Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, has a new television show debuting on The History Channel tonight. “Trial by Fire” can be seen at 11pm Eastern, 10pm Central, 9pm Mountain, and 11pm Pacific. Tim writes:
The concept is simple: I have one week to attempt to learn what is usually learned over 5-20 years. I either crash and burn — or survive by the skin of my teeth — in a final test (trial by fire) each time.
This initial episode profiles his attempts to learn Japanese horseback archery, or yabusame. This is only a pilot, and in order for the series to picked up, it has to draw a lot of viewers. I know that many of you, like me, are Tim Ferriss fans. If you have a chance, I encourage you to check out the show! Here’s a YouTube preview:
Meanwhile, you folks have been sending me a lot of great personal finance stories like these:
It’s time to add another “must-read” to the collection of articles about the financial crisis. After I mentioned The New Yorker‘s Ben Bernanke article on Monday, guinness416 recommended “The End of the Wall Street Boom” by Michael Lewis. This is a great article, especially for those Peter Schiff disciples who think he’s the only one who called this crisis. Lewis profiles another man who did the same, a man who made a fortune by betting against the market.
Pam pointed me to The Frontal Cortex, a science blog by Jonah Lehrer. He has a short post about how buying with credit really does affect our brains differently than buying with cash. I’ll have to track down his past writing on the subject. Speaking of credit…
At Carrie & Danielle, guest-writer Valencia shares her top five get-out-of-debt mistakes. Three of these are spot on, but I’d argue that two of them are circumstantial. It’s not always wrong to close credit-card accounts. Yes, doing so will ding your credit score, but sometimes that’s better than deeper debt. Also, I have first-hand experience using a home-equity loan to pay off credit cards. It’s not always wrong to do so. You just have to be careful.
Finally, GRS-reader Nancy sent me a couple of entries from Mondo Fruitcake, a blog that’s, well, all about fruitcakes. (How seasonal!) In particular, she pointned to an article on the price of fruitcake in America, which argues that people are being duped! They’re buying something they’re unfamiliar with — fruitcake — at a price too high for the quality.
Note: Sorry for changing the lead-in like that. I had meant to share Tim’s new show, but forgot. It’s much more interesting than what I did with my day, anyhow.
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Bummer you lost a day. But great that you got so much done. I will be at the computer all day today because I need to finish off my freelance writing so I can reach my deadline.
Good to see someone else is being productive too
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Ryan’s comment now makes no sense because I changed the lead-in to the link roundup. Sorry, Ryan!
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The article you mentioned “The New Yorker’s Ben Bernanke article” is one of the best articles on financial crisis. Only one problem I had with it … it’s too long.
Regarding Tim’s show – possibly only him can come up with so many unique ideas like this TV show. A perfect entrepreneur.
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Mr. Ferriss is getting around tonight. I guess he’s making a push for his new show. It ought to be very interesting. I love his attitude toward living life to the fullest!
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Am I the only person who’s not that impressed with Tim Ferriss? I think that it’s fantastic that he’s inspiring so many people to go out and aggressively enjoy their lives, but I wish he was a little more about the deep joy and subtleties of true mastery of an art that years of cultivation can bring and a little less about accumulating odd titles and easily impressing non-experts.
Also, who buys fruitcake? Get out your old copy of the Joy of Cooking, pull out the recipe for dark fruitcake, buy as much of the best dried fruit and brandy as you can find (not those weird fluorescent chunks of candied “fruit” they sell this time of year), and make it yourself. It’s so much better.
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Have to agree, I’m also not that Impressed with Tim. Read his book, and although good, it doesn’t really tell people anything that they couldn’t think of on their own.
He also makes some pretty strong assumptions that don’t realistically apply to his entire audience.
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Hey JD,
Thanks for the link to Valencia’s article — I agree, it’s often a fine line between what’s good for your credit score in the short term vs. what’s right for your personal situation today and over the long term.
When I started my first business, after the dot-com collapse, I racked up considerable credit card debt funding it and covering the “cash flow chasm” that affects so many small start-ups.
When I sold the business it was immensely satisfying to pay off all the cards and close one of the accounts, and have money in the bank. The psychological value of that was immense, and it was part of a commitment to being debt-free.
Cheers,
Dan
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I’ve been avoiding the Lewis article because of the length but if Guinness416 recommends it…
It was a great read…
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No, A., I’m not impressed w/ Mr. Ferris either. Personal finance and personal development aren’t about some kind of excitement, IMO. The whole ordeal is quite ordinary. Better to learn how to deal w/ the little, quiet, everyday kind of moments of life, as that’s mostly what life is made of. The big stuff happens rarely, if at all.
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Thanks for the Michael Lewis article! He’s one of my favorite writers and I can’t believe I missed this one!
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I just closed my only credit card and I feel great about it. After 10 years of running up the bill and then paying it off, I now realize that I don’t know how to handle credit. We’re not planning on buying anything soon and I realize now that whenever I wanted to tackle my student loan debt – I had to deal with my credit card debt first. I took some really drastic measures and now have $1500 in an emergency fund, $1300 in our ‘medical insurance doesn’t cover everything fund’ and have only $2,500 left from $13,000 of credit debt. That’s getting paid of in a month in a half, hopefully. I don’t think I would be able to do this if that credit card was still open. It’s what is the right decision for me.
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The Carrie & Danielle post is pretty lackluster–your right about the two points which are circumstantial, and of the remaining three, the only one that doesn’t fall under “well duh!” is Number 2, don’t hire a debt-consolidation agency. In all, that’s a pretty mixed bag to showcase. And Michael Lewis isn’t really providing gems of wisdom. He essentially prognosticated that the market goes up and down, which we all know. He’s made that incorrect assumption that its permanently down–the market will rise and fall again. It may take a few years (or decades), but once fears are forgotten, greed will creep back into the equation.
Sorry for being negative–long week and little sleep.
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“The end of the wallstreet boom” is a great and – chilling – article. This whole time I was investing in my 401 I was buying small parts of companies. Now I’m not sure at all what my money was buying.
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Cool concept. Something I should DVR. Sounds like a similar type of concept to Morgan Spurlock’s 30 days TV show.
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Re closing credit accounts: I am one of the people who had an inactive Macy’s account “flipped” without permission to a Citibank MasterCard with a $5K limit that I neither wanted or needed. They sent the already-open credit card by mail. The account was opened with a credit inquiry, so that hurt my score; then I closed the account, so that has also likely hurt my score, and is recorded as a card that I’ve had as long as the Macy’s account is open. If you google, there are many articles on this barely-legal scam that Macy’s and Citibank have perpetrated. It’s a no-win situation for consumers, whose credit scores will be hurt no matter what.
So — what is a responsible user, trying to eliminate credit card debt, supposed to do? Other than never, ever spending another penny at Macy’s in this lifetime, I have no recourse. They’ve done this to millions of people simply because they were responsibly not using their Macy’s account at this time. And the irony, of course, is that I was planning to head to Macy’s for some basic clothing needs that very weekend.
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Rather than cancel her credit card accounts, what my best friend did with a couple of her accounts is cut the card up but not cancel the account – that way, she didn’t have the temptation of using the card and racking up more debt, but maintained her credit score.
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