The Money Writers

Like almost all of my weekend posts, I try to highlight something that’s not necessarily related to personal finance. Maybe it’s a small detail of something that’s going on my life. Earlier this week, I was driving to the store to do some shopping and I heard an unusual song. It caught my attention because I would categorize it as rap, but I don’t listen to channels that typically play rap. Perhaps it’s a lot like one of favorite bands, Cake.
I went home and found the the video on YouTube. I showed it to my […]

Ever notice that Where’s Waldo and Harry Potter had striking similarities? Both characters were created by British authors, (Waldo is actually the US version of the original Wally). Both were featured in children’s books, but had their audience to adults expand to a point where they had sold billions of copies and lead to spin-offs of video games, magazines, dolls, and toys. They both pull of the nerdy glasses quite well. They have a signature striped piece of clothing, Waldo with his shirt and Harry with his scarf. They are never too far away from […]

I’m going to try something a little new and interesting this week. I thought I’d give a shout out to some bloggers and their articles that I find noteworthy. There are a lot of great personal finance articles, but this takes it a step beyond to the level of garnering a small amount of fame.
I’d like to give a shout out to Joseph Sangl for his appearance in Money Magazine. I’m just egotistical enough to claim that I’m probably the only person to review his book Joseph Sangl : I Was Broke, Now I’m Not and I […]

This is an interesting weekend for me. I’m very excited about two events tomorrow. In the morning, I get to watch one of my wife’s friends get her doctorate from Stanford… followed by a graduation speech from Oprah. It’s kind of sad that I’m not really interested in her for any reason other than she’s Oprah. I’m not exactly a fan.
After I’m done with Oprah, I have to hop on the Celtics’ bandwagon and root with some friends at a bar. I didn’t think I’d find basketball interesting ever again, but between Pierce coming back […]

This past Thursday, I was reminded of the power of social capital. A friend of mine contacted another friend (who works for the Celtics) on my behalf to score tickets to last Thursday’s game. I’m the type of person who won’t bug a movie star for an autograph. Even though I am fairly close with both friends, I just didn’t feel comfortable asking since I was sure that he had a billion other friends who would love to go. I’d like to take a minute and thank both friends.
It was a phenomenal game. When we […]

This week I’m taking a vacation and seeing family and friends in Boston. I had gotten to the point where I really liked the San Francisco area. I didn’t realize how much I missed Boston. I got very emotional driving down the Mass Pike… seeing Fenway Park… seeing the gun safety advertisement on Landsdowne. I’m torn between two coasts.
Here are some links from The Money Writers and beyond:

Million Dollar Journey presents saving strategy: ask for a discount with some great examples and a tagline you should always keep in mind… “Is that the best you […]

As a subscriber of pop music band’s Weezer’s newsletter, I occasionally get an e-mail about news that is going on in Weezerland. They don’t send too many e-mails out, probably only one every six months or so. When they come, they are genuinely a good read. So when I got one this Friday, I had to check it out. They put their new upcoming song and video on YouTube. Imagine giving away your product for free… people who do that must be crazy…
The video was one of the best I’ve seen in some time. […]

It’s game seven time in Boston and I can’t imagine the atmosphere. I personally stopped watching the Celtics when legends retired (Bird, Parish, McHale, etc.) and the new stars literally died (Reggie Lewis, Len Bias). The team philosophy for a number of years seemed to be to try to stay .500. This year, I’ve started watching a little more basketball - about 10 games compared to the 72 I used to watch. Yes, I’m a fair-weather fan, but I think it’s reasonable considering the circumstances. So let’s dedicate this set of links to the Boston […]

Mother’s Day is tomorrow. Of course you already knew that. Since I already wrote my Mother’s Day post, I thought I’d share some great Mother’s Day songs with you. I did a little quick research and found “Mother Mother” by Tracy Bonham’s and “Mother” by Danzig. On second thought, let’s just scrap the cuddly song idea and get onto the links.

Over on my sister site, I wrote about the great value that I find in Taco Bell’s healthy Fresco menu.
Did you know that just by getting in shape you can save yourself from going under?
Plan Ahead […]

A couple of weeks ago, a friend turned me onto Harry’s Hofbrau a local chain of restaurants. It turns out that in San Francisco “Hofbrau” means more of a carvery. It might somewhat similar to a more upscale version of Boston Market. It’s a little like a cafeteria where you just go down the line and construct your meal from all the options in front of you. The food is amazing, but the prices are even more outstanding. Last night, I had sirloin tips in a mushroom sauce on bed of noodles with a roll […]

Yesterday, I woke up excited for the NFL draft. It had been heavily publicized for the last two months. I was disappointed to find that Comcast, my cable television and Internet provider, was experiencing an outage. Right before the draft, they got the television working, but the Internet was down all day. I finally called Comcast late last night to find that when they fixed the outage, the cable modem needed to be recycled. I lost a days worth of work with the Carnival of Personal Finance due out tomorrow because they didn’t tell me […]

Today when I woke up before I dawn, I realized it was my first day of being a full-time problogger. I’m still in the corporate mentality of thinking of Saturday as a “day off,” though. I realized that might be one of the first things that has to disappear to make that corporate […]

I don’t know what it is about this weekend, but Amy Adams is invading my wife and my lives this weekend. Friday night, we went to the local DVD Play in an attempt to rent Juno. Since it’s so new we had to settle for a back-up. The only movie my wife and I could agree on was Enchanted - starring Amy Adams. We watched that Friday night. Saturday morning, I woke up early and put in the next movie in the Netflix queue, Talladega Nights - of which she has a sizable minor role. […]

Since we may be faced with the end of the world this summer ( photo credit: Ethan Hein), we might as well enjoy the spring weather. A few thoughts:

The Knicks fired Isaiah (finally) at the same time the Pope arrived in New York. Coincidence? Hmm.
I got nostalgic for one of the greatest […]

You may have noticed that Lazy Man and Money and Lazy Man and Health have undergone a redesign recently. I have gotten some excellent feedback thus far, including my suggests on how to improve it further. I can always use more feedback, so if you have an idea, please consider sharing it with me via this web form. I hope to implement many of the subtle changes over the next week or two. In the meantime, here are a few of the changes and why I made them:

Narrower content area - A person who I respect […]

Debtkid from Lending Club approached me about doing an interview for them. I’m generally very open to doing interviews for other sites and this was no exception. He came at me with some questions that required me to be more serious than I would normally be on Lazy Man and Money. If you are a regular reader and interested in a behind-the-scenes look at my life, I would suggest checking out the interview.
Articles from The Money Writers:
Brip Blap tells us how he gets things done. I need a system, but I can never stick with one.
The […]

Friday was a highlight in my personal finance writing career. NetworthIQ and Expensr hosted a meeting in San Francisco. I got to meet Flexo, Jim, SVB, J.D. and his wife, Cap, Sam, John, Jeffrey, and James. The idea was to brainstorm about the next generation of personal finance tools. If you want a good recap, I suggest these article from Get Rich Slowly and The Digerati Life. I find it funny that I just finished writing that personal finance isn’t about the tools and here I am consulting on them. Perhaps soon, I’ll detail how […]

For about a year now, I’ve been part of a loose network of bloggers. These bloggers included The Sun’s Financial Diary, Money Smart Life, The Digerati Life, and Generation X Finance have consulted with each other to improve our blogs and our writing. We’ve recently decided to formalize the relationship and bring a few new members on board. These new members include Brip Blap, Million Dollar Journey, and My Dollar Plan. We’ll strive to bring you a variety of thoughtful personal finance articles. If you want read all of our articles on one site, […]

Baseball can’t get started soon enough for me. My interest in baseball grows with the lengthening of the day. It literally brightens my day and injects me with fresh motivation to get things done. While I work on those things here are some links.
The Digerati Life writes a definitive guide to identity theft. As she says, a credit freeze is always an option, but can be a costly one as you have to pay to freeze and unfreeze your credit.
Ben from Money Smart Life learned quite a few sales tactics from a lawn salesman. I […]

I’m a member of a diverse group of people with a common interest. I’ve found that situation often leads to one or two people who are “a little too different” than the rest to be openly accepted. There was one guy in our group who always brought up really bizarre topics that the majority would consider extremely inappropriate. Other conversations seemed to lack what many would consider a grasp of logic. I think the group would consider him the most eccentric they’ve ever met. It got to the point where we wondered how it is […]

It was a rough week emotionally for the Lazy Man. I felt that I got hit and kicked around a little bit. So on Friday night, the wife and I went out and did some hitting and kicking. Specifically we went out to Maverick, a restaurant owned by Scott Youkilis - the brother of Red Sox first baseman, Kevin Youkilis. How does this fit in with the hits and kicks? Well, we picked up a bottle of Youk’s Hot Sauce autographed by Kevin Youkilis. The chilies provide a kick and some of the proceeds […]

For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a great turkey day. My family has a Thanksgiving tradition of making a Christmas list. This was always the hardest thing for me growing up. Everything that I wanted was just a little more expensive than what was deemed polite for the […]

One of the reasons I started this afternoon links was to introduce readers to blogs and articles that I like. When I was just starting out a few blogs did a similar thing for me and it really helped me stick with writing when the stats weren’t there. One of these sites, […]

I received news that I’ll be saving around $10-12 a year and I’m mad about it. It looks like Time Warner is closing down the Business 2.0 magazine. It was my favorite of three magazine that I subscribe to - the other two being Men’s Health and Money. Perhaps I’ll have […]

Last week, I had mentioned that I planned to post a little more and link to some other great reads that I’ve neglected sharing in the past. My idea is that I’d write about some short story, lyric from a song, or a money quote that made me recently think. It sounds […]