The Writers Coin

I wrote a piece over at Wisebread about how the $8,000 credit has made M and I a lot more comfortable buying our place.

To us, the credit isn’t what got us “over the hump,” we were going to buy anyway, but the article is all about how it gives us additional peace of mind because we can replenish our savings account. Which is going to feel damn near empty after we put all this money down.

Which makes us nervous.

Which is normal.

Anyway, a lot of the comments over there are focusing on the potential downside: people that can’t afford a home but use the credit as a down payment or in another way to “make it affordable.” They claim that this is why the mortgage bubble burst in the first place.

They are interesting comments, and you would expect it from a financially responsible group of people, but a lot of people lost focus on what I was trying to say.

Which is: money can buy you peace of mind. And the more of it you have, the more peaceful your mind will be.

I’m a huge baseball fan and the arbitration process is something that fascinates me. It’s how teams and players settle on a salary for a player when they don’t agree on how much he’s worth.

The details on which players are eligible and when they can file for arbitration is here, but what I’m interested in is the actual process.

How it Works

The team submits an amount they think the player is worth and the player submits the amount he thinks he’s worth. Then they go to a three-person arbitration hearing where they try to justify their number.

He who makes the best case to this three-person panel wins: their amount is the amount both sides must abide by. There is no splitting the difference, there is no compromise—if you win you get paid (or pay) the number you walked in with.

Fascinating, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to put together a bunch of numbers, emails, and facts and waltz into your boss’s office to make your case for a higher salary in an arbitration-style hearing?

No, you wouldn’t. The reason why is very simple.

It Gets Ugly

Think about it: the team doesn’t want to pay the player more money than it has to. To make that case they’ll have to denigrate their own player.

His defense cost us many games last year.
He choked when it really counted.
He had that DUI incident which really embarrassed the team.
His skills are deteriorating.

That’s the kind of stuff you can expect to hear coming out of the team’s side. They have to make the player out to be everything short of a monster to win the hearing.

Could you sit there and listen to your employer/boss rail on you and then go back to work the next day with no hard feelings regardless if you won or lost? Let’s be honest: it wouldn’t be easy.

And then there’s the other side of the coin—the case you have to make. Now you have to toot your own horn and make the case as to why you deserve more. And that’s something most people suck at.

On the other hand, most people are too shy/scared/nervous to stroll into their boss’s office and make the case that they deserve more. So at least having a formal process like this would force people to stick up for themselves and highlight their accomplishments.

What do you guys think? Would this work at your office?

Image by mistycabal

When I first started this site, there were three sites that I aspired to be as big and as good as: The Simple Dollar, Get Rich Slowly, and I Will Teach You to be Rich. Ask anyone in the personal-finance space and they’ll tell you these are the big boys the girls love and the boys want to be like.

Yesterday I finally managed to get a guest post on GetRichSlowly and the comments have been fast and furious (51 so far). The post is about the things I’ve learned about money in my two plus years of marriage.

Not surprisingly enough, a lot of people disagreed with my thoughts on “we” vs. “I.”

My baseline argument: learning and adjusting how you do things is always a good thing. When you think you’ve got it all figured out, you are doomed. And boring.

Among some of the shots I took:

• I’ve only been married two years so my advice carries very little weight
• Marriage can never be equal so stop dreaming
• You must have your own money even if you combine your finances (which I agree with)

Check out the post and the comments—I’m curious to hear how JD’s readers differ from “my” readers (including all you recent subscribers).

So I’m thinking of starting a side business to help people get the most out of their PCs. There are some tweaks that almost all PC owners can do to take clean out certain parts of their machines that make them slower than they need to be.

What I need to know is if any of you out there are potential customers and what you would want/pay for a service like this.

The service would be something like this, though I haven’t nailed it down yet: I’d come over to your house for an initial inspection. It would take about a half hour and cost around $25. If your computer doesn’t need any work, then that’s it—job over.

But if it does, it would take me about an hour (on average) to run some software on it and get it working faster. I would show you before and after data that shows the improvement so you don’t have to take my word for it.

That service would be an additional $50. So that’s $75 for an inspection and a revamping of your system.

Not only that, I’d set all the software to run once a week so you don’t need to call me again.

The target customer: someone with a computer that doesn’t have the time or the patience to learn the intricacies of making it faster. Someone who feels his/her machine is slower than when they first bought it and is maybe thinking they need a new machine but don’t want to spend the money.

What do you guys think? How much would you pay for something like this?

Any and all feedback is appreciated!