Money Blue Book

When I read about the crazy sums of money football fans have been plunking down for a chance to watch the New York Giants play the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII (42nd), I was shocked, but not surprised. Just for the record, no - I didn’t pay more than $4,000 for a pair of Super Bowl tickets to watch the two best football teams in the nation play this coming weekend. But I understand why feverish and passionate football fans would pay that kind of money to support their team (I’ve done it before, although not nearly to that level of degree).

If I were a Giants or Pats fan, I would have given some serious thought to shelling out the high scalper-driven prices to secure the coveted tickets and necessary hotel rooms for the chance to experience the event of a lifetime. Looking back at my earlier days, I wish I had jumped on the exciting opportunities when I had the chance. When my college alma mater made it to the men’s NCAA basketball championship game I was still in graduate school and didn’t have the financial means or the ability to take time off from classes to attend. Looking back I wish I had dug down deep and made the effort, because ultimately my school went on to win that national title game. I missed an opportunity that may not happen again for some time. Afterwards, I promised myself - never again would I give up such a once in a lifetime opportunity on the account of mere time or cost, in the absence of other considerations.

Money Spent On Memories Vs. Money Spent On Material Goods

While I personally am very wary about spending exorbitant amounts of money on material goods, I don’t seem to have the same aversion towards spending money on precious experiences that have the possibility of creating everlasting memories. Unlike the substance of memories, I view tangible goods as items with limited and fleeting lifespans that ultimately depreciate and wither away. Particularly with newly released electronic products like iPods and flat screen TV’s, they frequently become outdated within months by the time the new updated model rolls around. Technology prices drop fast and what was top of the line one day soon becomes yesterday’s news the next. At the end of the day, all material goods break down, wear out, and eventually become obsolete, but memories are forever. Memories and experiences are retained in the recesses of our minds, enriching our human experience and growing ever more valuable as time passes. As we age, those fond memories from years past become priceless treasures (it’s cheesy but true).

When I was little, I spent a great deal of money and time on buying and playing video games. But looking back, it wasn’t the computer technology, gaming systems, or game cartridges that brought me joy - it was the experience and cherished moments I had when playing games with friends and family. I think it’s important to practice a reasonably frugal lifestyle, but some expenditures are worth the financial price. There’s nothing wrong with living it up within your means on occasion - just make sure you are spending your hard earned money towards the things that have residual and appreciative intangible value.

The stores of wealthier diehard Super Bowl fans paying upwards of $20,000 for a pair of front row seats to the greatest show on earth is indeed stunning, but if they are sharing the experience with their friends, spouses, and children, I say - more power to them. I just hope they are living within their means and not doing anything financially crazy like putting the entire amount on a high interest credit card they can’t afford, just for a 3 hour thrill.

Opposed To Spending Money On a $5 Coffee Drink, But Okay With Spending $250 To Watch My Favorite Sports Team Play

I’ve noticed that I seem to have a selective form of frugality. I generally like to save on the little things in life by cutting back on smaller daily expenses like my old Starbucks coffee habit and by refraining from frequently updating my clothing wardrobe. However, I seem to have no problem spending larger sums of money on things like entertainment experiences that I truly care emotionally and passionately about. It’s an odd form of frugal living that I sometimes wonder if others share as well.

Back in the day, when you wanted to listen to music, you either had to listen to the song off the radio, or you had to visit your nearby record store to buy the artist’s compact disc. Each CD usually went for $12-18 depending on the album’s popularity and you had to store your music CD collection in a plastic shelf case. As your CD collection grew you usually had to buy more cumbersome storage. Because the CD surface was itself easy scratched, you always had to take great care when handling the discs to minimize damage.

Everything all changed during my last few years of high school when the internet arrived to the scene. At first it was only seen as a novelty and used by a handful of people, but gradually the mainstream began to adopt it, recognizing its information potential. The technology started out slow, bumbling along at 56k modem speed on the average home computer. Faster broadband technology was out of the question at the time due to the prohibitive cost. But when I entered college and became introduced to T-1 broadband technology, I knew the age of file sharing had arrived. By then music sharing had become full blown as every campus student had ready access to super fast download technology at their fingertips from on-campus computer labs to broadband enabled dorm room connections.

What Is Online Music File Sharing and How Did It Start?

Napster was the first and biggest free centralized peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing program during my early college years. The downloadable program allowed users to connect to each other online using their computers and swap primarily MP3 music files, ripped from store bought CD’s. With the ability to download free songs from Napster, many people started burning their own compilation albums without paying any royalties to the music company or the artist. The popularity of Napster peaked in early 2001 until the company was finally brought down by the music industry through a series of critical lawsuits that successfully proved Napster knowingly committed copyright infringement.

However, since the demise of the free music days of Napster, numerous improved variations have since spawned, including Limewire, Kazaa, Morpheus, and BitTorrent. One of the programs that is still enjoying continued success today as a contributer to free music downloads is the Gnutella-technology based Limwire program. Many people still use Limewire to download free copyrighted songs and videos clips. Suffering continued financial losses from dwindling music sales, the music industry has been trying to go after those who share copyrighted music files. But Limewire has proven to be very difficult to stop due to the program’s network architecture. Unlike Napster which utilized a central server, Limewire is very decentralized, and since the program’s operated by individual sharers, this makes it extra difficult for any one company to shut the whole system down or limit the flow of its contents. The record publishers have tried to flood the system with dummy files and corrupted fakes to discourage downloads, but their tactic has been met with little success.

The Music Industry and The RIAA Are Making A Big Mistake By Going After College Students For Alleged Music File Sharing

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) represents many of the big music publishing companies and is the face of the music industry’s movement to crush those who share copyrighted music files. For the last few years they’ve focussed much of their efforts towards stopping young individuals from alleged sharing activity, filing lawsuits against college students as well as their schools, demanding that the institution turn over the offending sharer. The RIAA has enjoyed some limited pockets of success with tracking down the identities of some college students and forcing them to pay hefty settlement fees, but on the whole they’ve not been able to put much of a dent in overall downloading activity. Meanwhile the music industry continues to lose millionaires of dollars in legal fees trying to pursue the endless leads.

The difficulty comes from the nature of the underlying technology. The RIAA can track down individual IP addresses and usernames, as well as where the offending activity originated from, but they are unable to ascertain specific names. Despite the RIAA’s continued demands, many universities are refusing to turn over student identification information, claiming that the demands place undue burdens on them to locate the specific offender. Particularly due to the growth of campus wireless networks and the shared nature of dorm rooms, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly who performed the alleged sharing activity.

Personally, I think the RIAA and the music industry is making a huge mistake by continuously going after file sharers. I understand they are losing millions every year to this but this is a landmark opportunity that happens every so often that ought to spur companies to innovate. When the Beta and VHS video tapes and later DVD technologies first came out, the movie industry claimed that this would be the end of the film industry. It didn’t happen - people started buying the new improved products because they made their lives better. Rather than trying to hold back progress, the RIAA and the music industry need to come up with a more comprehensive and cost-effective way to embrace this new medium of music enjoyment. Like it or not, the music industry will continue to fight a losing battle as music sharing technology continues to improve and become even more elusive. Rather than kicking and screaming about their lost revenue streams, they need to improve and find a way to stop alienating their fans and make music more affordable.

As a side note, I think it’s prudent to point out to readers that the RIAA is watching and continues to scope out file sharing networks. However, most of their attention and efforts are aimed at those who share large quantities of files rather than those that download one or two songs here and there.

I left the traditional attorney job behind a few years ago and now do finance and legal work on a contractual basis. I’ve been doing this for more than a year now and so far it’s been enjoyable, although not without its ups and downs. But then they don’t call it a job for nothing. I probably can go on and on about how miserable I was working as an attorney but I think I’ll save that for another day. Suffice to say, the legal field is overly saturated and the profession simply isn’t the lucrative and inspiring field it used to be. I think most attorneys today, including myself would be wary about recommending law school to those contemplating a field of study. I am constantly trying to tell younger friends to bypass law school and do something more worthwhile and meaningful with their lives, but they never seem to listen. They’ll know what I mean when they get out.

A Change Of Profession Is What I Needed

So here I am in my current job, working on a contractual basis in a field somewhat related to my area of study. The job security and rapid advancement opportunities may be gone, but my sanity and happiness have flourished ten fold. Working on a contractual basis, I now have the opportunity and time to develop and improve my various side ventures - things I’m quite passionate about. Of course, perhaps one day I will tire and choose to get back to the nitty gritty legal practice. Tax law and small business consulting maybe.

All in all, it was definitely worth the transition, although I do look back with tiny tinges of regret and musings of - what if? What if I had done something different with my life? What would be my dream job? I’m sure we’ve all pondered these questions at some point in our lives. Well here’s a list of a few fantasy jobs I wanted to have during different times in my life, starting with the most recent and working my way into childhood:

1. Sports Anchor - I currently love watching and following spectator sports. I love playing fantasy football and I take it seriously, spending a lot of time researching and tracking player and team performance statistics. My dream job would be to become a sports commentator for a major network like ESPN or even for a local television station. Everytime I watch Comcast SportsNet I always wish I was sitting on the sofa in front of the camera sharing my thoughts and predictions about my favorite sports teams. I have so much to say but no group to call an audience. My girlfriend is not into sports although I think she enjoys watching me get all excited when I talk about how my favorite teams are doing.
2. Investigative News Reporter - I think I see a trend here. I really should have gone into journalism as I love to write and speak my mind. I’ve always envisioned myself walking the news beat exposing bad business practices, defective products, as well as cracking down on white collar computer crimes. I think I would greatly enjoy chasing perpetrators down to get the story. I would probably focus my first investigative pieces on exposing online scammers, and those who engage in phishing and other illegal online activity.
3. Doctor - Like everyone else when they were young, I originally wanted to be a doctor - that is, until I realized how disinterested in the sciences I was. I started college as a biochemistry major on the pre-med track but ultimately shifted gears into computer science and finance. Eventually I went on to complete law school. I think if I had continued, I could have ended up becoming a doctor, although it would have been out of character for me. I’m simply not very passionate about medicine or the natural sciences.
4. Video Game Designer - When I got out of the pre-med track, I studied computer science for a year before I transitioned into finance. During the transition I initially wanted to become a video game designer. Ever since high school I loved playing role-playing video games and I always wanted to design them. When I was a kid I remember making my mom buy me an expensive computer paint shop program so I could dabble in graphic design. However I eventually grew out of it, although my interest for web designing and programming remained.
5. Pet Shop Owner - Okay, I know this one’s extremely random but when I was very little I wanted to run my own pet shop. I’ve had a variety of pets in my lifetime, including a parrot that I still own today. At the time I thought it would be so cool to have my own breeding facility where I could raise baby animals. Of course that’s before I got older and realized that I wouldn’t be able to keep them forever and would have to give them up to paying customers. Well, it was whimsical while it lasted.

So, now you know my current and past dream jobs. What are some of your own?

For those who haven’t seen it before, MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16” is one of the many things in television pop culture today that is seriously messing up the minds of kids today, leading them down the path of excessive consumerism and obsession with wealth and entitlement. The MTV reality TV show follows and documents the 16th birthday celebrations of upper class teenagers. Now these are no ordinary birthday parties. We’re not talking about a day at Dave and Busters or the bowling alley. On this program we have stretch Hummers, horses, live dancers, famous rap stars, decked out ballrooms, and budget rolls in excess of $300,000. You won’t see any “paltry presents” like Apple iPods or Gap clothing here. Instead, the doting parents of these spoiled rotten kids prefer to give them top of the line BMW’s and Land Rover’s, capped with red bows on top to quench their material thirst. The show, although quite entertaining, proclaims the non-stop need to spend, spend, and spend to the utter collective delight of all luxury car dealerships and luxury boutiques everywhere.

Spoiled Bratty Kids Come In All Sizes

The show features spoiled teens of all race, nationality, and even sex - black, white, Persian, and even shockingly, a few teenage boys among the mostly teenage girls. The show follows the same template, tracing the excitement and expectation of throwing a “sky’s the limit” 16th birthday bash. We get to know the teen as she brags about her wonderful lifestyle and how much she owns in the way of material possessions. The majority of these “daddy’s little girls” stomp their feet and pout until their rich dads buy them the dream party that they want. The mothers that usually accompany these prissy little girls are no different - encouraging and stoking their behavior. In one episode, one mother even ended up trying on the same expensive dress that her daughter was trying out, sending the daughter into an angry and competitive tail spin tizzy of materialistic proportions.

The Excessive Lavishness Knows No Bounds

The show always starts with an elaborate ceremony usually complete with stretch limos and servants to hand out the official decorative invitations to chosen members of the teen’s high school in a manner befitting a royal coronation. The party usually takes up an entire decked out ballroom, with servers, dancers, and show-stopping celebrity singers. $75,000 jewelry and dresses line their wardrobes, adding to the excessive opulence. Throughout each episode, the birthday girl’s teenage guests scream and “woohoo” about the historical nature of the event and how it will go down in history as the best party ever and how everyone will always remember this - to the collective eye rolling of every single television viewer in the United States, myself included.

The end of each episode is never complete without the mandatory birthday girl walking outside with her guests in faux both-hands-to-the-cheek amazement at the ridiculously expensive luxury car awaiting her. While the girl drives away in her birthday present, her throng of friends and guests are left hollering and cheering her on with lavish love, admiration, and envy at her fortune.

It’s Really Entertaining But Also Really Sad

The alarming thing is not that these teeny boppers expect to be thrown lavish over-the-top birthday parties, but it’s that their wealthy parents are so boastful and encouraging of such a superficial lifestyle. The show proudly shows off the birthday teen’s opulence and extravagance, seemingly suggesting that such actions are perfectly normal. There are never glimpses of the ordinary masses, as the birthday teen’s friends and guests are almost always all filthy rich as well, with material throngs and possessions of their own. We never see any bitterness or ridicule by the guests or outside observers as the critics have all been effectively filtered out.

The show is admittedly quite entertaining, but not for necessarily the right reasons. It instills the wrong values in children and younger viewers today, particularly those approaching their 16th birthdays. Rather than preaching hard work and dedication, the show encourages feelings of material entitlement in the nature of “if you loved me you’d buy this for me”.

However I must admit, My Super Sweet 16 is terribly funny and interesting to watch. But when I laugh at the foot stomping, pouty girls in the show, I am doing so in the same manner that I would while watching a celebrity train wreck such as the salacious paparazzi antics of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. I laugh because it’s so stupidly funny, but at the same time I feel sad for them - for the type of persons their own parents have groomed them into one day becoming.

As for my own 16th birthday way back when, I got an ice cream cake custom baked by my mom. I rented a few Nintendo games from Blockbuster, invited 4 close friends over for a video game sleepover party, and partied like a rock star at home. I grew up just fine, although getting a luxury sports car as a present would have been nice.