Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist - The F.S.A.

Wow, is it really the end of the month already? Time is just flying by so quickly. My daughter is almost one month old already! Before you know it, she's going to be dating boys and going off to college. Sigh, kids, they grow up so fast nowadays.

Interpid readers, I know you've been eagerly awaiting my next post, and while this is a mere morsel to tide you over, here are some topics I will soon be discussing/posting:
- Making money with citi credit protector.
- Adventures in camping out in front of retail stores for this seasons hottest toys.
- Adventures in recuperating from camping out in front of retailers for this seasons hottest toys.
- Adventures in making programs that text message you to let you know to buy this seasons hottest toys online.
- Adventures in selling this seasons hottests toys on ebay and dealing with difficult people who want you to lower the shipping cost after they've already bought the product.

You get the idea, :P.

I should be able to do the full calculation of our net worth tomorrow as well. I know people are so anxious to see that little number.

Also, if there's anything else people want me to discuss, I'd be more than happy to put it in queue. Thanks, and I hope everyone is doing alright.

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Edit: For those who don't know, this seasons hottest toys are the playstation 3, the wii, and the elmo tmx. Just FYI.

Tags: personal finance

This was just too funny. Over at slashdot they posted about the Charles Darwin works being available online here. This was a typical negative response:

While discussing Darwin's "great" works, it would be a tremendous start to report them accurately. The title of Darwin's work which most modernly and conveniently call "The Origin of Species" is actually and originally the following:

The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life

Please make sure to credit Darwin's theory with the rationalization used by Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and every other genocide which is perfectly justifiable by the degradation of the value of life down to nothing more than an accidental tissue mass. Before everyone wants to shout this down as "religion" consider that no "religion" or "religious belief" has been forwarded here. That's just the logical ramification of subscribing to the "Preservation of Favored Races" which is basically a racist view of the living. Those murderous dictators were perfect Darwinians. Its also perfect justification for the destruction of the environment, endangered species, and various ecosystems, which apparently deserve to be destroyed if natural selection dictates that they do not maintain the ability to preserve themselves in their present state.

For good or bad, everyone at least ought to be honest about who their associates are. As they saying goes, "a person is known by the friends they keep."[emphasis original]

The reply by one misanthrope101 was hi-larious:

Don't act like the title is a hush-hush secret, because that title is printed in the Penguin edition I bought from Amazon a month ago. And by "races," he meant what we call species. This is obvious to anyone who reads the first few pages of the book, which tells me you didn't read the book. Let me be more clear by quoting from the book you denigrate, but never read:

Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally revert in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me not improbable, that if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance, of the cabbage, in very poor soil... The Origin of Species, Chapter 1

Oh my, Darwin was a cabbage racist! Stop the presses! Oh wait, that's stupid. You saw the word "races," thought "aha, ammunition" and went running. Here's a hint--don't trust creationist web-pages, because they'll give you a misleading, caricatured idea of what Darwinism means. They'll make you look like an idiot because you'll run around calling him a racist, when anyone who even reads chapter 1 of the book knows he was talking about varieties, or species, not races like the KKK gets hung up on.


I'm not clear why I would credit Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot et al to Darwin since all of these dictators were motivated by a lust for power, not because they were convinced of common descent. Are you calling everyone who believes in common descent a Nazi? "Those murderous dictators" weren't perfect Darwinists, because nothing they did was "Darwinian." Darwinism is based on variation in the gene pool, acted upon by a selective force, leading to diversity. Oppose that to Hitler, whose philosophy was based on the idea of a "pure race." It's obvious that Hitler's views were not based on Darwin's ideas. In fact, both Stalin and Hitler actually banned Darwin's works. Stalin banned the teaching of Darwinian evolution. So by what stretch of the imagination were they "perfect Darwinists"? If a political leader banned the bible, would you infer from that that he was a perfect Christian?
Since Darwin died long before Hitler or Stalin came to power, how could he keep their company? Even if they based their policies on his ideas, which they clearly didn't since they banned his works, what control does a naturalist have over a wacko who kills people 70 years later?

I don't ask that you suddenly change your mind. I do ask, however, that you stop being an idiot, and make an effort to think your arguments through. It takes one Google search and 30 seconds of reading to refute every single point you made. It's not that I think I'm smart, only that your arguments are so embarrassingly bad that people will inevitably conclude that you're stupid. If you aren't stupid, then stop being intellectually lazy.

Hi-larious.


Tags: evolution darwin

Someone once said: 'Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy you more options'. I'm not sure who said it, or if there was only one person that did say it, but I've been thinking about that more and more these days.

What prompted this post was Miserly Bastard's post on nanny costs in NYC. Commenter Trent left a note about daycare, and mentioned one of the benefits of daycare is the forced socialization aspect.

MB's post was quite timely as my wife and I have been discussing our current and future child care options. Currently we use an au pair. For those who don’t know, an au pair is a young woman from overseas who signs with an agency to come to the United States. In exchange for providing child-care, she is allowed to stay in the United States for at most a year (with an option to continue for one more year) and she must follow certain other rules. If anyone is interested, let me know in the comments and I can expound on it some more.

From our standpoint, this was an economical and convenient form of child-care, even before the birth of our third child. For an all-in cost of ~ $15,000 a year, we receive at most 45 hours of child-care a week, a woman that has been teaching our children another language (with modest success I must admit), and someone who is close enough to our age that we can call them a friend. We have been extremely happy with our au pair and consider ourselves very lucky.

Now here comes the options part I alluded to in the first part of this post. While the au pair is great with kids and is cheerful and seemingly as energetic as both of the boys, we’ve noticed one slightly disconcerting aspect of our first child’s personality.

He doesn’t socialize very well with other children.

There are many ways to deal with this, but my wife has decided that a daycare would be the best way to have him interact with other children his age on a regular basis. Needless to say, paying for both an au pair and a daycare on a single salary is much too cost prohibitive right now.

That being said, we discussed having my wife stay at home and just sending the eldest to daycare. However, now that we have three kids, the au pair has become even more important in our daily routine.

So, I’m at a loss. We don’t have the extra $X thousand to afford daycare, but then we feel like crappy parents because our son is a social misfit (to exaggerate of course, but you see how strongly we feel about this, even if it’s irrational).

This is just a post to clear my head more than anything else, forgive me if it comes across as whining or complaining. It’s just that we are trying “to give our kids the best”. Whatever the hell that means, right?


Tags: personal finance personal

ecumenicalism

In its broadest meaning, ecumenism refers to initiatives aimed at worldwide religious unity. It is understood in this sense in the Baha'i vision that advocates a greater shared spirituality across Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths as part of its core beliefs.

In a narrower and more common sense, ecumenism refers to the movement towards unity among Christians. In this sense, ecumenism is based on the idea that there should be a single Christian Church, a single Christian faith.

A more limited goal of ecumenism in either sense is promotion of co-operation and better understanding between religious groups or denominations, without aiming at unity.

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Net Worth
I don't have time to run through the numbers, but it's approximately -1500. Some things that helped:
1. 401k saving and matching
2. Earning over $100 in interest from Emigrant Direct and those 0% balance transfers. That's getting addicting, I'm already planning on doing more once the first of those are up at the end of this year. Can't pass up that free money.

Work
Things have gotten extremely busy at work. Hence the lack of posts. Its exciting though, and I've taken some new responsibilities. Not many people at my level have these types of responsibilities so I'm hoping that will play out as a larger bonus or as a reason to keep me longer term. Either way, I'm hoping it leads to more positive things.

New Baby
That girl has some lungs, let me tell you! She is absolutely adorable. As soon as we get that SSN, we're opening a 529 plan for her. I can't help but think of that 1.7 million figure for their college costs. Truly a scary thing.

Overall, it's going to be a somewhat stressful month for the FSA family. On the plus side, we've signed all 6 of our citi cards up with their credit protector program. That means we don't have to make payments for 2 or 3 months for those credit cards because my wife gave birth. Since they are our balance transfer arbitrage cards, that's a great thing. I have to hand it to my wife, she did the research on the program and made us sign up. Thanks honey, I love you.

Stay tuned. I don't expect to update much more unfortunately, but I do have two weeks off for paternity leave. Thanks for all the congratulations.

Tags: personal finance atheism

Welcome to the world my daughter.
After a very quick (3 hours and 45 mins) labor, our daughter was born today. At 6 lbs and 15 ounces she has some lungs let me tell you. I think this also means that my hiatus just got a little longer.

Mother and daughter are both doing well, father and sons are doing well too.

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I am still alive. I have been extremely busy at work. I hate to do this, but I have to go on a hiatus for a couple of weeks. Check your feeds and check back around then and I should have some more posts. Sorry for sucking.

Tags: personal finance atheism