A Happy Miser

"The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him and even the flea would desert him for a velocipede." -Mark Twain

I have no idea where I learned thriftiness but I have applied it since I was in kindergarten and maybe earlier. I swear it's in my genes. Or, perhaps, it's a learned lesson about loss I learned so young. I can't determine just how I came across this trait. Decades have passed and I still have this habit.

I came across the above quote from Mark Twain while reading his “Roughing It.” I smirked and at the same time fully appreciated the image of Want Twain was painting. Want, is a plague to be avoided at all costs, if you are able to.

I've been called cheap, tightfisted, stingy, miserly and a host of other names that deprecates we New England Yankee skinflints. I really can't dispute these labels, they do describe my views on money management. But, it arises from knowing Want.

Want sucks.

I am sure we've all been, or are, in situations where you needed something that only money would fix...and you didn't have it. To me, being cornered like that, being shackled, is tyranny. Hence, it has given me great motivation to keep Want at bay via the decisions I make. This means I don't blow money like a drunken sailor.

 

I have heard people tell stories of what they've bought, and I swear they can almost see my mouth drop open. Well, it feels to me like my jaw just dropped.

“You did what?” (eyes wide, look of awe)

I've asked these people for a rational explanation, but never receive one that satisfies me. I have learned to shut up and let people be, but I can't keep from screaming to myself very quietly...”What the fuck are you doing!!” It's an agreed opinion that you don't bring up religion or politics around company, add to that any damnation of other people's purchases.

Yet still, I feel the need to preach about the evils of wanton spending to these lost souls. Shut up, Ron...just.shut.up.

The trick to life is balance...right? How devout should one get about a belief, hoping the more fervent one is, the quicker salvation will come? And in doing so, what else falls from your life as you expend a good amount of your focus and energies in such a narrow sense?

Ain't that the trick, huh?

In truth, this has become a personality trait of mine, never to be shrugged off entirely. Ah well, at least I do spend the $ on things I love. Albeit they are few and far between. And thank God I don't have to drink whiskey every night or maintain a cocaine habit, that would suck.

Lifestyles You Never Know About

...an interesting article I found explaining life in high finance...

OWS and Why Anyone Not at Their Desks by 7:30 is a Nobody.

I have worked closely with Institutional Equity Sales desks for the majority of my career and have been tempted to accept offers to work there. There are two reasons why I haven’t. One, the politics surrounding the dispersal of client accounts is Machiavellian enough to make the backroom dealings of the medieval Vatican seem like a rural PTA meeting. The other reason is that, given my later start in the industry, I was too old. Unless you are firmly established on the Desk by your early 30s it is unlikely that your energy level will hold up long enough to realize the considerable compensation potential.

Those fuckers work hard. The basic hours, at your desk at 7:00, meetings at 7:30, 12:05 and 4:10 with the intermittent time spent either generating or shepherding your clients’ trades, are not prohibitive. The bigger problem is that Wednesday through Thursday, it is more or less required that you entertain your clients according to their proclivities – dinners, strippers, shows...whores – until late at night before arising again at 5:30 to head back in to the office. Not occasionally – this is every week. Recent layoffs have only made this worse, to the point I would like to see an intrepid, well-connected reporter dig in to the insane growth of the cocaine usage which is reaching 80s levels again as aggregate job security wanes.

I am again just using Institutional Sales as an example. The workdays for traders and bankers, particularly during a big deal, can be even more onerous. As a whole, the level of effort expected leads to the generally-accepted belief within Capital Markets that anyone not at their desks by 7:30 is a LOSER. The most common response to the experience of getting a coffee at 9:15 and seeing people rushing to the office in their coats,(and this is a topic of discussion on the floor), is a bemused “what exactly do you people do that you can get away with starting at 9:00?”. By definition, it can’t be that important.

The anti-finance movement can, if they carefully ignore some of the more economically vital aspects of the industry, frame their argument in terms of “all you guys really do is shuffle paper around”. What they under-estimate, however, is how hard industry participants work at “shuffling papers around”. It is extremely difficult for anyone, including me, to take someone seriously when they work less than 50 hours per week. Unless they’re semi-retired, no one we know who works 35 hours a week is even relevant, never mind qualified to re-regulate the industry.

The work ethic is clearly a function of simple economics. The monetary upside in finance is arguably higher than any other so the candidates to replace the more complacent employees are at least in the 100s, probably 1000s and everybody knows this. The means by which the less committed get jettisoned can get pretty nefarious – I’ve seen three or four women ousted during their maternity, albeit with big checks – but everyone understands, and largely accepts, the logic behind it. Not only that, we take a sort of black humor pride in it.

The psychological outgrowths of this type of environment are pervasive and powerful. When OWS is trying to comprehend the viciousness of pushback, they need to keep in mind that the level of personal investment for industry professionals, years upon years of 60 hours weeks and four hours of sleep a night, is not something you ever, ever want to see threatened by a Tobin Tax. And this is particularly true if the complainants’ primary motivations, and theological certainty, arise solely from one charismatic professor teaching Rawls during an “exhausting” 20 hour per week class load. You may have a point, nobody knows better than we do, but we’re not going to consider you credible unless you work for it

4AM

I don't know about you, but I will have a dreams that will abruptly rouse me. They're not nightmares like a kid will awake screaming to. These particular dreams I have I call “truth dreams.” It's the substance of the dream that I find surprising yet familiar as well. Surprising due to my being half- aware of the “truth” and familiar due to the same reason. I guess my unconscious will dig through the back closets of my brain and bring forth things I’ve forgotten about. It's 4 AM now and I have been awakened by one.

Without giving you an entire history of my mother, here she is in a nutshell, or rather here is what I surmised her to be till one day she invalidated a good part of that summation. On the surface, my Mom would leave most people, and me at the time, underwhelmed. I had thought I had known everything that was possible to know about her and her chances of expanding any horizon on her life, personality or what-have-you was at its end. What you see it what you get and there ain't anymore.

In the dream, I was going downstairs into the cellar to find my Mom carving rock into little statues. I stood there, in quizzical surprise, when I said, “I didn't know you could do that!”

She responded that she never did it before, it was just a new hobby that she figured she'd try out. And it was apparent she had some decent talent at it too.

Then I awoke.

Years ago, as my brother and I were leaving the house, we passed our Mom who was at her kitchen table, smoking cigs and drinking her Lipton tea as she always did. She had that constant disinterested look on her face. She unexpectedly stirred, opened her mouth and opined on the essence of her two grown sons.

“Ken, you're the social butterfly. You are constantly bouncing from group to group, talking, meeting ...and Ronnie, you just do whatever the hell you want.”

I stood there wondering to myself, “Where in the hell did that come from?” It wasn't till a little later on that I realized she was right about us. This women who I sort of gave up on long ago wasn't quite finished yet and did possess some hidden expertise.

And now I dream the same story in the dream world of symbolism to remind me.

Besmirched!

Interesting conversation with a few friends out on the Cape who do public relations.

I related to them a series of events I'm privy to and the actions of an NGO, a private concern and a gov't concern. These people on the Cape I know have done “emergency damage control” when an event becomes public and is detrimental to their clients.

The gist of their reaction to my story was: “Are they (the private concern) that stupid?”

 

Party A, who is being ripped apart in the press should have gotten out in front of the ball immediately according to these PR people. Even if your client is guilty as sin, you get YOUR story out as fast as possible and keep hammering away at it before public reaction starts to solidify. He says the “solidification” process can happen as fast as a week but is pretty much done in one month. It's hard as hell to manage perceptions once the infection has had a chance to settle in.

“Rehabilitation of a damaged image is an awful thing to deal with.” he related further. “It's far cheaper and more effective to get it right at the beginning.” “Re-Branding has NEVER worked either.”

He mentioned an old saying, “I'd rather be caught in bed with a dead whore, than a live boy.” I chuckled when I heard that one. The meaning that it's better to deal with the somewhat appalling vs. the very appalling.

“...and it sounds like Party A has been captured in a very ugly way...” he went on to say.

In today's internet age, you gotta move fast!

Not Good Enough...

I spent the day down in Newport which coincided with Spring Break, which I totally forgot was happening around now. We were winding our way through the crowds of drunken college kids when I realized, “Hey, I used to do this!”

Used to...

We ended up at an outside bar on Thames St where I spent the time people watching, which is a great hobby really. What was fun watching was the high pressure testosterone/estrogen mating attempts by all of those involved. The guys were hitting on enough girls in hopes that a ratio of 1 in 50 may just pay off.

Nothing changes I find. The girls, in 45 degree weather, were as lightly clothed as possible. And some were in bikinis in this weather, strutting up Thames St in high heeled shoes, or knee length leather boots. Some of those girls know exactly how to “peacock” to get the guy's attention.

What was surprising, was how picky they all were about each other. From my perspective, the women there were all pretty. It's hard not to look good when you're of college age. BUT...even amongst themselves they were sifting just which ones were the best. Damn. Tough judgments!

When you people watch you also eavesdrop. I know it's none of my business but so what, some conversations are entertaining. I overheard two Salve Regina girls, in teeny shorts, bemoan the “wrong colored hair” on one the guys that was hitting on them both.

“Gawd...it's almost BLACK! Ya think he dyes it?” Asks one.

“No, it's real..even his eyebrows are black...you can talk to him if you want to...I don't care. “ Says girl # 2, who was releasing this one to her friend to catch.

“Wrong colored hair?” I thought to myself. Damn. What if you have ONE freckle on the tip of your nose...are you disqualified? I guess in this Survival Game the fussy rules are that meticulous.

It was an hour later that I listened to a group of guys sit in judgment of the girls that were passing them by on the sidewalk. The commentary was pretty funny to me. Luckily for the girls, those comments weren't so vocal for them to hear.

“Filthy Pig!” One of they guys said, followed by head nodding of his friends. Gee, I thought that girl that passed them was fairly cute, what the hell is wrong with her?

Or.

“Look, there's an Ultimate PIG...Kyle..YOU can have that one, you like the sows right?”

Or..

“Oooh! Skank Heaven there!” One of the boys points out a group of girls coming down the street. Again, I found nothing wrong with them at all.

As that group of girls passed, the boys shoved one of their friends toward them to make a connection but he retreated as fast as he could complaining that, “Forget it! Her eyebrows are too straight!”

There were girls there that looked like they did belong on a Hollywood set. Girls who fell on the Earth pretty with the additional luck of having rich parents. Girls whose skin maybe needed a just a hint more of a tan, and it's just mid March now. Girls who learned how to breezily walk without a care in the world. “Too young to know, too old to care.” That was the attitude some have and display it well.

You could tell these girls came from money. To have perfect hair like that and well coordinated, fashionable clothing from bottom to top takes some money and a lifetime of living with your rich peers who have all the knowledge of just “how” to look.

Those girls, denied about 99.999999999999999% of the guys who came near them, or perhaps even looked at them.

And there I was, pushing 50, thinking, “My God...MOST of you, guys and girls, have NOTHING to complain about when it comes to looks...most of you are fine...would you lay off one another!”