• On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: Healthcare, Midnight Deployments, and Markov Chaining

    I’ve been all over The Incidental Economist lately, and it’s really hard not to link to every one of their posts that I can make heads or tails of. They’re really prolific by my standards, though, which means it’s a struggle to keep their posts from falling off the 30-day cut-off in Google Reader. Simply put: Marginal cost/benefit – "You’ll consume as much health care as you think worth it for the transaction price (your copayment if you’re insured). The lower the price, the more you’ll consume. You’ll keep using health services until the marginal benefit falls below the price you pay." I'm not sure I agree that people will…

  • On Life and Love

    Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning: Investment Policy Statement

    This is the second of my Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning series. “Investment Policy Statement” a hoity-toity term for “make a contract with yourself on how you’ll invest”. What’s your risk tolerance? What allocation of investments do you want to maintain? How often will you rebalance? What’s your goal? How often will you reassess your goal? I’ve had these things in my head, shuffling them around as I researched and toyed with percentages and numbers. What they weren’t was written down.

  • On Life and Love

    It’s Okay to Breathe

    I just finished The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed yesterday, although the book was eye opening and (fer skerious) life changing throughout–I’m leaving it under Greg’s pillow, on his keyboard, and in his underpants drawer–one paragraph near the end caught my eye: Return calls promptly. How many times has someone explained away a long delay in response with that lame excuse “I’ve been swamped”? Expunge this phrase from your lexicon. It’s horse hockey. Newsflash: it’s the twenty-first century, and we’re all swamped. If someone leaves a voice mail message for you, log it in and get back to them within twenty-four hours. E-mail etiquette is slightly different,…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: Stockholm Trolls

    Um… it’ll make sense as you read. Amanda Hocking’s Blog: Some Things That Need to Be Said – From a successful self-published author: "This is literally years of work you're seeing. And hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn't writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me." The Very Rich Indie Writer – Novelr – Making People Read – Looking at the example of Amanda Hocking's financial success, will authors of web fiction start to close…

  • On Life and Love

    Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning: Determining a Retirement $$ Goal

    This is the first of my Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning series. The ultimate question is simple: how much do I need to have when I “retire” to be able to live for decades on the proceeds? It’s worth getting over the hump of the definition of retirement, because it always seems to come up as a side topic in retirement discussions. Retirement, to me, isn’t buying a boat and spending all day golfing. …Especially since I’d rather just take a group walk through a park instead of hitting and chasing a small ball in the process. To me, retirement is getting out of a 40 hour a week job and working…