The expression TVM, in this case, stands for “Time Value of Money”, and yes, I know that I am a weird-o. What TVM is, is a basic tool of financial analysis. I am not any kind of official “Finance Guy”, but I have always considered personal-finance to be a hobby. Twenty-five years ago, I had a hand-held financial calculator from Texas Instruments (remember that company?) and I used to sit at home on the weekend running TVM-scenarios just for the fun-of-it while dreaming about retirement. I told you that I was a weird-o, and my wife thought so too as I sat there for hours giggling at red LED-numbers on a calculator display.

Although it is used for a lot of stuff, one of the things that TVM is really useful for is to figure out how much money your IRA or other savings can provide as income. Of course, the simplistic thing to do is to just take your IRA-balance and divide it by years-till-you-plan-to-die. This is really inadequate though, because it does not account for return-on-investment (ROI) that is earned in the meantime. Folding the ROI into this equation is complicated however because of compounding. The year-1 return earns a return in years 2, 3, 4 etc., and the year-2 return earns a return on years 3, 4, 5 etc., and so on, and so on. It would be an awkward pain-in-the-ass to do this all by hand, not to mention, prone to mistakes. The point of the TVM calculator is that by plugging in a few numbers and hitting a button, the calculator does all the arcane math under-the-covers and just pops out an answer. The fact is, if you have an invested IRA and have only ever done the simple “divide by years-to-live” calculation, you may be very pleasantly surprised by a TVM analysis because compounded ROI makes a big difference.

The components of a TVM calculation are standard and can be used in any TVM tool. There is the “Present Value” (PV), which in my IRA example is the current dollar-balance of your IRA. The “Payment” (Pmt) will be the annual amount that your can safely pull out of your IRA, and this is what we will solve for, so nothing is entered. The “Future Value” (FV) can be either what you want to leave behind for your heirs, or “0” if you plan to spend every-last-dime on yourself (good-for-you!). The “Periods” field is the number of intervals that you will use. I am 65 and to be “safe” my wife and I have agreed to use age-100 as the zero-point of our IRA’s, so in our case “Periods” will be 35 (as in, years-to-age-100), and the “Period” itself is defined as “annual”, as opposed to monthly or quarterly or anything else, because I want to see an annual dollar figure. Some calculators also have a selection for “End Mode” or “Begin Mode”. This refers to whether the “payment” comes out of the principal at the beginning of the period before the ROI is calculated (and the payment is therefore a bit lower) or at the end of the period after the ROI has been applied (and so the payment will be a little bigger). Although End-Mode is usually the default, because of the way I will use this, I chose Begin-Mode for my own calculations.

The final thing to enter is the annualized rate-of-return that you expect your IRA to earn. If your IRA is sitting in a CD in a bank then that may be 1%, if you are lucky. If your IRA is invested in an S&P-500 Index stock fund, then you might want to use 8%, because that is the financial-industry standard assumption for long-term investment ROI. If you like to be pleasantly surprised down-the-road, you could use something less than 8%, and if you just can’t part with those rose-colored-glasses, you could use something higher. If you want to factor-in inflation or taxes, you can do that by manipulating the Rate.

So; we’ve filled in PV, FV, Rate, #-of-Periods and the definition of the period (annual). The only field that isn’t filled in is “payment”, so you just hit the “payment” button and the answer magically appears. This will show up as a negative-number because it is considered a debit from the PV-principal, but it is the amount you can pull out of your IRA each year and expect to reach your FV at the defined end of Periods.

If you are already pulling out money from an IRA, but you are doing this on faith and don’t really know how long it is likely to last, you can delete the “Periods” field and fill in “Payment” with what you are taking out (be sure that “Payment” is a negative number) and solve the equation for “Periods”, which in this case will be the number of years until your IRA goes to zero.

Oh, and in case you want a link, here is one that I have been playing with recently;

http://www.fncalculator.com/financialcalculator?type=tvmCalculator

Have fun!

3 comments View Entry

I am back from my LARP event in Virginia. It was a 5-hour drive down on Friday, an all-day thing on Saturday, 5-hours back on Sunday and then 3-days processing the 1,603 pictures that I took while there (on my 3 cameras).

To be clear, a LARP (Live-Action Role-Play) is not really a “Renaissance Fair”. A Renn-Fair is mostly about vendors selling crafts, and food-and-drink, and modern-dress spectators walking around watching paid-actors put on skits and demonstrations. A LARP is participatory. Everyone dresses up and grabs a weapon, and everyone is part of the show. It is also not just about medieval reenactment. There are elements of fantasy in these events, and characters can also include “orcs” and “fairies” and “elves”. It is more like an immersive “Game of Thrones” experience.

The last one of these I did had about 200 “players”, but this was smaller with maybe about 50.  It was hosted at a small winery in northern Virginia, and the winery owner is one of the most enthusiastic of the players. There were many local day-trippers too, including a bunch of kids, who also love to dress-up and fight. The “weapons” are rubber swords and foam arrows. The serious, die-hard folks camp-out in tents and have their own armor and battle-axes. These sorts of events crop up all over and generate a dedicated sub-culture.  These are very big in Europe, and my wife is going to one in Canada in August that should have about 3,000 participants.

2 comments View Entry

I am going to be out-of-town for the weekend. I’m going to a LARP/CosPlay thing in Virginia. This is a sort-of mediaeval reenactment where people dress-up in armor and run around bashing each other with (rubber) swords and (foam) arrows. Most of the people involved in this are 20-somethings, and I am just the event’s designated photographer, but my wife is fully engaged in the play and working as one of the organizers.

In preparation for this trip I have found, reviewed and printed off the directions and map for where I am going. I realize that 99% of the modern world would use their cell-phone with location-tracking for real-time, GPS-based audible directions, but I just cannot bring myself to release that much personal control. I want to KNOW where I’m going before I start the car’s motor, and I can’t get comfortable blindly turning myself over to a voice coming out of a cell-phone telling me what to do. It’s not that I “don’t understand the technology”, because I do. I worked in high-tech for 40-years and I know perfectly well how these things operate. THAT is exactly why I refuse to turn my life over to it. These things are not “smart” at all. They are dumb-as-a-rock and only do (or say) what their programming (legitimate or hacked) allows them to do. I want to make my own decisions in my life, and I want to be in control of my own life. The stupidest excuse anyone can give is; “My phone told me to do it”.

There is an article in the NYT today about how researchers can now manipulate voice-activated devices, like smart-speakers, by imbedding inaudible commands in broadcast music or other programming, or transmitting these silent commands remotely. They say that there are no known cases of this being done maliciously – yet – but obviously it is only a matter of time. Imagine a TV commercial that can automatically add their product to your shopping list without you even knowing it (if you also have auto-ordering and auto-delivery you’d never know), or a burglar transmitting a code from the driveway to your “smart-house” to unlock your front door. The thing is, the actual value that this tech offers is so minimal. It’s really nothing more than a cute novelty. The risks that arise from becoming dependent on this stuff are so great though. Of course, the “Answer” to all the problems that a new tech creates is – more new tech. We wouldn’t need to have our cars recalled to fix defective air-bags if we didn’t have cars in the first-place, which were – once-upon-a-time – just a cute, silly, and unnecessary novelty themselves.

4 comments View Entry

I was just reading a story in the NYT this morning about robo-calls and how these have been surging recently “…since Obama-era regulations have been loosened.” Yeah, thanks for that.

 The thing is, it has always amazed me how this can even be a business. I understand that only a few “hits” on suckers are required out of millions of calls made for pennies, but still – how is it that in this day-and-age anyone would respond to these things? I’m really not angry at the robo-callers, because they are only a tiny gnat of annoyance in today’s modern world and they can easily be ignored. I am fascinated by the bizarre mentality of the people who are engaging with them however, because these are the people who are truly responsible for the problem. It is the drug-user who necessarily and inevitably creates the drug-dealer.

I know that I am a weird-o, but I never, EVER listen to a recorded message on the phone. You can always tell when a call is a recording by the timbre and background noise, and the way that it takes about 2-3 seconds after you say “hello” for the relay to click over and the recording to start. I always immediately hang-up on a recording. This is usually before I even know what they claim to be calling about. This has been my habit for at least 30-years and I have never missed anything “important” - ever. The thing is; legitimate business is simply not done this way (at least, not with me). The article in the NYT pointed out that there are some serious uses for robo-caller devices – the example given was school closing notifications during bad weather – but if you don’t have school-age kids in the house, it’s not a school-day morning and/or it’s not a raging blizzard outside, it obviously won’t be about that. There are also “appointment reminders” from doctor’s offices, but over the years, my doctors have forgotten far more appointments than I ever have, so these calls are just an unnecessary insult to normal human intelligence (although they may be essential for those of sub-standard intelligence).

I think that the thing that drives people to listen to robo-call pitches is a pathetic “Fear of Missing Out”. They may say; “Yes, I know that most of these are scams”, like they say “Yes, I know that the casino always wins in the long-run”, but when the phone in their pocket tinkles, it is the one-in-a-million chance that this time it might be something good that obliges them to listen – just like the heroin user or compulsive gambler is powerless in the face of their addiction. They seem to be as chained to this FoMO as the rest of us are to the force of gravity. Wow. What a sad way to stumble through life.

Then there are the people who actually go for this crap. I mean, really… “This is your final warning before referral to a collection agency” or “The IRS demands IMMEDIATE payment of your back taxes”. I know about this because I sometimes hear these in v-mail messages, but Seriously? Are there really adults capable of dressing themselves who fall for this? I mean, people need to take at least a little responsibility for their own well-being, though I suppose that anyone who can’t keep track of their own doctor’s appointments may not be able to keep track of what money they owe which people either.

I know, I know; “There, but for the grace of God, go I”, and maybe someday I’ll be feeble-minded enough to be suckered too, but I really hope that the scam that takes me will be a bit more sophisticated than these. I mean, these guys couldn’t be more transparent if they introduced themselves as a “Nigerian prince” or Elvis Presley calling from the grave.

6 comments View Entry

This is a home-alone weekend for me. My wife left for a martial-arts tournament in Washington-DC on Friday morning and she won’t be back until Sunday night. She is one-of-those-people who is simply incapable of sitting still, in other words – pretty-much the opposite of me. The reason why our marriage has lasted for 34-years is that she doesn’t insist that I accompany her on her endless expeditions, and I have no problem being left home-alone like this. I like being home-alone. The fact is; I feel a little bad about how much I like it.

I really don’t do anything different when my wife is away. I don’t invite a bunch of college-girls over and throw lurid, risqué bacchanals, but the point is – I could if I wanted to (assuming that anyone would show up). The term “freedom” has always been more about possibilities than actualities anyway. What I have accomplished so far on this wild weekend of renewed bachelorhood is that I have fixed a light-sensor on our outdoor landscape-lights, and I have given the cat a flea-treatment. Later in the day, once I have recovered from the effort of those first two projects, I may also sweep out the garage. WOO-HOO!

The excitement for tomorrow will include a thorough mopping of our hard floors. Probably ¾ of the floors in our house are tile because we both prefer hard-floors, but they do need to be mopped once-in-a-while, and given my fastidious nature, this is not an insignificant task and it is likely to take me several hours. I prefer to do these substantial housekeeping chores when my wife is not around. If she is here when I start doing jobs like this, then she whines that she feels guilty and, very reluctantly, tries to help to assuage her remorse.  I really don’t mind doing most of the housecleaning, but the whining and “helping” are really annoying. If I do the big jobs when she is away, then neither one of us needs to be bothered by it, and life is a lot easier for all concerned.

What I like about being home-alone is the emptiness and the silence. There is no banging around in another room and no chance that I will be asked to drop what I am doing, trivial as it is, to do something different. There is no drone of commentary on something that I don’t care about and no compromise on things such as what will be eaten for the next meal and when that will be. It is just so … Relaxing.

4 comments View Entry

A few hundred feet above our house, our little country road degrades even further - into a single-lane dirt track. We try to avoid driving a car in this direction out of fear of meeting someone coming the other way, but it is great place to walk. Even the dirt-roads are sparse in our hills, so “around the block” is too many miles to manage comfortably, and I do a simple out-and-back. It is still a couple of miles, it takes me about 90-minutes (including a couple of rests, I have to admit) and parts of it are quite steep. This is a picture of the “flat part” along the top of the ridge, by the way.

Plenty of people live up here, although I do pass some places on this walk that are clearly seasonal “vacation homes”. Most of the residents have 4-legs though, and there are always plenty of critter-tracks along this dirt road. There are deer, of course, and racoon and skunk and fox and although I have never met the owner, I swear that I have seen bear-tracks along here too, and people say that this is entirely possible. Hopefully, he can read however;

On the way back, about where the dirt becomes blacktop again and shortly before reaching our house, the woods breaks into farm-field and there is a magnificent view. The steam rising behind a hill to the right is our home-town nuclear power plant, and although you can’t see it in a copy this small, on the horizon in the center of the frame are two tiny bumps that are the skyscrapers of Center City Philadelphia, about 40-miles away.

2 comments View Entry

It is a wet and foggy Wednesday - not very nice out there for cats, or people. Breakfast has been made and eaten, the dishes are in the dishwasher, and the corned beef is in the slow-cooker for this evening. It should be a good day for lying around the house and being lazy. I do like to get a few things done that I can claim as “productive” however, just so that I can feel Righteous about the day. Today it may be a modest wash-down the kitchen counters, stove-top and microwave. I periodically do a Deep-Clean of the kitchen, including the oven and the cabinets, but that is too ambitious for this day. Then there is making the bed and picking up the bedroom, doing a little spot-vacuuming around the upstairs, and then we’ll see if the downstairs could use a little cleaning too. See – it’s a real “nothing” day. By noon I should be ready to kick back with some jazz and read my e-book (“Behave”; a fascinating and well-written book about neuroscience and the biochemical mechanics of emotion, cognition and behavior). If I get tired of reading, maybe I’ll shoot a little pool later too.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a nice day, and it should be a gym-day, but maybe I’ll take a long walk instead. My usual circuit is a little over 90-minutes, and it gets pretty steep, so this should be sufficient exercise. Then, tomorrow night I have a photo-shoot at the local community theater for the opening of their new play; “Proof”. Friday it may rain again, but that’s OK because I’ll be processing those pictures for most of the day anyway. The weather forecast for the weekend looks pretty nice too, and I’ll be home-alone for those 2-days, so that is something to look forward to also.

2 comments View Entry

There was an essay in the WSJ today that I liked, and which set off this chain of thought. Unfortunately, the WSJ operates on a strict subscription-basis, so no link to this story will work. Anyway, the theme was that, contrary to popular impression, “retirement” doesn’t need to be manically busy – unless you want it to be. The essay observes what I have also found to be true. When you tell someone that you are retired now, or bump into someone who you haven’t seen for a little while, they always ask the same thing;

But what do you DO with yourself all day?

… as though life-itself is not a sufficient reason to consume oxygen.

As the essay points out, there is a strong ethos in our society that everyone should be busy all of the time. In fact, everyone should be overcommitted to 110% of themselves all of the time. The prevailing attitude is that if you are not engaged in “Doing” at any given moment, then you need to be rushing off to the next “Doing” because you are late. Anyone who is not either “Doing” or rushing to a “Doing” is just lazy and worthless. This notion extends into retirement and other people act like, if you are not “Doing” constantly - even now - then you are sad and empty and in effect; committing suicide. Not true.

I feel especially sorry for the children of the last 20 or 30 years whose parents raised them in this mode of constant, manic activity, with every moment of every day planned and controlled and necessarily kinetic. At least I had the privilege of plenty of “me-time” as a child.  That doesn’t mean that I was sedentary, just that my activities were my own and unsupervised – thank God. The message of the WSJ essay was that once we have achieved retirement, we can afford to let go of this constant need to prove-our-worth by being in perpetual-motion. Yeah – if only we knew how at that stage.

I think that this need for constant activity is a recent development in the human race, although that may seem counter-intuitive. I believe that it probably got started in our own “TV Generation”, where downtime was defined as having stimuli passively poured into us by the boob-tube (and now it is The Internet, and all-the-time, but same-thing). What this means is that many people have never gotten comfortable living inside their own heads, and for them, quiet solitude is an alien environment to be feared and avoided at all costs. They must be “Doing” (or passively and brainlessly “Watching”) 100% of the time, or they’ll be forced to face that monstrous Alien lurking for them in the silent shadows.

Some might counter that constant activity was a requirement of life “In Olden Times” because then, when you stopped working, you starved. The thing is; not really. Someone working 12-hours or more all alone in a farm-field (or sewing clothes all alone in the farmhouse) is most definitely living inside his/her own head. What is there to “do” with yourself when the 15-mile trip to the next town could take an entire day – with no Sirius/XM to distract you? How would you respond to 8-solid-hours of slow jolting down a dirt road on your buckboard with only your horse’s clip-clop as company? These people knew themselves and the world around them, because there was little else to know about.

Modern Folk can’t stand silence. This is why every-single waiting-room on the planet has to have a goddamn TV blaring away. When you look around the room, every head is buried in an electronic screen, but mute the TV and there is an instant wail of complaint because silence means that a stray original thought might be able to slip through, or even worse, not be there when looked for. People these days must be hooked-up to sound and visual stimulus and “Doing” every-single-moment because if it ever stopped, then they would have to face that horrible, empty void – of themselves.

2 comments View Entry

It was a nice day today, in what I call “The Glade”. This is a patch of ground that is maybe 100-ft x 100-ft, and it is about the closest thing to “flat” on our entire 10-acre property. From here our wooded lot extends both uphill and downhill behind both of our next-door neighbor’s houses. The hill is not too steep to hike, and after working on it for a few years I now have it riddled with random, twisting trails, like one of those old see-through ant-farms. It is steep enough for the hike to be something of an effort though, even at my relatively young age, and I am personally familiar with every “sittin’-rock” along the way. It will be a very sad day indeed when I finally cannot make the full patrol of our perimeter, which is something that I know is inevitable. I do hope that this is another 10 or 15-years out though. Even Worst-Case however, I should still be able to get a motorized wheelchair into The Glade long after the rougher trails have been swallowed back up by the woods.

The Good-News is that The Glade is directly behind our house, so even when modesty is compromised by dormant foliage, as it is now, The Glade is relatively private. I cleared this opening in the woods myself a couple of years ago, and we put out some Adirondack chairs and foot-stools so that it functions as an outdoor room. The chairs are that solid, plastic-lumber stuff with stainless-steel hardware, so we leave them out all year. I come out here a lot. In fact, any day that it is at least 50-degrees and not precipitating I am usually here for at least an hour or so. When I first “built” this place a couple of years ago I initially just bought the one Adirondack for myself, but my wife pouted until I went and bought a second one for her. I think that she has sat in that chair twice for a total of 15-minutes over the last 20-months, which is why I didn’t start out with 2 chairs in the first place. My wife is NOT an outdoorsy-type, and apparently, I know that better than she does. Still, the cost of an extra chair is a small price to pay for The Domestic Tranquility.

There is a steady refrain of various birds out here in the woods at this time of year, and they almost drown out the distant waterfall-like noise of the local 2-lane highway, which is about 2-miles away. There is also the occasional loud rat-a-tat of a large Pileated Woodpecker, sounding like an assault-style weapon with a bump-stock. Or maybe it is the sound of an assault-style weapon with a bump-stock coming from one of several gun-clubs in the neighborhood, because we do hear that from time-to-time too. This is so different than it was 10-weeks ago, when winter’s silence ruled while I sat here wrapped in a down-coat. Now, suddenly, there is a roar of human machinery as another near, if not adjacent, neighbor has a burst of activity. This neighbor is a small commercial vineyard and they move equipment, call to each other and haul gear for their vines while riding around on noisy little ATV’s. That disturbance never lasts long however, and soon the bird-calls dominate all again, while the sound of a single-engine airplane slowly evaporates into the blue. It’s time to head back.

John

1 comments View Entry