Everybody Loves Your Money

http://news.yahoo.com/s/keye/20050714/lo_keye/cbs42enronboardinhoustongetsheftypayraise
There are owners in society, (the Elite) and then there are the rest of us. We are mere flies to swat away when we bother the elite. How do you know if you are one of the elite? What are the signs? Well, to pick a couple examples from the above article:

You don’t even work for the company but are on the board and get paid $300k just for being on the board

The company you don’t work for but are on the board of is Enron

You then VOTE yourself a raise that is over 4 times the amount that you were receiving before. (note: you still don’t work for the company)

Amazing.

A couple years ago, I was sitting in my office paying my bills when a thought occurred to me. I confess, lots of thoughts come to me all the time, which is why I probably tend to ramble a bit. Most of these thoughts could have also come to a monkey at the zoo, but every now and then, one really stays with me.

It is a heck of a lot easier not to spend $20 than it is to earn $20 in interest. If you are like me (as opposed to all the PF Bloggers out there), you probably have a savings account at your bank and are earning somewhere around 1.5 percent interest. I would have to let $16000 sit in my savings account for a full month in order to get a $20 return. Alternatively, I could just not eat out once a month and end up with even more money. So, when we go out and spend money frivolously I tend to think in the back of my head, “How much money would it take to generate the amount I’m going to spend?” More than once, I’ve turned the car around and headed back home to eat left-overs.

So, now that I’ve probably highlighted one of the most basic and well known facts about personal finance, all of my fellow PF Bloggers can chuckle at me and think to themselves, “Wow. He’s 33 now and he thought of that 2 years ago. Geez. It took him until he was 31 years old to realize this. Maybe he should be in the zoo too.”