The Wall Street Journal article The $200,000-a-Year Mine Worker reports that those willing to work in dangerous, isolated, and difficult conditions can earn large amounts of money in Australia. The article profiles James Dinnison who is enjoying the lifestyle his hefty paychecks purchase but does not see much need to save for tomorrow.
One of the fastest-growing costs in the global mining industry are workers like James Dinnison: the 25-year-old high-school dropout from Western Australia makes $200,000 a year running drills in underground mines to extract gold and other minerals.
The heavily tattooed Mr. Dinnison, who started in the mines seven years ago earning $100,000, owns a sky-blue 2009 Chevy Ute, which cost $55,000 before a $16,000 engine enhancement, and a $44,000 custom motorcycle. The price tag on his chihuahua, Dexter, which yaps at his feet: $1,200.
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"It's a historical shortage," says Sigurd Mareels, director of global mining for research firm McKinsey & Co. Not just in Australia, but around the world. In Canada, example, the Mining Industry Council foresees a shortfall of 60,000 to 90,000 workers by 2017. Peru must find 40,000 new miners by the end of the decade.
Behind this need for mine workers is a construction boom in China and other emerging economies that has ramped up the demand for iron ore, used to make steel, and other metals used in construction, such as copper, typically used for wiring buildings.
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Mr. Dinnison went into mining solely for the pay. While in high school, he said, he broke somebody's skull and teeth "in a bar fight that I deeply regret and have never repeated". He said the judge in his case told him that he could spend a year in prison or pay a $10,000 fine plus $16,000 compensation for the victim. "I needed the money, so I went to the mines," he said.
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Despite having earned roughly US$1 million since he started, he has no savings and doesn't apologize. "The mines are so dull, that when you get back here, everything is stimulation and excitement," he said. "The money I spend supports other businesses because of the [stuff] I blow it on."
Mr. Dinnison proudly calls himself a Cub—a Cashed-up Bogan, a bogan referring to Australian slang for an uneducated blue-collar worker. Books and documentaries are coming out about this group, exploring the country's unease with the thought that conspicuous consumption by undereducated people is what is helping to keep the country afloat.
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Mr. Dinnison hopes to be promoted to another underground job paying $1,400 a day, up from $800 a day. Lina Mitchell, his 28-year-old fiancée, said she is committed to teaching Mr. Dinnison how to manage his money. "The miners will spend the money on cars, bikes, parties," she said. Mr. Dinnison, meanwhile, said he is committed to mining. "I'm qualified enough now that I'll always have a job," he said. "Without mining, I'd be an auto mechanic making $600 a week. I love mining, mate."
Ah to be young and never having heard of commodity boom and bust cycles...
New York Times: How a Financial Pro Lost His House
The New York Times article: How a Financial Pro Lost His House has another New York Times financial reporter confessing to his personal finance failures. Interesting that two years after the Edmund L. Andrews fiasco, the New York Times is trying this again. I guess it is good to know that the whole "write a book to help dig myself out of my financial mess and get free publicity for it from my employer" playbook is still working. Carl Richards book - The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money, as the article makes sure to mention, is due out in January.
What would be a nice follow-up would be if the Times could convince one of their other reporters who perhaps got themselves into financial trouble but managed to resolve it by not walking away from their mortgage or getting the bank to forgive hundreds of thousands worth of debt - to tell us their story. But then, I doubt that person has a book deal...
The Wall Street Journal Article: As Jobs Vanish, Sticking to Knitting profiles recent University of California Berkley graduate Shelby Stofle (24 years old) of Suisun City, California who has been unable to find steady work (let alone something that utilizes her degree).
"It wasn't what everybody tells you is going to happen when you graduate," said Ms. Stofle, who studied abroad in Ghana while in college, raises chickens in her backyard and dyes wool as a hobby.
Discouraged, she shifted gears and signed up in January for a free state-run training program near Suisun City. Over several months, she learned how to install solar panels and other skills, but nothing translated into a job.
In March, Ms. Stofle was hired to tend and sell plants for a nursery. But her hours have been cut and she now works part-time, taking home about $1,200 a month after taxes.
"You hear you're going to get into a career, and it's going to start paying a lot—that's why you go to school," she said. "But I make as much now as my 17-year-old co-worker. I took the time and spent the money to go to school. Did it mean anything?"
Her husband, Greg King, a 29-year-old student at California State University at Sacramento, brings in $700 after taxes each month as a part-time food clerk and bookkeeper at grocery chain Safeway.
That leaves the couple scraping to pay their monthly bills, including $525 in rent, a $300 car payment, and Ms. Stofle's student-loan payment of $110. Their expenses will increase when Mr. King graduates in December with $30,000 in student loans.
Her plan at this point? "With many employment options exhausted, she said she feels her best shot is to set up her own business, selling her hand-made scarves at craft fairs and farmers' markets."http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
My advice? For what it is worth - explore all of your entrepreneurial options with knitting, but focus on where the best profit potential lies. Is spending your time knitting scarfs and then manning fair booths selling them the best way to profit or is setting up a web site or Etsy store and bulk selling your hand dyed wool? Maybe it is spinning raw wool and selling that to others who want to hand dye but don't live in a rural area with access to farms. Perhaps it is a combination of all of the above. The important thing is to try to figure out how to produce enough income throughout the year to consider this a viable career.
The anemic interest rate CD options are getting me down
My ING Direct CD is nearing its maturity date and I spent some time this morning looking into my options for a roll-over. The options are not looking very good at all. As you can see below, right now if I allow my CD to roll-over for another 12 month period my interest rate will drop from 1.40% down to 0.60%. This is utter craziness when you consider the regular online savings account at ING is paying 1% (higher rate than most of their CDs!)
Looking around, the better rates for CDs seem to be found on the Ally Bank website. As always, the longer you are willing to lock your money away, the better the interest rate. But Ally adds the wrinkle of providing a 2 & 4 year "Raise your rate" options. This at least provides some peace of mind that if rates do miraculously start climbing again, that you can adjust your rate once or twice (depending on if you go for the 2 or 4 year option) upward.
But picking among these options/rates is still depressing. I feel like I am fishing around in the bottom of a chip bag hunting for the biggest crumb. No matter which large crumb I eventually uncover, it is still a crumb and not a whole chip. How the heck can I grow my cash savings with these crumby interest rate offerings?!?
For now, I have set my ING CD to close when it matures later this month and that money will automatically migrate over to my regular ING Savings account which is at least earning the 1% interest rate. I have a couple of weeks to decide which Ally Bank CD option I will go for.
The New York Times article: Back to the Land, Reluctantly has author and freelance writer Susan Gregory Thomas recounting the many frugal chores she performs to keep her husband and three children fed on her unpredictable salary.
As a 42-year-old Brooklyn mother of three, what I care about is lunch, and feeding my family on a tenuous and unpredictable income. And so I have 20 fresh-egg-producing hens and a little garden that yields everything from blackberries to butternut squash to burdock root.
My turn with spade and hoe started a few years ago when I found myself divorced and flat broke. My livelihood as a freelance writer went out the window when the economy tanked. I literally could afford beans, the dried kind, which I’d thought were for school art projects or teaching elementary math. And I didn’t know how to cook.
Luckily, my late father had hammered into me that grit was more important than talent. So, when I couldn’t afford fancy food — never mind paraben-free shampoo — for my babies, I figured, if peasants in 11th-century Sicily did all this, how hard could it be?
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Bread wasn’t hard either; it was just a drawn-out procedure. Yeast, water, a little honey, salt, whole wheat flour, and assorted seeds. Mix; wait for rising; knead; wait; knead; wait; bake. I made batches and froze them. So long, Eli Zabar’s 10-buck Health Loaf. Hi there, homemade loaf for less than $1. I soon realized that it’s not necessary to follow every recipe to a T, particularly if it calls for expensive items. For example, if a recipe called for red wine, I used diluted balsamic vinegar, or even apple cider vinegar and a wee bit of honey mixed with water. If the recipe called for saffron I used turmeric, which is cheap in bulk at Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights, Queens. And I always added twice as much garlic to everything.
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I had to be sold on the chicken idea, two years later. It seemed like a lot of work, flies and yucky upkeep. But an out-of-work antiques restorer (who later became my boyfriend and is now my husband) persuaded me to do it. We ordered 2-day-old peeping chicks for $2.75 apiece by mail and kept them under heat lamps in a Pack ’n Play in my daughters’ room for about a month, and they became the coolest pets and science lesson ever. Five months later, we had a coop and four hens.
Today, we eat a mostly vegetarian diet, with plenty of protein. My cleaning products are distilled white vinegar for wiping and baking soda for scouring (and also for tooth brushing). Our soap and shampoo is Castile mixed with olive oil. We live this way for $100 a week. And I’m still the sole breadwinner.
Admirable, but as she notes, time consuming. That peasant in 11th century Sicily may not have had Ms. Thomas' Columbia education, but then they, like Ms. Thomas, did not have to commute and work a regular 9-5 job. That always seems to be the secret when you read about people growing their own produce section or raising their own protein - they don't have jobs. Two adults with only one "breadwinner" but that one working from home and not full-time - makes producing your own $1 home baked bread loaves possible. But it is this section of the article I find a bit disingenuous
IT is a lot of work. You have to be organized and able to improvise on your feet. But, frankly, it’s awesome. Before we embarked on this Waldenesque life, the only thing I had ever used my hands for was picking up a book or typing on my keyboard; today, my family and I are living our own scrappy take on President Obama’s promise of “Yes, we can!”
Even if things turn around financially, I don’t think I could stomach going to Whole Foods (except maybe for olive oil) because my biggest revelation in terms of self-sufficiency is this: It is no big deal. You can tell yourself anything is too difficult, or you can just do it. And you do not need to reconstruct your worldview or take issue with others.
You just need to be hungry.
By "turn around financially" does she mean money will somehow appear that will not mean her hands will now be spending more time typing? Self-sufficiency is awesome - but it can also be a full-time job. She is fortunate that her income covers rent, taxes, utilities, transportation, and the $100 per week she mentions in the article for feeding her household. If work starts flowing in again and she does get busy typing again, why would her only choice be heading to Whole Foods rather than her backyard to pick-up dinner? This is the part I found troublesome. Is there no middle road that can work for someone who does not have time to do it all?
Here’s some good news for homeowners who have gone green and installed energy-saving features but haven’t been sure whether appraisers will credit them with higher valuations: Thanks to a new industry-issued appraisal addendum, the odds have improved that they’ll get the market value they’re due.
The Appraisal Institute, the country’s largest and most influential association in its field, published the long-awaited addendum Sept. 29. It’s designed to be attached to any standard appraisal report covering a property with significant green features. Owners, sellers, buyers, refinancers and real estate agents don’t have to wait for an appraiser to use it. They can download it at no cost and ashttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifk that it be made part of the appraisal submitted to the lender.
The addendum won’t guarantee that the appraiser will raise your property value by the tens of thousands of dollars you spent on your solar panel array, high-efficiency windows or geothermal system. But it should guarantee at a minimum that he or she will take notice of those energy improvements and seek a value adjustment consistent with your local market conditions.
Ah, the tyranny of a standardized form. If a tick box next to solar panel does not exist - how can it be appraised? Glad to know the form is getting a bit longer and now includes these green features.
It is nice to see that the form includes both low-cost and high-cost improvements (solar shades to panel arrays). The location section includes the ability to value for "walk score" and access to public transportation. Pretty cool and well worth reviewing the form (below) to see how this might capture additional value for your home.
The Wall Street Journal video embedded below interviews a Hong Kong housewife who lives with her husband and two children in a 150 sq ft apartment. She pays 3,730 HKD (about $479) in rent (soon to be raised to $577).
My small house feels palatial in comparison. The poor woman appears to be depressed - who wouldn't be? I assume her husband and children spend most of their time away at work and school while as a housewife she spends the majority of her time in the small space.
