Success Warrior: Alan B. Rowley II - Beachbody.com, P90X, Voluntaryism, Voluntarism

What's Up With Success Warrior?

He's still working, exercising, kenpo-ing, exercising, coaching, exercising, eating right, exercising, and trying to get enough sleep.

What this is going to mean for now is a scaling back on blogging.  Scaling back meaning dropping the SWB blog for a while and aiming for a post a day for Chronicles.

Chronicles will still, uh, chronicle my fitness journey and the other days will likely be a mish-mash of topics.  What ever strikes my fancy for the day and probably covering several things per post like the Snippet Saturday posts.

Today, Tia and I are going to the city to see if we can help pull this country out of the recession by buying birthday presents for Trey. 

No, we didn't get our "rebate" from King George yet.  We won't be using that to help with the recession.  That's going toward paying off my car.  Other than the mortgage, we should be debt free in June.  July at the latest.

Speaking of the mortgage, I called my credit union to see what kind of rate I could get on a refi*.  Not a whole lot better than what I have now.  What the hell?  Uncle Ben is selling fiat money at bargain basement prices.  You'd think my credit union could pass some of that savings on to me.

Tomorrow, I'll update my P90X Journal and maybe on Friday I'll have an interesting story from today's little outing.  It seems like something funny or interesting happens when we go into town.  I think the reason for that is the fact that I don't get out much so anything beyond my front lawn is interesting or humorous.

Have a great day!

More proof that I don't understand the stock market

I check the headlines just about every day and I really should be recording my thoughts each day about what I see.  Things seem busy for me now so I'm lucky when I can a blog post done.

I couldn't let this one pass though.

Stocks are up because people are spending more money.

Why are they spending more money?  Everything costs more.  Inflation is forcing people to pay more for things they have to buy.  Trivial things like food.

I read an article quite a while back that stated that the Fed is always trying to create *some* inflation.  They always want costs going up so that businesses think they are making more money.  Seems stupid to me but there it is.

Anyway, that theory has kicked into overdrive with the current inflation rates.  Companies are bound to see record sales in dollar amounts because the dollar is worth less.  The whole thing seems like a game to me and the people being hurt by it are the ones that can't afford to play.

Speaking of which, I was just paid 68 cents in dividends on my stocks.  Watch out Buffet, I'm on my way.

Christians Destroyed the Economy

I'm not jumping on the blame wagon.  If I did, it would be to point out something in an effort that we wouldn't repeat the mistake again. 

You would think that maybe, somewhere in this mess, there was a lesson or two that could be learned.  Maybe banks shouldn't loan money to people who can't pay them back.  Maybe artificially raising the prices of houses and then borrowing the fake equity was a bad move.  Maybe people shouldn't borrow money they can't pay back.  Maybe people shouldn't live paycheck to paycheck promising away all their money in the form of installment payments.  Maybe Wall Street shouldn't take these worthless debts and bundle them up to conceal their worthlessness and sell them off.  Maybe the Fed shouldn't bail out people who did all these unethical actions.

You know?  Somewhere in there, there must be a lesson. 

You know what though?  Knowing what we know now, would we do it again?  Hell, yeah, we would.  It would be a more pronounced spike but it would still happen.  People would get in on the game sooner and try to get out before everything fell apart.