Not a fan of blockbuster been using Netflix for a long time (I did jump ship to blockbusters online service temporarily when it first came out - the incentives were too good).
To get nostalgic for a second, I will miss the experience of visiting the movie rental stores. The excitement was palpable as a kid - walking the rows, looking at all the movie covers, hoping that Dad would let me rent a game, etc.
The social experience of walking around with other strangers, looking for the entertainment of the evening...there was something fun and special about it that Netflix will never capture.
...the convenience of netflix trumps that though ;-)
I've got a 8 month baby boy and wonderful wife that are the center of my universe right now.
I got a chuckle about the time invested into the childbirth process; my wife teased me about knowing more about having a baby than she did ;)
That said, I am spending less time on my business - whereas in the past after coming home from the office I would take a break for dinner, the gym, then get back to my desk at home and work into the night. That schedule has changed drastically - I would rather spend the evening playing with my son and hanging out with my wife than working. After the little one goes to sleep though, I try to put in a couple hours of highly focused work.
Overall, I think I'm almost as productive (after the first 4 months) - when you have a child, the need to maximize time and effort are amplified.
> But I do think everyone should work at a restaurant at least once in their life. It's a customer-service learning experience and gives you an appreciation for the staff when you patronize restaurants later.
Very much agreed - I worked in the kitchen of a family run Chinese restaurant during my junior and senior years of high school. Did everything from taking orders, to chopping tons of cabbage, mopping up a drunk assholes puke to de-veining shrimp. All at the same time! J/K ;)
Although it sucked some of the time, looking back at it, I would have done it all over again. Learned a lot (I can cook Chinese and can put together a great dinner very quick), made long lasting relationships (the same family still owns the restaurant and I stop by whenever I visit my parents) and the customer service aspects have been ingrained in me since.
I subscribe to the John Bogle school of passive index fund investing (Rebalancing once a year) - Currently have a 401k that I max out using Vanguard funds. I'm also working on saving a 12-month 'emergency' fund. When the emergency fund is complete, I'll move on to adding more funds to my taxable account that I have with Scottrade.
For whatever it worth, my current asset allocation is:
Vanguard Institutional Index VINIX 25%
Vanguard Extended Market Idx Instl VIEIX 15%
Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Index Inst VFWSX 35%
Vanguard Inst Total Bond Market Index VBMPX 25%
I use the following site and forums for my investing questions and info:
Also worth a look is FutureAdvisor (disclaimer: YC S10). Bo and Jon are working on helping people answer these questions - they're both very smart guys who really know what they're talking about (the latter is a surprisingly rare quality in both the financial and startup communities, in my experience).
I take the same approach of a diversified, low-cost ETF portfolio, but a different allocation than you have. Googling for "lazy portfolio" is a good starting point to find out more about this.
In general, I prefer to think about "saving for the future" instead of "saving for retirement". You never know what's around the corner and what you might need, so having a buffer when you need it can make your life a ton easier.
A fairly financially sound hacker! Nice work! I have some what similar portfolio like yrs, I take on a bit more risk. I also have one small portion to kiva.org .. I have my own property, so that's taken care too. You could look at real estate too.
You are all bonds and equities. This is betting on the previous 30 years of financial history going forward. You will be wiped out in a deflationary environment or in a very high commodities inflationary environment.
Harry Browne's "Permanent Portfolio" is a wiser mix. You need at least some precious metals and commodities specific exposure.
Personally, I've been thinking a couple acres of black walnut saplings might be one of the best long term investments.
I hold commodity ETF's in my taxable account. No reason behind it other than they were in my scottrade account prior to me getting behind the index fund strategy.
> This is betting on the previous 30 years of financial history going forward.
How does that old yarn go, past performance is no indication of future return. ;)
I agree - A 'buy RubyPoints' image/link might be desirable; and similarly to parent comment, what is the major incentive here? What site(s) currently offers redemption of Rubypoints?
Rather than having to sign-in to view how a transaction is done, can you have a demo page that includes 'dummy' rubypoints that can be redeemed to view a pdf/mp3 - for me, it would help make a decision about whether the service is useful or not.
In general, cool idea! I'm just the type of person that would like to see the service in action without having to login/create an account first.
We setup a presentation that included 8 different individual businesses (total headcount in the meeting/presentation was about 20); My business partner knew some of these folks and invited them to hear our offer. The others, we emailed - not framed as a sale but to check out our technology and provide feedback.
After the presentation, we had 2 businesses ready to cut us a check and 3 that later signed and the others provided us valuable feedback and references.
There is an interesting book by Adrian Slywotzky, The Art of Profitability, that goes over various profit models. I think the above example falls into 'Multi-Component' profit, in that the same product (water) is priced differently in different businesses (super market, convenience store, delivery); since customers behave differently in each purchasing situation you see the ability to price the product in various ways.
Another example would be how Coke is priced (to restaurants, grocery stores, vending machine).
A Dell computer running Win 2K server w/ a Pentium 400MHz & 512MB RAM. Its an old server but has not crashed in years (I've rebooted for maintenance here and there, but thats it).
> the consumers never wrote off Netflix and that's pretty much all that matters.
Not that I necessarily wrote off netflix, but I did jump ship to Blockbuster's online service for short while when it was first introduced. The ability to return the movies I got in the mail with any movie at their physical store was a pretty nice feature, in addition I got to rent one game per month as well.
A couple of months later, blockbuster started changing their policies and I switched back to trusty netflix.
When blockbuster first introduced their service I thought that netflix might be in trouble...but my unpublished prediction was unfounded! ;)
Growing my own food is something that was instilled in me by my parents - We always had fruit trees, nuts and veggies growing in our backyard. My Dad having an MS in Agronomy didnt hurt either.
Currently in backyard in CA:
-Plums, lemons, oranges, pomegranate (my personal favorite), avocado and fig tree.
-Eggplant, jalapeños, bellpepper, corn
-Mint is the only herb we're growing
Beyond watering every evening (I actually find this therapeutic in a way), the twice a year fertilizer (the fresh stuff we get from Dad's friend) and once a year pruning, our backyard garden provides us food year round.
To get nostalgic for a second, I will miss the experience of visiting the movie rental stores. The excitement was palpable as a kid - walking the rows, looking at all the movie covers, hoping that Dad would let me rent a game, etc.
The social experience of walking around with other strangers, looking for the entertainment of the evening...there was something fun and special about it that Netflix will never capture.
...the convenience of netflix trumps that though ;-)