Nathan Key

The time you have on this earth is more valuable than anything else you have in your possession. Manage it just as well (or better) than you manage your wealth.

Make Two Lists

List One: The first list should be a ranking list, 1-20 *whatever number, regarding where actually want to spend your time. Don’t worry about obligations. Just write what you’d actually LIKE to do with your time.

Mine might look something like this:

1. Exercising Faith Practices
2. Hanging with my Family
3. Writing/Blogging
4. Ministry to other Christians
5. Hanging with Friends
6. Learning, Researching, Schooling
7. Work (yes, I actually like working)
8. Gaming
9. Watching LOST and The Office (maybe a movie?)
10. Exercise

List Two: On the next list, outline things that you HAVE to do. These are obligations that you can’t avoid. Don’t forget about things like commuting, sleeping, eating, etc.

Mine might look something like this:

1. Sleep (at least 8 hours)
2. Work (at least 8 hours)
3. Commute (at least 1.5 hours)
4. Putting Ethan to Bed (at least .5 hour)
5. Eating Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner (1 hour)
6. General Readiness like showering and cleaning, etc (.75 hour)

Plan Your Calendar

After you make these two lists, put the activities from List Two on the calendar first. They’re the unavoidable ones so you may as well deal with them.

Then, before you put ANYTHING from List One onto your calendar, try to find a couple spaced throughout the week/month where you can partition some free time. This is simply because you never want to completely fill up your calendar. If you do, two problems will occur- firstly you’ll never have any time that you can share with someone if something comes up, and secondly you’ll always be running up against deadlines or moving toward the next event and, let’s face it, that’s no way to spend life.

Next, begin running through List One and add in activities based on what you thought was most important. If you run out of space in your day before you run out of things that are important you have two choices- you can either scratch them off your list- or you can reprioritize List One so that those things you really wanted to do make it into your schedule.

What If I Run Out Of Room?

Welcome to the real world. There will NEVER be enough time in the day/week/month to do everything. That’s why you were suppose to rank the things that you REALLY wanted to do and put them in first. Anything that falls into Non-essential or Non-priority needs to be something you’re willing to sacrifice.

So, when you run out of room in your calendar and you still have things left over. It’s time to cross them off your list. And when new things come up that you’d like to be a part of- you need to make a decision: Is this new thing worth more to me than something else on my calendar. If it is, cut out one of those other priorities and add the new one. But if it’s not, be willing to say no.

After all, you can’t do everything.

Be OK with it.

There were two men, living on the same street who became fathers within a short timespan of each other.

The first man was wealthy and did everything he could to make life seamless for his son. He gave him all the latest toys and gadgets. He donated large sums of money to his schooling so that his son would have access to the top programs. When his son graduated, he worked his network of colleagues to make sure his son landed a great job. At one point, his son lost his job when the economy went south, and the father paid off every debt and lavished money on his son to make sure his unemployment period would be as painless as possible. Soon, the boy found work again and life went on as usual.

The second man was not well off, like the first man. He couldn't afford to give his son as much, but he worked hard to make ends meet and spent as much time as he could with his boy. He couldn't afford to send his son to the best schools, but he encouraged his son to get the best grades possible and spent every evening helping him with his studies. He didn't have the same sort of connections, but he encouraged his son to make calls and contacts of his own and applauded him found a job and encouraged him to work hard. When the economy went south, his son was also laid off, but he didn't have any money to pay off his son's debts. So he took his son to the bank and they worked out a plan with one of the loan officers that would help his son avoid credit problems, while giving him the flexibility to look for more work.

Both of these fathers loved their sons very much.

But one day... tragedy stuck.
An earthquake destroyed the street that both men lived on and they both perished.

Which of the two sons was more prepared for life after the passing of their fathers?

This is going to be a difficult post/topic to write about without offending everyone.

So, I'm going to ask a question up front so that you'll participate in this thought experiment with me rather than have this post sound like a crazed attack on entitlements and programs that seem geared toward progress and empathy:

Since we can't continue to run a budget deficit indefinitely, what are some areas of government that we could/should cut back on or say farewell to (either permanently or temporarily until the economy improves)?

This question goes out to all political affiliations, not just Libertarians who are in favor of cutting just about every federal program there is...

Here are my top two, I'd love to hear yours as well.

1. War
At a trillion dollar price tag, so far, our efforts in Iraq (in particular) have become some of the most costly in the history of the world. So whether you believe our presence in Iraq is justified or not, we can't afford it any longer and we need to pull much of our resources out of that area before we find ourselves in Vietnam, the sequel.

2. The Space Program
If you recall from my previous post, I really do like the space program. I like Cable TV and Internet access, too- but they are obviously expenses that I could do without in my own home when finances get tight. Although there are a lot of scientific advancements and excitement surrounding the Space Program, it's not imperitive to our success as a country. So, I'd cut back (at the very least).

I pulled this quote from a yahoo article that my friend Matt posted yesterday:

"President Barack Obama is counting on his $787 billion stimulus of tax cuts and increased government spending on big public works projects to help bolster economic activity later this year."

* * *

One of my major complaints about the Bush Administration was that it held an economically unsustainable model of CUTTING TAXES and INCREASING SPENDING. Anyone who's ever done basic arithmetic should realize that continually cutting income while expenses continue to grow is the sort of thing that inevitably leads to debt.

And considering that our own national debt is in the trillions (and climbing), I firmly believe we've passed that threshold long ago and are now dabbling in financial risk that surpasses anything the world has ever seen.

I'm sure you'll recall that I'm no democrat, but I have argued somewhat favorably toward them in the past on the mere basis that they seem to know how to do basic math. They seemed to understand that when you increase spending you must increase taxes, too. Well, imagine my disappointment when I find out that this is apparently not President Obama's plan any longer. He has instead decided to follow the same lousy Bushinomic Principles by spending more and collecting less.

Man, I really hope someone reminds him that he's going to ruin us if he continues.

Now don't get me wrong- I wasn't looking forward to paying more taxes! I abhor the thought. I'd prefer the Libertarian model that cuts taxes AND government spending. But I still had this small bit of faith (and hope) that a change in the administration would bring about some sort of sensible financial policy that would balance our federal budget and begin reducing the national debt- even if it meant more taxes in the short term.

Well, I guess we can cross that dream out and throw it in the reality check file. And with this in mind, I'm going to continue to encourage my countrymen to look to a third parties in the future. Cause the "big two" just don't get it.

My good friend Tom and I don’t agree politically very often- so I’m really glad to be in his corner on the issue of the evils of the bailout money and the tragedy that our government is spending our tax dollars to salvage really awful, shortsighted, and greedy decisions within the financial district. I’m glad that we can also agree that the government has no right to keep a failing US Car industry afloat by stealing money from its citizens after they chose to support non-US brands instead.

While it’s shocking to me that we can throw out $700 billion at the financial district, I don’t really think that most people truly understand numbers this big. Billions of dollars are simply so much money that we can’t wrap our minds around it. We simply can’t garner the mental capacity to understand how much that really is.

And because we don’t really have the ability to wrap our mind around numbers that big, the media takes advantage of the situation and pulls data that makes us even more angry about the situation. Take, for example, the recent bonuses that AIG gave their upper tier executives. When we heard that they gave their executives Millions of Dollars in bonuses (paid out of the billions of bailout funds), it turned into hysteria.

Now, they’re reporting that $22 Million have been spent lobbying the government to relax some of the very restrictions that have been put in place to keep these sort of things from happening. We can’t help but freak out at this point. They’re seriously using MILLIONS that WE gave them to LOBBY for GREEDY ENDS?

-- HANG ON: I need to interject a side comment here for a moment to remind readers that I’m very much against restrictions and government intervention in the market, I think that Federal government should keep its head OUT of the private sector. But I also believe that corporations and big businesses have no right to buy off congress, either. When the government sticks its head into the market it’s almost always results in the kind of socialism that results in stagnation and poverty. When businesses (or religions) stick their head into government it almost always results in fascism and corporatism that results in stagnation and poverty. So, both are terrible. I wish they’d leave each other alone. :END of RANT --

OK, before we get too carried away, let’s stop our anger for a moment and put these monies into perspective.  $22 Million is a lot, right? Here’s what it looks like numerically:

$22,000,000.00

It’s a big number. More than any of us will probably see in our lifetime.
But let’s see how it stacks up against $700 Billion? Here's the two amounts next to each other.

$22,000,000.00
$700,000,000,000.00

OK, so $700 billion is obviously a lot bigger, right?

But these numbers are still so much bigger than the sort of money we're used to exchanging that it's still a bit hard to put these into perspective. So, let’s go back to 7th grade math for a moment and kill some of those extra zeros. This will result in a proportional set of numbers that are a little smaller- a little closer to what we might expect to interact with in our lifetimes.

$22
$700,000

These two sets of numbers are a little more manageable. I’ve spent $22 dollars within the past week.

But what about that $700,000?

I still feel like that sum is a little too big. It’s the cost of a really nice house rather than the sort of money that I’d be able to exchange on a frequent basis. So let’s make this number $700 instead. That’s more like the amount of money I might get in a paycheck (or paychecks depending on job).

$.02
$700.00

When we make these numbers comparable to what normal Americans interact with on a daily basis- it turns out to be about the same as a guy who takes his $700 paycheck (or to make the analogy even more pertinent takes a month’s worth of unemployment claims) and tries to put in his “2 cents” worth to a senator or representative.

Of course, the principle remains the same- “why would any of these businesses spend money that wasn’t theirs to begin with on things that are just going to make the public enraged?”

But when we put it in perspective these sums should actually beg a different question- Why does anyone need $700 BILLION dollars? What on earth did they do to get that far into debt that $22 million dollars of lobbying is comparably 2 cents- a sum so small that it doesn’t even seem to matter?

But another story here is that we need to be careful lest our heads and hearts and opinion be swayed by manipulated data from the media. Given the right perspective, it’s easy to believe things about certain individuals or governments or situations that aren’t actually the reality.

Take for example the “Swine Flu” thing that’s going around. Sure, we need to be careful because it’s a potentially lethal disease. But so is the regular flu. In fact, the regular flu kills off thousands of humans each year in the United States alone. So far there haven’t been ANY substantiated fatalities in the US from Swine Flu.

Which one is more dangerous? Which one should we truly be scared of?

Apparently, that doesn’t matter. The media needs to find a story that will make us tune into their broadcast. They need to create emotions and so they feed us swine flu hysteria and bring on their experts to remind us that the evil financial district is spending huge sums of money with the bailout we gave them.

Don’t get sucked in; do the math and check the facts.

And don’t freak out.

Micah Tillman and I were having a conversation about a new economy the other day- one that's been brought to life by Google's Ranking Algorithm.

It all began when I attempted to put a link to his website on my sidebar, but ended up linking to my good friend Seth instead. It was a little embarrassing, but seemed easily corrected. All I needed to do was update the link, publish the site, and everything was back to normal…

Except that it wasn't...

You seen, my site is ranked by Google as a definitive site for 'Nathan Key' (which is good, because I like being the definitive source of info about myself).

Now, I don’t think too many people are looking for me, but since I have fairly regular traffic here, Google respects me enough that their little webcrawlers use my site as a legitimate source of information. Therefore, when they saw me link to Seth’s site (and call it Micah Tillman's) they assumed that I knew was I was talking about. So now when you search of Micah- Seth’s site comes up toward the bottom of the first page as a potential option…

Yikes. That’s not right.

While Micah was pretty cool about it, my mistake sparked a short conversation about traffic economies which, of course, got me thinking about ethics.

What I mean by ethics is this: Since part of Google’s algorithm includes visits and links in & out of a site, it follows that any site with a lot of traffic also has the ability to influence Google’s ranking system. They have the ability to tell the world where searchers should go to receive definitive information about a certain topic.

And since information is power and “with great power comes great responsibility,” it seems to me that we need to be awfully careful what we’re linking to and how we’re linking to it.

Step One
Hand out taxpayer money to businesses who have mismanaged their capital interests, rewarding failure and maximizing the impending crash that comes when these companies fail anyway.

Step Two
Place pay restrictions on corporate executives, thereby crippling the potential of businesses who are on the brink of failure to attract top talent that might come up with some great ideas on how to turn things around. If they weren’t about to fail to begin with, this is a great way to speed up the process.

Step Three
Force out business executives who aren’t leading their companies the way you want them to. After all, who better to decide who gets to lead failing companies than a government that has managed to rack up the biggest national debt in the history of the world.

* * *

Now that we know these 3 easy steps, let's all take a moment to give thanks to the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration for getting us through them all in less than a year. The only thing left to do is sit back and wait for Stagflation and Poverty to rid the entire country of the “evils of capitalism.”

I went to a website yesterday at my pastor’s prompting and was instructed to enter my annual salary. Based on my yearly earnings, I’m apparently in the top 1.43% of the world’s richness scale. After showing me how many people in the world live significantly below my own standard of living, they politely asked me to consider giving some of my “new found riches” to others who are in need.

It was a pretty cool thing and a good reminder to be generous.

However, it got me thinking about the fact that if someone else here in the United States, making minimum wage, took the test- they’d probably pop up on this indicator as one of the richest people in the world, too. But they’re struggling. Really struggling. They’re probably wondering if they’re going to be able to pay their rent and eat (and still have enough left over to leverage transportation to and from work.

Someone making the same yearly amount in a third world (or even second world) country would be the king of the neighborhood. OK, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but they wouldn’t be wondering where their next meal is coming from. You see, richness is relative.

This makes sense to anyone who has gone between cities/states/countries and realized that the a gallon of milk is a dollar in one city, four dollars in another, and ten cents in the third. And if all prices in the market are congruent to the milk- a person living in the city where milk costs four dollars per gallon is going to need to make 40x the amount that the person makes who is living in conditions where the milk only costs 10 cents per gallon.

Person one would need to make 40 dollars for every 1 dollar made by person two (or to put it in annual salaries, person one would need to make $80,000 a year to be considered in similar living conditions to person two making $2,000 a year).

Perhaps in dollars and cents, we'd consider person one to be "richer" than person two. But in quality of life, they’re technically equals. They both have the same buying power with comparable to their income.

This is why it’s hard to just make a blanket statement that one person is richer than another or that someone making a certain amount per year has an obligation to help out another person making less. If we’re not careful, we can end up guilting those who really don’t make a lot into feeling some sort of unachievable burden to help out those who may actually be comparatively similar to them in economic terms.

Instead of merely looking at raw data, you really have to look at disposable income rather than simply how much is made per year. Once you’ve done that, it’s a lot easier to coach people on generosity.

And I'm pretty sure this is why Paul said- "Let each man decide in his heart what he should give." Otherwise, it's just too complicated when we try to impose a mandated amount on anyone.

Dear Congress, Federal Reserve, and Mr. President:

I hate to say "I told you so."

But really... what do you expect a business (who obviously doesn't know how to manager their assets) to do with "free money" you've printed up and given to them.

I personally don't think you have any right to hand out money to businesses in the first place- but why are you suddenly surprised to find out that they are lining their own pockets with our wealth?

That's what they've been doing all along.

It doesn't take a lot of intuition to realize that they're going to continue to do so until someone lets them suffer the consequences of mismanaged funds. You should have let them FAIL put that money back in the hands of the people who actually need it. Or better yet, used it to pay down our national debt. What sort of message are you sending businesses and families when you don't even know how to balance your own budget.

Thanks for listening (even though you never do).
Kindest Regards,

Nathan