Get Rich Slick

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In my last couple of jobs I’ve had the corner office in the high rise and this time is no different and I usually get to oversee the traffic on a major freeway or interstate and as I’ve sat on my desk the last six months and checked the traffic I’ve seen a considerable uptick in the number of large rigs coming and leaving the city.    There is currently significantly more traffic on the freeway, although still small, than I’ve seen in the past few months.

This past weekend, I started a project to implement a 56 square foot garden box to grow veggies this season, I purchased some items at Home Depot and overheard the manager tell an associate that they were beating all of their sales targets.   I have to give it to Home Depot, the service there has DRAMATICALLY improved and I’ve been going back more often since the people are so helpful.  Almost all the items I purchased this past visit were loaded onto a trolley by helpful sales associates and they even loaded the heavy cinder blocks, soil and other items into my truck for me.

I’ve been heading out to lunch with co-workers a few days out of the week and I’ve been shocked at how packed some of the restaurants are during lunch.  It would seem that the “fear factor” is diminishing a bit and while there are still plenty of problems and potential pitfalls with the economy, there is anecdotal evidence that things are getting a wee bit better.   Where we go from here is anyone’s guess….

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So my wife and I are watching the Oscars and we couldn’t help but make three key observations:

1. We have seen maybe 10% of the movies that are up for Oscars and there was a time when I watched almost every movie that came out of Hollywood.   Of course, we were much younger back then with little or no time commitments or obligations so watching a movie was fairly easy to do.   Unfortunately between work and kid demands we simply can’t make it to the movie theater too often and the experience pretty much sucks now anyway.

2. The movie stars all seem to be getting older and uglier or perhaps the fact that I’m watching in HDTV and the stars aren’t as heavily makeup’d with the perfect lighting that’s making me wonder.  Oh yeah and there were so many bad make up jobs too!

3. While we were watching the Oscars we really weren’t watching it.   We were all on our laptops doing different things while watching the Oscars as a “secondary” venue.   I was blogging, wife on Facebook, son watching movie trailes on iTunes…..we watch a clip of the Oscars and tune out for the commercials, TV advertising is so dead.

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I grew  up with one television in the house that got three channels: ABC, NBC, CBS and on occasion PBS.   I say on occasion because we were too far from the station to get clear signal.   At one point, we bought an outdoor antenna and picked up PBS in full clarity but that took a few years.    Most of my entertainment as a kid were 40 year old encyclopedias that my grandfather gave to my mother and hanging out with some neighborhood kids.

Today my kids have 500+ channels of TV, video on demand, music on demand on streaming on high speed network connection displayed on HDTV.   My kids have iPods that house movies, music, and a variety of games.     My kids have high speed internet and access to multiple computers in the house which include 5 laptops and two desktops. My kids have portable Nintendo DS as well as a Nintendo Wii.   My kids have a half dozen board games including at least four variations of Monopoly, Operation, various card games, and a garage full of gear: bikes, razors, basketball, soccer ball, badminton, swimming gear and camping gear.   Where I went on two vacations in 18 years, my kids have visited at least 40 locations worldwide and they’re still not teenagers yet.

My kids generally receive between $200 to $400 cash on birthdays and other holidays not to mention a ton of toys and other goods and gift cards.  I often compare and contrast the life I had and the life they have and stand in sheer amusement that no matter how much or how little you have, sometimes life can seem boring.

Whenever the kids ask for something I tell them the same thing, “You’ll play with it for a few days then it’ll sit on a shelf until we give it away to some charity.”  My son recently asked for an ipod touch and asked him why he didn’t buy one with his own money.  He really didn’t have an answer other than he wanted me to spend the money instead of him.  I asked him if he knew what would happen if I bought the thing for him and he said, “I’ll play with it for 5 minutes then get bored with it.”   I smiled at him and nodded.

We’ll be headed off on a skiing vacation trip soon and I know the kids won’t be bored.  At the end of the day, all that really matters is that they get to spend time with mom and dad.   All the toys and other garbage really don’t mean much to them and they are finally learning that lesson on their own.    The consumer economy and demographic is quickly changing and I hope it is for the better.

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I’m taking a trip down nostalgia lane….Do you remember March 6, 2000?   That was the day the Nasdaq peaked (a.k.a The Dot Com Bubble) at 5,048 and the sky was the limit.   Many investors, speculators and the public heralded as “the new economy” where exponentially growing and astronomical P/E ratios were perfectly justified and rationalized by everyone including your local shoe shine kid.

(click for larger image)

Even today, the Nasdaq is below 50% of the peak value and there are no signs of the Nasdaq climbing back to its former glory.   The next anniversary to look forward to is October 9, 2017 which will herald the 10th anniversary of the Dow which peaked on October 9, 2007 at 14,168.  Yeah, I have a feeling that in 2017 it’ll be at or below 50% of the value so perhaps it’ll be floating around 7k to 8k.   I can’t wait to see if I’m right!

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I walked into the credit union office and requested to open a new account.  The standard process was fairly mundane except when we came to the part where the rep asks me if I want a debit (visa/mastercard) branded card.   I said no, I want a plain ATM card.  “Sorry, we don’t offer those anymore.”

It must have been a fairly new policy because the form she gave me had a check box with “ATM Card” written right on it and I pointed that out to her and she said that they just don’t offer them anymore.

Well it’s no problem for me as I have basically stopped using ATM’s after Chase ruined them and I generally have other methods to obtain cash when I need it.  There is no way in hell I’m ever using a debit card as long as credit cards are around.   Why in hell would I want to risk losing funds from my bank account when I can lay that loss off on the credit card company?

Ultimately, I’m glad the credit union didn’t issue an ATM card since that means there’s only a couple of ways to get money out of there so perhaps it is a new layer of security to keep my money semi-safe.

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So I walk in to Costco this weekend and my jaw dropped at the huge volume of  customers but that’s not what surprised me.   The large crowd was a bit of a shocker and I considered that perhaps the economy was recovering but then I took a look at what most shoppers had in their carts.

What did they have?   Well, nearly every shopping cart had a nearly identical set of items and the thing the items all had in common were the items listed in the Costco coupon book for January.     Almost every couple, every single man or woman trolling the aisles at Costco had that little Costco coupon book people get in the mail.    It seems people were loading up on items that had $2 or $3 dollar off coupons.

The store employees were busy moving forklifts to bring new palettes of items that were on the coupon list.   Paper plates, laundry detergent, tissue paper and paper towels were in almost every cart.    What wasn’t in most shopping carts?  Expensive meats or large quantities of canned goods or other perishable items.   I can surmise that people are bulking up on non-perishable essentials that were on sale at Costco.

Not coincidentally, I had my own little coupon book and stocked up on similar items except I did buy some meats and poultry for my Atkins diet.   I did see one guy put three, yes THREE LCD TV’s into his cart but that was about the only excess I saw.    The other item I saw people were snapping up were rugs.  The rugs are $30 off and on sale for about $119 and it made sense since people are likely buying it as a cheap way to cheap their floors warm this brutal winter.

In the many years of shopping at Costco, I have NEVER seen so many people using the little coupon book nor stocking up on bulk items in the manner that I saw them today.   Unfortunately for Costco, this is going to erode margins at the retail level if customers are only buying items that are heavily discounted.

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Over the past few weeks we’ve been dining out or buying food at restaurants for take home because the deals are just too sweet to be cooking at home.   Chilis has dining for 2 for $20 which includes an appetizer, two entrees and dessert.   Another chain restaurant has fajitas for two with sides, chips and some extras for under $25.   I drove by a seafood restaurant and they were advertising 25 fried shrimp for $10.   Another seafood restaurant has all-you-can-eat lobster for under $20 and those are the deals at expensive restaurants!

It is ironic that more people are consuming food at home and being frugal at the grocery store when now is the perfect time to be eating out.  For lunch today, I had a 12 oz steak with salad and grilled veggies for under $11.   Although I don’t eat fast food too often, I stopped by at Jack-In-The-Box a couple of weeks ago and saw two croissants (even the supreme version) for $3 which is a pretty good deal.   I’m guessing other fast food restaurants have a variety of deals.  I’ve seen Pizza chains offer any size any toppings for $10 and Domino’s has some new deal for two pizzas for $5.99.

If you love eating out, now’s the time to be doing it before some of these chains go bankrupt!

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My two year old MacBook Pro went to sleep and never woke up and I could not boot it up again so I took it to the Apple Genius guys over at the Apple shop at the mall.  I was shocked to see how dead the mall was for a Saturday, this place was jam packed the week before Christmas and now it was totally dead except for the Apple store.   The Apple store seemed to have quite brisk business but I was worried so many people were there to see the “Genius” guys to repair defective equipment.  I overheard quite a few conversations and most seemed to be centered around defective hardware or malfunctioning software.

I was prepared to have the Genius guy tell me that my Mac Book was dead but he said there was a known problem with my model of Macbook and they would repair it for free despite the fact that it is out of warranty.   I am pleasantly surprised that they will honor the repair since I really didn’t want to have to buy a new laptop.

Since the holiday shopping season is over, I am extremely concerned that we are heading back into the abyss.  I just couldn’t fathom that the mall would be so dead on a Saturday during peak time!

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By pure accident, I ended up on google news archives and discovered something very interesting.   I was searching for a list of companies that went bankrupt in 2009 and I came upon an odd little graph at the top of the google archive.   I’m not sure how the graph works but I’m assuming that the graph indexes the amount/volume of words used in News articles for the period in question.   Since news organization often give the readers “what they want” to read I can surmise that news articles are a reflection of societies’ needs, wants, likes and hopes.    So here are the graphs for a few key words.

The  graphs include economy & money related, recovery, depression, education, regulation, deregulation and gloom and doom famine, disease, death:

Just by looking at the graphs and the major spikes that occurred during major economic distresses such as the great depression and world war II,  I don’t think we are anywhere near the end of the current economic calamity but you can draw your own conclusions.

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Here’s an interesting observation, this year we bought our first turkey fryer for Thanksgiving.  We fried a turkey and chicken nuggets during the holiday and it was interesting that the new models all come with timers that only keep the flame burning for 30 minutes.   I’m fairly certain that the “timer” feature was a result of countless unattended oil burning over the past few years causing untold number of fires.    The explicit instructions that read, “DO NOT USE INDOORS” helps affirm my suspicions.

But we also recently bought a new George Foreman grill as the previous 10 year old one we owned finally burned out and that came with a timer that turns off after 30 minutes of use.   I can’t help but wonder if the next generation of stove tops, ovens, and other cooking appliances are going to have a 30 (or some time frame) limit on use.

Is this what our society has come to, the dumbing down of appliances to the point where they have to auto-shut off.   Is this what we can expect in the future for our cars and refrigerators?   I’ve heard rumors of giving the power company the power to shut down our appliances if there is too much demand for electricity.    And idle running cars should shutdown to save the environment right?

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