36 Degrees

It's a cool night tonight! A great night for a dip in the hot tub-a waxing moon and clear dark sky makes this the near perfect hot tub night. You can see your breath and tons of steam roll out of the hot water...It's a good day in Minnesta.

Sound financial advice

TUCSON, AZ—After reviewing his client's income, assets, and personal budget Tuesday, Morgan Stanley financial adviser Henry Dalton determined that Jason Hutchinson, 43, could make the best use of his portfolio by dropping dead at the age of 62. "Taking account of inflation and the rising cost of living versus the projected direction of the economy in the coming decade, I told Mr. Hutchinson that he could significantly reduce his spending by simply living less," Dalton said. "After looking at his investments, I calculated that he really shouldn't live a day over 62—or 59 if he wants a funeral." In order to help his client plan for his financial future, Dalton presented Hutchinson with several of the company's comprehensive suicide packages.

 

The Onion

Fall fruit makes us all happy~

The very little fruit bearing items we have in our yard seem to keep us anticipating all summer. We seem to finally hit the jackpot beginning in October. Kaner loves grabbing his after school snack without passing by the kitchen. The raspberries are called "kiwi raspberries" they are ripe when light pink. They are FANTASTIC, better then red in our opinion. The only problem is Kane is quicker and lower to the ground, Ryan and I rarely get to sneak one in~

This vid was forwarded on to me via email and I think is quite a few years old. Apparantly, there was some kind of oil spill near Australia where the front fell off a ship. This is a hilarious (fake) interview of an Australian politician (again fake) about the incident. It made me laugh so I'm forwarding to on.

Twin Cities 10 Mile

If you'll look carefully, there's a familiar looking guy in a long sleeve shirt running like the wind. Yep, that's me. If it's a little fuzzy, that's because the camera had a little trouble focusing on something moving so fast!

This pic was taken during the final moments of the Twin Cities 10 Mile run this past Sunday. It was a great run.

Cooking with the Candidates

Man, this morning my mind is cooking...who won, who lost, who smiled, who frowned, who threw the best slam, who, who, who??? (Who cares?) I am confused about which one to vote for...am I alone? So, I asked the (easy out) question, "Is Ralph Running?"

(I posted this on my "cooking blog," but decided to re-post it here).

Fire Stick Dilema

 We visited Nick and Scott a couple of weeks ago and had a very nice fire in the new fire pit-But there was one thing missing-a fire poker-So Nancy and I have been searching for just the right kind of poker-

But I am not sure they are really up to or able to use such a cool poker as this one- Since Dale was original (father of the fire poker) I thought we should ask him for his insight.

Oh Great Father of the  Poker(Dale)-Hear our words...

Shall we allow them to

1) Use it untrained or unsupervised-no training needed?

2) Let them be trained during long bonfires (for a few summers) at family outings.

3) Not let them into the(Holder of the Poker) fold- ever-(after all-they live in a city)

Now you other fire guys (or gals), you can chime in as well-What should we do?

Lehman Brothers Boss Defends $484 Million in Salary, Bonus

Lamon-we spell our name wrong-

It should be Lehman-maybe we could get a piece of the $484 Million in Salary and Bonuses...Maybe we should be taking some of his money(houses and property) back-to help fund the crazy bailout!

The farmers market had lots of winter squash available today-We are cooking a bright orange variety-Looks wonderful-

On top of that-Dirty Wild Rice Bake Yum...

Fall Colors

Youtube link

Somebody in Ely has a great sense of humor!

Thanks Aaron

700+ billion

I guess the US Senaters (including Obama and McCain) thought that 700 billion dollars  was just not enough to get the bill through- so they beefed  it up-(or porked it up)

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING? 

And how much more will congress tack on today? Are we talking a trillion- ($1,000,000,000,000)  

Are we are being porked...

Fall Has Arrived-First Frost-First Fall Fire

I woke up to our  thermometer-saying that it had reached freezing- its 30 degrees. This year it has been a long late summer in Bemidji-Nancys flowers are doing well and there is still tomatoes in the garden-So after today-that all changes. When its gets colder some things get better-and one of the things I really like is a fall campfire-So this weekend will be our first "after the frost" fire. 

Frugality

Gary mentioned in his last post that it would be interesting to list some of our ways of saving money. Dale & I have three areas that we target: food; energy; entertainment.

Because I am not willing to sacrifice taste and good quality food, I choose to cook at home. I am convinced that restaurants don't have our best interests in mind when they throw entrees together. I think about fat content; shortcuts; bugs, etc...& I want to cook at home. Even though I work 36-40 hours per week, I consider myself a scratch cook and feel that we save money there. I do go to the farmer's market and a meat market and turn my head occasionally when prices are too high and justify it with, well, we aren't eating out much anymore!

Energy is another area that we are trying to cut back on using. Normally this time of the year we are using our (propane) gas which we filled in July ($1000), but we've decided to have a small wood fire instead & save our propane for the days when the temps are closer to zero. So far that is working.

Last winter the "aha" light came on in my head when I decided that I no longer needed to run my clothes dryer constantly. I dry clothes for about 15 minutes (to get the wrinkles out) and then hang them on hangers to dry. I checked our electric bill for two months in a row & the saving was approximately $30 a month! And, the clothes came out nicer! I do continue to dry towels, underwear and sheets, however.

Entertainment is another item we refuse to give up, so we have gotten smarter. Remember those days when we played games/cards/puzzles? That was really fun! We don't go to too many movies, but when the temps get colder, we rent or wait for them to come out on TV. We aren't willing to give up cable this time of the year because that is about $10 per week that comes out of our entertainment budget. We love baseball, hockey, outdoor, food channel, etc.

I guess it is all about choices and the quality of life we choose to live. As we approach retirement I realize that the financial choices that we have made as a couple have been pretty "sound" ones. For that, I am happy. We would be in a world of hurt otherwise.

The Market

Gary asked in a comment to an earlier post about any market insight I may have with what's going down on Wall Street today. Even though I work in the financial services industry, I don't have a lot of day to day dealings with the market and stock trading. But I am following the current crap that's rolling downhill right now with a lot of interest. One of the best summaries of what is happening that I have read actually comes from our company's CFO, Ted Truscott. I'm not enough of a corporate drone to have warm fuzzy feelings about all of our management and their actions, but Ted is one guy who usually can do no wrong in my eyes. I think he's a smart guy and knows the markets well. Here's a brief excerpt from his latest market update from September 23, prior to the $700b package failing to get through congress and the market going down nearly 800 points (highest single day point loss, but not even in the top 10 of highest percentage losses):

As young commercial bankers, we learned a lot of lessons about credit from demanding, and not particularly polite, bosses. It was boot camp, and I am afraid that a whole generation of today's bankers are about to go back to boot camp themselves. We learned that borrowing short and lending/investing long was an eventual recipe for disaster at any corporation, and particularly banks. We also learned the “C's” of credit, which included character, capacity and collateral.

A borrower had to be of sound character or perhaps a loan might not be repaid. The capacity to repay, including the ability of an individual to remain employed or a company to generate free cash had to be present; otherwise the loan was too risky. Finally, there was collateral. A home could secure a mortgage, a plant could secure a long-term loan and receivables could secure a short-term loan. The collateral had to be substantive because falling prices could render the collateral worth less than its stated value.

The last 25 years, particularly the last five, have seen all the rules of credit cast aside. Our nation has feasted on credit in order to live beyond our means and to create higher investment returns than could be sustained. Character has mattered all too little, capacity has been imagined rather than real, and collateral (particularly homes that secure mortgages) has fallen deeply in value.

How's that for calling a spade a spade? You can read the full market update here, or if you've got the time and find this stuff to be interesting you can read all four market updates Ted has issued since June. The links are below:
June 12
July 15
September 8
September 15
September 23

The closing line of the final article is better advice than I can give:
"At the end of the day, we continue to encourage investors to stay invested, be disciplined and resist the urge to let emotions drive their decisions — even during difficult times like these."

Is it time to tighten up?

Who really knows what is going to happen with the future-

As for me I hate paying for the high heat costs, high transportation costs, high grocery etc-
I am trying to figure out how  spend less certain things- or to be more "frugal". Dale and Lois saved about $50 by repairing and old wheelbarrow. 

 One thing we do is we have decided not to go into town on the weekends. We do our shopping after work and that saves us a few ways-we save the money on gas for the extra trip- and we tend not to buy as much unneeded stuff when we shop,-because we just want to get home. But the big bonus is that we gained some extra time on the weekend by not needing to go shopping.

Another way we are saving some-is by weather striping and filling in/repairing some of the holes around the house-I was surprised how many openings there were in the house.

I am trying to do more work from the office as opposed to driving all over the state-when gas was relatively cheap-its wasn't an issue-today-if I drive more than 100-150 miles in a day-that becomes an expensive day-

I am also trying to work from home at least once in a while-As a salesman I can do that from time to time...I'm not sure about how productive I am but I do know the house gets a bit cleaner and the pets are happier and I still take care of my customers.

Let us know some of the things you are doing to cut your expenses.

  

Happy Birthday to you...

Happy birthday Carol! Hope you have a great one!

End of Summer Activities

This was a very busy weekend for this Lamon family-We had our nephews Joe and Dylan over from Friday to Sunday afternoon-

We started out with a rainy Friday evening-so we just had supper and played some cards(Phase 10) and watched/snoozed through the debate and since we were all tired out we were done by 11.

Saturday started out by eating the cold leftover pizza for breakfast, mowing the grass (mulched the pine needles), introduced the boys to golf, tossed the football around, roasted hot dogs, had a campfire, watched a scary movie with popcorn-

Sunday, we made a big breakfast together, played a bunch of games of HORSE and PIG (Basketball), more golfing around the yard, ladder ball and of course we went into the hot tub three times over the weekend-

Luckily-its Monday morning and I get to rest by going back to work!

He saved $49.99

Fall Beauties

This is a rose plant that Dale bought for me V-day, 2006, & when Spring arrived, I stuck it outside because I didn't want it to die. Last summer not a blossom was to be found...but this summer it has been absolutely bountiful (25-30 continuous blooms) and beautiful.

We are completely enjoying the colors of autumn and it seems gradual because we haven't had a killing frost yet and that is good.

Happy fall.