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

Maybe I missed most of them, but this was actually one of the few "War on Christmas" articles that I've seen this year. It's CNN's Rolan Martin who gives commentary from time to time on a variety of different subjects. He's suppose to be receiving a master's in "Christian communication" whatever the hell that is from Louisiana Baptist University. He's commented on a variety of issues, some of them revolving black men and their place in society. Usually, I don't partciularly care either way on his stuff, but his recent commentary displays his ignorance.

He starts with this ridiculous statement:

This whole push to remove Christ from the Christmas season has gotten so ridiculous that it's pathetic

Color me surprised that I haven't gotten the memo from the supreme atheist overlord on how we're going to remove Christ from Christmas. I miss it every year.

From there he rants about people not saying "Merry Christmas" and the like. Then he displays his ignorance with this:

We spend an inordinate amount of time focused on shopping and buying gifts, but really, what does any of this have to do with the birth of Jesus?

Here's a question for you Roland, what does December 25th have to do with the birth of Jesus? Answer, not a damn thing. In fact, the Puritans outlawed Christmas in 1659. Why, because there was no biblical basis for December 25th to be the birth of Jesus. As has been pointed out numerous times, Christmas is a hodgepodge of pagan rituals and symbols that early Christians co-opted in a bid to convert others. That "Christmas Tree" that Roland laments is now being called a "Holiday Tree", pagan symbol. Mistletoe, pagan symbol. Do I need to keep going?

While he then goes on to rightly decry the orgy of consumerism that takes over this time of year, he finishes his commentary with another gem of idiocy: "secularism must never become so prevalent that our religious traditions are discarded".

Oh no, here come those scary secularist. Seriously people, is your omnipotent, onmipresent, omniscience creator of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE going to be pissed that we say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Wait, what if I say Merry Christmas, even though I'm an atheist. Does that mean I'll be going to that special part of hell where Judas lies as well?

It's hard for me to take people seriously when they start whining about people no longer saying Merry Christmas, calling Christmas Trees Holiday Trees or the like. Especially given the fact that it's such a bullsh*t holiday in the first place. For what it's worth, I like holidays. I get off from work, I get to spend time with the family. We go down and spend time with the wife's family, and getting and receiving gifts can be fun as well. That's all I need for the holidays to be enjoyable. I have no need for Christ or Hannukah candles. And I fail to see how forcing others who don't believe as you to say Merry Christmas makes the holidays any better?

But who cares, so Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, a belated Happy Hannukah to all. I promise this will be my last rant for the year.

I was going through some old files the other day and I happened upon some old Java code I wrote in 2003. It was for a binary search tree. For those who don't know, it's a way of storing data that makes certain things easy to do like searching for values.

Anyway, I was looking through my old code and I could hardly follow it anymore. Not only that, but this was something I did for fun back then! Seriously, I don't know what I was thinking. As I strained to understand what I did before, I remember how good I use to be. Not to sound cocky, but I was a good programmer. The code is well structured, commented clearly, each method of the object made sense and there is a minimalist sense about it. Not a line was wasted for superflous stuff. It was good code.

But part of the reason I lost interest in programming was because I didn't feel like I would ever be good enough. In college, there were guys who could code circles around me. They could quite literally code all day and night and I just did not have that in me.

Thinking back on the career decision I made to go into finance, I wonder if I made the right choice. I was talking to my wife about this and she reminded me how I use to curse profusely at the computer trying to get code to compile and often how a misplaced comma or semicolon would cause me hours of grief trying to debug. I certainly don't miss that aspect of programming at all.

In the end I think I would have been fine as a programmer. Most likely I wouldn't be making the kind of salary I'm making now, but it would have been a comfortable life. Oh well, just a bit of nostalgia for the day.

My goals for 2007 were a bit hit or miss this year. Here's what I wanted to accomplish:

• Pass Level II CFA
• Lose weight
• Spend quality time with family
• Double kid's 529 balance
• Double 401(k) balance
• net worth target: $25,000
• Build a cash reserves
• Kick ass at work in new role

How'd I fare for this past year:
1. Pass Level II --> done and done 1/1.

2. Lose weight, specifically get under 200 lbs --> nope 1/2

3. Spend quality time with wife and kids --> yea, I certainly did that 2/3

4. Double kids 529 account balance --> Starting Value: $1,758, current balance $2,432, don't think this one is going to happen, even with Christmas contributions. 2/4

5. Double 401(k) balance --> Starting value: $5,800, current balance $14,360 (this is the vested balance). Done and done 3/5

6. Net worth target $25,000 --> not going to happen 3/6

7. Build a cash reserves (emergency fund basically) --> also a no, 3/7

8. Kick ass at work --> more or less, yea, I did a reasonable job with this 4/8

So I accomplished 50% of the goals I set out to accomplish. Not too bad there, not great either. Why didn't I accomplish the other goals? I didn't really have a plan, I just kind of said, "wouldn't it be nice". Next time around, I will attempt to make SMART goals for 2008.

I want a rice cooker. A really good rice cooker. We eat rice everyday in our household and we've gone through 3 different cheap ones already. All I want for Christmas is a nice rice cooker. Does anyone have any suggestions from Amazon?

I met with my manager to get my bonus information for this December. It was about 10% more than I was expecting. Additionally, my bonus was raised for next year and I was given some deferred compensation that could amount to 30% or more of my salary...after two years or so (its a type of retention compensation).

All in all, I was pleased with my compensation for the year. In terms of the constructive criticism I received from my manager it wasn't really anything new. That is to say, I already know what my weaknesses and strengths are right now. He essentially said, you do this one thing very well and it was very helpful this past year with the uncertainty in the financial markets, but if you want to have a future here I'm going to need you to branch out and do more. He said I need to be more aggressive. I'm not sure if anyone reading this realizes, but I am not an aggresive person. So while I'm aware of my weaknesses I'm unsure of how to overcome them for the coming year. More to come on that.

Right now the market value for our retirement accounts (401(k) and Roth IRA) is approximately $29,000. By the end of January 2008 I expect this amount to be (assuming a flat market) approximately $46,000. We're planning on funding our Roth IRA for 2007 (sometime in 2008) which will add another $8,000 to put the market value of our retirement accounts at approximately $54,000. That's pretty sweet and awesome. Vesting on the other hand, kind of sucks, as I don't have full claim to that amount.

For our debts, we're going to be paying back more than $15,000 in credit card debt and then in January we'll probably take out $10,000 more which should net us a positive $5,000 in terms of net worth. Why are we taking out more credit card debt? A few reasons. One: we need to pay for part of my wife's tuition that we would otherwise have to pay with expensive un-subsidized student loans. I think we can do better with am introductory credit card offer, especially since we plan to pay this off in a year. Moreover, we are in danger of losing the tax-deductibility of student loan interest once my wife starts working later in '08. It would probably take at least one more year, but it makes the prospect of taking out those loans less attractive in addition to paying a relatively steep origination fee. Two: we are also going to use that money to fund our Roth IRA contribution for the 2007 tax year. And lastly: we are using part of this to prepay our auto insurance bill for the year and save some money.

I'm hoping to have a post looking back on the year and of course looking forward to 2008 with some goals and what not.

Nick over at punny money is ranting and raving (rightly so) about the proposed plan by Paulson and Bush Co to freeze subprime "teaser" rates.

I'd like to clear up one of the biggest misconception of this whole subprime mess and that is these less than stellar borrowers were getting ridiculously low interest rates (below 5%). That's quite false, most of these borrowers were getting rates in the 7-8%. Even prime loans aren't at that high right now with the rise in interest rates (conforming at least, no idea about Jumbo). So yes, these subprime borrowers started at a higher rate than most and they were going to reset higher (9-10%) but now they get to keep that rate.

Now, I'm not trying to say that we as citizens shouldn't be outraged by what kind of precedence this sets up, and Nick mentioned many reasons why he is outraged.

If the government can come in and change the terms of a contract, what does that mean for credit cards? Will they come in and say everyone that has a large balance was deceived and should now only pay 3% instead of their default rate of 29%? Oh, and by the way, everyone who pays their balance on time, you get nothing.

Does that mean that I should start running up a large balance instead of being responsible with my credit cards because the government will now decide that I was "deceived" into getting my credit card? Have these people ever heard of moral hazard, I already mentioned that already and this plan seems to be the very definition of moral hazard.

Another month, another load of debt to add. Part of that debt was to prepaying our car insurance for the year, we were able to save a fair chunk of change by switching to Geico. Almost 50% in fact. Since my bonus is coming in December, we figured we could pay it off and have more cashflow throughout 2008. My goodness, it's almost 2008 isn't it? Wow, it's amazing to me how quickly time flies.

As for the numbers, Assets were up 974 bps while liabilities increased 1203 bps. This is exactly the opposite of what you want on a monthly basis :P. That brings our net worth to (16,712). I expect that to be substantially higher after I get my bonus (possibly in the zero or positive territory), but I haven't the time to check.