The one where I live in a futuristic sewer

I dreamed that I was arrested for being a homeless person, living in the sewers of a futuristic city.

There were no prisons in the future, so I was conscripted into the army. Since there were also very few military conflicts in the future, most of the personnel were assigned to city cleaning duty. I was assigned to live with my military unit in some barracks in the sewers. So my housing in the military was not much different from when I was homeless.

Our duties to clean the city included both emergency cleaning (such as when litter was detected) and scheduled cleaning (such as sweeping streets and cleaning windows). As part of our uniform, we wore devices on our left forearms which were like a curved tablet. It displayed a map of the city and sewer system and it was connected to scanners that would send alerts to show us where to go to clean up trash.

Once we were situated in our new sewer barracks, we were given training on how to perform our duties. When a litter alert was sent, we were required to clean it up within a certain time frame or we would be punished. When an alert would show up on our scanner screen, we would need to get dressed in our large white over-clothes (kind of like a fireman's protective suit), and then report for duty in the correct spot to clean the litter. Usually the target location was just underneath the manhole cover that was closest to the litter. For our training, our sergeant would send us test alerts when we weren't expecting them and then she would check our response times. If our entire team was not assembled under the manhole cover quickly enough then we would all be punished.

On our first day of litter alert training, I had put on my white suit and was hurrying to the correct sewer location, when I spotted a small stone figurine on the ground. It was only about 3" tall and appeared to be in the shape of a person, but it was pretty primitive looking. I was worried that if I stopped to pick it up that I would be late. But it looked neat and I figured that it wouldn't take long so I stooped down and grabbed it while I ran. I stuck it in my pocket.

My team sprinted down the sewer tunnel and took our places under the manhole cover. Our training sergeant was there with a stopwatch and when the last of us got into position she clicked the stopwatch button to stop the timer. She looked disappointed that we had made it on time and she wouldn't be able to punish us.

The next training we received was window washing. For this task we got to come out of the sewers. The city was futuristic. The buildings were all tall skyscrapers. There was a small man-made lake in the middle of the buildings that was surrounded by nice walkways with glass railings, and the lake had a fountain in the center.

We were taken up to a walkway that was high in the air and lead between two buildings. Jen was our trainer for this task. She gave us spray bottles and squeegees. She explained that there were tiny ledges about 4 inches wide that went around the buildings that we would go out on to wash the windows. There were no safety ropes or anything. Jen then walked out onto one of the small ledges and all the rest of the trainees followed her. Neither she nor any of the other trainees seemed the least bit concerned about falling to their deaths but I was terrified. I dropped where I stood on the walkway and clung to the pavement with all my strength. I thought that if I didn't that somehow the walkway would tilt me toward the ledge and I would slide off the walkway, onto the ledge, and then fall to my death. I stayed in that position but as I glanced over towards the windows and ledge I could see Jen showing the other cleaners the proper method to clean the windows. They were all now precariously balanced on the ledge and some of them were leaning over to get a better view Jen's instruction. Still none of them seemed worried at all about the possibility of falling.

Suddenly we all heard a loud commotion coming from far down below us at street level. I looked on my arm scanner and I could see lots of gunfire showing up on my screen. The plasma blasts from the guns that the military used registered somehow on the device. But there was no visible enemy on the screen.

We made our way down to the ground and could see armed soldiers running around on the pathways around the lake. Our training sergeant explained to us that a dinosaur was attacking the city but it was moving around through the sewers so nobody could track its movement. That is also why it did not show up on our scanners.

Our sergeant ordered us to help fight the dinosaur. I reminded her that we did not have any weapons but she did not seem concerned. I was able to find a plasma gun near the body of a fallen soldier and I picked it up. I watched the plasma blasts that showed up on my scanner screen and I could see that the dinosaur and soldiers were currently in the sewer tunnels under the lake nearby. The dinosaur soon burst up out of the water and started rampaging around on the streets and walkways. I and the other armed soldiers fired our plasma guns at it over and over but the dinosaur seemed unaffected. Then the fighting came very near me and I was struck by the dinosaur's tail and knocked unconscious.

I woke up in a hospital. I was miraculously unhurt. When the military commanders saw that I was awake, they ordered me to go back out and fight the dinosaur again. I looked around my hospital room but my plasma gun was not there. I asked if I could have a new gun and they said, "No".

As I left the hospital and was walking back toward the lake, I vaguely remembered that the last thing I did after being struck by the dinosaur tail was to break my plasma gun into three parts and to hide the parts in the bushes and flowers around the lake. I reasoned that I had done this to send myself a message. It occurred to me that I had probably discovered the secret to defeating the dinosaur before being knocked out and I was trying to give myself a hint to remember what it was.

I decided that since I hid the gun that maybe that was to tell me that fighting the dinosaur was not the answer. It then occurred to me that maybe the dinosaur was really just a peaceful creature that was looking for something. Perhaps it had only become violent because it had been attacked. The answer of what it was looking for must be the small stone figurine in my pocket. I decided that the dinosaur was really just looking for its lost magical totem and if I could give the small statue back to it, the dinosaur would leave peacefully.

I explained my plan to the military commander I was with. I told him that I would stand out on a walkway near the lake and give the statue back to the dinosaur but that it was vitally important for all of the soldiers to not shoot at the dinosaur to anger it or the plan would be ruined. He agreed to try my plan and gave the order for all the soldiers to stand back and not fire on the dinosaur.

I stood alone on the walkway by the lake. I could see the soldiers around the lake with their rifles pointing towards where they expected the dinosaur to come out of the water. I took the small figurine out of my pocket and looked at it. It seemed strange that so much destruction had been caused by such a small thing.

Suddenly I heard shouting and I could start to make out the dinosaur coming towards the surface of the water. I started to worry. What if the dinosaur was still angry? Even if we didn't shoot at it, it could still be really upset and just eat me. We had no way of telling the dinosaur that we were now trying to be peaceful. The dinosaur's head started coming coming up out of the lake.

And what about all those nervous soldiers? Had the command really been given to all of them to stand down? What if one of them had been missed? And would all of them obey? Even if the dinosaur was now peaceful, if even just one soldier panicked and fired a shot, that would anger the dinosaur again and it would just eat me! The dinosaur was almost entirely out of the water now and it was heading straight toward me.

And what if my idea was wrong? What if the dinosaur didn't want the statue? What if it was really just a rampaging dinosaur? Why in the world am I standing here? Am I going to really try to hand the figurine to the dinosaur? Should I just drop the figurine on the ground and pretend that I am dead? Would it leave me alone or just step on me or eat me anyway?

I started to panic! The dinosaur was getting closer and closer. I didn't know what to do and I was starting to second guess pretty much everything that I had thought about my plan. My mind was jumping back and forth between the nervous soldiers, the approaching dinosaur, and the thought of throwing the statue and then flopping on the ground to feign death.

At this point my panicked brain pulled the ejection handle and woke me up. I will never know if my plan would have worked or not.

Dreamed around Oct 2020

10 Simple Steps to Financial Security

These 10 simple steps will put you on the path to financial security. The first 3 steps are the foundation and essentially "get your house in order". The 7 following steps will show you how to reach the long-term goals you set.

1. Establish a Plan

An old Chinese proverb states, "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is now."

It is important to setup a long-term financial plan that addresses the categories of debt, investing, insurance, and eventual retirement goals. When you are finished with your plan you should be able to answer questions like these:

1. How much debt do I have and what are the interest rates on those debts?

2. How much life insurance do I need and how much will it cost?

3. What age do I plan to retire and how much money do I need to have saved for retirement by that age? How much do I need to save/invest each year to reach that goal?

The retirement plan is the one I have the most trouble with. You have to make assumptions about how long you will live, what kind of return you will get on your investments, and what the inflation rates will be over the next several decades. A good rule-of-thumb is that you will need between 10x and 15x your salary in retirement. So if you currently earn $50,000 per year, you will want to have saved up $500,000 - $750,000 by the time you retire. This may seem like a very difficult thing to accomplish, but it is really not that hard if you follow these steps.

It all starts with a plan, and your plan will change, but the first step is to start a plan and to have your current long term goals written down.

2. Create a Budget

This step is simply to make observations about how you live your life. Evaluate your personal spending. Keep track of all financial expenses, and look back and categorize what you have spent over the last 3 months. Then answer these questions:

1. Do you save? How much, and where does it go?

2. Do you have Emergency Savings?

3. How much do you spend each month, and what do you spend it on?

Often simply observing where your money is currently going will make you more aware and careful of how you spend your money.  Create a detailed record of where your money is consistently going. This simple step will help you with step 3.

3. Identify Roadblocks

Now that you know from step 1 how much you need to save each month, and you know from step 2 where your money is going, identify what needs to change in your spending. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Is there anything you are currently doing that is getting in the way of reaching your financial goals?

2. What do you need to stop or start doing today to begin making progress towards your goals?

3. What sacrifices are you and your family willing to make today that would lead to you making progress to accomplishing your goals?

When you finish this step you should be equipped to tackle the rest of the steps here.

4. Eliminate High-Interest Debt

If you have any high-interest debt, like credit card debt, make it a high priority to eliminate. The average interest on a credit card is 17.30%. That is absurdly high! Never allow yourself to carry a credit card balance month to month. If you are in this habit, stop now. Credit cards can be useful for benefits, but if you carry credit card debt, you are losing money.

Consider this quote that demonstrates the disastrous effects of high-interest debt on your financial status and overall happiness.

Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels... it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff. Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands nor orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.
- J. Reuben Clark Jr

Simply put, do you want interest to be working for or against you?

 

5. Life Insurance

If you have dependents (people that depend on you for your income to provide food and shelter) then you should have life insurance. Get some inexpensive term life insurance in case something terrible happens to you that will provide for those dependents until they can make other arrangements (get jobs, etc). You might also consider disability insurance that will provide for your family's needs if you become disabled. Some employers also provide some life and/or disability insurance for free.

If you do not have any dependents then you don't really need life insurance unless you just want enough to cover funeral expenses so your family doesn't have to foot the bill.

6. Emergency Fund

Establish a 3 month emergency fund. This should cover your necessary expenses for 3 months. You know your monthly expenses from step 2 so you know exactly how much that requires.

This fund is very important as it protects you from a "rainy day." This might be a medical bill, repairs on the car, a natural disaster, or even a pandemic. You can’t predict the unexpected, but this will help you be more financially secure regardless of what happens.

7. Invest

I have another blog post that has some detailed investing advice, but here are some basics:

1. Employer Match

If your employer provides employer match on a 401k, get it - that is free money!

 

2. Roth IRA

Setup a Roth IRA. Work towards eventually maximizing your annual contributions to it. I recommend Vanguard.

 

3. Automatic Investing

Make investing automatic so you don't have to think about it.

4. Index Funds

Invest in low fee index funds. I recommend something like the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSAX), LifeStrategy Growth Fund (VASGX), or a Target Date Fund.

5. Savings Rate

Work towards eventually saving 15%-20% of your income each year. If you are doing that then you should be able to reach your retirement goal.

8. Investment Creep

Instead of "lifestyle creep" where your raises go into a better lifestyle (eating out, a boat, bigger vacations, etc.), implement "investment creep". This means that some of your raises go towards increasing your saving and investments. Continue to do this until you have reached your target savings rate that is necessary to reach your goals.

A couple extra years of "living like a student" and using the saved money to pay off debt, build an emergency fund, or invest, will pay great dividends in the future. Immediately transitioning from living like a student to trying to live the "good life" may generate bad spending habits or cause you to take much longer to reach your goals.

This doesn't really mean that you should eat mac-n-cheese for several years after graduation, but the goal is to prevent you from thinking, "Now I have lots of money - I can eat out and get a new car!"

9. Educate Yourself

Take time to become more financially savvy. This can be done by reading books like "The Millionaire Next Door", reading blogs like "The White Coat Investor", or anything else.

Investing rules change, laws change, and best practices change. You want to keep up-to-date on what is happening so that you can adjust your plan if you need to, or so you can switch to a new type of investment if something better becomes available.

10. Evaluate Progress

Every 6 months to 1 year you should evaluate your progress towards your goals. Has your spending gone up? How are you doing on your goals? Are there any adjustments that need to be made?

Don't worry about how your investments are performing necessarily. As long as you are invested in index funds then in the long term you should see growth, even if there are dips in the short term. The main thing to check is to see if you are investing your 15-20% or if you have a sufficient emergency fund in place still.

 

 

Source: This is based on advice given by The White Coat Investor. The original post is geared towards doctors. I simplified it and made it more generic.

The one where I learn about the economy of Victorian England

I dreamed that I was walking along a sidewalk. The street was to my left and to my right was a park. The street was raised so that the park was below me and street level was near the tops of the park's smaller trees. There was a wrought-iron fence between the sidewalk and the park to (sensibly) prevent people from accidentally falling off the sidewalk.

I walked along the fence looking at the trees and bushes below me in the park. Suddenly my eyes caught a flash of color. I crouched down to get a better look and I could see a TV partially obscured by some tree branches. The TV was on a stand and was pointed up towards the street as if it was meant to be watched by people up on the sidewalk. But over the years the tree nearby had spread its branches and partially obscured it from view. I reached my arms between the bars of the fence and held the branches out of the way so that I could see what show was playing.

It was a documentary on the economics of Victorian England. I learned that there was a large class of poor people. If the poor people's net worth dropped below a certain threshold then those people were sent to a poor house. Every once in a while, wealthy individuals came to the poor house and selected some of the people to come work for them as a sort of indentured servant.

At the time, the big culinary delight of the rich was canned asparagus soup. It was actually made from chunks of Brussels sprouts in a pureed broccoli base, but the wealthy did not really know that or care. It was also usually served cold - straight out of the can.

The real difficulty that the rich had was that they did not know how to operate can openers. They needed to have servants because only the poor knew how to open the cans and serve the soup. The poor also instinctively knew that they needed to remove the largest bits of Brussels spouts from the soup to prevent the rich from having to awkwardly chew them at their fancy dinner parties. So the poor and rich lived together in a symbiotic relationship of sorts. The poor could open the soup cans for the rich, and the rich provided food and shelter for the poor.

It was all very fascinating. But just as I was learning about how the soup was manufactured, I suddenly realized that I was wearing no clothes. I was crouched on the side of the street completely naked and I was holding my car keys in my left hand.

My first thought was that I needed to get home so that I could put some clothes on. But then I realized that the keys in my hand would jingle while I walked. I did not want to have jingling keys attracting any extra attention to me in my current state. So before I walked home, I needed to put my keys in my pocket to prevent them from jingling. But I didn't have any pockets because I had no pants. So before I could put my keys in my pocket I needed to go home and get some clothes. But my keys would jingle while I walked home. So before I went home for clothes I needed to put my keys in my pocket...

My dream got stuck in this cycle for a few minutes before my brain realized that there was no possible solution to this infinite loop and woke me up.

Dreamed on 4/24/2020

The one where we make a quick stop for snacks

I dreamed that I was driving somewhere with my father-in-law Bruce and my son Daniel. I don't remember where we were headed but it doesn't really matter because we never got there. 

We decided that we should stop for snacks, because it is never a bad idea to have snacks no matter where you are going. We pulled into a parking lot at a grocery store and went inside. 

The store was warehouse-style, like Costco. It was also enormous. It was at least four times the size of a regular Costco. 

We quickly grabbed some snacks near the store entrance and got in line to check out. Bruce got in line first. He put his items on the conveyor belt, and then Daniel and I put our items on behind his. 

I had grabbed a hostess cupcake. Daniel had a bottle of mountain dew and two small snacks that looked really good. I asked him what they were and he said that they tasted like a cross between an eclair and a zinger. He said that the store was giving out free samples. 

I was really jealous. They sounded amazing! And with a free sample I could taste one (or two) now and also grab a few for the road. I asked him where he found them and he pointed to the left saying they were just a couple aisles away. 

At this point, the cashier finished pulling Bruce's items off the conveyor belt. My items slowly moved forward but when they got to the front where the sensor should have detected them, they just kept going and went right off the end and fell on the floor. When the items behind ours got to the front the sensor detected them and the conveyor stopped. 

That was strange. I picked our items off the floor. The man behind us in line saw what happened and gave us a look of sympathy. He moved his items back to make room for me to put mine back on the belt. I carefully placed them back on, making sure to put the large bottle of soda on the side where the sensor was. 

It didn't make any difference. The sensor still didn't detect our stuff and they fell onto the floor again. The belt stopped when it detected the items behind ours. I decided to just hold my items until it was time to checkout. 

I kept thinking about Daniel's snacks. I really wanted some. I thought that if I let the guy behind me checkout next then I should have enough time to grab some of those snacks and be back in line before he was done. 

I told the guy behind me that he could go ahead of me because I needed to run and grab something. I placed my items behind his on the belt and I quickly walked towards the back of the line. 

Across from our checkout line there was a large counter where a man was doing a teppanyaki-style cooking demonstration. I really love watching those guys cook, but I reminded myself that I was in a hurry so I turned left and started looking for the snack aisle. 

At the end of the next aisle there was a guy handing out free samples of freshly baked rolls. They looked really delicious, but I again reminded myself to stay focused and I just hurried past. 

As I continued walking past row after row I would glance down each one to see if I spotted anything snack-like. I saw an electronics aisle, one with light fixtures, another with hardware and tools, and then a couple that had computers setup where people could trade stocks. But no snacks. 

I realized that I was running out of time. I glanced up at the signs that were at the end of each aisle to see if one of them sounded promising, but all the words on the signs were blurred out. 

I walked faster, passing several more aisles with no snacks. I could actually see the end of the store at this point and from where I was until the end there was only produce. There was nothing down there that I could possibly want to eat so I turned back. 

At this point I figured that I had just missed the snack aisle somewhere, but I also decided that I was probably out of time. I just needed to get back in line and checkout. 

I hurried back towards where I had left Daniel. When I got back near the hardware aisle I could see the checkout line. It was huge. All the other checkout lines were closed so everyone had gotten into our line. The line was so big it looked like it was Black Friday. 

Daniel was at the front of the line, frantically waving one hand in the air to get my attention, while his other hand held our items which had fallen on the floor again. 

The hordes of people behind him were angrily complaining about "some idiot" who was holding them all up and causing all these problems. 

I tried to inconspicuously sneak back to the front of the line, but it was blatantly obvious that I was the person at fault. As I slowly slunk to the front of the line each person I passed gave me a withering glare. When I was about halfway to the front I couldn't take it anymore and woke up. 

Dreamed on 4/14/2020

The one where I'm a member of the special council on alien relations

I dreamed that Jen and I were elected to the state legislature. It wasn't because we were exceptionally qualified - it was because nobody else wanted to run.

Anyway, we were both assigned to serve on the super secret Special Council on Alien Relations. It was a scientific group who were aware that there were aliens living on Earth and who were tasked with collaborating with them to promote peace, understanding, and technological advancement.

I was taken to a special conference room where the group met. There were six of us on the council: Jen and I, our son Daniel, a young scientist who I understood was there to serve as the brainy yet endearing comic relief, an ideological scientist who served as the alien sympathizer and possible traitor, and an imposing scientist with a beard who was very serious and in charge.

At this point I also came to understand that I was in a movie and that is why there were these various roles assigned to the scientists. My role (as we shall see) was as the inept government liaison.

At our group's first meeting I was told that there was a special emblem that the members of the council used to identify each other. When I asked what it was they said it was called a "valet". Then each of the scientists lifted up their legs to show me their shoes. On the bottom of their shoes they had taken a sharpie and drawn a downwards pointing arrow and written their name in cursive. Jen had already written hers, but she didn't want to ruin her shoes with sharpie, so she drew her arrow and name on her ankle.

I was told that there were two types of aliens that we were in contact with. The main aliens either looked just like us or had replaced some of us like in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". The other type of aliens were called biomorphs and they were bio powered constructs - like living robots. They had the general appearance of being human - with a head, torso, two arms, and two legs - but their bodies were transparent so that you could see inside them, and they looked slightly puffy like they were made of balloon material. Picture Big Hero 6, but transparent. If you looked inside their torso you could see how they were constructed and what type of bio material was powering them.

As part of my new assignment to the council I was given a tour of the alien research facility. While there I saw the (potentially) traitorous scientist working with the aliens on various experiments. There was also another scientist there who I suspected was actually an alien. The two of them glanced at me suspiciously as I walked through the lab.

There was also a biomorph in the lab. I glanced inside it to see what was powering it. Almost all of its torso was filled with a large rice krispy treat and the spaces on the sides were filled in with sliced potatoes and carrots.

Near the end of my tour I looked towards a corner of the lab and I saw what looked like an incubator partially obscured from view by a sheet. When I asked what it was the two scientists said it was nothing important - just an old experiment. Despite their protests, I walked over to it, pulled away the sheet, and saw a large incubator that contained several alien egg sacks. They were roughly the size of a large baked potato and they looked like the egg sacks in the Aliens movies - all slimy and pulsating. Each egg sack would hatch thousands of aliens.

I immediately realized that the aliens were plotting to take over the world. I hurried back to the secret meeting room so I could tell the others about the plot to overthrow the world. When I arrived, I found that Jen and Daniel had moved the large conference table out of the way and laid down mats so that they could practice gymnastics and parkour.

I called everyone together and had them close the doors. I told them that I did not want to cause a panic, but that I had found out that there were alien egg sacks being secretly incubated in the lab and that they were planning to take over the world.

As I told the story about what I saw, random other people would open the door to our secret meeting room and wander through. Whenever someone entered, we would all pretend to be doing nothing or talking about unimportant things. Then when they finally left we would resume our top secret conversation. It never occurred to any of us to lock the doors.

When I had finished, the large imposing scientist told me in very dramatic fashion that we should prepare a response to fight off the alien invasion. He then took me aside and whispered that really everything was OK - it was all part of the plot. The aliens were actually friendly and peaceful, but I had to see the egg sacks and raise the alarm to create some sort of tension for the movie.

At that point I woke up. Hopefully the script writers were able to resolve the conflict without too much violence. I especially worry about what happened to the rice krispy treat biomorph. He seemed particularly friendly.

Dreamed on 4/18/2020

The one where Jen is a volleyball coach

I dreamed that Jen and I were on vacation in San Diego. We were at the beach and having a fun time. After a little while, Jen started walking around and talking to people she didn't know (which is unusual for her). Most of the people she spoke with were people who were playing volleyball. Once she had talked to everyone she wanted to, she told me it was time to move to another beach.

When we arrived at the next beach, Jen continued talking to strangers. This time I followed her around to hear what she was talking about. I discovered that she was the head coach and also a player on a local high school volleyball team and she was out recruiting people to play on her team. It seemed unusual to me that a high school team would allow the coach to play, but it seemed even more unusual to me that it would allow the coach to recruit out-of-state individuals (most of whom were clearly not high school aged). I asked Jen about it and she just said that she wanted her team to compete for the national championship, so she needed the best players available.

This continued for a while and we visited four or five beaches before Jen decided that she had finished her recruiting and told me that we needed to head back up into town. We walked a little ways up the street and then Jen got a phone call. I couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, but I was able to gleen some information by listening to Jen's side.

Shaquille O'Neal had (in my dream) not graduated from high school or earned his GED. This somehow gave him a few years of eligibility to play high school volleyball. Jen had recruited Shaq to play on her team and had even bought him a $40,000 car as an incentive (which I believe is a clear violation of the rules). The person on the other end of the phone was trying to convince Jen that her tactics were not only underhanded, but also illegal. Jen responded by stating that, "I intend to win the national championship and I'm going to do whatever it takes!"

At this point I decided that Jen might be on the phone for a while and I needed to use the restroom. I saw a dollar store across the street and headed over there to see if they had one. As I was crossing the street, I saw a police officer walking down the middle of the road wearing a shirt that had "Media Circus Police" written across it in large 70's style block lettering. I wasn't really sure what to make of that - was it supposed to be funny or serious? I decided to err on the side of caution and avoid the officer's attention.

Next to the dollar store was an electronics store with several TVs in the window. I could see a breaking news story about Shaquille O'Neal. He had been out partying with a bunch of friends in a new $40,000 car that had been given to him by an unknown recruiter and had been in an accident. Fortunately nobody had been severely injured, but the police were on the lookout for anyone with information about the circumstances that led to the accident.

I quickly ducked inside the dollar store. The cashier informed me that they did not have a public restroom, but that they did have some really attractive reading glasses. I insisted that I did not yet need reading glasses, but she guided me over to the reading glass display anyway and showed me a pair of bright orange glasses that she insisted would look really good on me. I tried them on to be polite and looked at myself in the small mirror. I admitted that they certainly would attract attention, but I have never been very good at telling what looks good or what is fashionable. She insisted that they were and that everyone would soon want to own a pair just like them.

I again told her that even though I thought that they might indeed be really cool, I still did not yet need reading glasses. Maybe I would buy them in a few years. She told me that if I bought them now that she would throw in a gallon of 2% milk at half price! I did not really need milk either, but that seemed like too good of a deal to pass up. A new pair of bright orange reading glasses and a gallon of milk for only $1.50 (+tax)! How could I resist?

As I left the dollar store with bright orange reading glasses on my face, I opened my jug of milk and started drinking. I looked down the street to make sure it was clear before crossing and I saw another police officer. This one was carrying an empty water bottle that had been found in the car. The police suspected that it had the DNA of the recruiter on it and this officer was walking down the street and asking people if they knew the whereabouts of a Jennifer Lambert. They had a few questions.

I hurried across the street but as I drank from my milk jug, the milk became chunkier and chunkier. It was really gross but I couldn't stop taking swigs. I was trying to avoid attention but soon I was sputtering and spitting out chunks of milk in the middle of the street. The officer noticed me and headed straight over. "Sir, I would like to ask you a few questions!"

I didn't want to lie and be arrested as an accessory, but I also did not want to turn Jen in. Fortunately I couldn't speak because of the milk chunks. I gestured to the officer that I couldn't speak and she asked me a yes or no question so I could respond with just a nod. "Do you know the whereabouts of <incoherently mumbled name>?" I put my hand up to my ear to signify that I couldn't clearly hear the question. She repeated, "Do you know the whereabouts of <incoherently mumbled name>?"

I reasoned with myself that I had tried my best to understand what was being said and I decided that since I didn't for sure know the name of the person the officer was looking for that I could at least somewhat honestly answer "No".

I shook my head. The officer moved on. I still felt a little guilty. I soon after woke up and I never discovered if Jen's team was successful in their bid for a national volleyball title. But with Jen's determination I think they had a pretty good chance.

Dreamed on 3/22/2020

The one with a snowball fight in Egypt

I dreamed that Jennifer and I were going on an expedition in Egypt.

I was describing to someone where we were headed by pointing at a globe. I wanted to say that we would be heading "southwest from Suez", but my brain couldn't come up with the word Suez so I said Cairo. And as I was about to say "southwest" it occurred to me that since I was facing the globe maybe my directions were backwards. So to get the directions from the globe's perspective I turned around and held out my right arm in the direction we would be traveling. Right arm means east, so I said "southeast from Cairo".

Immediately, a portly Egyptian wearing shorts and a t-shirt appeared to my right. He glanced at me disapprovingly and slowly shook his head in disgust as if to say, "You idiot!" I cringed, knowing that I had totally blown the directions, but tried to just move past my mistake as if it hadn't happened.

Once we arrived in Egypt, Jen and I found ourselves wandering through the desert. We were looking for a long lost oasis. It was extremely hot and dry as we trudged trough the miles of sand.

As we reached the top of a large dune, we could finally see the oasis on the other side. It was decorated as if for Christmas with colored lights strung between the palm trees. The small area around the oasis was filled with people all wearing coats and scarves. Some were even ice-skating on the frozen pond while Christmas music played from speakers.

We walked down the other side of the dune towards the little oasis Christmas village. As we got closer the sand under our feet slowly transitioned to snow and by the time we arrived at the edge of the festivities, we were stomping through deep snow.

Many of the people near us were having a snowball fight and that sounded like a fun way to relax after our journey through the desert, so Jen and I started to join in. We quickly realized, however, that all the people in this oasis had been brainwashed into thinking that snowball fights were meant to be won by making hard, icy snowballs and hurling them at 100 mph at other people's heads.

Some of my neighbors were there in the crowd that were attacking us, but they shall remain nameless to protect their identities. They had angry expressions on their faces and were trying their best to decapitate me with their murderous snowballs. Luckily, I had ninja-like reflexes and was able to dodge the most vicious of their attacks. Jen did not even seem phased by the snowballs and they would just bounce off her puffy coat.

Even with my amazing dodging skills, it seemed like I could not avoid death forever under that constant barrage. I thought that the best solution was to show everyone that snowball fights could be fun instead of deadly. I made nice, soft snowballs and I would lob them slowly at my brainwashed foes.

At first when they saw my feeble attacks they cackled evilly, but soon the cackles turned to real laughter and the brainwashing spell was broken. We then enjoyed a fun and festive snowball fight where nobody was murdered.

And that is how I saved Christmas.

Dreamed on 3/17/2020

The one where I cure the Corona virus

I dreamed that I discovered a cure for the Corona virus. It only required 1 or 2 cornbread muffins, depending on the individual's age, height, and socioeconomic status. 

Once the cure was applied, the CDC could remotely verify that it worked and the person would receive an official certificate in their email stating that they were virus free. 

Unfortunately I don't remember the exact details of how the cornbread muffins were used in order to act as a cure, but I'm sure this information should be enough for the CDC to have a big headstart in researching and developing this simple but effective solution. 

You're welcome, world. 

Dreamed on 3/8/2020

The one where giant monsters attack!

Last night I dreamed that Jen and I visited a theme park. The park itself was divided into sections, each built in a different style. We started in the "Farm Town" section of the park. It had wide, rolling hills with an occasional farm house or ranch. It was very beautiful and peaceful.

Unfortunately, the theme of the theme park was "Giant Monster Attacks!" Every 10-15 minutes, a giant monster would go rampaging through the park, attacking everyone. While we were exploring a ranch we got to experience our first attack. We heard a deafening roar behind us. We turned and saw Godzilla stomping towards the ranch. I like to think that if I was ever in a situation where I was attacked by a giant monster that I would be noble and try to save those around me, but what I learned is that I was filled with an all-consuming terror and a desperate desire for self preservation.

Everyone around us was screaming and running. I tried to remember if Godzilla would be attracted to movement or not. Should we stay still or run? I decided that I would rather take my chances in the screaming hordes of fleeing people than be the lone person standing in the open near Godzilla. I reasoned that if people were fleeing in every direction, what were the chances that Godzilla would go in the same direction that we chose to run?

Apparently the odds were pretty good. No matter which direction we ran, Godzilla seemed to home in on us. I wondered if I could buy some time by running in circles. Maybe, if its reflexes were slow enough, it would not be able to keep track of me. But then I realized that it was big enough that it would just step on me. I briefly considered trying to climb a tall fence to get away but quickly calculated that the fence only came up to Godzilla's knees.

At some point Jen and I got separated in the chaos. I think that was probably good news for Jen because really it looked like Godzilla was specifically tracking me. If Jen was not with me then she was likely safer. The only thing that ended up saving me was that Godzilla was easily distracted. When he reached a farm house he took some time to stomp it to oblivion. I used that valuable time to make my escape to another part of the park.

The exit to Farm Town led to two other sections of the park: "Game Day" and "The Suburbs". I looked over towards Game Day and I could see a large baseball park and a giant three-headed ape which shot lightning out of its mouths. I decided to head to The Suburbs.

The Suburbs was laid out like a little town. It had streets lined by picket-fenced homes with small yards. I saw a T-Rex rumbling down the street towards me, so I ducked into the nearest house hoping to find a place to hide. The house was filled with knick-knacks and curio cabinets. There were lots of crystal vases and china plates on the walls. The house was also filled with other people who were, like me, looking for a place to hide. Most of them were just crowded into the main rooms.

I remembered for sure that the T-Rex would be attracted by movement. I knew it was true because I got that information from watching a dinosaur documentary called Jurassic Park. So I thought that my best chance would be to find a small bedroom or closet with fewer people in it. I reasoned that if there were fewer people around then hopefully the T-Rex would be distracted by the large groups of people running and screaming elsewhere and not notice me.

It seemed like lots of other people had that same thought because in the bedrooms there was a person huddled behind almost every piece of furniture, no matter how small. Finally I located a dresser that was not occupied and I crouched behind it. I could hear the T-Rex tear through the outer wall of the house. People screamed and ran in all directions. The T-Rex crashed through interior walls and smashed furniture. It seemed to be enjoying itself. The curio cabinets and china plates made satisfying "crunch" sounds as they were ground into powder.

I knew that the T-Rex was coming for me so I decided to escape from The Suburbs while the T-Rex was distracted with destruction. I exited the home through a gaping hole in the wall and ran down the street to the next section of the park, which was called "Ninja Land".

Ninja Land was like a forest with small dirt paths leading through it. I followed one path until I came to a small ninja village which was surrounded by a wooden palisade. This looked promising! At least a defensive wall would provide some sort of protection against the monsters! I climbed up on top of the wall to help reinforce it. There was a ninja up there who was directing new-comers and telling us what to do. He asked me to get some wooden poles from a nearby pile and described to me how I should add them to the fortifications.

I was very excited to be part of a ninja defense team! While I walked over to the pile of poles I wondered if I also would be given shuriken and trained to use some ninja fighting techniques. When I arrived at the pile I saw that many of the poles were old and rotten. I grabbed some of them that were still new and strong and I carried them back to the wall. When I got there I realized that half of the poles in the palisade were brand new, strong poles and the rest were old, rotting poles.

The ninja in charge noticed my look of despair and told me not to worry. The defenses were purposefully made with half of the poles rotten because that would fool the other ninja clans. When they attacked they would not know which parts of the palisade were solid and which would just crumble when attacked. It seemed to me that it would be better to not have any of it crumble when attacked, but he just chuckled and shook his head at how naive I was about the ways of ninjas.

It suddenly registered with me that he had said that we were going to be attacked by opposing ninja clans. But we were also going to be attacked by giant monsters. I instantly realized that I had wandered into the worst part of the park. At that moment, dozens of enemy ninjas erupted from the trees around the village and started sprinting towards the palisade. They threw shuriken at us as they approached and I had to duck behind some of the more solid poles to avoid being hit. As if in sync with the ninjas, the T-Rex also burst from the trees at full speed headed towards me.

When the enemy ninjas reached the village wall, some of them were stopped because they hit the strong sections, but others were able to break right through because they came to the rotten sections. I still did not see how it was beneficial to have part of our defenses crumble immediately but I was too busy running for my life to really analyze it further. I fled towards the center of the village - away from the palisade, attacking ninjas, and the murderous T-Rex. There were shuriken flying everywhere and I tried to keep my head down while I ran. Those of us trying to defend the village were being herded into the main square. I saw no hope for escape. I feared that we were all going to be massacred.

Mercifully, my alarm went off and woke me up. That was not a restful sleep. I guess it is my own fault for recently watching Pacific Rim, Pacific Rim Uprising, Godzilla, and Naruto. O_o

One thing I can tell you for sure is that I will never again pay to enter a theme park based on Giant Monster Attacks!

Dreamed on 2/27/20

Progressive vs Conservative vs Socialist and US Historical Context

This is the text of a post on the boardgamegeek site forums which was posted by user rayito2702. I do not entirely agree with everything that he says, but the core of what he says I agree with. Primarily that we need a happy medium between unbridled capitalism and full-blown socialism. We need a regulated free market with catch-up mechanisms in place to assist the poor.

I used to consider myself a conservative. But in an attempt to rationalize the conservative embrace of Trumpism, I went looking for any historical value conservatism might have. Here are some of my conclusions.

Throughout much of the first century of the existence of the US, political and economic policy can be considered predominantly conservative. Small federal government, minimal taxes and regulation, etc.

By the 1890s, however, this method of government had proven a failure. There were many reasons, but a primary one was that the American West had been "won". Up to this point western land represented easy access to wealth for the voting public. You don't like your current situation? Go west, claim land, enjoy a fairly equivalent quality of life to any other American. It served as a political and economic pressure valve, almost like a 19th century UBI.

However, once the West was won and wealth was no longer being handed out, the existing economic policies of the US created an efficient rich-get-richer snowballing of the economy. In this era, known as the Gilded Age, the US was literally ruled by oligarchs. Government at all levels was corrupt and owned by wealthy individuals and corporations. There were virtually no legal ways to counter this influence. Wealth disparity increased. The economy was increasingly urbanized -- over 70% of Americans in the 1780s were farmers, but by the 1890s it was down to 40% and dropping. To survive, most American families had to send parents and children into the workplace to work grueling hours. Options for economic progress beyond mere survival were slim.

Then came the Panic of 1893, the worst economic disaster in US history at that point, and only exceeded by the Great Depression.

In the face of this conservative disaster, there was a ready alternative in the form of socialism. Many Americans embraced this option as a way forward and the first "red scare" in the US occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Into this divide, the progressives pioneered a moderate path.

Progressives rejected the basic economic ideologies of socialism as contradicting American values. Instead, progressives embraced free markets, personal property rights, and capitalism.

However, progressives rejected the Jeffersonian individualism of conservatives. Instead they embraced the Constitutional mandate to "promote the general Welfare" -- a phrase that has given conservatives heart-burn since the Constitutional Convention.

Where conservatives were individualistic, progressives were collaborative. Where conservatives were traditionalists, progressives embraced concepts learned from the scientific community and preferred to analyze data and outcomes to optimize government policy. Where conservatives relentlessly exploited natural resources, progressives embraced environmentalism and sustainable economies. Where conservatives blamed the poor for their poverty, progressives sought to understand how environment and external forces contributed to poverty. Where conservatives sought to maintain the status quo, progressives advocated the expansion of democratic opportunities to ensure all voices were heard.

With this in mind, progressives expanded the scope of government to function as a regulatory body to ensure that individual freedoms didn't undermine general welfare. They believed democracy would be the ultimate restraint on tyranny and keep government from becoming bigger than necessary.

Theory is all fine and good, but does progressivism work? Oh, my, yes!

Now, progressivism has never been perfect. But the value it placed on analysis and outcomes allowed it to self-correct in ways that have eluded conservatives. In fact, progressivism worked so well, it's probably the most revolutionary thing to come out of the US besides the Revolution itself. It's what made America the most powerful, wealthiest, and technologically advanced country the world has ever known.

It's how we created public education, came out of the Great Depression, helped win WWII and the Cold War, sent human beings to the moon, created the American middle class, created national parks and the EPA, amplified entrepreneurial opportunities, made the US the foremost manufacturer in the world, and developed the infrastructure that became the internet. Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon and Ford (to a lesser degree), Carter, and Clinton -- presidents of both parties -- embraced progressive policies. The 20th century, for the US, was a progressive century. Progressives made America great.

---

To sum up: conservatives and socialists are the extremes. Progressives are moderates. The 20th century shows that progressivism is far better than those extremes.

This leads to some compelling questions: why, when progressivism has proved to be so valuable to the average American and for almost 100 years had broad-based bipartisan support, has it come to be seen as extremist and "leftist"? And why, when we've known since the 1890s that the inherent extremism of conservatism has repeatedly lead to disasters (see 1893, 1929, 2008 for some economic ones, but there are a host of non-economic ones as well), do we keep trying to accommodate it as though it were moderate, reasonable, and practical?

Source: BoardGameGeek RSP Forum

The one with broken power lines

In my dream last night, I was told that there were some broken power lines that needed to be fixed. When I arrived at the location of the problem, I could see that there was a very tall metal tower with some loose power lines at the top. There were no ladders or cranes available so they told me to just climb the tower with my bare hands.

I glanced upwards at the tower. There was some metal cabling that criss-crossed between the sides of the tower that at least offered some decent hand and foot holds, but since the cables and connectors were all metal it seemed like a really bad idea under the circumstances.

I'll admit that the thought of free climbing the tower was appealing. I've always liked climbing and this seemed like a fun challenge. However I was pretty sure that the tower was tall enough that I would never make it to the top, particularly since the only exercise I get is swiveling in my office chair. And even if I was able to make it to the top I was nearly certain that I would be electrocuted somewhere along the way.

I expressed my concerns about electrocution to my boss and he said not to worry because he had brought some pool noodles that could be placed over the metal cables. He assured me that the pool noodles would act as insulators. Fortunately for me, while I was second-guessing my boss's plan two of my coworkers arrived.

One of them was wearing a safety harness with a long metal cable that he could attach to the tower while he climbed. It would at least keep him from falling if he lost his grip, but I was still worried about all that metal.

The other coworker was building some sort of pulley system out of ropes and some old logs. It was very elaborate and I thought that it might have worked if he had remembered to secure the end of the ropes to something large enough to act as a counterweight.

As I watched my two coworkers struggling to get to the top of the tower I remember thinking that the situation was not going to end well. On the other hand I was happy that it wasn't me climbing up that tower.

But I couldn't really help them out anyway because my boss had assigned me to take the psychopathic monkey to its new enclosure, feed it lunch, and then get it to carve a magic totem out of a chocolate coin.

Dreamed on 2/12/2020

The one where I'm a pessimist

I dreamed that I was standing in a large group of people. We were waiting to be assigned personalities. A lady was walking around holding a plastic bucket filled with strips of paper that had various personalities written on them. Each person would reach in and pull out a strip of paper and that is the personality that they would be assigned. 

I remember thinking, "I hope I get 'pessimist', I hope I get 'pessimist'!" I figured I could really excel at being a pessimist. 

Finally the lady with the bucket came up to me. I reached my hand inside, closed my fingers around a strip of paper, and pulled it out. 

I read the word on the paper: "pessimist"! I was so happy! I yelled, "Hooray! I'm a pessimist!"

Then I suddenly realized that I had hoped for something, and then I got that thing, and it made me really happy. I think that immediately disqualified me from being a pessimist. 

Dreamed on 2/9/2020

The one that was the most terrifying

When I was a young teenager I dreamed that I was walking home late one night. It was dark outside and I could see a few stars. As I got to the house about three houses away from my own, I noticed a yellow star high in the sky ahead of me. It seemed to be getting brighter.

I stopped and watched the star as it grew in brightness. It got brighter and brighter until it was the brightest star I could see. Then the star started to slowly move to the right, then slow to a stop, and then reverse and go back to the left.

As it slowly moved back and forth I could feel the wind pick up a little and it made a low moaning sound as it swirled around me. The star continued to move slowly back and forth, its path going a little bit wider each time, and it continued to get even brighter.

The star also appeared to be getting bigger. It was no longer just a point of light but it looked like an actual shape. Suddenly I realized that it wasn't a star at all! It was the Banshee from Darby O'Gill and the Little People. The moaning sound wasn't from the wind, it was the Banshee howling!

I was terrified! I looked around for a place to hide but my neighbors' houses did not have any trees I could hide behind. The house next door to mine had some raised flowerbeds, like mounds of earth raised about a foot. That would be better than nothing! I sprinted to that house and dove behind the little rise of earth as if I were shielding myself from oncoming machine gun fire.

I glanced upwards and I could still see the Banshee, slowly moving back and forth across the sky, and growing larger and larger as it got closer to me. Suddenly I could make out what the Banshee was moaning. Its words came out in a ghostly howl.

"I'm gooOOOooing to get yoooOOOooou! All yooou kids who stay up late at night!"

Terror filled my soul as I realized it was coming directly for me! I stood up and sprinted across my neighbor's yard and straight to my bedroom window. I tried to open it but the window was locked from the inside. The Banshee was only a few hundred yards away now and it continued to howl, "I'm going to get you!"

I fled toward the front door! To my relief it was unlocked. I ran inside and went straight to my bedroom. I turned off all the lights and crawled in bed, hoping that would either appease or fool the Banshee.

As I cowered under the covers I could still hear the howling getting closer and closer, "I'm going to get you!" I was frozen in terror, not knowing what to do. I could sense the Banshee right outside my bedroom window, about to pass through the wall and destroy me!

I woke up with a feeling of dread that I have never forgotten.

Dreamed probably around 1985?

The one with covert team building

I dreamed that I was part of a covert operation in Germany during WWII. We were supposed to go around Germany and kill high ranking Nazis and other high-value targets.

Because of the secret nature of our missions we mostly worked alone. But we had one middle-manager who decided that we did not have much agency unity. He proposed that we have team-building activities to build more unity.

I tried to argue with him that having all of our secret, under-cover operatives meet together was a really bad idea and had a high probability of blowing our covers and getting us all killed, but the manager ignored me and planned an agency movie night.

When I arrived at the movie night, my brother Sam was there. I guess he was also an operative in the agency. Sam insisted on sitting in the front row of the theater. I told him that it was terrible watching a movie from the front row but he ignored me. When we got up to the front row we found out that the front row of seats was installed backwards, facing the back of the theater. Sam still insisted on sitting in those seats.

We tried to watch the movie by craning our necks around backwards. It was really difficult to follow what was going on on-screen. After a few minutes, Sam got up and started complaining loudly that he couldn't see what was going on. In a whispered voice I tried to convince him to sit down, warning that he shouldn't draw attention to us because it could get us all killed. He ignored my pleadings.

The other people in the theater started yelling at him to sit down because he was blocking their view. In return, he started dancing around and complaining even more loudly. I pointed out to him that the theater still had many empty seats that were facing forward and suggested that we move to any of those seats. He refused and then started yelling at the theater employees that "worst of all, you didn't even start the movie with a PRAYER!"

At this point my brain was so exhausted with the stupidity of the dream that it pulled the ejection handle and woke me up.

Dreamed on 1/19/2020

The one with the work meeting

I dreamed that I was at work and I was asked to attend a meeting with some of the big-wigs in the finance department. I work from home so in my dream the place where we were was my house even though it really looked a lot like my grandma's house in Claremont, CA.

As I was getting ready to attend the meeting I realized that I only had one sheet of paper left in my notebook, so I decided to stop by the supply room to pick up a new one. The supply room was on the fourth floor, which meant I was now in an office building which had my grandma's house as the first floor. As I stepped on the elevator I could see all the finance guys in their suits heading into the conference room for the meeting. I knew that I needed to hurry so that I would not be late.

When I got to the fourth floor I walked down the hallway to the supply room. I opened the door, went in, and quickly found the notebooks. I grabbed one off the stack and turned to leave, but found that there was a sign on the back of the supply room door. The sign explained that the door was broken from that side.

I glanced around the small supply room for an alternate exit and I saw a tall step ladder pushed up against one of the supply cabinets. Above the cabinet I could see that there was a small rectangular opening in the wall (maybe 3 feet wide and 1 foot high). I climbed up the step ladder, awkwardly squeezed myself through the small opening, and dropped to the floor in the hallway on the other side.

Right down the hall from the supply room was the break room. I was kind of hungry and I figured that since it was on the way back to the elevator that it wouldn't hurt to grab a snack (in my dream my work provided free snacks).

As a side note, I must mention here that my daughter Eve has challenged me (in real life) to not eat any sugary treats for thirty days. So no soda, candy, ice cream, etc. It started on Jan 6 and will mercifully end on Feb 5, not that I am counting down or anything.

Unfortunately my dream self was aware of this challenge and did not realize that dream treats do not violate the terms of the challenge. So because of the challenge I was determined to grab a healthy snack like a fruit cup or something.

As I opened the door to the break room I came to understand that my mother-in-law had been hired to stock the snacks. The room was stuffed wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with delicious, sugary snacks. There were racks of donuts, boxes of candy bars, freezers full of ice cream bars and popsicles, and even a soda fountain. I whimpered a little to myself but was determined not to give in to the temptation.

I searched around and at the bottom of one of the freezers I found a ziploc bag with a few fruit cups. Upon further examination I discovered that they had all expired years ago and were totally freezer burned. My eyes darted back and forth between the frozen chunks of rotten fruit and the stacks of donuts. I whimpered again but renewed my resolve to be strong. I would just have to go to my meeting hungry.

I went back down to the first floor and walked to my office to collect my laptop backpack. As I picked it up I found that the zipper had been left wide open and all the contents spilled all over the floor including my old notebook and several pens and pencils. I quickly tried to collect all the items, shoving them under my arms. I then scurried over to the meeting room, dropping pencils as I went.

When I got to the meeting I found that it had changed into a game of cards. Instead of the suits from finance, there were three guys sitting around a table. One was one of my current managers from work. I did not recognize the other two. The game they were playing was unfamiliar to me but they told me that they were all ready to start and were just waiting for me to pick my "wild suit". They explained that each person was allowed to choose one suit and all the cards of that suit would be wild for that player, and that we would be competing to collect and play cards.

I asked what suits they had chosen to be their wild suit because I did not want to be competing to collect the same suit as someone else. My manager, who was sitting to my left, said "clubs". Then the next guy to his left said "clubs" and the last guy (to my right) said "clubs". I thought that was really odd and a terrible strategy but I didn't say anything. Instead I announced that I would choose diamonds as my wild suit.

The game started and we were discarding cards and picking up new cards and playing cards. I did not really understand what was going on, but I was collecting a lot of diamonds because the guy to my right kept discarding them. I was feeling really good about my chances in this game.

Suddenly my manager stood up and angrily told me that he needed to have a private meeting with me in the restroom. I had no idea what had made him so furious but I put down my cards and followed him into the restroom. When we got there he turned to me and said that the game wasn't fair because the guy to my right was throwing the game by giving me all those diamonds. He said that I should do something to stop him. I acted like I was really concerned about this new information he had given to me and explained that I would see what I could do. On the inside I was just happy that I was doing so well.

When we left the restroom and headed back to the card table I found that my wife Jen had taken my manager's spot at the table. My manager did not seem to mind. He interjected some strategy advice while we played for a little while and then just kind of wandered off.

As we continued to play it became clear to me that the game had changed. People were now trying to get rid of cards instead of collect them. I also realized that the values of the cards were different than what I expected. Suddenly people were taking tricks with 2s or 3s when I had played a Jack or King. I tried to get clarification from the other players but they would not divulge any details of how the game was to be played.

Eventually I pieced together that we were playing a variation of the game Scum which I played a lot in college. As soon as I realized how to play I found that my cards were slowly being replaced with pieces of fried chicken. At first the pieces of chicken would still have little tags on them that would tell me their suit and rank, but slowly even those went away.

Despite these handicaps I was still managing to get rid of most of my cards. It came down to the last hand. Jen was in the lead. I had three pieces of chicken left (two breasts and a thigh). I was pretty confident that two of them were Queens but I couldn't remember the suits. And I thought that the last piece of chicken was a Jack but I wasn't sure. It might have been a 4.

Jen played a card and if I played the correct piece of chicken I still had a chance to win but if I didn't then I would be disqualified and Jen would win. I looked all over the three pieces of chicken in my hands to see if I could find any clues as to which one was which but there was nothing to go on. And as I turned them around in my hands the pieces of chicken were suddenly covered with a very delicious BBQ ranch sauce which made them difficult to handle and very messy.

I asked the other players if they could help me identify my cards but they said that there was no reason for them to help me. It was my problem that I couldn't identify my own cards, not theirs. They also started getting agitated because I was taking so long to make a decision so I just picked one of the breast pieces and placed it on the pile of cards in the middle of the table. BBQ ranch oozed off the chicken and spread onto the other player's cards underneath it. I looked up at the other players to see if I had chosen correctly, searching their faces in hopeful anticipation to see what their reaction would be.

I had chosen wrong. Jen won the game.

Dreamed 1/23/2020

The one where we live on a giant floating island

I dreamed that I was going around pleading with everyone to always wear parachutes when they left their homes. 

My reasoning was that if the land we were on was really a giant island floating in the sky, and if you fell off, then having a parachute on would give you a chance to survive. If you had no parachute it would mean certain death. 

Later on in the dream I saw a man climbing on some large boulders. He lost his grip and fell. It turned out that we really were living on a giant floating island and he started plummeting to the earth below. 

Fortunately he had heeded my warning and was wearing a parachute. Even though it was an old World War 2 era parachute it was still enough to save his life. 

So if you see me wandering the streets with a parachute on you'll know why. #BePrepared

Dreamed on 1/15/2020

Basic Investment Advice

The Basics

The key steps to financial security are very simple:
1. Spend less than you earn
2. Invest what you save
3. Repeat until wealthy

There are two types of saving that you will do: retirement investing and rainy day savings.

For retirement investing, the eventual goal is to be able save roughly 20% of your annual salary per year. Initially of course that may not be possible but that should be the goal you work towards. The general thinking is that if each year you invest 20% of your salary then by 65-70 you should have enough for a comfortable retirement. Once you are retired, the rule-of-thumb is that you can pull 4-5% of your savings out each year and your retirement savings will last you for 25-30 years.

That 20% estimate is fuzzy of course because nobody knows what the stock market will do or how long they will live. Some people estimate that 15% savings per year is enough and others say you might need as much as 25%. I tend to think that 15% is probably enough to live on and 20% is enough for comfort, meaning maybe an extra trip each year or something. In other words, don't worry so much about hitting the 20% number as soon as possible.

I will discuss rainy day savings in more detail later on.

A Caution

As with anything else, it is possible to take money and investing to an unhealthy extreme. Please keep that in mind with all the advice I give here. What I don't talk about in detail among all this investing advice is how Mom and I have also prioritized tithing and charitable giving. We always pay our tithing first and then we make sure that we give large charitable contributions. Then we adjust our savings and investing.

These three quotes have been my guide regarding being charitable:

I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. ... If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, ... they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.
- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), p. 67

I am a firm believer that you cannot give to the Church and to the building up of the kingdom of God and be any poorer financially. ... If the members of the Church would double their fast-offering contributions, the spirituality in the Church would double. We need to keep that in mind and be liberal in our contributions.
- Marion G. Romney, Ensign, May 1986, p. 32

A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.
- Joseph Smith, Lectures on Faith 6:7

The Details

The secret to step 1 ("Spend less than you earn") is to create a budget and stick to it. Figure out where your money is going so you can make informed decisions about where expenses can be cut to increase savings.

Step 2 ("Invest what you save") is a little more complicated. Even though the overall principle is simple, the details of investing can be tricky.

Here are my recommendations on what to do.
1. Maximize your 401k employer match
2. Pay down debt
3. Have a Rainy Day Fund in a local bank for emergencies like a doctor visit or a car repairs
4. Maximize your Roth IRA contributions (you and spouse)
5. Do other investing (kid's education, saving for trips, etc)
6. Maximize HSA contribution
7. Maximize your total 401k contribution

The first step is an absolute must! The others are a little more flexible. For example, I started investing in one Roth IRA, but also started putting money in education savings plans for the kids' college at the same time. Later on I started the second Roth (later than I should have but that is because I didn't understand all this stuff at that point).

Some people say that you should maximize 401k match > HSA > Roth IRA > 401k > college. If you want to retire as early as possible then this is probably the best advice. The thinking with this strategy is that if you maximize all your retirement investments early they will have much bigger gains than college savings (529) accounts. 529 accounts tend to have lower gains because they are shorter term savings and thus tend to be in lower risk, lower reward investments. So instead of investing in a 529, you put more into your retirement accounts and then just help pay for your kids' college with normal income.

With all this talk about maximizing your investments (like Roth, HSA, and 401k), remember that once you hit your target savings amount (like 20% of your income), you do not need to continue increasing your retirement savings percentage. So if I have my 401k match maximized, my Roths maximized, and a little bit going into my HSA, and that equals a 21% savings rate compared to my income, then I don't need to fully maximize my HSA and/or 401k. Adding more at that point will allow you to retire earlier or more comfortably, but you could also just start enjoying your extra money now by going on trips or doing other fun things.

401k

A 401k is a special retirement account that you put money into it tax-free (you don't pay any income tax on it from your paycheck), but you pay income tax when you take the money out in retirement. This is nice because generally you will be in a lower tax bracket in retirement. But is also nice because it means you are losing less money to taxes now.

Start with your 401k at work. Most employers do some sort of matching. My employer matches 50% up to the first 6% I contribute. So if I contribute 6% of my salary to my 401k, my employer adds another 3% of my salary. That is free money that is just lost if you do not contribute enough to get the full match. Always, always get the full match!

If you change jobs you will keep your old 401k and you will start a new one with your new job. You will not be adding any more money to your old 401k, but it will continue to grow as the stock market goes up.

You can just leave the money in whatever account you had with your old employer or you can move it into a new account called a Rollover IRA. I wanted to have as many of my accounts in one place as I could so when I left Keane I moved my old Keane 401k into a Vanguard Rollover IRA and invested the money into Vanguard Funds. The side benefit of this was that the fund expenses were much lower at Vanguard than they were at the other investment place. I discuss expenses in more detail later.

There is an annual maximum that you can put into a 401k. It changes occasionally but is currently $18,000. After you have maximized your other retirement savings options you can work on maximizing your 401k contribution if you need to in order to reach your savings percentage goal. 

401k example: If I want to invest $1000 in my 401k account, that $1000 comes directly out of my paycheck and goes straight into my 401k account. I do not owe any federal or state taxes on that money. Lets say that grows to be $16,000 by the time I retire. When I withdraw that $16,000 out of my 401k account and I have to pay taxes on it. If we assume that the tax brackets are the same, I would own 12% federal and 5% state taxes, or $2720, so I would end up with $13,280.

Debt

After maximizing your 401k match, paying down debt should be possibly your next highest priority. Ideally you will not get into any debt with the exception of something like for a home, car, or education. Even then it is always good to minimize the debt you are getting into (get a smaller house for example). You should never go into debt for anything else. Credit card balances should be paid in full each month. If you cannot afford to pay off the credit card balance you should not be buying those things. It is better to save up money first and then pay in cash than to go into debt to buy something.

Once you have a loan for something like a house you should try to pay extra to the loan each month so you can pay it off early. If you wait the full 30 years to pay off a home loan, you could end up paying 3x the original cost of the home. So to pay off a $250,000 home loan, you might end up paying $750,000 over the 30 year period. This is how banks make so much money! If you can pay extra each month on your house payment that can reduce the total you paid for the loan to $500,000 or less. Each $100 you pay early on can save you $1000 or more in the long run. The savings really adds up fast!

Roth IRA

A Roth IRA is a retirement account that you put money into after paying income tax on that money, but then all the money you pull out of the account in retirement is tax-free.

Once you have maximized your 401k match your next investing step will be to create a Roth IRA for yourself and another one for your spouse. Eventually you will want to maximize the allowed contributions to both Roths. The max for each account is currently $6000 per year, or $500 per month ($1000 per month for both accounts). You start small with maybe $50 per month and gradually increase the amount as you get raises until you are maximizing your donation to both accounts.

Roth example: If I want to invest $1000 in my Roth account, I first pay taxes on that $1000. I am probably paying 12% federal taxes and 5% state taxes, so I pay 17% in taxes, or $170, and then invest $830 in my Roth account. Lets say that grows to be $13,280 by the time I retire. I can take all $13,280 out of that account and I never have to pay any taxes on it.

If you compare the 401k example to the Roth example you probably noticed that the end amount after taxes is the same. Remember that those amounts assume that the tax rates remain the same as they are now. Taxes are near all-time lows right now, so it is possible that they will go up. If you end up in a 20% federal tax bracket when you retire then paying 12% now to put it in a Roth makes more sense than putting it in a 401k. It is all speculation, but Roth seems like it is more likely to be a good bet, so most people recommend maxing the Roth before adding more to the 401k past the employer match. Having both a Roth and 401k is also nice because then you can pull some money out of the Roth and some out of the 401k to minimize the amount of taxes you will end up paying.

Other Investing

Once you have maxed out your 401k match then any additional money you have can be invested either in the Roth IRAs or any of these others as you see fit. I would prioritize the Roths slightly ahead of many of these, but others can be just as useful/important. Here are some options in no particular order.

1. Put more into your 401k. There is no more free employer money to be had, but there are still the tax benefits. Since I prioritize Roths slightly higher than more 401k money, I would only do this after the Roths are maxed, but adding more to the 401k is never bad. It also immediately reduces what you pay in taxes which can be useful.
2. Put money into a non-retirement (brokerage) account. This does not give you any tax advantages, but this is money that you also have access to before retirement without penalty. So this money can be used for trips, emergencies, education, etc. I would probably do this after the Roths are maxed, but an argument can be made for keeping some of your short term savings in a relatively low risk investment like a bond fund.
3. Start college savings accounts. College accounts are great because the money is pulled out tax-free when used for educational expenses. The main downside is that you have no idea how much your kids will need for college, so you may over save or under save.
4. Add to a Health Savings Account (HSA). HSAs are like a 401k and Roth combo account! The money goes in tax-free, but it also comes out tax-free when it is used for medical expenses. It also can be used now, meaning you do not have to wait until retirement to use it. You contribute money to the HSA account each paycheck and then reimburse yourself from that account when you have a medical expense (doctor visit, prescription, glasses, dental visit, etc). It is generally better to let the money grow as much as possible, but it is there for when you need it and it saves you money in taxes.

HSA Optimization
The optimal way to use an HSA is to invest your HSA money in something like an Index Fund and let it grow. You would always pay for medical stuff with your regular money and save all the receipts. Then when you are retired you can pull money out of your HSA to reimburse yourself (tax free) for all those medical expenses.

What this does is it allows your HSA investment to grow over the years. You put money in tax free so you get the benefit up front like a 401k. But then you can also pull it out tax free like a Roth. If you reimburse yourself early on then that money does not grow.

Example: I invest $1000 in an HSA and let it grow for 40 years in the stock market with a 10% average return each year. After 40 years it will be worth around $40,000! On the other hand, let's say in the first year I reimburse myself for a $100 doctor bill so now I only have $900 invested. After 40 years that would only give me $36,000. Taking out that $100 early on ended up costing me $4000 in the long run!

The downside to this approach is that it requires you to be very organized with your receipts and save them for a very long time. Of course this could be made easier by taking photos of them and storing those somewhere online. I have been too lazy to do that, but I give you the information so that you can decide what you want to do.

Rainy Day Fund

It is always a good idea to have some money available for emergencies like a doctor visit, a car repair, bribing a local official (just kidding), etc. If all of your money is tied up in retirement accounts then you cannot get to it without penalties. If your other money is in a brokerage investment account then it could take a week to get the money into your checking account so you can spend it.

You should always keep some extra money in your local credit union or bank account so that it is available if you have an unexpected expense come up. What that amount is can vary greatly. Early on I tried to always keep a couple thousand dollar buffer in my account. Later on as my kids got older my expenses got bigger so my rainy day fund had to be larger.

Budgeting experts seem to agree that you should try to have a rainy day fund of 3-6 months of expenses. Note that this is not 3-6 months of income, but just what you spend. So if you spend (on food, housing, insurance, etc) $2000 per month then you will want to have a rainy day fund of $6000 - $12,000. With that much saved, if you lose your job, or have emergency car or home repairs, or have unexpected medical expenses, you will have enough money to get through that without having to go into debt with a credit card or loan.

Investing Principles

Index Funds
There are many, many strategies to investing. The bottom line, though, is that almost nobody ever beats the return of the general market. In other words if you take all the paid investors out there trying all their crazy "insider tips" to time their buys and sells just right (see Timing the Market), they still almost always do worse than if you just watch the stock market indicators like the Dow Jones or the Nasdaq. So in my opinion (and the opinion of many others) the best option is to put your money into a low fee index fund that basically just mimics what the overall stock market does. Also, many investors talk about he importance of diversifying your portfolio by buying many different types of stocks. The good news is that the index funds also already do that for you!

Lazy Investing
I like to call my preferred method of investing "lazy investing". I prefer to just stick money in diversified funds and forget about it. My favorite (and a favorite of many on the internet) is the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSAX). I have a lot of my money in that one fund. If you want the simplest option then that is my advice. Another fund that is a little more diversified so that it has lower risk but also slightly lower returns and slightly higher fees is the Vanguard LifeStrategy Growth Fund (VASGX). Beyond those two there are other good Vanguard funds that you could choose but I am not an expert so you will need to do your own research. 

I personally have put most of my money in VTSAX and left it there for several years. Now that I'm getting closer to retirement (~15 years away), I have moved most of my money over to VASGX so it is a little more stable. Some would say that I'm moving it too early, but there are also a lot of financial experts that say having 100% stocks (VTSAX) is a bad idea. At this point, the 3% difference in return is not worth the extra risk to me, and I don't need the higher return of VTSAX in order to reach my retirement goal.

Timing the Market
Timing the market is when you sell your stocks, expecting that the market will go down in the future so that when it is lower you can buy back in. This is basically rolling the dice. You are generally more likely to end up selling right before the market continues to go up. Never try to time the market!

A corollary to this is to never panic-sell your investments. Remember that these investments are for the long-haul. When the stock market lost over 30% of its value at the beginning of 2020, some people moved their investments from stocks to bonds in order to be "safe" and to "not lose any more". But then the market went back up. When they were eventually convinced to move back to stocks they had missed out on a lot of gains. They essentially sold low and bought high, which is the opposite of what you want to do. The best strategy is to just invest your money in an index fund and ignore it for 30 years.

Expense Ratios
An "expense ratio" is how much the fund manager charges you each year to invest your money. When you are selecting funds to invest in, the options can be overwhelming. My general advice is to stick with an "Index" fund for the reasons I explain above. Then examine the available index funds and compare their expense ratios. Vanguard generally has the lowest expense ratios so that is why I chose to use them for my investments. You can also choose other investment firms. Fidelity or Charles Schwab are both commonly used. When I did research, Vanguard seemed to have the lowest expense ratios overall for what I was investing in so I went with them.

As an example, VTSAX has an expense ratio of 0.04% and VASGX has an expense ratio of 0.14%. Both of those are really low. An expense ratio 0.04% means that if I have an account (like a Roth account) with $100,000, that Vanguard will charge me 0.04% of that (or $40) each year as an administrative fee. The VASGX account would cost $140 per year for $100,000. The average expense ratio for an index fund is around 0.2% ($200) and some funds which are actively managed by people trying to beat the market will cost 1% ($1000) or higher. I think you can see why VTSAX has become such a popular fund.

Getting Close to Retirement
Long term, as you get closer to retirement, you will want to start to pull your money out of index funds. This is because the stock market can have very large swings. Picture what would happen if you lost a third of your retirement fund value during your first year of retirement - suddenly you would not have enough money. So as you get within perhaps 10-15 years of retirement you will probably want to start moving some of your money into less volatile funds like a Bond Index Fund.

Historically, stocks have tended to average a 10% return and bonds tend to average 5-6%. Stocks tend to have a negative return about every four years. Bonds are pretty constant. Recently, stocks have swung between -5% and +28%. Bonds have been around 2-4%.

You want to slowly move your money over to bonds because you don't want a year like 2008 or 2020 where the market lost over 30% to destroy your retirement. If you do not have time to wait for it to recover (which could be 5 - 10 years) then you are out of luck! On the other hand, if you already had 20-30% of your retirement in bonds then you could live off that while the rest of your investments recovered.

Now that I am about 15-20 years from retirement I am taking a little more cautious approach and I have started to move my retirement money to something less risky. I chose the Vanguard LifeStrategy Growth Fund. It is 80% stocks and 20% bonds, so it is still pretty high-risk, but it is a start. In 10-15 years I will probably move some of it to the Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund (VSMGX) which is 60/40. I might just leave everything there until I die depending on the market, but if things start to tank I might move to the Vanguard LifeStrategy Conservative Growth Fund (VSCGX - 40/60) or even the Vanguard LifeStrategy Income Fund (VASIX - 20/80). My guess, though, is that I will never use the VASIX because the return on 80% bonds is too low.

Note: If you research the LifeStrategy funds you will see that they are just a mix of the Vanguard total stock market, total intl stock, total bond, and total intl bond funds. So you could do the same on your own without paying the higher fees of the LifeStrategy funds, but I am lazy and I know I would probably not keep up on rebalancing the investments every year.

Target Date Funds
The other thing you can do is invest in a Target Date Fund. These funds tend to not do as well as index funds and they have higher fees (expense ratios) but they can be nice because you can stick money in them and forget about it. These funds start with part of the money in bonds (which is why they do not do as well as index funds) and part in stocks. The fund manager will slowly move your money over from stocks to bonds as you get closer and closer to retirement. I have some of my retirement funds in Target Date Funds just to be a little more diversified. I also have split it up into four funds with target years of 2040, 2045, 2050, and 2055. That way the money will be moved into bonds more slowly than it would if all the money were in a 2040 fund.

Other General Advice

Credit Cards
Credit cards are a very useful tool when used correctly. My advice is to get a good credit card, use it for all your regular expenses (groceries, bills, etc), and pay off the balance each month. Having a credit card and paying it off each month helps you to start building your credit score. This allows you to get loans when you buy a home or a car.

A good credit card has no annual fee and it will give you cash back for using it. I use a Capital One Visa that gives me a 1.5% cash back bonus on everything I buy. That is like getting a 1.5% discount on everything!

The downside to a credit card is if you do not pay off what you owe each month you are charged an incredibly high interest rate. It is never worth carrying a balance on a credit card. If you are in a really tough spot and need money for an emergency, borrow money from us instead of keeping a balance on your credit card.

Life Insurance
Don't buy Whole Life Insurance. It is almost always a terrible idea. Buy Term Life Insurance instead and then invest the difference.

Financial Advisors
If you meet with a financial advisor, make sure that they are a Fiduciary. A Fiduciary is a person who is legally and ethically bound to act in your best interest. A non-fiduciary person is likely to be acting in their own best interest by selling you products that give themselves the biggest commission or fees (like whole life insurance). Any financial advisor (fiduciary or not) that tells you to buy whole life insurance is a bad one.