My 9-year-old daughter, Lenina, lost another tooth today!
Of course, most everyone knows custom dictates that when a child loses a tooth they dutifully place it under their pillow knowing that the Tooth Fairy will come and take it in exchange for ...
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Celebrating My 100th Post!
You know, they say a milestone is anything that gives you a personal sense of accomplishment and helps you move forward. Amazingly enough, after just over six months I reached an important blogging milestone of my own today: post number 100! ...
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The 5 Worst Jobs For Teenagers
With summer here, schools are now on hiatus for vacation in most places around the country and teenagers are scurrying to find temporary jobs to earn some extra money. With that in mind, some parents may be interested to know that the National Consumers League (NCL) has once again selected their Five Worst Teen Jobs that teenagers are advised to avoid at all possible costs.
With the help of the Child Labor Coalition, the League bases its rankings on government statistics, reports from state labor officials and news accounts of injuries and deaths.
Parents living in the heartland of America may be particularly interested to know that an agriculture job tops the list for the third consecutive year.
According to the League, here are the Five Worst Teen Jobs:
5. Landscaping, grounds keeping and lawn service
4. Door-to-door sales
3. Driving forklifts, tractors and ATVs
2. Construction, especially at heights
1. Crop harvesting
Just how dangerous are these jobs? Well, according to the NCL:
"... (in the US) a worker under 18 dies every ten days. In 2006, there were an estimated 52,600 work-related injuries and illnesses among youth 15 to 17 years of age requiring treatment in hospital emergency departments -- that’s a hospital visit every 10 minutes for a teen worker."
By the way, the League also took the liberty of including a "Bonus Worst Teen Job" this year. Their dubious selection for this category was "working in illegal meatpacking plants." Call me crazy, but doesn't this selection fall squarely into the duh! category?
Of course, this got me to thinking. I would be doing my readers a disservice if I failed to include several other "Bonus Worst Teen Jobs" of my own (obvious as they may be) that I believe the NCL has egregiously managed to overlook.
And so, parents, it is probably best if your teens also stay away from these extremely dangerous summer jobs as well:
- Tornado Storm Chaser Intern
- Police Explorer Cadet: Bomb Squad Division
- Apprentice line-cook for Chef Gordon Ramsey
I'm sure I'm overlooking a few others. Let me know if you think of anything else.
In the meantime continue to encourage your kids to look for a summer job. Just make sure they stay away from the local meatpacking plant.
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Paying Off the Mortgage Early? Not So Fast …
In January 2009 I wrote one of my most popular posts to-date entitled Paying Off Your Mortgage Early Is A No-Brainer. In that post I did a detailed analysis that justified why paying down my mortgage was the right thing to do.
That Was Then, This ...
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9 Personal Finance Lessons I Learned from Watching The Simpsons
Twenty years ago the series premier of arguably the greatest cartoon ever, The Simpsons, debuted in the United States. Over that time I have watched countless episodes chronicling the lives of Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa Simpson and all of their ...
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How to Avoid Neighbor Conflicts When It’s Time for a New Fence (Part 2)
This is the second part of a two-part series. Click here for part one.
As I noted in part one, over the years I have personally talked to several friends of mine who told me they would rather spend a couple hours in the dentist chair having their ...
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How to Avoid Neighbor Conflicts When It’s Time for a New Fence
Being a homeowner has a lot of responsibilities that renters never have to deal with. Many of the responsibilities are no big deal; others can be extremely unpleasant. One of the most painful homeowner tasks is dealing with the neighbors when a ...
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Inflation: How China May Be Forced To Use The Nuclear Option
It's Inflation Week at Len Penzo dot Com. Follow me over the next several days as I explore the multiple facets and facts about this insidious scourge, the probability of its resurgence, its potential impacts on us, and strategies for protecting ...
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Inflation: Your Four Best Defenses For Preserving Your Wealth
I kicked off this series on inflation with a warning about why all of us should fear inflation and why the US government needs it to take root in our economy. But I'm not the only one who thinks so.
Forbes posted an excellent article on the coming ...
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Inflation: Why You Should Fear It, And Why The US Wants It
Ronald Reagan accurately warned us in 1984 to be vigilant against inflation because it can come, "like a thief in the night to rob our savings, rob our earnings, and take the bread off our tables."
For this reason, the government is usually on guard against the threat of inflation. In the simplest terms, this is normally done by controlling the amount of money in circulation. It's really a matter of supply and demand. If everybody has more money in their pocket to spend, then too much money chases too few goods and the currency becomes devalued. This, in turn, drives up the cost of everything from gasoline and furniture to food and the price of a ticket to Disneyland.
President Obama's proposed budgets over the next two years call for spending on an unprecedented scale. His proposed budget has a funding shortfall of almost three trillion dollars over the next two years, an amount equal to a staggering 12% of the entire US gross domestic product and twice the size of the worst deficits on record. Indeed, President Obama's own budget people are predicting budget deficits during his time in office to exceed that of all the other presidents combined from George Washington.
So, Len, just how does the government plan on paying for all of this?
In essence, the government has two choices, massive tax increases or high inflation. Naturally, the government is going to take the political path of least resistance.
Indeed, in order to pay its massive bills the United States will have no choice but to abandon its commitment to fight inflation and ramp up the output of the Treasury printing presses. This, of course, will end up flooding the economy with trillions of additional dollars that will not only drive up the prices of goods and services, but also punish fiscally responsible individuals by diluting the value of their dollar-denominated savings and retirement accounts.
Simply put, inflation is taxation without representation. Alan Schram uses the example of a man earning 5% on his savings account, who ends up in exactly the same financial position whether he pays 100% tax on his interest income with zero inflation, or zero income taxes with 5% inflation. And Schram correctly observes that if Congress tried to pass a 100% tax on anything, the public would be marching on the Capitol steps with pitchforks and torches.
The US government's unfettered spending plan is clearly unsustainable with respect to current taxation rates. But instead of suffering the consequences that would come with overtly increasing the taxes necessary to support these insane budgets and associated bailouts, Congress will be content with letting inflation do its dirty work. For that reason I believe inflation rates exceeding those seen during the mid to late 1970s are inevitable.
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Does Buying Your Gas In The Early Morning Really Save Money?
I've already written about the folly of trying to save a few cents per gallon when shopping for gas.
But did you know there are times when you don't get exactly what you pay for when you fill up your gasoline tank at the local station? It's not that the gas stations are doing anything illegal. But they are taking advantage of the laws of physics in a way that permits them to make a little extra money at your expense.
Now, for those of you who regularly ditched your high school physics class, let me give you a quick primer on why this is so. ;-)
Gasoline expands when temperatures rise, but the energy content of gasoline is directly related to its weight, not its volume. The end result of this expansion results is less energy per gallon.
Now, it's absolutely true that gasoline retailers adjust for hotter weather when they buy fuel at the wholesale level. But it's also true that the very same retailers (at least in the United States), knowingly refuse to make the same warm-weather adjustments when they sell their gasoline to the public on hot days. The result of this is consumers end up paying a "hot fuel premium" every summer in the neighborhood of two billion dollars.
This tends to get a lot of nerds who actually enjoyed their physics classes really spun up. But should they really be that upset?
There are roughly 300 million people in the United States. Assuming that about half of them drive, the two billion dollar hot fuel premium costs each driver about $16 per year. That probably doesn't amount to even a half tank of gas per year for the average driver, although it ultimately depends on the type of car you drive, and the cost of fuel.
Still, if you want to ensure you avoid the summertime hot fuel premium you can move to Hawaii, which already requires retail stations to install automatic compensation devices on all its gas pumps.
For those who don't live in the Aloha State, they may be happy to know that Costco recently announced that they have agreed to install the same type of gasoline compensation devices at stores in 14 states. Those states are Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
Then again, if a trip to Costco is either impractical or a non-option, the effects of the hot fuel premium can be minimized by filling up in the early morning when temperatures are coolest.
True, the Costco decision will not result in any significant gasoline savings, but at least you can be assured that when you pull up to the pump you will get what you paid for.
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How Mexico Can Save Its Oil Industry: Sell Baja California to the US
Another economic disaster looms for both the US and Mexico and something needs to be done in the near future to stop it.
Mexico is currently the fifth largest oil producer in the world and the third biggest supplier of crude oil to the United ...
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Out of Touch? Putting The Tea Party Protests In Perspective
In 1773, American colonists tossed three shiploads of taxed tea into Boston Harbor as a protest against the British practice of taxation without representation. Some 236 years later, another tea party of sorts was held in towns all across America, ...
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Beware of Strangers Bearing Gifts
Lisa Simpson: Grampa! Didn't you wonder why you were getting checks for doing absolutely nothing?
Grampa: Not really... I figured it was because the Democrats were in power again.
-- From an episode of The Simpsons
I've got some great news ...
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Don’t Fall for the Siren’s Song of Socialism
Rasmussen Reports released the results of a survey today that shows only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. This poll represents a shot over the heads of everybody who cares for the future of this country.
Among ...
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Stop the Bailouts and Let the Bankruptcy Process Do Its Job
The US government's decision to force out the head of General Motors should send chills throughout the private sector for years to come. This only serves to undermine the free market and stretch government authority over the private sector in ways ...
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What It Really Feels Like To Be A Millionaire
Yesterday my family and I got in the car and drove to Arizona for the day to see my beloved Los Angeles Dodgers play a Cactus League game against the Chicago White Sox at their new spring training complex known as Camelback Ranch.
The Dodgers lost ...
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The Middle Class Should Prepare for an Increasing Tax Burden
It's time to dip into the mailbag again. I always love it when I get letters -- especially the more, shall we say, interesting ones.
For example, I received one letter from someone who I can only assume is a card carrying member of a militant ...
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Gordon Gekko Would Be Proud: It’s Time to Let AIG Fail
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for ...
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24 (Financial) Things About Me … And One Confession Makes 25
I have a confession to make: I'm the Prince of Unhip. The King of Cautious. Poster boy for Blah. Lord of the Nerds.
I get misty-eyed every time I watch Anthony Edwards give that inspiring "I'm a nerd and I'm pretty proud of it" speech in front of ...
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