Jeremy Phillips

And this is teaching the next generation to be responsible how? I believe Henry Ford has one of the best quotes for this situation. It’s one that I most definitely agree with…

“Let them fail; let everybody fail! I made my fortune when I had nothing to start with, by myself and my own ideas. Let other people do the same thing. If I lose everything in the collapse of our financial structure, I will start in at the beginning and build it up again.” — Henry Ford, February 11th 1934

From the article:

The $825 billion economic stimulus package rolled out by Democrats on Thursday might not be enough to prevent an economic catastrophe, according to the chief architect of the package.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey D-Wis. also told reporters it may not be the last effort to use big government spending to spur the economy.

“This represents the largest effort by any legislative body in the world to take government action to prevent economic catastrophe,” Obey said, “and even that may be insufficient alone.”

Later in his briefing, he added, “This product may undershoot the mark.”

The bill could be voted on in committee next Wednesday. That’s the day after the inauguration of President-elect Obama — or, as Obey put it, “the day after the crown prince is sworn in.”

via TheHill.com – Rep. Obey not sure $825B stimulus is enough.

It’s rare that I get as involved with a television series as I have with Sons of Anarchy. I’ve been watching it on Hulu since the Pilot, and really, really enjoy it. There are 13 episodes in the first season, and FX ordered a second 13 episode season on October 6th. The season finale aired last night (November 26th 2008) but will not be available on Hulu until next week.

Sons of Anarchy is an FX television series starring Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman, and Katey Sagal about the lives of a close-knit motorcycle club operating in Charming, a fictional town in the San Joaquin Valley in Northern California.

The Sons of Anarchy is an outlaw motorcycle club with many charters in the United States. The Charming local is the original founding charter of the Sons of Anarchy, all other charters came after the one founded by John Teller and Piermont “Piney Joe” Winston.

The Charming charter is based out of a clubhouse adjacent to the Teller-Morrow auto mechanic shop. Led by Clay Morrow, the club protects and controls Charming through close community relationships, bribery and violent intimidation. The full name of the motorcycle club is Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original; on occasion, the show will abbreviate it as SOA, though more frequently the club is referred to as SAMCRO (a rough acronym of The Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original ) or Sam Crow. This nickname is also reflected in the original title of the show, Forever Sam Crow. The club’s leathers also refer to “Men of Mayhem,” Jax has worn a hat that says “Reaper Crew,” and their logo is a grim reaper wielding an M-16 scythe and holding a crystal ball. Another symbol of the club is the crow. (At least two female characters affiliated with the club have crow tattoos.) As for the motorcycles, the Sons mostly ride customized Harley-Davidson Dyna Glides, Night Trains and Road Kings.

Club members have “day jobs” in local industries, but they primarily make money by doing protection runs for local businesses (protecting valuable shipments from hijacking), and by importing illegal weapons and selling them to drug gangs in the East Bay.

SAMCRO keeps meth traffickers out of Charming, which puts them at odds with the meth-distributing white supremacist “Nords” gang, headed by Ernest Darby. Unlike their rivals, the Sons are relatively diverse and inclusionist, disdaining the Nords’ social perspective. The SOA also have to deal with a rival Oakland-based MC, the “Mayans” led by Marcus Alvarez, who control the neighboring territory of Nevada. Other groups in SAMCRO’s orbit include the San Francisco-based Chinese-American mafia and the Real IRA of Ireland, which supplies them with illegal Russian-made guns, and various affiliates in the state prison system, where many members of the club have been incarcerated at one time or another.

The club operates out of an elaborate clubhouse attached to the Teller-Morrow auto shop. The clubhouse includes a living area where Jax is currently camped out (since leaving his house to ex-wife Wendy following their divorce), a bar, a pool table and an elaborate conference table made of redwood that has a reaper logo carved into the top. The club also owns a secluded cabin in the woods and formerly had a warehouse outside of town where they assembled the illegal weapons. They are currently looking for a new warehouse space.

John Teller and Piermont “Piney” Winston co-founded SAMCRO in 1967 following their return from service as paratroopers during the Vietnam War. Six of the “Redwood Original 9″ members were vets; Clay Morrow was the youngest of the original members. Following John’s death nearly 30 years later, his widow Gemma married Clay.

John and Gemma’s surviving son Jax (another son Tommy died in childhood of the “family flaw”, a congenital heart defect) is second in the club’s line of succession after co-founder and sitting president Clay. Jax is recently divorced from Wendy, the mother of his son Abel, who is born 10 weeks premature as a result of his mother’s meth addiction. Jax is also connected to Tara, a doctor at St. Thomas hospital. The two were high school sweethearts.

The family drama is loosely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet; indeed, star Ron Perlman has said, “I’m sure they’re going to stick to the structure of Hamlet all the way to the end” of the series. Clay is based on the role of King Claudius and Gemma as a Gertrude figure. Jax stands in for Prince Hamlet himself; his reflective questioning of the SOA culture, brought on by the birth of his son, references Hamlet’s melancholy over the death of the king. Additionally, Jax “communicates” with his dead father by way of his late father’s unpublished journal/manuscript; Hamlet, of course, literally communicated with the ghost of his father. Lastly, narratively the Sons are typical antiheroes.

To date the series has followed a cohesive plot that has been played out wonderfully. I would highly recommend watching the first two to three episodes on Hulu to see if the show is something you might be interested in.

There is a good article over at LivingAlmostLarge entitled “Q&A with Lewis Schiff” about ‘middle class millionaires’. Some statements that popped out at me;

We see the competitive and driven nature of Middle-Class Millionaires emerging clearly in the form of mergers and acquisition (small business activity is way up) and aggressive investment for new opportunities. By contrast, most of the middle-class will tell you they are just keeping their head down and waiting for all of this to blow over.

…

In so many ways, the advice we’ve gotten our whole lives, to avoid failure, to chart a steady path from higher education to entry level job and up through promotions, are contrary to the ways people create significant wealth in this country.

It’s definitely an interesting interview, I highly recommend reading it. [ LINK ]

This just blows my mind. Why people think taxing the wealthy more will solve anything makes no sense to me. From the article:

The measure would impose a new 35% income surtax (in addition to federal taxes and the existing 10.3% top state rate), and penalize people who leave the state by seizing 55% of assets exceeding $20 million. The money raised would be used to eliminate the state’s budget deficit and for purchasing controlling shares in large corporations.

The 17.5% surtax is unusual because it would be on a taxpayer’s total (not marginal) income whenever it exceeds $250,000, with another additional 17.5 percent tax on total income (for a total additional 35 percent tax) whenever it exceeds $500,000. In the case of single taxpayers or taxpayers filing as head of household, these additional taxes would be levied on incomes greater than $150,000 and $350,000 respectively.

Yeah, that would be a hard decision if I lived in California. I’m so glad I never moved there. Read the whole article at [ LINK ]

From over at the Financial Times…

“I think we need to tell the American consumer that [prices] are going up,” he said. “We’re seeing cost increases that we’ve never seen in our business.”

Fair Use, from http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/people,601,soros-predicts-worst-recession-for-50-years,13683 …

Amid collapsing stock prices worldwide, the billionaire investor George Soros has told an Austrian daily, the Standard, that the United States is threatened with recession and the world is facing the worst financial crisis in half a century. “The situation is much more serious than any other financial crisis since the end of World War II,” Soros was quoted as saying.
He said over the past few years politics had been guided by some basic misunderstandings stemming from something that he called “market fundamentalism” – the belief that financial markets tended to act as a balance. “This is the wrong idea,” he said. “We really do have a serious financial crisis now.”
He added he was surprised how little it was understood that a US recession was also a threat to Europe. European shares duly fell nearly six per cent on Monday, their biggest one-day slide since 9/11.
Meanwhile in Mumbai, some market analysts are suggesting Soros shorted the Indian markets last week. Over 15 years after he shorted the British pound in September 1992 and earned one billion dollars, local market sources say one of Soros’s funds may have shorted the Nifty last week.

For those who don’t know, I have three children who are currently 9, 6 & 5. This means my wife and I have three college educations to at least help with, if not pay for in full. It’s the least we can do for the joy and meaning our children have brought to our lives.

However paying for three college educations, even with in-state tuitions at public universities, is not going to be cheap. Because it’s going to be so incredibly expensive, I was immediately interested in Upromise, an easy and free way to save money for college educations. How it works is pretty simple. You register your credit and debit cards and select companies – quite a few actually – will put a percentage of your purchase in your Upromise account whenever you make a purchase at their store with a registered credit or debit card. You can also register your grocery store cards (Safeway, Fred Meyer, Albertsons, etc…) and when you buy selected items, which are marked with the Upromise logo on the shelf, a small amount will be deposited to your Upromise account. Easy as pie.

There is also a method of doing your online shipping through the Upromise website to get an even higher percentage of your purchases donated to your account but I haven’t tried that yet so can’t comment on it. Quite simply, this is a quick, easy and most importantly free way to help save for a college education for your children. Even if you don’t have children of your own, you can save the money for yourself, for future children or you can donate it to your nieces, nephews or grandchildren so sign up now! Upromise – Save money for college.

I read an interesting article at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity that raised the question of whether one’s emergency fund should be located in a Money Market or High Yield Savings account. The author comes to the conclusion that you should keep part of your emergency fund in a high yield savings account and part in a local bank, and while I somewhat agree I thought I would share the plan I just put into action less than two weeks ago. I think it will work fairly well but would appreciate any comments or suggestions.

First, some background facts…

1.) Some time ago I opened a MMDA (Money Market Deposit Account) at Capital One Direct Banking. Currently it earns 4.40% APY.
2.) We are also in the process of changing banks from KeyBank back to Bank of America, due to a combination of the random and unpredictable fees that KeyBank repeatedly charged to our account and the generally lackluster customer service they provided to us.

An Interesting Side Note: I opened a standard ‘free’ checking account and linked savings at Bank of America. Normally they only waive their checking account fees with Direct Deposit but I explained my convoluted system I am setting up and they agreed to waive the fees. They may do the same for you, as the only thing that seems to matter is that funds are electronically deposited to your account on a regular basis.

Now, the plan that I have laid out is as follows…

1.) All revenue received, from any source, will be deposited to our Capital One MMDA via one of two methods a) electronic – such as direct deposit or wire transfer or b) deposited to Bank of America savings and transferred via ACH.

2.) I have setup a bi-weekly transfer from Capital One to Bank of America that will be sufficient to cover all our bills and provide spending money for Holly & I. This is far less than the income being deposited to the Capital One account which will provide for an automatic savings plan as we’ll never see it.

3.) I currently have set aside $500.00 in our Bank of America savings account, and have been transferring anything exceeding that amount to Capital One. The savings account doesn’t ever earn much interest but we are signed up for Keep the Change, so we do end up with excess funds in that account. I don’t really have a schedule for transferring these founds out yet, but I’m going to try and find a time slot every other week that I can dedicated to making sure all these transfers are happening as they should.

Why I Chose an MMDA instead of a High Yield Savings Account
There are quite a few reasons actually, with the most important being that I will have much easier access to my funds via a good old fashioned checkbook. This will allow me to keep a much lower balance in the low yield (~0.50% APY) savings account at Bank of America, while still providing semi-easy access to my funds.

Thoughts/comments/questions?

I’ve decided to start including posts about personal finance here, as it’s something that has been at the forefront of my mind lately. As with most things that are at the forefront of my mind, I’ve been reading about it – namely at blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar. Get Rich Slowly’s author J.D. Roth also has a rather interesting personal blog entitled foldedspace as well and his latest entry really got my attention and has helped push me into action. The paragraph that most inspired me was towards the bottom.

As of this moment, I am technically debt-free except for my mortgage. I haven’t actually paid the final debt, but I have the money in the bank to do so. This is an enormous step for me. Defeating my debt is akin to defeating the demons from my youth. It’s a sign that the adult J.D. is asserting himself, is denying that the things that happened to the young J.D. will actually control his life.

It touched a certain chord in me as a large part of my adult life has been controlled by the things that happened to me as a child and I’m finally starting to realize that and push through those issues to become the adult Jeremy. Now is the first time in my memory that I don’t feel the need to prove myself to anyone, which is a good feeling and a great start to the rest of my life.