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

I'd like to introduce a new author here at FSA headquarters. You've known her solely as Mrs. FSA, but now my wife, moniker S. Lee, will be publishing articles on the blog as well. I would expect them to be of a more...practical nature than my excel laden theoretical investment posts :). She's also started a blog of her own Learning By Ear, so feel free to check it out as well. Please join me in welcoming her and hopefully she can up the post frequency around here as well.

Now that my current car has a CD player, I've been borrowing audio CDs to listen to on my drive to work. The most recent audio CD I listened to and really enjoyed was Richard Feynman's What Do You Care What Other People Think. It's a sort of sequel to his previous semi-autobiographical book: Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman (which I haven't read, but plan to in the near future). I did however, really enjoyed listening to the book. I was familiar with Richard Feynman as a larger than life character but this series of autobiographical anecdotes were a very pleasant insight into the real person. While the book contained a hodge-podge of stories, the two main centerpieces are the tragic tale of his first love and his involvement with the investigation of the 1986 Challenger Explosion.

One of the smaller stories interpersed in the book, was how Feynman became an atheist. This interested me quite a bit (obviously). He was brought up in a secular-ish Jewish household and when he was growing up he went to Sunday school (or the Jewish equivalent, he calls it Sunday school in the book). He had a scientific mind even then (which he credits to the influence of his father growing up) and he was constantly trying to reconcile the miracle stories he heard with reality, because he assumed that all the stories were true. For example, he heard the story about Moses seeing a bush that was shaking but there was no wind. One day he saw a tree branch that appeared to be moving vigourously but there was only a very slight wind. Aha, he said to himself, the wind is hitting the branch at just the right angle so that it vibrates at it's reasonant frequency. Basically, the branch appeared without wind again, but now he had a scientific explanation for what Moses thought was a miracle. However, he was unable to reconcile all the stories he was being and this frustrated him.

In one particular class, a rabbi was recalling the story of a young woman who was being tortured during the Inquisition. The climax of this story was that just before she died she thought to herself, "blah, blah, blah" (he literally says blah, blah, blah in the book). This piqued young Feynman's curiosity, how on earth did they know what this woman was thinking before she died. After Sunday school, he approached the Rabbi and asked him how they could have known. The Rabbi said, "Oh, it's just a story, it's suppose to teach a lesson about being Jewish [something like that]". This shocked Feynman, and he started crying! He was so upset, because no one told him that they could just be made-up stories; he thought they were all true, and he had no reason to belive otherwise. This ultimately lead him down the path to atheism.

It was fascinating to listen to this story. Here was a young man trying his best to reconcile the physical world with the miraculous stories of the Torah. I could feel that he felt betrayed by the authority figures who pretended to know more than they really did. I wonder how many other people became atheists from a similar experience?

The one qualm I had with the book was that it seemingly bounced back and forth between different anecdotes, but over time I got felt that it depicted Feynman's personality well. So while it took some getting use to, having completed the book, I have a better appreciation for why it was done that way.

I highly recommend people pick up a copy, it's a very entertaining and insightful read on a curious character. Here's to you Mr. Feynman.

Just a short message to please consider donating to the relief effort in China. Here is one of the many organizations collecting donations right now: IFRC. There are many others, please donate to whichever one you see fit. Thanks.

While last month I felt that we were firing on all cylinders, this month was comparatively weaker, but still a good one. The beginning of the month is always a nice time now, because that's when our interest payments are made. We get interest from our Emigrant Direct, interest from our high-yield checking account, interest from our the money market accounts in our Roth IRAs, and in the beginning of May and December we get interest and capitalization distributions in my 401(k). Slow and steady, slow and steady (at least for now).

On the asset side we were down 192 bps. This was because we paid off my wife's dental bill for her braces. We paid everything upfront so we could receive a substantial discount and we are going to be getting reimbursement from our dental insurance and our Flexible Spending Account. That money should be trickling in over the next few months. For our investments we had a nice bounce in my 401(k) which was up 868 bps month over month (MoM), and our Roth IRAs continued to receive their small but growing interest payments. All told the market value of our investment portfolio stands at $57K but unfortunately I am not fully vested in my 401(k) yet (for net worth purposes I only count the vested amount).

Our liabilities ticked down 198 bps as we paid off the credit card for the aforementioned braces and continued to make the necessary payments for our other debts.

At the end of the day our net worth declined 115 bps to $19,578. I expect that number to be higher next month as we should start receiving reimbursements and I don't expect our debts to increase materially.

Plans for Stimulus Check/Direct Deposit
Like many Americans we will be receiving a stimulus payment from the government. My wife and I discussed what we were going to do with the money and came up with the following allocation:
1. $300 for our kids 529 Plan ($100/each child).
2. $1000 Roth IRA contributions ($500/wife, $500/me).
3. $500 debt repayment (tackling our highest interest debt first).
4. $300 for clothes (I need work clothes and my wife also needs some more clothes as well).

As you can see, nothing too fancy for the FSA family. We will be saving most of it, and front-loading some necessary spending. Dull and dull.