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Last week I wrote a post about cracking my knuckles and sadly it was my most popular post to date.

It’s funny actually, I write all these financial planning based pieces and the one that delivers the most traffic is the one about my knuckles.

Actually, I’m kidding about being sad about it, I love the fact that people enjoyed it. All work and no play is not the kind of approach that I want to take to this blog.

So I decided for every few on-topic posts, I want to mix it up a bit and write about something different. Which brings me to the topic of this post… these funky ear plugs.

Big things come in small packages

I get a lot of mail each week from different investment companies and sometimes they attach little gimmicky type gifts. On this day, there were two little orange ear plugs attached to the mailer in a plastic bag. The mailer said something like, ‘drown out the market noise.’

Continue Reading “These earplugs doubled my productivity!”

I find myself cracking my knuckles all the time. I can’t remember when I started doing this but I probably do it about once an hour or so.

Now, I’m double jointed and can bend the top part of my thumb back to parallel. When I show people this they make that bitter beer face and say it looks weird.

I guess they’re right, it does look kind of strange. I’m just so used to seeing it because it’s me and I thought it was normal.

And funny enough, its the knuckle I enjoy cracking the most, maybe because I don’t need any other fingers to assist. It makes a crisp little popping noise that makes me feel like my thumbs are ready to rock.

Continue Reading “I can’t stop cracking my knuckles!”

Well I’m back to the blog after a few days of R&R for the Labor Day weekend. Been relaxing and watching the US Open Tennis, loving the matches and the great coverage on USA and CBS, always one of my favorite times of year in NYC. Tonight on USA is Roger Federer vs Andy Roddick in prime-time, I can’t wait. Hopefully Andy will give him more of a challenge then he did at the Australian Open in January.

This time of year brings back special memories for me, as I grew up playing tennis at the USTA National Tennis Center. I ball-boyed the Open for many years, alongside my tennis friends, many of whom I’ve lost touch with. I ball-boyed the Womens doubles final where Steffi Graf and Gabriella Sabatini won the title that year.

Back in the day

I ball-boyed a Mens quarterfinal between Jimmy Connors and Brad Gilbert, I ball-boyed for Boris Becker on a few occasions and everyone thought I looked just like him; I used to take photos with fans who thought I was him, pretty funny.

Continue Reading “Labor Day memories”

Originally, I knew very little about the blogging world. I mean, I knew what blogging was about but had little idea how extensive and influential the blogosphere is.

Around the middle of June, I was in Las Vegas with a few friends and got into a conversation with a friend of a friend.

He was an online marketing consultant, heavy into social media, and was telling me all about the world of online blogging and how powerful a medium it can be.

A real newbie

I was intrigued by it all. I had had this idea of “financial planning for my generation”on my mind for quite some time now, but didn’t know how and where to get the word out. The medium, it turns out, was right in front of me the whole time, but it took this conversation in Vegas to turn the lights on. Who says you can’t get lucky in Las Vegas? Continue Reading “Tweaking the look”

Is there really a downside to good planning?

Hmm….
thinking, thinking, thinking…

Nope can’t think of anything substantial enough to write about here…

The title for this post was inspired by the ‘computer for every child’ program. This fantastic program aims to give every child in the world access to the internet.

Nicholas Negroponte is the co-founder of MIT’s Media Lab and is working on a way to mass produce laptops for $100 a piece.

The goal is to sell them to developing countries on the cheap and give the world’s poorest children access to something we all get to use everyday. Here’s a link to read more about it.

Continue Reading “A Roth IRA for every American!”

Here’s a little analogy I put together to go with the previous post.

You and your family decide that you want to rent a catamaran and sail from Bay Shore, NY to Florida. Your neighbor, Barney Rubble, decides he wants to do the same thing, leaving from the same dock in Bay Shore, NY. Barney has spent sometime sailing and you are relatively new to it.

On board your ship you have the latest navigation equipment, including chart-plotters, radars, autopilot, the works. Barney has little to no equipment on his catamaran and feels comfortable using his instincts.

Continue Reading “Sailing takes me away”

I am a GenX’er… born in December 1971… which makes me 35 yrs old. According to Wikipedia, anyone born in North America between 1961 and 1981 is a part of Generation X, so I literally split it right down the middle. That makes anyone in North America between the ages of 26 and 46 an unofficial member of the X Generation.

I find it interesting that the term “GenX” really only applies to North Americans… I’d never thought of it that way. Originally, I wrote the above paragraph without the words “North America”… I later went back to edit it.

Continue Reading “Generation X or E or Bof”

I struggled for a while with the name of this weblog. Eventually, I decided on the name “chance favors”… with “roth matters” coming in a close second.

“Chance favors” is a bit of a play on words, as you can take it to mean a few different things. For instance, you may have come upon this page, by chance, and you may take something from it that will be of use to you, consider it a favor of sorts:)

The name also conjures thoughts about how luck and timing play a big part in all of our lives…which is getting closer to the real reason I decided to go with “chance favors”. Continue Reading “Chance favors or Roth matters?”