figuring out finances

So, I've been on a bit of a finance kick lately. I got a bit lucky joining Google, you know, so I have a little money sitting around in a bank account which I feel guilty not investing. I figure there are three levels of passively "holding" money:

1. put it in your mattress (aka low, low interest checking account)
2. find something that *might* keep up with inflation (ING, emigrant direct)
3. put it in a diversified set of no-load funds, rebalance once a year, watch the moolah roll in, retire happy and rich in 40 years

all of those are pretty passive, and since they are, why not put in a little time up front and go for #3? I'm in such a good situation -- good income, no mortgage, no kids, simple life. also, i am quite lazy and don't like work very much, so the sooner I can get out of it the better! I am very fortunate in that I have a money-oriented dad who started me a Roth IRA when I was very young. This is my one VERY IMPORTANT piece of advice to any of you reading this: if you can, put money in a Roth IRA!!! there's a limit of like $4,000 a year, and I know you can't touch the money till you're 59.5, but you are going to be able to take that money and all the interest it's earned out tax free when you retire.

Ok enough preaching. I read this book by Suze Orman, which is a little bit annoying but still very good called The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke. Ok, I am not two of those things (I'll let you guess which one I am) but I still found it VERY useful.

I'm currently reading Personal Finance for Dummies. Don't laugh, some smart people at Google recommended it to me. It's not as easy a read as the Suze Orman book, and I find some things it suggests oversimplified and a little fishy, but I know very little about funds so I'm reading those chapters.

So, the point of this very long and drawn out post: be nice to me now, because I'm going to have tons of money when I'm 59 and a half!

bloglines + shortcuts

finally! bloglines has added keyboard shortcuts to navigate your subscriptions! I've been waiting for this forever. I wonder if it's a direct response to the new Google Reader or if it's independent of that launch? I feel like they must've been working on it for a little while, so perhaps it is just the coincidence of discovery.

Anyway, I just started using them and i like the keyboard shortcuts a lot. This is actually sort of annoying, because I planned on significantly cutting down on the blog reading because I found myself spending too much time at work catching up on crappy link-happy productivity blogs. Notice how I was nice and didn't link to anything specific there.

If you don't read *any* blogs, you should start! Some are really interesting, and that's how I find out about cool things like the new video ipod.

7.6 earthquake in india/pakistan/afghanistan

cnn article

This is so awful. My parents were travelling in Kashmir, too, but fortunately I heard they're ok. My sister called my aunt last night and she confirmed that they were doing fine, but I haven't talked to them yet. It's so frightening to think that this could happen and they could be hurt while I'm on the other side of the world having a regular Friday night. I hope that they get home safely!

wow

I just read this article on smartmoney.com about outsourcing. It's hilarious! So we actually heard Thomas Friedman come and speak at Google about his latest book, The World is Flat, but this is ten times better. I thought Thomas Friedman was a little behind the times (oh look, there's India! People there are smart too! uh oh!) but who knew you could outsource you daily tasks to a personal assistant? I should hire someone to do my work at Google for me :)

Oh, and for the record, I think his book is quite boring. Freakonomics is much funnier.

Update: I thought about this a bit and realized it's not a very culturally sensitive article. However, I think that the author is mainly making fun of himself, and other possibly lazy people who underestimate the qualifications of foreign workforces. I'd also like to point out that my very indian coworker sent this to me, because I know some people don't think i'm very indian!

not such a fan of the Blue Angels

So, the Blue Angels are in town for Fleet Week. Google it if you're not sure what it is, I'm feeling too lazy to link. Red Bull sponsors these people who create these "structures" that are supposed to fly and then they push them off of a precipice and see what works.

Anyway, the Blue Angels are loud. very loud. at first i thought it was sort of cool -- these incredibly fast planes that do tricks and fly in formation. But for some reason they are flying ALL over the city today, and everytime one goes by you hear this insanely loud roar. It's so loud that right after one went by I saw two parents trying to console their baby which had started crying.

that's right, the blue angels made a baby cry.

nevermind all the distracted people who look up into the sky and might run into things. like me!