befriend future tech billionaires“—is not about what I thought it was going to be about. I read that headline and couldn’t click fast enough—yes, please, tell me how to be friends with people who will become very rich and then take me to the riviera. French. Italian. Any riviera.
It is not that. It’s advice for older business people on how to get in early with bright young things who will become their bosses one day. The tips are kind of great actually. Hang out where they hang out, like, in online chatrooms. Mentor them, but make sure you don’t tell them how to do anything, they hate that. Ask questions. Give them money. Worship the ground they walk on. All great tips. READ MORE
Overworked?
“What have you been up to? How’s the site?” are the questions I get the most often when I’m meeting up with someone.
“Busy!” I say. “I’m working a lot—pretty much all the time. But I feel really fortunate to be this busy. Busy is good.”
The main reason I feel busy is because I have 1.5 jobs, plus a mess of things on the side, so it always feels like I’m working on something. When I’m not working on something, I’m thinking about what I need to work on. But am I really that busy? Maybe not as busy as I believe I am.
Here’s The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson:
…in recent years, with wage growth falling behind the rising cost of essentials like health insurance and college tuition, and with technology dissolving the boundaries of the traditional workplace, Americans seem to be working more than ever. But the truth is that we are working less. So why do we feel so busy?
He answers—using a series of charts.
Don’t Buy Expensive Cereal Make Your Own Expensive Cereal
We already have a solid history of groundbreaking cereal coverage here at the Billfold, and today I’d like to continue that legacy with my recipe for summer cereal, or: the only food I will be preparing at my house until it’s not hot anymore.
YOU WILL NEED:
Trader Joe’s O’s or other Cheerios-inspired cheap cereal, $1.99
Frozen blueberries (I GUESS YOU COULD USE FRESH, BUT $$$$$), $2.99
Some trail mix or whatever you’ve got in the nut department (I USE Trader Joe’s Trek Mix which has almonds, cashews, and a very generous amount of chocolate pieces <3 <3, $4.99)
Almond milk or other milk product, $2.99
~~~----~~~~ALL PRICES APPROXIMATE AND BASED ON MY NOT ALWAYS RELIABLE MEMORY~~~~~---~~~~~~
DIRECTIONS:
Put all the stuff in a bowl. Top with almond milk. The blueberries will make the almond milk freeze kind of and you'll have this slushie cereal mixture. The nuts don't necessarily add anything in the taste department but the texture is "fun" and nutrients exist. Is this cheaper than buying, like, KASHI? Maybe not. Is it cooler and better and DIY? Yes.
Jobs I Had Before Getting My Novel Published
The hardest part of being a writer isn’t the writing itself—it’s the long slog while waiting for other people to agree to pay you for the pleasure. I always knew I wanted to write, but a childhood of watching my schoolteacher mother have to go on strikes every summer to keep funding made me gun-shy of getting a degree where my only fallback seemed to be teaching. So I opted for the Michael Crichton plan: I’d become a doctor, get rich, and then write. I then went through three years of getting a microbiology degree before getting sidetracked and moving across the country with no job skills.
Here’s a list of the (mostly crappy) jobs I had while writing nine novels before the tenth book I worked on got sold. READ MORE
Golden Housemates
“I’m in my 50s, and my friends are all talking about, ‘Could we all move in together? Could we buy an apartment building and all live together?’ There are all sorts of permutations of this conversation,” Kelly says. “But it really is something that people are thinking about, particularly women.”And, because boomers are boomers, some are doing more than just thinking about it. Already, there’s a small but apparently growing movement of boomer women forming group houses with their single peers.
Aging, unmarried boomers are considering who will take care of them when they’re too old to care for themselves—nieces and nephews, perhaps?—and they’re increasingly looking at shared housing situations. Hey, that reminds us of something …
Yeah, the Golden Girls did this ages ago, boomers. n.pr/13YAY5Q
— Evie Nagy (@EvieN) May 23, 2013
I’d be down to do this in 40 years (contingency plans!).
