In response to overwhelming demand, I made a 30-second video that shows how to wrap cables so that they stay wrapped, don't get tangled, and are very easy to unwrap.
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July 22, 2016 at 06:00AM: How I wrap earbud and charger cables so they don't get tangled
July 20, 2016 at 11:33AM: Tesla is developing heavy trucks and urban public transit
Elon Musk has just revealed his second master plan for Tesla, ten years after the first such plan was revealed as a road map for the company. The original plan called for a four-step process: build a low volume car (what became the original Tesla roadster), then build a medium volume car at a lower price (which became the Model S), to develop an affordable, high-volume car (the recently unveiled but decidedly not on sale yet Model 3). The fourth step? Provide solar power to consumers. That isn't news, but its serious implementation is.
Tesla has been a transportation company up until now, whatever Musk says. The purchase of SolarCity recently means things are changing somewhat at the company. This is even reflected in the URL: "motors" is now absent. It's just tesla.com.
Here's the TL;DR version of the new Tesla master plan, which isn't quite as procedural as the last one: Musk wants to build out more of the infrastructure around the electric car. He wants integrated solar production in private homes, he wants electric vehicles in every major automotive segment, he wants to increase autonomous vehicle safety by a factor of ten, and he wants you to use your fully autonomous Tesla as part of a ride-sharing system that will earn you money when you're not using your car.
The plan doesn't go into much detail about the SolarCity acquisition other than to say that the Powerwall home energy storage system will be integrated into the SolarCity solar-roof system. We'll probably hear more about this as Musk fleshes out the specifics of said integration.
Now let's get to the vehicles. Musk doesn't think Tesla will need to build a lower-cost vehicle than the Model 3, because two things are imperative. One, the company desperately needs to scale up production volume – that's something its cognizant of, and necessary to bring in some positive cash flow. Secondly, it's because Tesla is developing both heavy-duty trucks (think semis) and high passenger-density urban transport (think buses or trams), and plans to unveil them next year.
Add full autonomy to the mix, and Tesla believes we'll be able to shrink the size of the vehicles and eliminate their human operators, which is probably welcome news to fleet managers and logistics folks, but less so to truck and bus drivers. There's some logic to it, as autonomous and connected public transportation and cargo delivery could be controlled for maximum efficiency and minimum congestion.
On the subject of autonomy, Tesla remains resolute that deploying Autopilot in a beta form was the correct thing to do, claiming when used correctly it's much safer than a typical human operator. Indeed, the company says it'd be "reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press, or some mercantile calculation of legal liability." Don't expect Autopilot to go away or be renamed, but do expect the "beta" label to go away when the system safe has improved to the point where it's ten times safer than the US vehicle average.
Lastly, car sharing. It's pretty much what it sounds like. Think about what percentage of a 24 hour period you're actually using your personal vehicle. If you're not driving your fully-autonomous vehicle at that moment, Tesla wants you to make it available to other users to rent. Tesla will also operate fleets in places where this isn't practical based on demand. It sounds neat, but there's a lot of details left to work out, and a lot of local politics to play. Just think about Uber's recent experience in Austin.
There's a lot to unpack here, so let this all soak in and come back later for more analysis and commentary.
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July 17, 2016 at 10:00AM: Watch SpaceX try its second ground landing at 12:45AM Eastern
Now that sea-based rocket landings are relatively commonplace for SpaceX, the company is hoping to achieve repeat success with ground landings. Elon Musk and crew are launching a Dragon capsule full of cargo to the International Space Station on July 18th at 12:45AM Eastern, and they're using this nighttime mission to attempt the second-ever ground landing of a Falcon 9 rocket. You can watch SpaceX's live stream below starting at 12:25AM.
There's a lot riding on this besides bragging rights. The mission is carrying an international docking adapter that the ISS would have received last year if not for a Falcon 9 breaking up on launch. As you might gather, SpaceX really can't afford to lose that part a second time -- it'd not only hurt the ISS' supplies, but cast doubt on its attempts to improve reliability.
Source: SpaceX (YouTube)
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July 16, 2016 at 10:02PM: 10 Purchases You’ll Probably Regret
Sometimes it’s the thrill of a sale that lures us into buying something we don’t really need and can’t afford. Other times, it’s the urging of others to “keep up,” be like them, or fit in with the group.
Then there are those crazy, inexplicable moments where we wake up to realize we spent good money on a hulking pile of crap, an overpriced membership, or an unplanned splurge.
Whether it’s a shirt you never wear or a car you absolutely hate driving, we’ve all made purchases we aren’t particularly proud of.
10 Purchases People Almost Always Regret
Still, some “regret purchases” tend to leave us full of self-loathing far longer than others – simply because we should have known better or because they were so dang expensive to begin with.
Want to avoid a purchase you might live to regret? Several money bloggers and financial advisors weighed in to share the most common financial blunders they’ve heard to date.
Boats
If you gather enough boat owners in one place, you’re bound to hear horror stories of pricey repairs, depreciating values, and plain ol’ hassle. The truth is, boats are mostly giant money pits for the vast majority of people who own them. Worse, they are money pits that depreciate in value at lightning speed.
“There is an old joke that say the best two days of a boat owner’s life are the day he buys his boat – and the day he sells it,” says Ryan Guina of CashMoneyLife.com. “Boats tend to be very expensive to own and maintain, and many are purchased on a whim.”
Before you buy anything that has an engine and floats on water, make sure to assess the total costs of ownership – not just the price you’ll pay to pull your new boat off the lot. Consider the costs of financing, insuring, and maintaining your new floating ride, along with transportation costs like gas, cleaning fees, and winter storage fees. And remember you’re paying all that for something you might only use a couple of months per year.
If you’re determined to get out on the water, a better idea is to rent a boat several times per year instead, says Guina. You’ll spend a lot less money without all the commitment. And you’ll never have to sell your boat for a fraction of what you paid, either.
Anything ‘As Seen on TV’
We’ve all seen those late night commercials for cleaning supplies, Sham-Wow type cloths, real estate sales courses, and pressure cookers, but are any of those purchases really necessary?
Paul Moyer of SavingFreak.com says absolutely not. In fact, he says, only about 25% of them are worth anything close to the asking price. How does he know? He’s a self-proclaimed “sucker” for infomercials that promise the world and deliver little more than regret.
“The guy on TV selling them is awesome and the products seem like they will change your life, but in reality they are usually just another addition to the junk drawer,” says Moyer.
If you didn’t need it before you got lured into a 30-minute infomercial, you certainly don’t need it now. Moyer’s advice? “Turn the television off,” he says.
DVD Collections
Nearly everywhere you go, you’ll find bins of DVDs and movies you can purchase for $4 or $5 each. But, are these really a good bargain?
Jeff Rose of Good Financial Cents doesn’t think so. “I don’t know a single person who doesn’t have at least a few DVDs at home and, unless you have kids, you do not watch them” says Rose.
Plus, with movie-streaming and rental services like Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, RedBox, and GameFly readily available, we no longer need to buy DVDs and store them like long lost artifacts.
Can we just stop with this? Please?!
If you find that bargain bin calling your name, says Rose, step away. “Even though a $4 movie night seem like a good deal, it rarely is,” he says.
Just One More Drink
If a beer or glass of wine with dinner is a good thing, five or six drinks is even better, right?
Actually, nope. Not at all. Those few extra drinks can lead to more than a hangover; they can lead to regret.
Unfortunately, let’s have “just one more drink” is a stance many of us take too often. While you might have more fun with a few more drinks under your belt, going overboard will inevitably lead to regret and wasted funds more often than not.
“When you’re eating out, alcohol is so expensive, but if you’re having a good time and having great conversation, it’s easy to just order another one for you and maybe even for your friends,” says Cat Alford.
If you’re not careful, says Cat, this can add another $50 or $100 to your bill, which can cause a really unpleasant end to your evening meal.
If you plan to drink at dinner, try to limit yourself to one or two. And if you’re still enjoying the conversation and ambiance afterward, take the party with you and drink at home. Your pocketbook will thank you.
Exercise Equipment
Do you hang your laundry on a perfectly good elliptical machine or treadmill? If so, you’re not alone. Year after year, people rush out to buy home exercise equipment so they can get back into shape and get rid of that spare tire. But over time, our enthusiasm for home fitness seems to wane. And if you don’t use your treadmill, it can even serve as a daily reminder of your expensive failure to stick with the program.
At that point, you can either sell it for a less or hang your clothes on it, which is what most people seem to do. Still, there are other alternatives to consider if you’re worried you won’t use that thigh-master calling your name.
“Instead of that impulse treadmill, get a one-month membership to the local gym – at least at first,” says Joseph Hogue of My Work from Home Money. “If you stick with it, then maybe you’re ready for a bigger at-home purchase.”
That Backyard Hot Tub
A hot tub for the backyard can seem like a great idea if you’ve got achy joints or simply love the idea of soaking with a cold drink in hand — but will you really use it enough to get your money’s worth?
“You may enjoy it the first few times,” says Jim Wang of Wallet Hacks. “But eventually, the cost of maintenance and the fact that you have to deal with chemicals along with the infrequency with which you use it all make a hot tub a near-instant regret.”
“I have a friend who bought one many years ago and the times he’s cursed it greatly outnumber the times he’s been in love with it,” notes Wang.
Vaccuums Sold by Door-to-Door Salesman
Vaccuums are notorious for dying well before their time – or, at the very least, clogging up and becoming almost unusable before they are officially “dead.” You can buy a more expensive model, sure, but even the Dysons of the world may not last more than a few years. So, what are you to do?
Caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, you may be enticed into a “home vacuum demonstration” by a friendly Kirby salesperson intent on selling you their latest model. But if you buy the pitch hook, line, and sinker, you may live to regret it!
Financial planner Peter Huminski of Thorium Wealth says he fell for the spiel twice – twice!
“I know this may sound funny, but I have owned two now, and they are the purchases I’ve regretted most in my life,” Huminski says. Long story short, Huminski paid $1,500 for his first super vacuum that was supposed to last a lifetime. When it didn’t, he got roped into paying several hundred dollars to get a new one shipped out. That one, he says, worked for another year then died.
Now he sticks to cheap vacuums, he says. Even if he has to replace them every few years, it’s a lot cheaper than forking over $1,500. “I will never buy another vacuum over $100 again,” he says.
- Related: Handling Door-to-Door Solicitors
Timeshares
While you might score a deal buying a discounted timeshare from a frustrated owner on the secondary market, these week-long vacation blocks aren’t always a good deal when you consider what you actually get for the full sticker price.
“People get excited by the hype of great vacations all over the world and only for a small amount of money,” says Ricky Lalvani of Richer Soul. But if you dig a little deeper, you might find that the numbers don’t really work out in your favor.
“The math on a $25,000 week is that it’s immediately worth about 80% less for most people,” says Lalvani, adding that timeshares are notoriously hard to sell. And after that, he says, you’ll still have the “ongoing and ever-increasing costs of maintenance, exchange company membership, exchange fees, and then special assessments,” he says.
“The better deal is to rent the week from someone else who just wants to recover a little bit of their massive loss.”
That’s right; you can easily rent a timeshare or vacation condo without actually owning one. And most of the time, you’ll end up much better off.
An Expensive New Car
Is there anything like that new car smell? The simple elegance of an odometer with only eight miles clocked so far? The feel of clean leather sets unspoiled by your kid’s grubby fingers, dog hair, or stray Doritos crumbs?
Buying a brand new car with all the bells and whistles offers a glimpse of the good life – a chance at a new beginning. But once the newness wears off and your car is an inch deep in Cheerios and opened mail, the only thing left to “savor” is that huge new car payment you signed up for.
We’ve run the numbers before and, like it or not, new cars are still depreciating assets that can suck your finances dry if you let them.
“I always recommend my clients purchase a one- to two-year-old certified vehicle if they are looking to purchase a new car,” says Joseph Carbone, Jr., founder of Focus Planning Group. “You’d be amazed at how much money you can save on a ‘practically’ new car.”
Extended or ‘Extra’ Warranties
Whenever you make a big purchase — from used cars to appliances to that biggest buy of all, your home — you’ll likely be offered an extended warranty that will cover breakdowns or replacements of major components within a predetermined window of time.
But extended warranties are rarely a good deal for consumers, and there’s a reason companies try to push them at the point of sale. Their profits come from the purchase of your warranty — and the fact that they’ll do almost anything to avoid paying out if you do in fact need to use it.
An extended warranty on a car, for example, can add thousands of dollars to your total purchase, says financial planner Kenneth Feyers of Retirement Seeds. And if your warranty doesn’t cover the exact repairs you actually need… Welp! You’re out of luck.
The same can be said for home warranties, says Kate Dore of Cashville Skyline. “In most instances, these service contracts don’t cover as much as you would expect.”
At the end of the day, saving the extra cash in an emergency fund is almost always a smarter move.
How to Avoid Making a Purchase You’ll Grow to Regret
If you’re worried about overspending or constantly find your closets filled with stuff you don’t really want, it might be time to reassess your spending habits and ask yourself what is going on. Perhaps you love playing victim to every television ad you see. Or maybe you’re just a sale sucker who can’t say no to a “good deal.”
Whatever your spending weakness is, look for ways to talk yourself out of purchases made on the fly. Instituting a 24-hour wait period before you make a big purchase can be an extremely smart move, as can setting a fun-spending limit that you agree upon with your spouse.
On top of that, simply learning to tell yourself “no” can help a great deal. The excitement of buying stuff can be addictive, but with a lot of purchases, all you’re really left with in the end is the bill.
What purchases have you regretted in your life? What would you add to this list?
Related Articles:
- The Strategic Splurge: Saving for the Stuff You Really Want
- The Biggest Regrets and How to Avoid Them
- Control Yourself: 11 Ways to Stop a Splurge Purchase
- On Splurging and Regret
The post 10 Purchases You’ll Probably Regret appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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July 8, 2016 at 07:52AM: Canada Revenue Agency does not demand payment in iTunes cards, warns RCMP
The warning comes after a young immigrant in Burnaby fell victim to a scam and turned over thousands of dollars worth of iTunes gift cards to scammers via Snapchat.
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July 2, 2016 at 09:00PM: Richard Feynman on Teaching Math to Kids and the Lessons of Knowledge
Legendary scientist Richard Feynman was famous for his penetrating insight and clarity of thought. Famous for not only the work he did to garner a Nobel Prize, but also for the lucidity of explanations of ordinary things such as why trains stay on the tracks as they go around a curve, how we look for new laws of science, how rubber bands work, and the beauty of the natural world.
Feynman knew the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. And was often prone to telling the emperor they had no clothes as this illuminating example from James Gleick’s book Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman shows.
Educating his children gave him pause as to how the elements of teaching should be employed. By the time his son Carl was four, Feynman was “actively lobbying against a first-grade science book proposed for California schools.”
It began with pictures of a mechanical wind-up dog, a real dog, and a motorcycle, and for each the same question: “What makes it move?” The proposed answer—“ Energy makes it move”— enraged him.
That was tautology, he argued—empty definition. Feynman, having made a career of understanding the deep abstractions of energy, said it would be better to begin a science course by taking apart a toy dog, revealing the cleverness of the gears and ratchets. To tell a first-grader that “energy makes it move” would be no more helpful, he said, than saying “God makes it move” or “moveability makes it move.”
Feynman proposed a simple test for whether one is teaching ideas or mere definitions: “Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language. Without using the word energy, tell me what you know now about the dog’s motion.”
The other standard explanations were equally horrible: gravity makes it fall, or friction makes it wear out. You didn’t get a pass on learning because you were a first-grader and Feynman’s explanations not only captured the attention of his audience—from Nobel winners to first-graders—but also offered true knowledge. “Shoe leather wears out because it rubs against the sidewalk and the little notches and bumps on the sidewalk grab pieces and pull them off.” That is knowledge. “To simply say, ‘It is because of friction,’ is sad, because it’s not science.”
Choosing Textbooks for Grade Schools
In 1964 Feynman made the rare decision to serve on a public commission for choosing mathematics textbooks for California’s grade schools. As Gleick describes it:
Traditionally this commissionership was a sinecure that brought various small perquisites under the table from textbook publishers. Few commissioners— as Feynman discovered— read many textbooks, but he determined to read them all, and had scores of them delivered to his house.
This was the era of new math in children’s textbooks: introducing high-level concepts, such as set theory and non decimal number systems into grade school.
Feynman was skeptical of this approach but rather than simply let it go, he popped the balloon.
He argued to his fellow commissioners that sets, as presented in the reformers’ textbooks, were an example of the most insidious pedantry: new definitions for the sake of definition, a perfect case of introducing words without introducing ideas.
A proposed primer instructed first-graders: “Find out if the set of the lollipops is equal in number to the set of the girls.”
To Feynman this was a disease. It confused without adding precision to the normal sentence: “Find out if there are just enough lollipops for the girls.”
According to Feynman, specialized language should wait until it is needed. (In case you’re wondering, he argued the peculiar language of set theory is rarely, if ever, needed —only in understanding different degrees of infinity—which certainly wasn’t necessary at a grade-school level.)
Feynman convincingly argued this was knowledge of words without actual knowledge. He wrote:
It is an example of the use of words, new definitions of new words, but in this particular case a most extreme example because no facts whatever are given…. It will perhaps surprise most people who have studied this textbook to discover that the symbol ∪ or ∩ representing union and intersection of sets … all the elaborate notation for sets that is given in these books, almost never appear in any writings in theoretical physics, in engineering, business, arithmetic, computer design, or other places where mathematics is being used.
The point became philosophical.
It was crucial, he argued, to distinguish clear language from precise language. The textbooks placed a new emphasis on precise language: distinguishing “number” from “numeral,” for example, and separating the symbol from the real object in the modern critical fashion— pupil for schoolchildren, it seemed to Feynman. He objected to a book that tried to teach a distinction between a ball and a picture of a ball— the book insisting on such language as “color the picture of the ball red.”
“I doubt that any child would make an error in this particular direction,” Feynman said, adding:
As a matter of fact, it is impossible to be precise … whereas before there was no difficulty. The picture of a ball includes a circle and includes a background. Should we color the entire square area in which the ball image appears all red? … Precision has only been pedantically increased in one particular corner when there was originally no doubt and no difficulty in the idea.
In the real world absolute precision can never be reached and the search for degrees of precision that are not possible (but are desirable) causes a lot of folly.
Feynman has his own ideas for teaching children mathematics.
***
Process vs. Outcome
Feynman proposed that first-graders learn to add and subtract more or less the way he worked out complicated integrals— free to select any method that seems suitable for the problem at hand.A modern-sounding notion was, The answer isn’t what matters, so long as you use the right method. To Feynman no educational philosophy could have been more wrong. The answer is all that does matter, he said. He listed some of the techniques available to a child making the transition from being able to count to being able to add. A child can combine two groups into one and simply count the combined group: to add 5 ducks and 3 ducks, one counts 8 ducks. The child can use fingers or count mentally: 6, 7, 8. One can memorize the standard combinations. Larger numbers can be handled by making piles— one groups pennies into fives, for example— and counting the piles. One can mark numbers on a line and count off the spaces— a method that becomes useful, Feynman noted, in understanding measurement and fractions. One can write larger numbers in columns and carry sums larger than 10.
To Feynman the standard texts were flawed. The problem
29
+3
—
was considered a third-grade problem because it involved the concept of carrying. However, Feynman pointed out most first-graders could easily solve this problem by counting 30, 31, 32.
He proposed that kids be given simple algebra problems (2 times what plus 3 is 7) and be encouraged to solve them through the scientific method, which is tantamount to trial and error. This, he argued, is what real scientists do.
“We must,” Feynman said, “remove the rigidity of thought.” He continued “We must leave freedom for the mind to wander about in trying to solve the problems…. The successful user of mathematics is practically an inventor of new ways of obtaining answers in given situations. Even if the ways are well known, it is usually much easier for him to invent his own way— a new way or an old way— than it is to try to find it by looking it up.”
It was better in the end to have a bag of tricks at your disposal that could be used to solve problems than one orthodox method. Indeed, part of Feynman’s genius was his ability to solve problems that were baffling others because they were using the standard method to try and solve them. He would come along and approach the problem with a different tool, which often led to simple and beautiful solutions.
***
If you give some thought to how Farnam Street helps you, one of the ways is by adding to your bag of tricks so that you can pull them out when you need them to solve problems. We call these tricks mental models and they work kinda like lego — interconnecting and reinforcing one another. The more pieces you have, the more things you can build.
Complement this post with Feynman’s excellent advice on how to learn anything.
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