Balancing your checkbook

Ok, so I guess most people don't have checkbooks anymore - or at least don't use them regularly.  But surely you still have to keep your checking account register balanced?  I have not taken a survey on this, but as time passes I am finding out that more and more people I know haven't balanced their accounts in years, or even over a decade!

 

Am I the only one that still bothers with maintaining a balanced account?  Perhaps I am behind the times.  After all, with check card purchases the transaction clears the register in a day or two - so you don't have to worry about transactions outstanding for weeks or months.  I will point out, however, that I use very few checks, yet there is always at least one that hangs out there for months before being deposited.  It doesn't usually amount to much, but is still mildly annoying.

 

I guess I am just stubborn when it comes to this type of stuff.  I want to know that all accounts are perfectly balanced to the penny and I like to know where all money goes.  It's not that I am trying to be cheap (although I am frugal - there's a difference!), I just feel that it is good financial house keeping.  How else can you budget a savings plan or other expenses if you don't even know how much money you are making and spending?  Maybe everyone makes so much money now that they always have thousands of excess dollars hanging around in their checking accounts.  Even in that case I would argue that the accounts should still be balanced and maintained in order to more effectively utilize savings or investing plans.

 

 

The Man Time Forgot

I have to say, this was one of the most captivating books I have yet to read.  I realize that having read an unrespectable finite number of books this may not mean much, but alas it was also a NY Times Best Seller.

 

The story is of Briton Hadden, the lesser-known founder of Time Magazine (Time Inc.).  His partner, Henry Luce, lived much longer than Hadden and apparently made a concerted effort to take credit as the founder of Time.  Hadden is cast as an energetic, youthful, fun-loving, brilliant journalist who changed the style of American journalism forever.  Everyone who met Hadden loved to be around him.  He was always joking, pulling pranks, and was the center of attention everywhere he went.  It was his childhood dream to create a news magazine that would summarize the news every week in a clear, concise collection of stories and articles that told a tale of people and events like never before.  Even as a young school kid he talked about a weekly news magazine that could be folded twice and would fit in a shirt pocket.  Hadden was a brilliant writer even as a child.  He would become the editor for the Yale paper and be elected most likely to succeed by his classmates.

 

He followed through with his dream, and chose Henry Luce to start the company with him.  Luce was his friend and most competitive rival throughout his days at Hotchkiss and Yale.  Hadden always bested him and Luce often seemed quietly bitter about it - though he loved Hadden as a friend.  However, apparently Luce's unyielding competitive drive and determination to be successful would never allow him to treat Hadden like a true friend.  Twice while Hadden was alive Luce had betrayed him to advance his own agenda.

 

Hadden died at the age of 30, only a few years after starting Time.  He had become a millionaire the same year and Time was well on its way to national prominence.  Though visibly torn up by Hadden's death, Luce rarely ever spoke a word of Hadden for the rest of his life.  Luce was a brilliant business man and carried Time to where it is now as well as founding other successful magazine ventures like Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated.  But Luce never really spoke of Hadden as the creator of Time. He never mentioned that Time was Hadden's idea originally and suppressed the fact that Hadden was the early genius behind Time and wove its early success.  Without Hadden, Luce would have never experienced life the way he did.  Hadden catapulted Luce into stardom, died at 30, and Luce never looked back.

 

I found the book to be sad towards the end.  It was hard not to love Hadden throughout the book.  He befriended the outcasts, took in stray animals, and was the life of every party.  To read about him laying on his deathbed, helpless, but still making jokes about it left me sort of empty.  I wanted it to somehow end with Hadden realizing the success of his dream and be quietly satisfied that he accomplished his life's dream.  Instead he died wanting much more out of life and left Henry Luce to steal his dream and take credit for it all. 

 

 

Is it the new year yet?

Just like that it's January 2nd, 2009. It's not that I expected some kind of hazy aura of change to sweep over my town; Yet, the the current state of my environment is slightly unfulfilling. Although my calendar changed, and I will inevitably have to strike through "2008" (as I am a creature of habit) on documents for 4 months, nothing has really changed.

I suppose this is one reason that new year's resolutions are so hard to stick with. Something prevented you from making those changes in 2008. You knew they were worthy of pursuit, yet fell into a routine that shunned complete efficiency in productivity. Whatever it was about you, or whatever it was about your life, that caused you to sink into a rut... well, it's still there in 2009. Of course when I say "you", I mean "I".

Nearly 14 years removed from my last physics course, I think the word I am looking for is inertia. I bet Isaac Newton was really good at following through with his new year's resolutions. After all, he was the first to discover the law of inertia, which is apparently what keeps our resolutions from fabricating. The law of inertia pretty much says that things don't change unless acted on by an outside force.

"When a force acts upon an object to cause a displacement of the object, it is said that work was done upon the object"

And therein lies the problem: work. Nothing will change without an outside force acting on it. Producing that outside force requires work to be done. Bummer.

Physics and experience tell us that it takes energy to do work. So all we need is additional, or better, ways of creating energy and our new years' goals and resolutions will be a piece of cake.

So what's my point? I really didn't have one when I started writing this post - but if anything, I guess my point is that just because the year changed from 2008 to 2009it doesn't make it any easier to do the things you know you want to do (or should be doing). Those things are still going to require the same amount of energy and effort to accomplish that they would have a couple of months ago. The only real thing that we have going for us now is motivation. And motivation can be a pretty good source of energy.