Just Come Home

 My son, who has been all over the world in the last 16 years, has been living in San Jose for the past few years.  His his husband got laid off from his tech job in Silicon Valley.  This is a harbinger for things to come for California.  This is the canary in the coal mine for a major part of California's economy.  There was an article in the paper the other day about cracks showing in Silicon Valley's once glowing promise of tech innovations that fueled the local economy and beyond.  

I had that news four years ago from people actually living the nightmare way before the news reported it.  Let's go even deeper.  Many of my friends are getting laid off (or family members getting laid off) after 25+ years of dedicated service to SlaveDriver, Inc.  

How about that!  What THANKS!!!!  Thank you for dedicating your life to SlaveDriver, Inc., while you missed your daughter's first steps and first ballet performance.  Thank you for missing birthdays and other milestone family events because of some dumb-ass conference we forced you to go to to give a presentation to people who do not care, or take up your entire weekend (without extra pay nor recognition) to fix a computer programming bug that was jamming up financial transactions between institutions where you worked for 24 hours straight.  Here is what we will give you after a lifetime of dedication and performance:  YOU GET LAID OFF.  

Where am I going with this?  My son just wants to come home back to Sonoma County where he grew up.  My son has a job that affords flexibility for location, and his husband will find his way as he is very smart.  They just need to get re-established back here where they have a network of family and friends.  There is no place like home.  Sometimes kids needs to move away to appreciate it.  

Caution to those who slave away for SlaveDriver, Inc.  They do not care one *bleep* about you.  They only care about profits.  Keep that in mind.   

 

 

 

the Finances of Death

Here's a true story.  Once upon a time there lived a guy who was instrumental in getting Charles Schwab up and running.  See, Charles Schwab did not have any money of his own - he used his wife's inheritance to get his company up and running.  When the Charles Schwab Company was in its infancy it was teetering on collapse and almost imploded on itself.

At a pow-wow in a house boat on Lake Shasta in the late 1970's - early 1980's sat a council of stoned, drunk, and ego laden guys high on cocaine who were going to rescue Chuck and try to make the company succeed.

They did.  Not long after the company grew into a the first large-scale discount brokerage house in nation.  The guys in the background of Chuck's successful corporate turn-around then took their show on the road to rescue other brokerage firms with problems.

One of the guys, Mr. Rescue, had a wife.  Mr. Rescue was on the road constantly saving brokerage houses of their internal operational woes.  Mr. Rescue never shared any of their personal financial information with Wife-ey-Poo.  All Wife-ey-Poo knew was going to play tennis at the Marin Country Club and arranging flowers for her to photograph and paint.  She lived in ignorant, kept, sheltered bliss.  She thought they were "all that" and life was glorious.  yes...the key word was thought.

Sadly, Mr. Rescue died in a hotel room on the road trying to save yet another brokerage house.  Wife-ey-Poo was devastated.  She did not even know how to balance a checkbook.  Certainly there were life insurance policies in place and the houses and stocks he *claimed* he owned were worth something, right? 

Much to Wife-ey-Poo's surprise they had NO assets to speak of once the debts were figured out.  It was a typical house of cards.  Mr. Rescue was FLAT broke.  All Mr. Rescue did was shuffle personal debt around from one credit source to another...and he made a so-called career of "helping" brokerage firms get their operations in order.  

Clueless, naive Wife-ey-Poo is still painting and photographing flowers...too bad it's on the freeway off ramp next to the Mexican kid hustling strawberries as she can no longer afford the membership dues at the Marin Country Club.