Die Broke: A Radical Four-Part Financial Plan
Posted on February 27th, 2010 @ 4:21 pm
Recently I read Die Broke, by Stephen Pollan. Well, I read some of it, anyway. The book is broken into four basic concepts:
- Quit Today
- Pay Cash
- Don’t Retire
- Die Broke
This book had a few good concepts, but unfortunately they were mixed in with some terrible concepts, or at the least, concepts that were inadequately explained. If someone just blindly followed the advice in this book, they would end up having a miserable work life.
Let’s take a quick look at the four concepts:
Quit Today
The basics of this concept is to emotionally divorce yourself from your job, treating it only as a source of income, nothing more.
Really? You want to be emotionally detached from something you spend around 1/2 of your waking weekday hours on? Wow. Sounds like an employee I’d love to have working for me. (That was sarcasm, people.)
Let’s be realistic. Well rounded people are at least somewhat emotionally invested in what they do for a living. Unless you plan retiring young (and Pollan suggests you don’t retire at all), you’re going to spend a huge chunk of your life at work. And what a boring, meaningless existence it would be if your job is nothing more than a cash machine to you.
Pay Cash
Okay, here’s the one nugget that’s pretty much untarnished good advice. Buck the current credit trend and pay cash for everything. You may be self-disciplined enough to pay that credit card off each month, but most people aren’t. And even if they are, most are living paycheck to paycheck, so if there’s an emergency, the credit card is the first thing to be put off. I personally don’t think anyone should have a credit card.
(Note: My wife slightly disagrees with me on this one, so there is some compromise in the Priebe household for the sake of marital harmony.)
Don’t Retire
So while you’re supposed to emotionally remove yourself from your job, you’re also supposed to work forever. I think you’re kind of dumb if you do both of those things. If your job is a temporary thing where you make tons of money, fine. Just retire early. Or if you love your job, then work forever. But not retiring from a job you hate sounds like a recipe for an ulcer.
Die Broke
The title of the book was interesting, and actually why I bought the book. But the author’s reasoning assumes that his readers are incapable of teaching their children fiscal responsibility. Granted, many rich people lose that somewhere between the second and third generation of rich kids, so I guess spending all your money and dying broke could be a back-up plan of sorts.
If you hadn’t guessed, I think a much better plan is just to be a responsible parent and teach your children about money early on.
To be fair, I only read about a third of the book before putting it down. So it’s possible the author gets much better in the rest of the book. But somehow, I doubt it. Smart readers can probably pick out the good advice from the bad, but really there’s a dozen other places you can go that only have the good advice.
My advice: Don’t bother with this book.
Tags: book review, die broke, money, stephen pollan
Playing Machinarium with my five year old
Posted on February 7th, 2010 @ 11:47 pm
Josh with his newly opened robot computer game, Machinarium
This Christmas, one of the gifts I got last minute for Josh, my five year old, was Machinarium, which I’ve blogged about before. It’s a game with fantastic artwork and robots as the main characters.
Naturally, it came as a download. But as smart as Josh is, I was pretty sure software without some physical representation. So while in Dallas for Christmas, I used my dad’s printer that will print on CD’s, and made a decent CD and case for it.
Josh opened the gift Christmas Eve, and he seemed happy enough to get it. Later I found out there was some confusion, and he thought it was his three year old brother Jackson’s game. He was even happier once that was cleared up.
I decided to use the game as a father-son bonding activity. So I told Josh that as long as he behaved, we would play it every Sunday afternoon for an hour or two.
The first Sunday we played, I did feel my patience being tested a bit, as I let him guide me in what to do. I did give him suggestions, but let him decide how to play the game. The game had some hint options built in, which I was fine with using. I did try to get Josh to actually figure things out before we resorted to the hints.
On the sixth Sunday we were playing the game, we beat it. Josh went ahead and gave some feedback on what he thought about the game.
Overall, the experience was fun for both of us. It was nice to bond over a game that you actually had to think to play. I was fairly impressed with how well Josh did. If you’re a father, I would highly recommend playing through a point and click game like Machinarium with your five year old.
First copy of Blogify Your Business (sort of)
Posted on February 1st, 2010 @ 5:41 pm
When I worked on my last book, Webifiable, one of the things I did was order a physical mock-up of the final book from Lulu.com, with Lorem ipsum text in the place of the real text. I call it my motivational copy, as seeing a physical book helps motivate me to finish the actual book.
Well, Emily finished the cover design (first draft) for my next book, Blogify Your Business, and she ordered a motivational copy last week. It showed up today.
Didn’t she do an awesome job? Thanks, Emily!
P.S. Yes, that is an affiliate link to my own book. I’m nothing if not shameless.
Tags: blog, blogify, blogify your business, book, motivation, writing
