Money Buys Happiness and Discontent

Everyone has it in the back of their mind what they would do if they won the lottery.  Quit their job, buy their dream car, go on vacation.  You hear about the people that win hundreds of millions of dollars in the lottery and think that they are just set for life.  My wife and I always have that conversation of what would we do if we won that kind of money when they show on the news the people that win those multimillion dollar jackpots.  Think of what you could do with that kind of money.  The possibilities are endless.  There is also the bad side to winning the lottery I assume.  

What would you fear most if you won the lottery?

 Every once in a while, we stop and watch the show 'The Lottery Changed My Life' (or whatever it is called).  We talk about what we could and would do when they highlight the people that win the multimillion dollar jackpots.  It starts out with good intentions.  Paying of credit cards, student loans, investing for the future.  Donate to organizations we care about.  Then the question comes up as to what would happen after that.  Because we don't have enough debt to cover as much as some of these people win.  Would we continue to work?  I think so.  I couldn't handle not doing anything for the rest of my life.  Granted, some vacation time would happen first.  And we sure as hell wouldn't work full time.  You know, work twenty hours a week at a low stress job.  Maybe volunteer some time at a museum.  Then the question comes up as to where would we live?  Would we stay in Minnesota?  Move back home to Michigan?  I suggest living out in the middle of nowhere, but that idea gets shot down every time. 

That is all well and good, and actual things to consider, but what about the downside to coming into a lot shit ton of money?  I would fear moving to a small area, like our hometown, because news like that spreads faster than the clap in a frat house.  You don't want to think about this, but crime happens in small towns.  And when news that a multimillionaire moves into town, what do you think would happen?  You also have to be aware of 'friends' that you are making.  You would have the friends that you have had since forever ago and I don't think you would have to worry about them, but when people that wouldn't give you the time of day back in high school wants to hang out all the time, you might want to take time to think about that.  These sound like dire thoughts, but they have to be considered.  You don't want to be taken advantage of.  The obvious answer to this situation is not to publicize the fortune that has fallen upon you.  In order to do that, I would think that you would have to keep up appearances.  Like having a job, not driving around in a flashy new car, not buying the biggest house on the block. 

Being robbed is obviously something to fear if you ever to win the lottery.  But something more so is people wanting to take advantage of you.  Winning the lottery isn't something that happens every day.  People would take notice.  You can only control so much.  Don't throw out many flags and you might possibly avoid some of these situations.  But most likely you won't in which case you can deal with them.  No one forced you to play the lottery.  You have to deal with the consequences. 

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More on Contracts

I've been thinking on what I wrote about previously on getting rid of multi-year contracts.  I know there would be no chance in hell that this idea would work.  I don't always live in the world of possibility, but I enjoy thinking about alternatives to what we have.  Nothing makes me cringe more than see these decade long contracts because everyone knows a player (more often than not) is not going to be staying around for the full length of the contract.

So why wouldn't it work?  Monetary security for one.  Players probably don't want to go season to season not knowing where they will be playing the next year or how much they will be making.  You always hear players playing at a higher level because of a 'contract year', so why wouldn't they play for their contracts?  Makes sense to me.  It could raise the level of play each and every year.  But these multi-year contracts guarantee they'll be getting paid what they think they are owed.  Who wants to go year to year and possibly make less money because of a bad year?  Not any player I can think of.  No one person I can think of either.  Who wants to make less money because you had a bad year at your job?

Who would want to pick up and move year to year?  One thing that makes me feel bad for professional athletes is the amount of time they spend traveling.  Especially the players that have families.  Every year, you see a handful of players miss one or two games because their wife/girlfriend gave birth.  The player gets there, sees the baby, and then is off again.  That would drive me nuts.  If I were in that situation, I would think having at least one week off to spend with your family would be a must.  Imagine being a kid and moving to different states once every two or three years?  But then again, it's no different than a military family is it?  But still, if given the option from moving every two years to maybe once every six or seven years?  I'm sure I would take the latter.

 From the aspect of a person who can't stand the amount of money athletes get paid, moving away from these multi-year contracts would make me really happy.  Why?  I'm not sure.  I think that it's the fact that they get so much money for what they love to do.  I love my job, why don't I get hundreds of millions of dollars?  Because I can't hit a nasty twelve to six curve?  Most likely.  It's jealousy.  I want athletes to know what it feels like living paycheck to paycheck.  From the aspect of a person who understands that athletes are actually people, I feel bad about the fact that they are away from their families for such a long period of time. 

Another solution?  Just pay everyone the same when they come into the league and raise their salary across the board once they reach career markers.  A raise at three years, five years, seven years, etc.  Imagine that.  Every player gets paid the same.  And the focus would be on trading and developing the farm system.  Interesting...

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A Solution to Contracts

Big contracts are all the rage when it comes to sports.  Whether it is baseball, hockey, football, or basketball, you see athletes signing seven and eight year contracts for hundreds of millions of dollars.  Even soccer players in Europe sign multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts.  The most recent of these contracts is Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angels Dodgers who signed a seven year, two hundred fifteen million dollar contract.  That's a lot of bank.  And he's worth it.  He is one of the top pitchers in the game right now.  Big name players get big time contracts.  That's just how it works.  On the same day, Max Scherzer of the Tigers signed a one year, fifteen million dollar contract.  Most believe that Scherzer is going to test the free market once the year long contract is up.  And he'll be looking for just about the same, if not more, amount of money and length of contract.  This got me thinking about something.  What if sports moved away from the longtime contracts and went with just one year contracts for everyone?  Of course, there are pros and cons to this idea.

The first problem is contracts themselves.  Especially the contracts that are in the seven year plus range.  Unless the players are getting signed to these monster contracts in their first couple of years, as the years go on, the player gets older and production typically goes south.  Most of the money is in the beginning or middle of the contract and tapers off near the end, so that makes sense.  But there are those contracts that are seen as absolutely horrible.  A player comes off a monster two years and signs a ten year contract and then is bitten by the injury bug for the next five years.  It's considered a bust move and the team is stuck with the player and the contract because no one wants a broken down player or the money he is owed.  That doesn't always happen, but when it does, it is scrutinized by everyone.  A few names that come to mind with contracts that don't seem to be worth it are Carl Crawford (Red Sox), Veron Wells (Blue Jays/Angels), Andruw Jones (Dodgers), and Albert Pujols (Angels).
 
Each year, teams go to arbitration with players on the roster that have been playing for six full years in the MLB.  There are more details to it than that, but that is the basic idea behind it.  Basic idea:  player comes to the bargaining table with what they think they should be paid (say five million dollars) and the organization comes to the table with what they think the player should be paid (say three million dollars).  They then negotiate with each other.  Sometimes they reach an agreement (say four million dollars) and everyone is happy.  Other times they don't reach an agreement and have to go before a panel of three arbitrators.  Again, there is more to it than that, but that's the basic idea.  You see players come out with long contracts and players come out with one or two year contracts.  It all depends.  Players and organizations usually reach an agreement.  They look at how well the player  played over the last few years and base their offer on that.  Of course the player wants to up-sell themselves and usually send a number that is worth more.  They gots ta get paid.  As long as everyone thinks the offers are fair, then they sign it and go about their business. 

So why can't organizations do this every year for every player?  Start with your stars or upcoming players that you definitely want to keep on your team and go from there.  You have the salary cap so you know where you need to spend the money.  Plus, it keeps the organization away from those long contracts.  Players who have monster years can benefit from it, but not so much that four years later, the organization is trying to move the player to free up salary cap space.  It would make the off season that much more interesting.  Can you imagine each winter wondering how your favorite team will keep their roster together?  Or, if there is a big name player that wouldn't be resigning with their team, could you imagine the frenzy to sign him?  So how would this work?  The way I see it:  the organization has until February 1st to sign the players that they want on their team.  Let's say there are four players that underwhelmed the previous year, the organization gives them the option to either take a demotion to AAA or become a free agent.  If you have a prospect that is ready to play, you can sign him to a contract.  After February 1st, all free agents can start talking to any team that they want. 

Big name players are still going to get a ton of money because of who they are and how good they are.  But the lesser known players could also get what is due to them based on their ability.  It may not be with your favorite team, but another team might see their ability and give them a chance.  It gives a team a chance to retool each year if they want.  Plus, they could sit down with the team and discuss how they are going to go about signing their players.  And, how awesome would it be for players to stand up and say 'I'll take less money this year if it'll help sign another guy.'  Hey, I can dream can't I? 

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A Year of Actual Goals

Over the past two years, I have set goals of reading.  Not the biggest goals for a year, but I felt great about it.  I am a slow reader (as my wife so lovingly reminds me each time she finishes a book) so setting goals for getting through the stacks on my shelf were great.  I am nearing the end of my unread books.  I have a stack of ten books and just got one for Christmas.  So eleven total books left to read.  Not bad, but I am in no rush to get them done by the beginning of 2015.  I have come up with a few goals for this year.  Actual goals.

Drink less.  While I do not have a full on drinking problem, I do know I want to drink less (it will be tied into another goal I have this year).  I came to the following realization near the end of December regarding my work and drinking:

Four days before Christmas and I haven't been drinking heavily after work. Each. Day. Yeah, I made a smart move.
— Michael Litzner (@Litzner) December 21, 2013

I always looked at November and December as 'the heavy drinking months' because of my job at Target.  Now that I have a far less stressful job, I have not been coming home really wanting to drink heavily.  I have come home and had one or two beers, but that is about it.  I no longer have a need for four or five just to unwind from work.  So, with a less stressful job I won't be drinking as much and therefore won't be spending as much money.  Which leads to my next goal. 

Save more.  Tomorrow, my wife starts a new job!  For the first time in about three and a half years, we will have two incomes.  And it's not like she hasn't been looking for a job, it's just that her industry has taken even longer to recover from the recession.  Thanks for that recession Obama Bush.  So with this new income development, we will be looking to move from our apartment hopefully.  We have been watching our spending ever since she was laid off, but it is hard to keep your savings balance up with one income.  And a retail income at that.  Who knows if we will have enough of a savings to start looking for an actual house or if we just stay another year and continue to save save save.  With this new job, my wife will be driving forty five to fifty minutes each way each day.  So a move south of where we are now will be prudent. 

Write more.  Tons more.  While I have felt great about what I have written over the past two years, I feel like I have missed out on plenty of writing opportunities.  Maybe it is because of writer's burnout or just shear laziness, but I know there were times over the last two years where I thought about writing and then just didn't.  I am going to set a goal of one hundred and twenty entries this year.  Ten a month if you do the math.  Do I have the most interesting or original ideas?  Not really.  Do I have the most interesting life that people want to follow?  Not really.  In the middle of August I did accidentally deleted a couple of published posts and some drafts that I was working on.  It was really disheartening after I realized I could not recover the deleted posts.  And the drafts I was working on were really in depth posts.  It was right around that time that I kind of gave up on writing hardcore last year.  At the bottom of each post, I will be keeping a counter to see if I can reach my writing goal for the year.  

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Pinching Pennies

In an attempt to keep our spending down, I have several things I do to help out.  As it is with most people, the ultimate goal is to buy a house (and I would like to do so in the near future) and these are a few things that can help keep money in the bank.  Are they going to help us get a house or pay off credit cards just by doing these simple things?  No.  But every little bit helps out. 

Hair clippers.  A couple of years ago, I bought some hair clippers.  My wife has begrudgingly been nice enough to cut my hair for the past two to three years.  It works out great because going to a barber costs around ten dollars.  I bought the clippers for twenty dollars.  After two homemade haircuts, they have paid for themselves.  As long as you like the buzzed look.  I do, my wife does not.  Back in college, I went with the long hair look.  Nothing too crazy, but it covered my ears.  It was just one of those things that started with not having a barber I could go to in my college town and by the time I went home, I grew accustom to having the hair so I kept it.  By the time I was getting ready to graduate, I was tired of it.  So I went with the short hair.  I just like the low maintenance short hair brings to the table.  

Leaving lunch at work.  I say leaving it at work because I have an office space and drawers in which to leave stuff.  I buy bread, peanut butter, and jelly.  Buying it all at once it costs around seven dollars (jelly is expensive guys!).  Over the course of two weeks, you can eat lunch for seventy cents a day.  The bread lasts about three weeks before having to go and buy a new loaf, so all in all, I pay about forty six cents for each meal, instead of going out and buying lunch everyday at the cost of three to four dollars.  The only question is, how many PB&J sandwiches can one person eat before they get sick of them?  As it turns out, a LOT.  I do on occasion buy something from the store just for a change of pace, but it is not very often.  Once every three weeks maybe.  The thing that has really kept this going is having everything at work already.  I don't need to remember to grab a lunch bag every morning, it is waiting for me.  I have been doing this since last fall, August maybe, and the amount of money we are putting on the credit card has gone down. 

Cheap beer.  Of course the easier thing would be to not buy as much beer, but who are we kidding?  I like beer.  I like tasty beer, which usually equates to expensive so I save those for special occasions.  You need to splurge every once in a while.  What I have found is buying cheaper beer means thirty beers for sixteen dollars not twelve beers for fourteen dollars.  Beer is beer and any kind will get you where you need to go.  If you aren't too picky, there is no reason why you should be spending more money.    

These are just a few small things that I have been trying to do.  Again, these aren't going to grow the bank account a ton but I feel better about trying to save money.  There are times when you need to spend money on yourself though.  You cannot give up on getting out of the house and doing stuff.  We went to the movies today (saw 'Lincoln').  For the tickets and food, we ended up spending twenty dollars.  This isn't much if you aren't doing once a week.  I've been trying to remember the last movie my wife and I went to see together and the only one that comes to mind is 'The Avengers', but I could be wrong.