Lifting the fog

I've had a few things to overcome these past few years.  I think the toughest part of being in a tough situation is that after a while, the situation beats you down.  You do well at first, but eventually, it saps your energy.  You know what you need to do to improve things.  You just can't muster the strength to do it.

Things started getting difficult for me in mid 2009, and I did pretty well, but some time in 2010, things got very difficult to manage.  The business was doing poorly and the daily stress was just destroying me.  By the time I folded up the business in 2012, I just didn't have any strength to keep fighting.  

Is it depression?  I'm not sure.  I'd say it's more like a fog that just sort of settles in.  I've lived a lot of my life in this fog.  Sort of like you can have functional alcoholics who still manage to hold down a job and pay their bills, I'm sort of a functional depressive.

I'm no fun to be around, but I can put one foot in front of the other and trudge along.  I may be barely holding it together at any given point in time, but I am holding it together.  I'm just sorta soldiering on until things get better.

I know that plodding along this way is not helping things to get better.  I could be doing more.  Life just isn't that way most of the time, though.  It's not an equation where 1 unit of effort always yields 1 unit of progress.  When a person is functioning well, they're putting forth effort knowing that in the aggregate, it's helping them succeed, but knowing that not necessarily every thing they do helps them immediately.

It's been a long time since I've been able to feel like trying to move forward.  I've had to adjust to a new life.  New condo, new job, new situation with my son.  It's been a lot.  In addition, unlike being in business for myself where a good month could square me up after several terrible months, I earn a wage, now.  So, there's not that ever present possibility of a huge payday.  

That's not all bad.  Obviously, if my business failed, those huge paydays didn't come along nearly often enough.  In fact, when I think of most of the measures of material success, I did much better working for others than I ever did working for myself.  Yes, I had years of huge income, but all in all, averaged out, I probably did just as well working a job.  

The predictability is the biggest benefit of a paycheck.  With a nice paycheck, my retirement savings grew.  My guitar collection grew.  My mortgage got paid.  That was easy.  It was much harder to manage my money when a good month meant making $50,000, but a bad month could mean losing $30,000, and having no idea what kind of month was coming 2 months from now.  

I really took it on the chin from 2010 through 2013.  In fact, at one point in 2011, I noticed that I had developed a stutter.  I think it was due to stress.  I generally have fancied myself as a person very comfortable talking in front of groups.  I have heard people say that public speaking is one of the most common phobias.  So, to have things feel so out of control that I truly had difficulty stringing together a sentence without stuttering was a pretty alarming development.  

Folks who visited me saw that my house was a shambles.  Part of it had a rational explanation:  I was halfway through renovating a fixer upper when the business died.  Though, all in all, there was really no excuse for it.  I lived like a hoarder with all my stuff just sorta strewn all over the house... and I have a lot of stuff.

It's just difficult knowing that you've got looming challenges, and you don't entirely know how you're going to get through them all.

Things have gotten a lot better these days, though.  I'm coming to accept the parts of my life I don't like:  separation from my son and a horrific commute.  My life is challenging, but there have been a few things I have known I need to do that I just couldn't muster the energy to get busy with.

The first is fitness.  I work on a military base, with access to gigantic gyms where I can work out and use all the facilities for free.  There is simply no excuse for me to be in what is probably the worst shape of my life.  I've started moving my weights from my detached garage into the condo where I will set up a weight room in my basement.  I've already started doing some simple workouts with dumbbells.  This week I'll start hitting the gym a few times every week while in Dayton and start fitting out the workout room downstairs for workouts on the weekend.

There's a Planet Fitness within walking distance of my condo, as well as the YMCA/JCC.  I'll give it some thought, but will probably join one or both of those, eventually.

Being in shape, physically, is one of those things where all the effects are tremendously positive.  Not only do you have more energy and look more attractive, but it helps fight depression.  It puts you in a virtuous cycle.

I'll see where this takes me, but I would love to get somewhere in the ballpark of the fitness level I had when I was turning 35.  At that point, I did 2 or 3 workouts a day, and no matter what I ate (usually involving massive amounts of ice cream 3 or 4 times a day), I could not keep on any body fat at all.

I'm still not sure what shape the workouts will take.  I think I want to do at least one weight workout a day.  Then, combine with a second workout of some type of cardio.  My favorites are stairclimber and rower.  If I can do it without ruining what's left of my knees and hips, I'd love to run again, too.

So, fitness is something that I'm getting back into in 2014.  For every possible reason, I just need to do it.  I'm taking the steps I've envisioned taking for months, now.

The other thing is music.  I have pretty boring evenings in Dayton, where I end up just surfing the internet.  That's sort of become the new equivalent to vegging out on a couch.  At the very least, I could be working on my guitar and/or keyboard playing.  I'm sorta keeping an eye peeled towards an inexpensive keyboard that I can get on sale.

In the mean time, I'm bringing the guitars upstairs.  I cleaned up my main player's guitar (a mexican strat) and restrung it.  This is one thing where I might never be as good as I was when I was in my mid 20s, but I could at least be good enough to play a little bit here and there.

Those two things were so simple:  getting some dumbbells into the condo, re-stringing an old guitar, but I just couldn't muster the energy until now.  Now, it's just coming together.  I want to do the things I used to enjoy doing.  

I bought another guitar.  That actually lifted my mood, too.  I got a really good tax refund.  It's been a long time since I've had a really, really nice guitar.  I have had collections of Les Pauls and Melancons.  I've had Gibson SGs, and Fender Strat Plusses.  Every last one of them got sold off when the business did poorly and I needed money to meet payroll.

I managed to salvage a smallish collection.  A couple of them are my son's.  I was able to save an acoustic guitar, a classical guitar and the mexi-strat for myself.  So, I had guitars I could play.

Having a new guitar, though... well... different people have to define success for themselves.  For me, there can never be anything depressing about your financial situation when you can afford to buy a guitar.  Silly?  Yes, but a nice guitar has been an icon to me ever since the days when I was a pre-teen and could not afford one.   

I've got a lot to look forward to this year as well.  I may be able to get an overseas assignment.  I'll get a promotion in August.  The tax refund will help me balance the books until then.  I am changing offices and I'm anxious to see where I'll be for the next 18 months.

So, if success were a physical location, like a town or something, I would not be standing in it at the moment.  However, for the past 4 years, forces beyond my control were taking me progressively farther and farther away from Successtown.  Last year, I held my ground.

This year, I can feel myself starting to move back towards it.  As long as I'm moving towards it, I'm happy.  I have a new guitar and all the bills are paid.  I have the best son I could ever hope for.  I have a job that's taking care of things.  

For the past 3 years, I just kept moving forward, not knowing exactly how I was going to get out of the doldrums.

Now, I still don't have much of a clear picture of the exact path I will take.  I can tell I'm still moving forward, though.  Things no longer suck.  They feel like they're going to get a lot better.

How to Retire Comfortably, or even Rich!

I feel a little foolish writing this blog post because the stuff I'm about to talk about is readily available information.  Countless articles are written on this all the time.  Despite this, time and time and time again, I run into folks who just haven't absorbed this.  I draw up a simple spreadsheet and show them some simple calculations and they are utterly stunned at what is possible with tools that are easily within their grasp.

So, if you're already on your way to being a millionaire or multi-millionaire, please forgive me.  If you aren't, or aren't sure, please read just a little bit farther.

I'm going to focus on one aspect of retirement / wealth accumulation:  retirement accounts.  By this, I mean 401(k), 403(b) or TSP, depending on which one your employer offers.  It is not uncommon for some employers to offer a match of some sort.  However, I'll provide some figures that don't involve a match just for the sake of illustration.

Let's take a typical mid-20-something who has finished school and embarked on a career.  Let's set their initial earnings low.  So, let's talk about a 25 year old who makes $25,000 a year.

For the sake of this model, we'll increase this person's earnings at about 4% per year for their entire career.  Yes, it's true that a lot of you don't get very good pay increases in your jobs.  However, generally speaking people's earnings go up over their lifetime.  Every now and then you change employers and get 15% more, or you get a promotion and get 10% more.  For the sake of simplicity, though, we'll set this person's annual increases at 4%.

This person will put 5% of their annual salary into their retirement account.  So, for instance, in year 1, they will contribute 1,250.  Now, bear in mind that this contribution is tax-deferred.  So, although $1,250 goes into the retirement account, it's going in as pre-tax dollars.  Basically, if they didn't make this contribution, they wouldn't get that $1,250 to spend.  They'd get whatever the after-tax amount would be.  So, what, maybe $1,000 or so.

I will also presume that this person invests their money into something like an S&P 500 indexed fund.  Over the long-term, we'll presume this person gets 10% annual return from their fund.  (Yes, I know this is a very controversial assumption, especially after the debacle we've seen in the stock market this century.  However, the historical rate of return of the Dow over a long enough time frame is about 10%.  So, I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption.)

Okay, so this person plugs away, always putting 5% of their pay into their retirement account.  And after 10 years, their account will equal about $25,000.

After 20 years, it equals over $100,000.

After 30 years, over $300,000.

After 40 years, when they are 65, it will be over $900,000.

When they reach full retirement age at 67, it will be over $1.1 million.

Now, this raises a few questions:

1.  Are these assumptions realistic?  

Well, if you ask me, this model is exceedingly conservative in terms of this person's lifetime earnings.  The only assumption that might be a stretch is the 10% return from the stock market.  I have no idea what the stock market will do over time.  I just know that people tend to innovate and create wealth over the long haul.  This results in stock prices tending to go up.  Over a long enough time frame, a broad-based index increases at roughly 10%.  So, that's why I use that number.

2.  Okay, $1.1 million in 42 years?  But what will that be worth after inflation?  

A reasonable answer there, in my opinion, is that inflation appears to be getting lower and lower over time.  But a reasonable historical rate of inflation would be, say, 3%.  You can use any presumption you want, but my gut feeling is that 3% is more than inflation will actually be over the next 42 years.  So, if we adjust for inflation, $1.1 million will have modern-day purchasing power of over $330,000.  So, basically, a million dollars will be a lot of money, even 42 years from now.

3.  $330,000 doesn't seem like that much of a secure retirement.  How can I feel good about that?  That's not much of a brass ring.

No, it's not a brass ring.  You won't be able to buy human slaves or a mansion.  But don't forget that you'll also likely be collecting social security.  The combination of the two will probably provide for a reasonable and secure retirement.  Don't believe folks who say social security won't be around.  That's alarmist and even the most dire predictions don't include a scenario where social security disappears.  The absolute, worst-case, Armageddon scenario I've ever heard of was where benefits were reduced by 30% and no serious government official has ever proposed that.

4.  No, seriously, that sounds like a pretty bad scenario to me.  What gives?

I can understand this perspective.  Just keep in mind that many of today's retirees would be doing back flips if they had $330,000 in the bank.

But if you want to improve your wealth at retirement, there are other things you can do:

a.  Work for an employer who will give you a match.  For instance, my employer matches the first 5% I contribute basically dollar for dollar.  When I owned a small company, I provided a company match for my employees that was pretty much the same.  The large employer I worked with before that matched my first 5% of contributions with an amount equal to another 4%.

So, let's jigger the formulas for an employer who throws another 4% in for us.  If you do that, this worker, when they turn 67, will have over $2 million with an inflation adjusted value of about $600,000.

b.  You don't have to put 5% of your pay into your retirement account.  You can put in 10%.

This has a similar impact to getting a match.  So, presuming an employee who gets 0% match, if you put in 10% of your pay, you end up with about $2.3 million at retirement or an inflation-adjusted $660,000 or so.

c.  Do both.  Put in 10% AND get a 4% match.

At this point, you're hitting on 6 cylinders.  You will end up with about $3 million overall and inflation adjusted, over $900,000.

So, the potential is there to accumulate tremendous wealth.  But even putting away 5% is enough to change your life.  Now, there are obviously other things you can do to make for an even better retirement.  You can work for an employer with a bigger match.  You can work in higher paying fields.  (Let's be frank, the $25,000 in the example isn't exactly what most college grads envision.)  You can try to work in a field that has a genuine pension.

Those are all things you can do without taking extraordinary risk by starting your own business or heading off to try and work in a Silicon Valley tech startup.

What if you're already halfway down that road?  Hey, you have to jigger the numbers for your particular circumstances.  Now, yes, there are ages where it probably is too late to start.  If you're in your late 50s, you really can't leverage time like a younger worker can.  But even with as few as 20 years left in your working life, it's easy enough to construct a scenario where you retire with a million in your retirement savings account.  You will probably have to lean heavily on earning more money and putting away a larger percentage of your pay.

Especially if you're young, though (and to me, "young" is pretty much anybody in their early 50s or younger), start saving now.  Don't despair.  The impact is real and you can retire very comfortably.

Government Employment, One Year In

Today marks the one year anniversary of my working for the Department of Defense.  It's been an interesting year.  The main thing I like about it is getting to work with people.

Owning my own business was awesome in so very many ways.  To me, though, the main downside was that people interact with you differently when you are not only the boss, but you own the company.  I always enjoyed interacting with my coworkers when I worked a job.  So, that part is great, now.  I have awesome coworkers and really can't complain about the people where I work at all.  It's actually a little surprising how much I enjoy the people I work with.

Today is furlough day 9.  Really, it's day day 4 for most workers, but I took mine off in a big chunk to give me time to move and sell stuff.  Taking this time off was a good idea.  I needed some time away.  I was starting to get burned out a little bit.  I was able to settle in to the new condo, and sell off a big chunk of stuff on Craigslist, which more than covered the loss of income from the furlough.

I'm trying very hard to simplify my life.  I've accumulated a lot of stuff over the years.  Now that I'm in a condo, I just don't have the room I had in my house.  I don't know if I'll ever have a big house like that again, but I doubt it.  By the time I'm ready to afford another big house, my son will probably be off to college.  There just wouldn't be a point to it.

So, there's just no good reason to have a lot of this stuff around.  I may also be moving a few times in the foreseeable future and there's no reason to keep moving this stuff from location to location.

About the only extravagance I can foresee would be a music room of some sort.  A little studio where I could play music without disturbing anybody.  That will have to wait until I'm no longer living in a condo, though.

Making the Best of this Nice Glass of Ferlot

I'm taking the second chunk of my furlough and it's been really nice.  Basically, we're supposed to try to take two furlough days per 2-week pay period.  So, I took 2 days at the end of the last pay period and 2 days at the start of this one, giving me a total of 6 days off with the weekend.

My first furlough chunk was 5 days taken off so I could move to my condo.  At the time, we were told this was okay, but have since gotten guidance that they'd rather we didn't do this.  It came in handy:  I needed every day to complete the move and recover, physically, from the move.

This chunk is a bit more relaxed.  I've been doing craigslist selling.  I've been organizing the condo and the storage areas.  So far, so good.

It looks like we may be headed for a full-blown government shutdown on October 1, though, which is even worse than a furlough.  We'd be talking about zero pay until they get the thing resolved.  If you're wondering whether this is causing me to have second thoughts about my government job, the answer is yes.  Yes it does.

Although I've made some money with the craigslist selling, unfortunately, I've spent a chunk of it.  It's not a life-altering sum of money I've spent, but it's several hundred bucks.  That's something I would never have given a second thought to in my old life, but in this life, every dollar counts.

The first thing I spent money on is some components for my computers.  I've got more cable channels, now, and I miss having a DVR.  Renting the box from the cable company or going with Tivo runs around $15 - 20 a month and personally, I think that's a total rip-off.

So, with an abundance of old, useless computers around the house, I'm installing components to turn them into media centers.  The components, by themselves, are pretty cheap.  We're talking things like video cards for $35 or TV tuner cards for $70.  But when you order a few of them at once, it adds up.  Again, nothing too expensive, but it's a few hundred bucks at a time when I'm trying to save as much money as I can.

In the end, though, it'll beat buying a Tivo and subscription, or renting a box from the cable company.  Not sure how many of my computers I'll turn into media centers.  Mostly, I'll start with one for now.  I guess I have 3 old desktops I could do this with.  Yeah, 3 desktops sounds extravagant, but consider that they're very, very, very old and probably worth, at most, maybe $50, each if I were to try and sell them.  The stuff I'll be adding to them will exceed the value of the computers, themselves.

I got a lot of help for this project from my friend, Tom Meunier.  He pointed me to some great articles in lifehacker that show how to do this sort of thing:

http://lifehacker.com/5900626/create-a-kickass-seamless-play+everything-media-center-the-complete-guide

http://lifehacker.com/5936546/how-i-built-the-media-center-of-my-dreams-for-under-500

The other thing I sprang for is a nice weight bench.  I know the perils of home exercise equipment, but I've always gotten reasonable use out of a weight set and treadmill.  On the AF base, I have access to the largest gyms I've ever seen.  So, when I'm in Dayton, I'm good to go.  I just need something here for the weekends and such.  Still don't know where I'll set up my treadmill.  However, I think I have my basement empty enough that with just a little more organizing, I can get my weights set up down there.

Lastly, just in the past couple of days, I've tried to remind myself that although this is my worst-case scenario, it's really not that bad.  Yeah, I make less than half what I used to make during good years as an entrepreneur.  But I also make more than I made during bad years.

My pay is a matter of public record, but basically, in round terms, I make about $70,000 a year.  (We have our basic GS pay, but then "locality pay" and I get $10,000 student loan payments every year.)

Nothing to get too excited about, but still a lot of folks would be happy to be in my shoes.  I just couldn't help but feel bad this past year that I had fallen so far in life.  In the grand scheme of things, though, things could be worse.  I think the thing I feel worst about is my time away from Logan, but some of that was going to happen after the divorce, anyway.

As for my career, it isn't bad by a long stretch.  Plus, I have the potential for opportunities, both within the government and in the actual economy.  Yeah, the economy sucks and nobody wants a worker my age, but still, I've got a lot of working years ahead of me and in a lot of ways I'm better than I ever was before.

Despite those worthless, shit-for-brains, total jackass morons in the House and Senate (said the federal employee), this is still America.  If you have your health, a keen mind and a strong work ethic, your limitations and biggest obstacles will always come only from yourself.





If you're really bored and want to know what I bought, it's this stuff:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004I8W4VI/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004N3BH0C/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136268

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148902

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116028

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145278

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A3EQ7YG/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Am I Going to Bootcamp?

In the past year or so, I became aware of code bootcamps.  These are essentially 9 week intensive programming courses.  They cost around $12,000.  The number of hours of instruction is intense and they require that you complete a project before graduation.  The goal is essentially to take everything you NEED to know that you might learn in a college and condense it into the smallest block of time possible.  The bootcamps also have active outplacement functions and it appears that the vast majority of graduates find good jobs at graduation.

The two big dogs in this space are App Academy and Dev Bootcamp.

http://www.appacademy.io/#p-home

http://devbootcamp.com/

Both of them claim similar placement statistics.  Roughly 90% or so of graduates finding jobs starting at over $80,000.

Dev Bootcamp has campuses in San Fransisco and Chicago.  App Academy has campuses in San Fransisco and New York City.

The application process is similar for both.  They both involve a brief application form.  App Academy requires you to learn some Ruby programming language, and then take a test on it. I took the test, submitted it, and was rejected within about 30 minutes.  Hahaa!  Ooops.

Dev Bootcamp required a video.  I have an interview scheduled with them (via Skype) in three weeks.  After I submitted my application, they had me complete some ruby instruction online before agreeing to schedule my interview.  They said they just wanted to make sure I'd be happy writing code.  That was a little mystifying given that I had previously been a computer programmer for 4 years.  Still, it wasn't a bad requirement.

Acceptance to both camps is pretty low.  Somewhere between 10 and 20% of all applicants are accepted.

Now I should probably elaborate on a few questions that seem to pop into people's heads on this.

First, would I quit my job to go to a bootcamp?

If I am accepted, if push comes to shove, yes, I will quit.  I would prefer to use a combination of vacation (I should have maybe tree weeks worth), and Leave Without Pay.  However, LWOP is discretionary.  If they won't grant it, then I would have to quit.

Second, do I really want to change careers away from Government Contracting and back into Applications Development?

Really, the furloughs after sequestration had a lot to do with this.  Basically, congress couldn't get their act together and for 11 weeks, my pay is being reduced by 20% due to the mandatory furloughs that are occurring.  I don't see anything that indicates that in the future, this will be a rare thing.  Losing 20% of my pay is a disaster.  If it happens again, it will be another disaster.

Government pay isn't bad, but it's hardly extravagant.  At the moment, I make $48,000 a year (GS-9 step 1 with Dayton Locality).  So, a 20% pay cut really, really stings.  Now, in a month, I'll get my raise to GS-11, which is more like $58,000 a year, but that's presuming we don't face another furlough.  Even at GS-12 pay, which I will get in a year, that's only $70,000 a year.

I know that sounds terrible to say that $70,000 isn't great pay, but I have a lot of obligations:  child support, transportation back to Toledo to see my son when I can.  At 70,000 a year, I can keep myself afloat, but again, that presumes no whammies.

I just have no faith at all that the government will not screw up in the future.

It's a pity because I love working for the Air Force and DoD.  I love my co-workers.  I've never worked with such a great bunch of people before.  But just like pretty much anybody who works for a paycheck, you can't screw with somebody's pay without causing serious pain to them, economically.  I just can't afford that.  My margin for error is nil and I can't be in a situation where circumstances outside my control will throw my personal finances into a tailspin at any given moment.

As for my career in applications development, I rose rapidly through the ranks the last time I did this.  Getting back into applications is really the best logical fit for my background.  At this point, I have worked on 3 startups (2 tech startups and a non-tech startup.)  I was the lead on 2 of those startups.  I've had 4 years as an applications developer, 3 years as a project manager and 4 years as a division IT Manager.  And now, I can add 8 years of Chief Executive experience (non-IT) to the mix.

I hope I can use this background to move up quickly in web applications development.

Overall, the difference in pay is a bit too substantial to be ignored, too.  New Ruby developers are getting $80,000+ and experienced ones regularly get $120,000-ish.

Apparently, the better developers in the hotter markets can command $150,000.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/developer-little-insane-well-paid-125410909.html?bcmt=comments-postbox

So, even in a high cost of living area like New York or the Bay Area, it doesn't take a lot of budget stretching to afford a small $2,000 apartment and periodic airfare home on $150,000 a year.

If the opportunity presents itself, yes, I will take it.  It's not a total slam-dunk, but I feel that this is a better direction for me instead of government contracting.  I don't mean to take anything away from government contracting.  Like I said, I love the people I work with and I love the sense of purpose that I get from working towards the mission.  If the applications thing doesn't work out, I'd gladly keep working for the government.

It's just that applications development is a better fit.

The Reverse Depression Baby!

When I was young, we had a lot of depression babies still around.  And when they spoke of their childhood, it usually took the form of, "We had no food in the house when I was growing up.  Soon as I graduated High School, I was drafted and sent off to World War II."

These were people who had lived through a lot of deprivation and hard times.  There was really no appropriate response to these stories.  Compared to them, even the poorest kids in the 70s were spoiled-ass rotten.  Most of us responded to the stories with sarcasm:  "Yeah, yeah, you walked to school in the snow, barefoot, uphill both ways."

The decades after World War II were a period of mind-boggling prosperity in America.  Prior to World War II, we were still largely an agrarian nation, and our industrial revolution had a whole lot of ugly social aspects to it.

After World War II, it was truly a golden era where things got better and better every year.  The rich got richer.  The poor got richer.  The middle class prospered.  An average wage-earner could have a house, a car, and a stay at home wife.  He could have kids and could afford to send them off to a state school and pay for it without really having to save for it.  That was the norm.  It wasn't even considered hard to do.

During the 70s, though, we had some big adjustments.  Unemployment was high because a massive influx of baby boomers all hit the labor force essentially at once.  The Arab Oil Embargo caused huge disruptions in the nations energy supply.

So, things started to unravel a little bit in my childhood.  The unraveling reached it's worst pretty much the year I graduated High School:  1982.  We had a massive recession.  Inflation was double-digit.  Unemployment was at record highs.

If I live to be 100, I will never forget the memory of being unable to find a job in my native Ohio.  Not fast food, not retail, nothing.  There just weren't any jobs.

I goofed around, tried college, joined the Army and by the time I got out in 1987, America was in full-blown boomtown mode again.  Computers were king and I was getting a degree in Information Systems.

I remember driving home from school one day and picking up a hitchiker.  His name was Henry and he was out of work, thumbing his way from West Texas to Louisiana where a relative had a job lined up for him.  He had worked the oil fields until the early 80s.  By the late 80s, oil was too cheap to be worth drilling.

He seemed like a kind older fellow.  Asked me what I was "taking up" at school.  I told him computers and he said that seemed like a good field to get into.  When I dropped him off, I left him my lunch bag and apologized that it was already partially eaten.  He was grateful for it, anyway.

Even during that boom-time, Henry was a bit of a metaphor for how older workers whose skills were perfectly suited to a previous era, were easily discarded when things changed.

There was another recession when I graduated college in 1993 (this would turn out to be a recurring theme in my life:  whenever I needed a job, there would always be a massive recession.)

Still, after sending out 150 resumes, getting 4 callbacks and 2 interviews, I had two job offers.  One was for, I believe, $27,000 and the other was for $24,000.

Now, to give these context, that would be like chosing between a job at $37,500 and $42,254 today.

I picked the lower paying job because I liked the technology better, it was a bigger company, and it had a better training program.

I worked for that company for 11 years, leaving them in 2004.  At the time, I made roughly $105,000 if you included all my bonuses.  Adjusted for inflation, that would be $126,000 today.

So, I'm sorta the evil mirror-image of a depression baby.  I grew up during a time of incredible opportunity and good paychecks.  Even though my timing seemed cursed, there were opportunities for me whenever I needed them.

Even when I joined the Army in desperation, I got an enlistment bonus of $8,000.  (That's $18,000 today, folks.)  My college fund was worth $20,100 ($40 grand today).  I attended school on a full-tuition scholarship and pocketed every dime.  Without a scholarship, though, full tuition for a texas resident was around $300 a semester back then.

I was even lucky on my military service: I got to serve entirely in peacetime.  The sum total of my combat experience was a handful of bullets shot over my head when I was on a guardpost on the DMZ.  Even the options you took in desperation in my day were pretty damned good.

So, now, when I see what young folks are up against, I feel sorta bad.  Generations are supposed to get better from one to the next.  It's not supposed to be a situation where you tell young folks that you had it a hell of a lot better than they do.  Unfortunately, I just don't see any rational way I can try to insist that kids today have it easier than I did.  I just don't think that's true.

Now, lest you resent me because I am wealthy while young people struggle, unfortunately for me, my personal fortunes pretty closely resemble those of my younger co-workers.

In 2004, I started a business.  It went well for a while.  At its peak, we employed 16 people and had seven figure annual revenues.  I was within spitting distance of hitting the top marginal federal income tax rate.  Then, the economy tanked, the industry changed, and 8 years after I started the business, I was folding it up.

I'm pretty much in the same boat as my younger coworkers, now.  Just a heck of a lot older, fatter and balder, and looking at a much smaller retirement check.

We're lucky, though.  We work for the federal government.  We have paid vacation. We have health benefits.  We have a pension for our retirement.  Our paychecks aren't that great, but I would hardly call them bad.

Trouble is, these jobs are hard to get.  Like 120 applicants for 4 openings type stuff.  (And you only get to be an applicant if you have a law degree or an MBA and we recruit at your school.)  Even though the federal government doesn't pay top dollar (again, they don't pay badly, but they don't pay all that well), they just don't have that many job openings.  There are a LOT of unemployed kids and even the federal government can, at best, only hire a small number of them.

So, yeah, things used to be better.  I hit the worst job market since the great depression when I graduated in 1982.  And when I graduated from college in the early 90s, it was another horrible recession that cost George Herbert Walker Bush the White House.  We still had options, though.  Options that today's kids just don't have.

Things will change if we ever get back to boom-times.  Back in 2001, I remember it being so hard to hire good workers that I talked a kid into coming on full-time while he was still a community college student.  He made $40,000 a year to start and by the time I left, I think he was closer to $50,000.  The company gave him full benefits and paid him 100% tuition reimbursement so he could finish his degree.  (And yeah, increase those numbers by 20% or so to account for inflation.  When times were good, a kid with one year of college and incredible computer chops could command the equivalent of a $50,000 starting salary.)

Will we ever get back to that?  I don't know.  That company, an employer I loved, was an old school industrial company that believed it had an obligation to its employees.  Companies like that are rare, and most of them that may have been that way in the past aren't that way, now.  They provide good benefits and big paychecks only if they have to, and right now, they absolutely don't have to.

If things ever do get good again, it doesn't appear it'll happen anytime soon.  We're five years into this terrible economy and we probably have at least another 5 years to go before things get back to anything approximating normal.  There's also no guarantee that the return to normal has to happen anywhere near that fast.  This could be the new normal:  a depressing new normal of diminished opportunities for workers of all ages.

So, In the mean time, pull up a chair and let me tell you what it was like to graduate school and have multiple job offers back in the good old days.

Not Buying the Rationalizations of Tim Geithner

First, let me put out there that I understand the difficulties of public service.  You work your butt off.  All your friends make more money than you.  Everybody criticizes you at every turn.  It's hard work and it takes a strong person to do it.  Generally speaking, I'm grateful for the talented people who devote themselves to public service despite all the reasons not to.

Now that he's resigning, though, Geithner is trying very hard to spin his actions during the bailout.  That's really all he'll ever truly be remembered for.  Try as I might, I just can't ever really forgive Tim Geithner.  As far as I'm concerned, he and Hank Paulson ended America.

The bailout was my Watergate moment.  The moment when I lost all faith in my government and questioned whether America was actually a place worth living in.  The biggest difference, of course, is that the evildoers in Watergate were punished.  The bailout?  It ensured that the evildoers were manifestly rewarded.

Geithner makes a valid point when he says that relative to other responses to economic calamities  ours was pretty good.  I do agree that things could be worse today if not for the actions that were taken.

People have a valid point when they say, "Look, something had to be done.  The entire economy was going down."

Yes, something had to be done, and what was done was largely effective.  But it was the wrong thing to do.  It also wasn't the only thing we could have done.  It could have been done the right way.  It could have been done in a way that didn't destroy America.

To recap:  a bunch of financial institutions made record profits by placing risky bets that placed the global economy in jeopardy.  The bets eventually went the wrong way.  The global economy was in jeopardy.

Now, the response that is most reprehensible is the one by the Bush Administration.  Essentially, they said that the US was going to borrow all the money in the known universe and give it to the banks, with no strings attached.  Period.  Full stop.  That was it.

At every point along the way, they argued that if we didn't give the banks every penny available to the human race, the economy would collapse.

At every point along the way, though, people brought up the valid, commonsense arguments that if we were going to do this, that there should be limits on compensation because... well... you really shouldn't get a bonus when your company was so reckless they almost destroyed the global economy.

At every point along the way, Geithner and Paulson said that if you attach any conditions to the mountains of money, the Wall Street banksters wouldn't take it.  I really wish I were these guys' kid because they have to be the only clowns in the universe dense enough to fall for the old, "I'm going to hold my breath until I pass out unless I get a pony" trick.

So, the banksters got their mountains of cash.  Immediately used it to pay themselves bonuses and make themselves bigger than "too big to fail" and everybody was outraged.  The outrage part happened largely because the banks did nothing to help out main street.  They used the money to help themselves and nothing else.

Now, Geithner is saying that there was nothing he could do.  The Bush Administration had already decided that the best path was to make sure Wall Street was rewarded for being the worst businessmen in the history of commerce.  It was too late once Obama took office to do anything that might tangentially be regarded as fair or just.

Trouble is, Giethner was head of the NY Fed at the time the Bush Administration was in the business of maximizing the rewards for failure and greed.  He was involved in all those conversations and at every step along the way, he argued to maximize Wall Street rewards.

The end result?  Government action resulted in Wall Street never missing a bonus.  Main Street might recover in 10 or 20 years.  It's hard for me to agree that Tim Geithner helped America.  He helped Wall Street.  America has been left to rot.

The fundamental unfairness of this is inescapable.  We are supposed to be a free market economy.  Only the bad guys have governments who chose winners and losers.  The day our government decided that only Wall Street was allowed to win and that the rest of the country had to lose, a part of America died for me.  It really did.  It simply laid bare the reality that if you're rich, the government will set up rules to make sure you can take advantage of anybody who isn't rich.  If you over-reach and screw up big time, the government will step in and simply hand you mountains of money so you can go back to subtle subjugation of the masses.

I still wave the flat harder than almost anybody I know.  I've raised my hand to defend this country twice.  One of those times was during a time of two wars.  (I have not, for reasons unknown to me, been called up for either Iraq or Afghanistan, but I salute those who were.)  There's enough good in this country that I can't imagine living anywhere else.  However, the part of me that believed we lived in a fair economic system died with the bailouts.

I now have no illusions.  Small business people like I was, do not matter.  Our businesses can fail due to a bad economy and that's just not a problem.  We lose our homes, while the banks that held the notes get bailed out.  We struggle to find work while the very villains who gambled with the world economy and decimated it continue to get 7 and 8 figure bonuses.

Meanwhile the thieves on Wall Street make record profits by borrowing money from the Fed at 0% and lend it back to the government at 3%.

Wall Street never missed a beat.  But maybe 10 or 20 years after the "rescue", main street will be back.  If it ever does come back, it won't be because anybody lifted a finger to help.

A part of America died when we decided that only poor people need to suffer the negative consequences of capitalism.

Tim Geithner made sure of that.

We could have put in compensation limits.  No bonuses or raises for a period of time for any bailed-out firm.  We could have wiped out the shareholders.  We could have fired the executives.  We could have replaced the boards.

We didn't, and that was a conscious choice:  a choice to make sure that we rewarded evil as much as humanly possible.

Main Street?  Eh... what's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA.  10 or 20 years from now, they be okay, but really, who cares?

Geithner's own words sum up the problem better than I ever could:

"(wall street bankers) ‘Those are the people that got us in the mess; you saved them and they paid themselves billions in bonuses, and they should have gone to jail, and they are still walking around.’ I don’t know anything powerful enough to overwhelm that simple narrative.”

It's not that we don't understand.  It's that when you do something that is completely wrong, even if for a good reason, it's hard to spin it later, regardless of your motivations.