IT ALL STARTED WITH a purchase alert. With so much account hacking, we have alerts on our phones for every new purchase, so we can immediately respond if there’s an unauthorized transaction. What we didn’t know was that disputing charges can be so Kafkaesque.
My wife Jiab asked if I had just purchased anything online from Walmart. I had not. There were two suspect charges, each for about $50, simultaneously charged to our Chase and Capital One credit cards.
EVEN IN OUR consumer-driven society, some things are looked down upon if bought. One of those things is companionship.
I’ll leave the topic of sexual intimacy for another day. What I’m talking about here is paying—directly or indirectly—for social interaction. We might buy a younger colleague lunch simply to have somebody to dine with. We might continue therapy long after we’ve finished exploring the issues that prompted us to sign up. We all have a need to connect with others and thereby have our own existence validated.
IN OLD ENGLISH, to be “ready” for something meant to be well counseled. The English King Aethelred the Unready earned his nickname because he was ill-advised. His tumultuous reign ended with invasions and revolts, including one by his son.
When we feel we have “extra” money or even just a hankering to spend, there’s a host of outside voices to counsel us. Most try to influence our actions out of self-interest—for their commercial benefit.
I’VE BEEN AWAY FROM the HumbleDollar community for a while. Jiab and I are working on a new book about media literacy, examining the effects of social media influencers on youth consumerism. It will teach kids about responsible web use and how to avoid the traps of the online world.
I’ve learned a lot myself, including lessons that apply both online and IRL, short for “in real life.” As part of our research,
GOOD PARENTS WARN their children about predators who look to take advantage of them. By the same token, good adults should warn and safeguard their elderly parents, as well as the other seniors they care for.
We all use our electronics for accessing information. We sometimes forget the information highway is two-way, and nefarious people use those lines of communication to get to the vulnerable. And it isn’t just about hacking online accounts. Often,
IF WE GO TO THE movies and buy a mega-tub of popcorn, we’ll eat a lot, probably too much. If, however, that same amount of popcorn is packaged into four bags, we won’t eat nearly so much.
Why? With the four bags, we keep arriving at a decision point—that moment when we have to ponder whether it’s worth opening a new bag. This is the insight of behavioral economist Dilip Soman of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management,
I’M A FAN OF SLANG and newly coined words. Think of all the names for money we’ve had over the years, like cheese, clams and cabbage. New words catch on not only because they allow a new generation to put their stamp on the world, but also the words reflect changing attitudes.
That brings me to “stonks,” the name many millennials use for stocks—and one that reflects a different view of investing. No one’s sure where the word originated.
I WAS EDITING a fellow graduate student’s paper. She’s in her mid-20s, less than half my age. She’s bright and communicates well in class discussion, but her paper—frankly—was a mess. Great ideas, but she expressed them in overly pretentious language. One bloviated sentence was more than 60 words.
When I asked her why she did this, she said she wanted to “sound smart” by not using the same old words she normally uses. She worried that no one would take her seriously unless she adorned her ideas in the polysyllabic jargon of academia.
RESEARCH SHOWS HOW subtle sales pitches, called nudges, can influence our buying. Think of tricks like putting the more expensive potato chips on eye-level grocery-store shelves. Over time, such nudges create spending habits. Those habits become ingrained, nonthinking ways of dealing with money.
A collection of such poor habits begun in childhood can result in a hard-to-alter lifestyle of poor saving and foolish spending. Even worse, nudging sends a stealth message, especially to children,
APRIL IS FINANCIAL Literacy Month. If that doesn’t excite you, imagine how your children feel.
Still, consider this an opportunity to begin or reinforce your kids’ financial education. Many of my students told me one of their parents was into “finance,” but when I asked how the parent handled the family money, students would just shrug and say that was all they knew.
Children don’t like a straight-up lesson, especially from a parent. The trick is to make it seem casual and as blended into everyday life—theirs,
AT THE BEGINNING of 2022, I wrote about our resolution to go back to grad school. The short update: Jiab and I are indeed doing it. We’re enrolled in the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies program at the University of Texas at Dallas.
We scrambled to get the application paperwork done before classes started Jan. 18. Neither of us had applied to school for ourselves since the introduction of online registration, but we found it fairly easy.
BY THE TIME WE GET to middle age, we all supposedly have a book inside us. (Maybe that explains the weight gain.) We have a wealth of experience we want to share. Perhaps it’s about money. Maybe we want to tell the family history. Perhaps there’s a great novel we’ve been writing in our head for years. We finally sit down and hammer it out and, of course, edit and rewrite, rinse and repeat,
I ENJOY WATCHING superhero shows. It feels good to see the hero swoop in and save the day. Truth is, however, I also get a bit annoyed, as there are always some citizens who seem to ignore imminent danger. They sometimes just stare at it coming, doing nothing to get out of harm’s way.
It’s almost like they just count on the hero saving the day, and that’s a bad strategy. Strangely, many people in real life adopt the same strategy,
MY FATHER-IN-LAW was an avid tennis player and an astute coach. The first time he observed me play, he commented on how I—a soccer player growing up—had good speed and quick reactions. I had a terrible swing, however. As he put it, “You can get to any ball. You have no idea what to do when you get there.”
He was correct. To this day, what looks like a great shot is often actually a mishit off my racquet frame.
I WAS SURPRISED to realize the other day that, despite the varied topics HumbleDollar has addressed, I couldn’t recall a single mention of Sun-Tzu, the 6th century B.C. military commander who purportedly wrote The Art of War. The book is a favorite read of business schools. Even a cursory search on Amazon shows how often Sun-Tzu and The Art of War are invoked regarding business, finance and investing.
IN THE COMPUTER gaming world—and I’ll openly admit to occupying that realm often—one measure of a game’s value is its replayability. If you shell out $60 and play a game through to the end, how likely are you to do it again? Each time you replay, you’re getting more value from your initial outlay, making it a better decision.
I sometimes use that economic logic to try to persuade my wife it’s better for me to “shoot and loot”
MOST FOLKS DON’T teach and write about a topic until after they’ve earned a degree in the subject. Owing to my career path, and the nebulous nature of my specialty, I’ve done the opposite—with the next step coming in 2022.
I went to law school just after college because—frankly—I had no better plan. I enjoyed being a lawyer, but I knew it wasn’t my passion, so I went into teaching. I loved it. I taught various humanities,
THERE’S A PARABLE that I don’t claim to have authored, but which I think about at the beginning of each year.
A man became justifiably upset when he realized his home had been invaded by crocodiles. He wasn’t sure where they came from, but they were there, lurking and menacing him.
He went to a local store to ask for a solution. The salesman enthusiastically proffered his answer: kittens. Kittens are cute, their purr is soothing and,
ECONOMICS IS ABOUT supply and demand. Call me biased, but I think why people demand particular goods and services is a whole more interesting than how suppliers do their thing.
It seems, however, that the topic of supply is unavoidable these days. We’re all hearing about supply chain woes. We’re all tired of seeing the empty shelf where our favorite crackers used to sit.
Even though economists will scream from the tallest Federal Reserve Bank building that supply and demand are separate and independent variables,
WITH THE SURGE of urbanization in the 19th century, many folks became concerned by the seeming rise in bad behavior. This behavior could be illegal—such as theft—or legal but undesirable, like alcohol abuse.
Nascent social sciences, including sociology and psychology, developed two alternative theories. “Moral Deficit” theorists said people engaged in bad behavior because they were internally “weak.” You might have seen a movie scene where a hysterical person is slapped with the admonition to “get a hold of yourself.” Or you might be familiar with the approaches of The Salvation Army and YMCA,
PSYCHOLOGISTS and biologists call it a supernormal stimulus response. Basically, organisms evolve in the direction of what’s good for them. There doesn’t seem to be an off switch to this instinct, however, so organisms can pursue these “good things” even to their detriment.
For instance, field researchers have shown that birds instinctually drawn to colorful eggs will roost on more colorful fake eggs—and ignore their own. And, no, humans aren’t immune to such mistakes.
IT’S PROPERTY TAX time. Amid the holiday mail from friends, many of us get notices of payments due from our friendly local tax assessor.
No one likes getting taxed. But in many places, property taxes make up a huge part of the funding for public education. What always surprises and irks me are those who say the tax is unfair because they don’t “use” the public schools.
One neighbor says he has no children.
“RIFFING OFF” is a term used in music and particularly jazz. It describes when a musician picks up a musical line played by another musician and then runs with it, adding his or her own style or take.
I love riffing off my co-writers—and when they riff off me. I also do it sometimes with HumbleDollar articles and blog posts. I read a thoughtful piece and then, as the day goes on,
PAUL MCCARTNEY SAYS he originally wrote lyrics to a song that began, “She was just seventeen. Never been a beauty queen.” When he showed it to John Lennon, his writing partner, Lennon roared with laughter and said, “You’re joking.”
Lennon, who was a bit cheekier, then had McCartney change the second line to “you know what I mean” to add a wink-wink-nudge-nudge element. The eventual song, I Saw Her Standing There,
ONE FALL DAY, my father and I were watching the rain ruin our outdoor plans. “The one thing about rain,” he said to me, “is that there’s nothing you can do about it.”
My father was a go-getter. In 1941, he volunteered for the Army Air Corps right out of high school. He flew 35 missions in a B-17 Flying Fortress. After the war, he took over a local curtain manufacturing company operating in the red.
MY FRIEND HAFIZ HAS a common midlife problem. He’s built a successful career over 20 years. But now he wants a change—a new direction to focus his energy and talents. Over coffee, we kicked around the different paths he might take.
Some were offshoots of his current job, such as becoming an industry consultant. Others were wholly new, like becoming a writer.
“The problem,” Hafiz sighed, “is that whatever I do, it’s gotta pay for the country club.”
Hafiz explained that,
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE writing about gifts when the perfect essay on the topic already exists. I can’t improve on Emerson’s sentiment that expensive but impersonal presents are not gifts but “apologies for gifts” or that the true gift is “a portion of thyself.”
Still, I’m dismayed by the reaction to news that supply chain woes may negatively affect gift availability this holiday season. Naturally, retailers are worried. Some media outlets are reporting the lack of toys and other gifts in apocalyptic fashion,
GOT SOMETHING THAT needs repairing? Faced with the increasing specialization of people’s knowledge, ever-growing technical complexity and our perennial lack of time, it’s often tempting to just call in an expert or even buy a replacement.
But repairs can be costly, which is why we’re told to get multiple bids. One of the “bid” options I always check out: fixing it myself with the guidance of that repository of collective step-by-step knowhow, YouTube. Perhaps not since the Great Library of Alexandria has so much expertise been collected in one spot—along,
INFLUENCERS ARE people who use their popularity and social media presence to nudge our decision-making, especially our spending choices. They’re a powerful force in today’s marketing world, particularly with younger consumers looking for cues as to what’s hot.
In one survey, 60% of those ages 16 to 24 credited influencers with purchases they’d made in the past six months, more than any other age group. Combined with the bandwagon effect and FOMO, or fear of missing out,
IN SPAIN, “CHAPUZA” means something botched because of inattention or sloppy work. We learned the word when repairmen rewired the buzzers in our apartment building. They finished the work quickly so they’d be done in a single day. At 2 a.m. that night, we discovered the job was chapuza when our neighbor kept buzzing our apartment—because the buzzer had been mislabeled.
Chapuza can be found everywhere. Back in the U.S., we hired a highly recommended electrician to do major work on our home.
MOST EVERYONE AGREES financial literacy should be taught to some degree in schools. Even the basics, like how to set up a bank or credit card account, or how to make a budget and avoid debt, should be explained to those soon to enter the workforce.
Another group of newcomers to the U.S. financial system who could use guidance are immigrants, particularly refugees. Jiab and I have been volunteering for a number of years to help refugees get acclimated to American life.
THE RIGHT PARTNER is not one whose outlook is the same as yours, but rather one whose outlook complements you. For me and my wife Jiab, we agree on shopping decisions most of the time. When we disagree, however, it’s due to each of our “leans.” I lean toward spending a bit more money to save time. To be finished with shopping, I’ll say at some point that what we’ve found is good enough.
WHEN YOU’RE STUCK in traffic, have you ever idly wished for another lane to ease the congestion?
Not long ago, I listened to a podcast about the eternal problem of highway congestion in Texas, especially in the Dallas-Houston-San Antonio triangle. The expert said that our fundamental problem is that planners think of traffic as a liquid, so their answer to flow problems is always to “build a bigger pipeline”—meaning more highways.
Traffic, however, behaves less like a liquid and more like a gas.
TEACHERS SHARE space with people who aren’t as knowledgeable or understanding of a subject as they are. Sometimes, students will display incredible depths of ignorance. Most students try, but there are some who are unwilling to meet a teacher even halfway. Worst of all are the insolent ones. Proud of their ignorance, they dismiss the subject—and the teacher—with not-so-veiled disrespect.
You know what a good teacher does in the face of all this? She takes a moment,
THE GREEN KNIGHT is a new, Arthurian-age fantasy film that was released at the end of July. The crux of the story: The Green Knight offers a challenge at King Arthur’s court. He will allow any knight to take a swing at him with his great axe, as long as that knight agrees to receive a blow a year and a day later. Sir Gawain, one of the youngest of the Round Table,
I’VE HEARD SOME parents say that, while they don’t like their kids watching online videos, at least they aren’t being exposed to the ads that inundate kids on regular TV.
Nope. Advertising is at least as pervasive, and definitely more insidious, on the web. Kids have shifted from network television to web-viewing, and advertisers have trailed right behind them with Willie Sutton logic—because that’s where the money is.
YouTube is the most popular video streaming site in the world.
YOUR PETS CAN’T TELL you when they don’t feel well, and yet somehow they do.
One of our cats, Sangria, seemed to have no energy for several days. Part Siamese, she’s usually a loud crier. But lately she’d taken to quietly hiding in a closet. My wife Jiab—the cat attendant responsible for intake—reported her eating as normal. I, in charge of the litter box, noticed that outflow was a bit irregular. We thought it would pass.
FEAR GETS A BAD RAP. From the old No Fear apparel line to mantras such as “only bad decisions come from fear,” our society seems to say that fear is always the creator of regrettable decisions.
I disagree. I think we need to distinguish between irrational and rational fear. Irrational fear is worrying that all strangers are a threat or believing that stepping out of your comfort zone is too fraught with peril to make it worthwhile.
THE AMERICAN DREAM. Rags to riches. The self-made man—or woman.
Everyone growing up in the U.S. is told of these ideals. We are sharks who must keep moving to survive. The only acceptable direction is up. We do it for ourselves, believing happiness is just over the next hill of “more.” We do it for our family because providing is an act of caring.
If there’s a least-debated rule in economics, however, it’s that everything comes at a cost.
IT HAD BEEN A WHILE since we’d last shopped for a refrigerator. There was a time when such an appliance merely kept things cold and, for me, fancy meant the fridge could deliver crushed ice for my iced tea.
But today, there are all kinds of features. French-door style. Sub-area climate controls. The big new thing: see-through doors so you can choose without staring into an open fridge—a favorite pastime of my youth on hot Texas days.
WHEN PEOPLE MENTION Eastern philosophy, Westerners often have images of mystic monks in saffron robes, surrounded by clouds of incense and speaking in cryptic riddles like, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
In fact, Asian philosophy can be very pragmatic in addressing everyday decisions, from family matters to investment choices—and many Westerners welcome the different approach to facing life’s challenges.
Daoism (also called Taoism) is one of the world’s oldest philosophies. It’s believed to have emerged more than 2,000 years ago during a period of dissolution,
WE ARE STARTING from scratch. After living in Spain for three years, Jiab and I have returned to Dallas to be closer to family. We still have a home here, but—when we left three years ago—we sold all our furniture, cars and many other possessions to reduce storage costs. Now we have to reacquire those things that make living possible.
Fortunately, Jiab and I share a similar outlook as we reaccumulate. That outlook is inspired by Thorstein Veblen,
THIS IS AN ARTICLE about not writing an article. It started with a Vox piece about the changes in society wrought by the 2007 introduction of the iPhone. One graph that caught my eye showed chewing gum sales steadily declining from 2007 to 2017, which was when the Vox article was published.
No economist would ever tie an economic trend to any one factor, but the article proffered an interesting hypothesis. It suggested that,
HOW MUCH WOULD you pay for $10? Taking my cues from a game developed by economist Martin Shubik, I’d offer to auction off a $10 bill to my high school students. There were three rules:
Students could only offer bids. No commentary, cooperation or deal-making were allowed.
The highest bidder paid me the money and received the $10.
The second-highest bidder had to pay me their final bid but got nothing.
I ran such auctions for 20 years and it almost always had three stages.
AS WE MAKE FINANCIAL, political and other decisions, we’re bombarded with messages that supposedly offer helpful information. But as savvy consumers of news and advertising, we need to realize that we aren’t nudged just by the content of these messages. It’s also the packaging that can have a huge influence.
Below are 21 ways that information is packaged to make it more enticing. Think of this list as a follow-up to my earlier article,
DUTCH DISEASE. SOUND like something that might devastate your garden? In truth, it’s an economic term coined in by The Economist magazine in 1977—and it refers to the economic fallout that followed the 1959 discovery in the Netherlands of Europe’s largest natural gas field.
The natural resource was initially a great boon to the economy, causing the value of the Dutch currency—then the guilder—to rise sharply in the foreign exchange market. All good?
ARE YOU WORTH IT? According to many sellers, you are—even if they have no idea who you are.
Economics generally divides consumed goods into necessities and luxuries. But behavioral economists understand that we need luxuries, at least psychologically. Purchasing things for ourselves is a way to self-validate, to say we are more than our base needs.
Who hasn’t felt good about an accomplishment and used that as a reason to splurge,
IF YOU TOOK AN economics class in high school or college, you might see its usefulness as limited to helping with your grade point average. But the basic ideas you learned can still be valuable. Take this introductory microeconomics question: In a typical transaction, who has more power, the buyer or the seller?
When I started teaching economics many years ago, I gave the nod to buyers. Invoking the notion of “consumer sovereignty,” I’d explain to students that buyers have the power to vote with their feet—by walking to another store.
LET’S SAY YOU COME into some extra money. Do you take the family on a great vacation or do you remodel that room you try to stop guests from seeing? To come to a decision, you might weigh the fun of the vacation against the pride of the redone room.
It’s at this point that some intrepid economist, risking his or her life-of-the-party reputation, would pop up and say, “You’re not doing it right.”
Economics is the study of choice—and the big engine for choosing is cost-benefit analysis.
ONE SUNDAY, MY SON was lamenting that he had a school project due the next day, but hadn’t yet taken any steps to get it done. When I asked what his plan was, he replied, “I could use a really good montage right about now.”
For those who aren’t procrastinating teens with a father who delves into media literacy, a montage is a series of quick shots in a TV show or movie that accelerates time around a theme—that theme often being the effort and time expended to achieve a goal.
WHEN WE WATCH advertisements, we tend to think of ourselves as stationary, with the marketers coming to us and then, if we don’t respond, heading elsewhere. Like an Einstein relativity paradox, however, we observers are also in motion, being coaxed toward the marketer, often without knowing it.
A good business knows its customer niche—and good marketers know how to speak to that niche. Customer niches are defined by demographic attributes. When I discuss these attributes with students,
THERE’S AN ONLINE forum where writers of articles can request “expert” opinions for pieces they’re working on. Recently, a reporter was seeking recommendations for gadgets parents can buy to keep their children amused on family vacations.
Normally, I either send what I hope is a helpful reply or I move on. In this case, however, I responded—but my answer wasn’t positive.
I first railed against the idea that children needed anything beyond the trip itself,
OVER 600 YEARS AGO, Geoffrey Chaucer gave the world The Canterbury Tales, a caustic look at a cross-section of English society. While all the stories are still worth reading, one tale is especially relevant to today’s consumer.
For those who don’t remember The Canterbury Tales, it’s a story about a group of pilgrims traveling from London to Canterbury. They pass the time on the road by having a contest to see who can tell the best tale.
THE FINANCIAL SITE MarketWatch has been running a series about the lives and budgets of Americans who retire abroad. My wife Jiab and I—who moved from Texas to Spain—were one of the first couples featured, along with a husband and wife who now live in Chile. Both articles made clear there were plusses and minuses to such a move—experiencing new things, but also being away from family—and that we weren’t advocating this for everyone.
CONSUMER ECONOMICS and media literacy have evolved to become important fields of study, analyzing the way consumers make decisions—and how those decisions can be nudged. Here are 20 of the tricks and techniques used by marketers and others:
Aspirational buying. When consumers are encouraged to live like those they admire, even if they can’t afford it.
Bandwagon appeal. The psychological nudge to do—or consume—something because others are doing it. Also known as FOMO,
WE DON’T NORMALLY think of classical philosophy as relevant to modern money management. Perhaps it’s the perception that philosophers live humble, financially insecure lives ruminating on ethereal matters. Or, as my businessman father said when he saw I was taking a philosophy course, “That will make you interesting at parties, but how will you eat with it?”
Meet Marcus Aurelius.
If you aren’t a classics person, Marcus was born to a powerful and rich Roman family,
ON A RECENT VISIT to the U.S. from our home in Spain, I used one of my last days to do some shopping, including purchasing a new laptop power cord to replace one that failed the night before. I have a Dell computer, so I entered the store confident I could easily buy a cord tailor-made for my brand.
“We only sell universal power cords,” the clerk told me.
“I don’t need to power the entire universe,
“IS CBS PIPING FAKE birds into its Masters coverage?” That was the headline on a recent Slate article, which speculated that the television network might be adding “enhanced audio” of fake bird chirping to its coverage of the golf tournament.
This is not a scandal for the ages. But it serves as a timely reminder that we have fantasized notions of life that marketers and the media don’t hesitate to exploit.
Make no mistake: The PGA,
SOCIALISM. IT’S A WORD that can make people on the far left swoon, as they imagine an egalitarian utopia, even while inciting those on the far right to mumble protective oaths like a medieval citizen seeing a sign of the devil. It’s also a word that Google Trends reports has had a surge in search-related interest since last December.
As competing visions of how to protect and enhance the American economic system vie for political popularity,
TO BORROW FROM the movie Casablanca, we are all “shocked, shocked” at the college admissions scandal recently uncovered by the FBI. We are seemingly united in condemning the extremes that these wealthy—and sometimes famous—parents went to, as they sought college admission for their children. We’re talking fraudulent inclusion on sports teams, submitting fake standardized test scores and outright bribery.
But the idea of parents gaming the system for their child’s benefit is nothing new to those of us in high school education.
WHEN I TAUGHT economics, I would present students with the financial misunderstandings that people often have—and which the study of economics can help them avoid. Examples? Here are five widespread misconceptions:
Mistake No. 1: The rarer something is, the more valuable it is. Economics really doesn’t care about rare things—meaning those things that are few in number. Instead, economics deals with scarce things, which are things for which there’s greater demand than current ways to fulfill that demand.
MORE THAN 100 YEARS ago, Thorstein Veblen, the father of behavioral economics, explained the thinking behind most of our purchases and investments with the help of two spoons. In his seminal 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen compared a handmade silver spoon, which back then could cost up to $20 ($600 in today’s money) with a machine-made aluminum spoon that cost about 20 cents ($6 today).
Based on strict utility of purpose,
WE LIKE TO THINK we’re rational, especially when it comes to spending and investing. But in truth, all of us are susceptible to impulsive decision-making and unconscious persuasion. Result? We often end up wasting our hard-earned money.
According to traditional economics—which depicts humans as conscious, rational decision-makers—this shouldn’t happen. But this traditional view has been under attack since the late 1800s, when Thorstein Veblen explored conscious irrational decisions, such as buying items simply to impress others.
I’M AN AVID PLAYER of video and computer games—along with 150 million other Americans. They’ve been a nice occasional escape from the pressures and obligations of the real world for more than 40 years and, now well into my 50s, I’m old enough to see them as merely that.
Youth, on the other hand, is more susceptible to having their behavior influenced, if not shaped, by interactive entertainment. There’s much debate as to whether such games promote dissociative behavior and even violence.
Comments
We are pretty sure the breach was at Walmart.com. We read that others had the same problem. It's not just Walmart. The unfortunate situation nowadays is that wherever one stores one's card info, we have to hope they do not get breached. We started deleting stored CC info on sites. Better to have to re-enter it each time than have others get their cyber fingers on it.
Post: Aftermath of a Scam
Link to comment from March 10, 2023
I'm sure it varies by manager and on another day, we might have been absolved. I think what threw the system haywire in our case was confusing disputing a charge, which is technically ordering goods (to your address) and then being unhappy with them, and a fraud complaint regarding something you did not order (usually to another address). We had a fraud complaint that looked like a dispute because of the address.
Post: Aftermath of a Scam
Link to comment from March 10, 2023
Thank you, Chazooo. I am a big believer in pre-familiarizing yourself with something so that then your gut-grabber can set off the alarm based on something you can't specifically put your finger on but in your gut you know it's off. Back when I practiced law we asked if the witness' story passed the "smell test" before we even looked into details. I used the same gut sense when I became a teacher. Often my first signal that a student's paper was not theirs was my gut that said I don't hear his/her voice as I read it. Be well.
Post: Getting Good Counsel
Link to comment from February 25, 2023
Thanks, Edmund. I once gave a homily at my school talking about timeless humor. I pointed out that Aethelred the Unready was a 1,000 year joke as his name translates as "Well-advised the Poorly-advised." I laughed. The history and English teachers laughed. The kids stared. Jonathan Clements, I believe, is descended from British royalty. My mum was British, her family from Liverpool, so I would happily settle for a relation to one of the Beatles! Be well.
Post: Getting Good Counsel
Link to comment from February 25, 2023
Thank you for the kind words, Linda. I agree that the small choices often aren't worth the mental energy, especially if you have a backup plan or general flexible outlook that can adapt to fill in gaps on the fly. Jiab is better at pre-planning, so we often do a strategy for get-aways where Jiab does the pre-set (books the plane tickets and hotel) and then I do the adjusting/filling in gaps as they come along (look around for what to do when we get there). Be well.
Post: Getting Good Counsel
Link to comment from February 25, 2023
Thanks, Richard. We know someone who Googled "Facebook customer support" and the top hit was a phone number (FB has no customer support telephone number). They called and followed the instructions to find themself locked out of his own computer as the scammers hijacked it!
Post: There Be Monsters
Link to comment from November 23, 2022
I appreciate the feedback, Dick. Of course not every group is blanket ignorant and gullible, whether "seniors," "boomers," "millennials." etc. Each group has savvy and vulnerable people. That said, the big picture statistics indicate that people over 60 (and I am in that group) have seen a tremendous upsurge in being taken advantage of, especially from internet scams. See a report on official FBI warning here There are many possible reasons, whether because they are less "native" to the internet, a higher percentage incidence in cognitive decline than younger age groups, or that more within that group turn over financial matters to others to manage. None of these justify disrespect to you or other members of this or any group. I think it is good to warn everyone to be wary of scams, but the numbers indicate that this demographic is particularly getting taken, regardless of individual member's acumen, and so extra heed should be taken.
Post: Bad Guy on Line One
Link to comment from August 4, 2022
Thank, Dick. I appreciate the different perspective. I think that, when it comes to perceiving a different group of people, by location, beliefs, or age, it's like the blind men and the elephant. It depends on what part you inspect and how much of the total you get to examine (and that's just the elephant's physical build, not its temperament). I tell the same thing to young folks who tell me what all of us boomers are like (and always were like, as if we have never changed). If I'm feeling teacher-y, I use that to discuss sampling errors. Be well.
Post: Buy and Hodl
Link to comment from July 7, 2022
Well said, Richard!
Post: Course Correction
Link to comment from June 4, 2022
Thanks. OK, so your comment got my behavioral econ mind to wondering what are the male:female ratios on dating sites and are there any patterns (like if there are trends depending on how much the site is geared toward casual hookup or long-term relationship). Here's one article on it. I'll ruminate on the data while working out: https://www.datingadvice.com/online-dating/dating-site-male-to-female-ratios
Post: Course Correction
Link to comment from June 4, 2022