Wise Money Decisions

This map from mint.com shows income by state as well as several other interesting statistics.

For better and for worse, I live near the most expensive rent in the nation. Good because I’m a landlord, bad because I’m also a tenant.

“Rules-of-thumb are for people who want to decide things without thinking about them.”– The late Lynn Hopewell, former editor of The Journal of Financial Planning

As you might have guessed, PFAIRQWOBRAR stands for “personal finance and investing related quotes worthy of being repeated and remembered.”

Some are funny.  Some are insightful.  A few are both.

You can access all PFAIRQWOBRAR quotes via the Quick Link at your top left.

The market is having a tough day.  S&P500 is down nearly 4%.

In other news, the headline writers for Yahoo Finance are having a tough day.  The current headline:

Stocks Extend Slide on Lack of Positive News

I love the creativity.

My feeds are not working. 

I started looking into the problem and discovered that I am not alone. 

Feedburner was acquired by Google a few years ago.  Feedburner operated as a standalone service up until now.  Google is now requiring everyone to transfer their feed from Feedburner to google.  

Now all heck has broken loose.  The transition has caused all kinds of errors for all kinds of bloggers.  The blogosphere is up in arms that the mighty Google has bungled the transition.

I have contacted the Feedburner/Google people to see if they can help.  I am told it can take up to 48 hours for them to respond.  I’m certain they are being bombarded with emails and complaints right now. 

I will get my feeds fixed as soon as possible.

You may get an error if you try to subscribe to the feeds using the links in the left sidebar. 

Feedburner, which was acquired by Google a couple years ago, is transitioning their feeds to integrate better with Google products.  There are a few kinks to iron out.

Hopefully I can get them working later today.

If you subscribe to the feed through your browser, you shouldn’t experience any problems.   UPDATE: There seems to be problems with the browser feed too.  Stay tuned.

Jail is my worst enemy at times, and at times my best friend.  It depends on how many hotels there are.

I came across this statistical analysis of Monopoly by Truman Collins, who as far as I can tell is an electrical engineer in Oregon. 

It has the distinction of being both the most complete statistical analysis of Monopoly I’ve ever seen, and at the same time the only statistical analysis of Monopoly I’ve ever seen.

I have neither the time nor inclination to check Truman’s model.   But assuming it’s right, it claims to determine the most likely square to end your turn on (slightly different than the most likely square to land on).  I believe there are 40 squares on a Monopoly board, so the average likelihood for each square should be 2.5%.

It may not come as a surprise that Jail is the most likely square to end a turn.  You can end a turn in Jail by landing on Go To Jail, rolling three doubles, getting a Chance or Community Chest, or by starting the turn in Jail and not getting out. 

After Jail, what is the next most likely square to end your turn on?  I would not have guessed:  Illinois Avenue.

And the least likely square?  It’s a trick question.  Since it’s least likely to end on, rather than land on, Go To Jail is the least likely since it’s impossible to end a turn there. 

The three next least likely squares are Chance, followed by the first Community Chest (between Mediterranean and Baltic).   Why?  Because many Chance and Community Chest cards send you to another square.  Interestingly, the other Community Chests are substantially more likely than the first one.   Not sure why that would be.

After Go To Jail and the card squares, the least likely square is ….. (drum roll) ….. Mediterranean Avenue.

There you go, more statistics than you ever wanted to know about Monopoly.   Unless you’re a statistics geek like me, in which case I predict you will check out the analysis yourself.

P.S.  My deepest apologies for ending a few sentences with a preposition.  I don’t prefer it, but it’s the vernacular.

I saw a blip tonight on The Big Idea that Americans work more hours than the residents of any other industrialized nation. 

That might be true, but the Japanese actually have a word for death by overwork:

There is an effort in Japan to cut down on deaths from overwork, known as “karoshi.” Such deaths have steadily increased since the Health Ministry first recognized the phenomenon in 1987. 

I recently went to a Stanford Engineering Alumni Association seminar held at Google.  It was my first time at the “Googleplex.” 

My first thought when I arrived, “I’m back on campus.”   Jeans, long hair, rows of colorful umbrellas outside the cafeteria, volleyball, marker boards covered with marker-graffiti (I assume what I saw was the famous idea board, or one of them), nearly everyone is under 40 — just like the good ol’ days of grad school.

When you live around here you hear stories about the Googleplex and what it’s like to work there.  So I was prepared for some of it.

There were, however, two things I wasn’t expecting:  whimsical architecture and tight security.  The architecture is more colorful and whimsical than the link suggests.  For example, there is a building designed to look like one of the stories has fallen over and is leaning into the floor below it.  It creates a bit of an optical illusion.  

I couldn’t find a picture of it on the web.  If anyone knows the building and has a picture, and you don’t mind sharing it with the world, I’d like to post it.

As far as the security, as soon as I walked through a door there was a guard telling me where to go, and then he watched to make sure I went there.  At every door. 

After the seminar I hung out at the bottom of the stairs reading the idea board.  I wasn’t interested in the board.  I just wanted to see how long the guard would let me loiter.  I was there for 5 minutes.  Then I decided I had better things to do with my time than bait Google security.  I left.

It was fun to see this place that is the subject of so many stories. 

Here’s an aerial shot of the Googleplex.

Here are a few more shots from the central hub of the campus taken by a Google employee.  The pictures are a couple years old but it looks the same today.

KMC at Advanced Personal Finance has graciously introduced me to his readers.  So let me offer a warm welcome to Advanced Personal Finance readers!  I hope you will find something worthwhile here.

And to my small but growing audience, you should check out Advanced Personal Finance.  It is one of my favorite personal finance blogs. 

To give you a sample, I recommend his recent post about the circumstances that led him to leave his job despite not having a new job lined up and his wife about to deliver their second child.  Spoiler alert: it has a happy ending.