The Workermonkey

Monday, February 27, 2006

Congratulations me 

# posted by Brancibeer @ 2/27/2006 04:30:00 PM

I'm officially debt free. I just said 'fuck it' and paid the rest of my student loans off. I guess it feels good. I didnt have alot compared to most people, but i really made the push to get that shit paid off. Now its all banking black from here on out. That is until i go into major debt by taking on a mortgage. But all in good time my friends.

So i had a slight revelation this weekend. After discussing things with friends and evaluating my life to date, i've decided that i want to move back to CT. Now this doesnt mean for good, but maybe just for a while. I can feel myself falling apart here and i think i need to go back to base to recollect. I dont have much of a support function here anymore. And when you need that, and its not there...things really start to crumble. I wont be shy about saying i've been having a hard time lately, because i have. And its kinda scary. I've always prided myself with my self control, astute drive for life, and general 'having it all together-ness". I'm lost and i'm out of control. "He had been happy for so long, he didn't realize that he was indeed unhappy". I can honestly say i was happy thru the ages of 21-24. I'm unhappy here and this place and its people aren't helping. I always told myself that happiness comes first, and i need to follow thru on that.

I'm not talking anytime too soon. I'm thinking within the year, ideally around November. So keep your eyes out for positions around the area fellas. Brancibeer wants to come back to the NE. I'm feeling awefully dirty in the dirty.

18 comments

congratulations buddy! and dont worry, that dirty feeling washes away after a week or so of showering.

By  josh, at Monday, February 27, 2006 10:23:00 PM  

Nice job on the loan payoff! I can't wait to announce when mine are gone.

By  ron, at Monday, February 27, 2006 10:24:00 PM  

Congrats on the loan, I am sure that feels great. I will never be debt free because I am paying mine to the full 15 year plan and will surely have other loans by then. But why pay my 1.875% school loan when I can put that money in a CD at 4.6%?

There are some listings for jobs you may like at http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/jobs/index.cfm

By  Damon, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 1:10:00 AM  

ok, who had 2-27-06 in the pool?

By  Supreme Monkey Overlord, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 8:43:00 AM  

New England is best and CT ROCKS!

By  wyldshaman, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 9:00:00 AM  

Speaking of financial responsibility... has anyone thought of like investing or saving or anything like that? Looney, i know you were into that for a while. Chump, i know you were doing things. Damon seems astute. We need to share our experiences and advice to help eachother out. Lets make use of this monkey community. I'm going to look for a book or something.

By  Brancibeer, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 12:27:00 PM  

I have a Roth IRA that I opened in 2001 I think, it has gained about 55% over what I put in in '01 and '03. Doing very well recently as you might guess I am not betting on oil, so higher energy prices do my stocks right.

I like the Motley Fool books and I used to use their website, but it's not free anymore.

Thanks for the compliment.

I basically lost everything in a $500 cash account before I opened the Roth, but I suppose it was good practice. I find finance interesting, but don't follow my stocks as much as I should.

And I also love New England, but didn't realize it really until I went to school in PA. As of now, it looks like I am leaving Sthlm in September and will probably go to Burlington, VT.

By  Damon, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 1:35:00 PM  

i put money into an IRA every year for tax purposes, usually whatever the limit is, about 3-4000$ i think. the bulk of my savings ends up in CDs, usually a year or two at a time for a better rate. I have some stock that i've inherited and it seems to do ok for me, i really just leave it alone because i don't have time/am too lazy to keep up with watching the stockmarket. i'd like to do something with part of it but i'm not sure what yet. i need to do my research first.

i have a copy of investing for dummies which isn't bad and does explain a lot of these things. the motley fool was fantastic, but now it's not so great, unless you pay for it.

I agree with the helping each other out community thing. None of us are going to get rich working for other people and we're all in the same finacial bracket. Everytime i try to think of a way to make all this wrk togeather i end up thinking of a commune stlye living arrangement for all of us. We're all smart people and we all have the same goal for ourselves of wanting something better/whats best for ourselves.

It sounds nuts, but we have enough close friends that if we really did pool a bunch of our real world resources togeather (i.e. money) we could do something sweet and make a lot of it for ourselves. Even if its something simple like a restaurant we all own or something we'd be able to make a nice profit. We all have different goals in life, but we can't do shit without money, so unfortunetly it all starts there. we need money. lots of it. now, how do we do that?

By  Supreme Monkey Overlord, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 2:54:00 PM  

Selling porn on the website is a go, then?

By  DJ Booze Piñata, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:07:00 PM  

Theres an old saying, "never get into the restuarant business". I think its a saying for a reason. But pooling our resources is a good idea. As long as its not some stupid pyrimyd scheme...what was the name of that one Joe and Barton were doing?

By  Brancibeer, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:46:00 PM  

i'm not sure, but they insisted it wasnt a pyramid scheme. i think it was called pyramids-r-us.

By  josh, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 4:13:00 PM  

selling porn may be easy and if any of us were really good at the website stuff, we could. it makes money and all you'd have to do is make the same crap everyone else on the internet is doing.

we're entrepanures (spelling?), we just need to get the idea started, running to the point of letting other people take over, then we sit back and move on the the next idea. Once you get a few ideas/projects under you, you've built a nice little base, and you can move on to bigger money projects and higher revenue endevors.

never get into the resaurant business unless you want to work a ton of hours for minimal gain. unless a restaurant really takes off and franchises its hard to make a lot of money doing it. Take any local restaruant ower as an example. most of them own three or four places and they all kind of keep each other afloat. The people who own the glock aren't going to make millions with it, unless they had a glock style place in every local town in CT. Tino knows way more about the restaurant business then i do but it's just an example.

By  Supreme Monkey Overlord, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 4:22:00 PM  

When I get back I fully intend to build small hydro plants. I just need to borrow around $2.3 million per MW. Assuming 10% and worst case expenses and income, it pays off in 12 years, then profits $344k a year. Oh and best case numbers, it pays back in 3 years and profits $680k a year. Neither case takes into account the North East regional greenhouse gas reduction credit trading system, which could be additional income. Then again, given the rising interest rates 10% is too low. Oh yeah, so if you didn't get it, this is where my money is going. If restuarants don't profit, bars must? Everything sells for four times what it costs in a local store, so maybe 5-6 times what they get it for.

By  Damon, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 5:42:00 PM  

the best idea i've seen for hydro power was a small home unit for people with a good flowing stream near by, but a good idea none the less. i want in on the building of the power plants, i'm sure the company i'm with now can build some of it. and apparently i'm being trained in the construction of such objects, not nessecarily the design but i think i can successfully manage it. If i were to continue my education i think i'd go for something along the lines of engineering management or just plain business. looney, maybe i can just borrow your text books instead of the business degree. I bet it's faster.

restaurants do make a small killing off of drinks. its one of thier best moneyt makers because soda is so cheap. water and sugar, mix, serve. the syrup is dirt cheap, tino can confim this, i think we were talking about it just the other day.

Look at the simple activity we've had on this one post in only a day. fantastic.

By  Supreme Monkey Overlord, at Tuesday, February 28, 2006 7:34:00 PM  

I'm no hydro engineer, but the small unit for a 'good flowing' stream is probably a dead end market. You got a stream? No one on my street does.

Personally, I see the best investment for me right now to be a super fast sports car. Subaru WRX STi, why not?

By  ron, at Wednesday, March 01, 2006 8:44:00 AM  

no but what about the one that runs under higganum center? the resevoir over flow, that thing would crank out a bunch of power, plus the sizes are scalable for different projects and different water ways. there has to be a million small crappy streams like that around the country that would make a difference. a lot of our power generation can be solved by smaller scale means, a few small wind turbines on a house or solar panels everywhere, think smaller, not bigger.

By  Supreme Monkey Overlord, at Wednesday, March 01, 2006 2:00:00 PM  

You are right Matt. Although PV is currently only 11% efficient, versus 35% efficiency for large scale solar thermal to stirling engine generation. But there is about 10% loss in the grid, which distributed generation reduces, and it also helps avoid the massive blackouts like we had in '03 I think it was, that show just how weak the grid is. The problem with private wind is that hardly anyone is willing to live somewhere that is windy enough to provide decent power. Hydro is the exception however, as people love having a stream on their property. My father owns a piece of that stream between Little City road and the Res and he is interested in putting some turbines in it, but the laws don't make it worth his while as he'd get paid wholesale for the power unless he negotiates a contract with CLP for the tiny generation facility. That is assuming he could get a permit to alter the water flow which is unlikey. You can have hydro without a dam, but you lose the ability to store potential which is the big advantage over wind and solar. Too bad they just rebuilt the Res dam, they could have put a decent size turbine in there and probably have gotten power for the center's lights and several of the buildings. What I want to do is buy some nice tall dams like that (VT has 1200 dams) and convert them, so that the impact on the environment is nill, but it's clean power. Today though, more often dams are removed than built because people didn't realize how they devastate the river ecosystem when they were building so many in the past.

By  Damon, at Wednesday, March 01, 2006 3:43:00 PM  

yeah the new dam they built could have powered all the new lights and crap they put in down in the center. One of the biggest atvantages of the small stuff, is your house is already connected to the grid. thats one of the big hurdles for starting a project in the middle of nowhere, trying to connect to a grid for uninterupted service.

My uncle built a house recently in VT where he has a driveway thats about 3/4 of a mile long, one of the most expensive parts of hte house was running the telephone poles to it so that he could be connected to the grid. he had to pay what i think was like a grand per pole, and he need like 5 poles to reach the house and avoid the rock cliff.

the biggest blockage of new dams is the environmental impact they have on fish and the surrounding wildlife which is put under water. so why build new ones when there are already a bunch that have already screwed up the ecosystem and aren't generating power.

the power grids in this country are actually a massive problem too, i've read the 10% number but i 've also seen numbers much higher for how much is lost in transmission. part of the problem is that we're trying to send modern electrical requirements through lines designed before the turn of the century.

By  Supreme Monkey Overlord, at Wednesday, March 01, 2006 4:03:00 PM  

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