Dave Barry's Money Secrets

by Dave Barry

  We Boomers were comfortable with this system, because you always knew exactly where your music was: It was on the round thing. And it did not get mixed up: The Beach Boys were on your Beach Boys round thing; the Rolling Stones were on your Rolling Stones round thing; Ray Charles was on the Ray Charles round thing; Barry Manilow was in the Barry Manilow bin back at the record store; and so on.

  Today, thanks to “digital” technology, there is no way to tell for sure where the hell your music is. It might be on a little tiny chip the size of a toenail that holds 19,000 songs all mixed in there together, which means two things: (1) Satan is clearly involved, and (2) a reasonably strong ant could make off with your entire music collection. Or, instead of a chip, your music might be in an iPod, or some other small, digital, extremely lose-able non-round thing. Or maybe your music is on your computer. Or your cell phone. Or somewhere on the Internet in general. Or—if you have a new model—on your toaster. With digital technology, you’re never sure where your music is.

  This is no problem for today’s young people, who emerge from the womb crying digital cries. But it’s extremely confusing for those of us who grew up with the round format. At least it is for me, and I’m sure it is for millions of others like me. That’s where Technical Support for Boomers would come in. It would be a number you’d call for technical support, but with an important difference: The people answering the phone would be as old as the people calling. This would eliminate the problem with most “technical support” people, who are 24.3 years old, which means that, in order for you to understand what they’re telling you, you have to already know enough technical stuff that you would never need to call Technical Support in the first place. When I call Technical Support, I always have conversations like this:

  SUPPORT PERSON: How can I help you?

  ME: OK, I have this Vortex SoundLoin music player thingie my kids gave me for Father’s Day, and I’m trying to figure out how to play a song on it. I think I have it turned on, but I’m not sure. I definitely pushed all the buttons, but nothing seems to be happening. At least, I don’t . . .

  SUPPORT PERSON (interrupting): Can you tell me what music format you’re using?

  ME: Format?

  SUPPORT PERSON (sighing): The music format.

  ME: Oh. Motown.

  SUPPORT PERSON: Excuse me?

  ME: “Chain of Fools” by Aretha Franklin. OK, technically she didn’t record it for Motown, but her genre was definitely . . .

  SUPPORT PERSON (interrupting): No, I mean what digital format. MP3? WMA? WAV?

  ME:

  SUPPORT PERSON: Hello?

  ME (sheepishly): I don’t know my format.

  SUPPORT PERSON (sighing): Can you tell me the serial number of the unit? It’s a 63-digit number that should begin with either EX93857 or EX93957.

  ME (squinting): I don’t see anything like that. You don’t happen to know where my reading glasses are, do you? Ha ha!

  SUPPORT PERSON:

  ME: OK, really, I can’t find the serial number.

  SUPPORT PERSON: It’s on the bottom.

  ME (squinting): Which side is the bottom?

  SUPPORT PERSON (sighing): The side where you insert the batteries.

  ME: It takes batteries?

  So I usually come out of the Technical Support experience without a solution to my technical problem, and, as a bonus, I feel like a moron. This is why I believe Technical Support for Boomers would be a terrific business. Instead of some sighing whippersnapper, you would talk to a person your own age, who would be sympathetic to your specific technical abilities and needs:

  SUPPORT PERSON: How can I help you?

  ME: OK, I have this Vortex SoundLoin music player thingie my kids gave me for Father’s Day, and I’m trying to figure out how to play a song on it. I think I have it turned on, but I’m not sure. I definitely pushed all the buttons, but nothing seems to be happening. At least, I don’t think anything is.

  SUPPORT PERSON: I hate it when that happens! Why do there have to be so many buttons anyway?

  ME: Exactly!

  SUPPORT PERSON: OK, so you’re saying it’s a music player?

  ME: Yes, and I can’t get any music to come out.

  SUPPORT PERSON: Huh! I think sometimes, with these new ones, before you get the music out, you have to put the music in there.

  ME: Really? How?

  SUPPORT PERSON: Well, I can’t say for sure without my reading glasses, but I think you have to use a computer.

  ME: Oh God.

  SUPPORT PERSON: I know! It’s crazy!

  ME: All I want to do is listen to this one song, “Chain of Fools.”

  SUPPORT PERSON: Aretha!

  ME: Yes!

  SUPPORT PERSON: I love that song! (Singing). “My father said, ‘Come on home . . .’ ”

  SUPPORT PERSON AND ME SINGING TOGETHER: “My doctor said, ‘Take it eeeeeeeeeEEEEEASY . . .’ ”

  ME: Damn, that woman can sing.

  SUPPORT PERSON: I know. You hear these women singers today, like whatshername . . .

  ME: The one with the cleavage?

  SUPPORT PERSON: Yes! What is her name?

  ME: I don’t remember. But she has no talent.

  SUPPORT PERSON: I know! Take away her cleavage, she’s nothing.

  ME: She’s selling Frappucinos at Starbucks.

  SUPPORT PERSON: Aretha has talent and cleavage.

  ME: Oh God yes. You could lose a backhoe in there.

  SUPPORT PERSON: Try telling that to these kids today.

  ME: Isn’t that the truth. Well, listen, I’m sure you have other people waiting. Thanks so much for the help!

  SUPPORT PERSON: It’s why I am here.

  Wouldn’t that be a great service? Granted, you won’t solve your technical problem, but let’s face it, you’ll never solve it anyway. The reason your kids gave you the music player in the first place was that they knew eventually you’d give up on learning how to use it and give it to them.

  But the point is that Technical Support for Boomers could be a very successful business. And not just because of digital music. There’s also the whole issue of digital photos. There are millions of Boomers out there taking pictures with digital cameras, and the majority of them do not know how to get the picture out of the camera. The only way they can see their pictures now is on the little screen on the camera itself, which means when they get home from their once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Grand Canyon, their visual souvenir of one of nature’s most spectacular and majestic vistas looks like this:

  Photography Credits

  A person frustrated by digital photography would definitely benefit from Technical Support for Boomers, which would offer timely and specific advice (“What I do is buy postcards”).

  I’ve given you some good Boomer-related ideas. But the truth is that any business you come up with that targets Baby Boomers will probably be a big success. You don’t even necessarily have to have a real business. You could just select Boomers at random from the phone book and send them invoices for “services rendered,” and a lot of us Boomers would pay them. We’d just assume you had provided some service to us, and we forgot what it was.

  Speaking of cluelessness, another prime target demographic group for your business could be:

  Pet Owners

  It is a known fact that modern pet owners are completely insane. There was a time when dogs and cats were considered to be, basically, dogs and cats. We were very fond of them, of course, but we understood that they were animals, and we did not confuse animals with humans, except sometimes late at night in parts of the South.

  That line has long since been crossed. Many modern pet owners consider their pets to be much more important than the actual humans in their lives. These pet owners will cheerfully pay for any service or product that they believe will make their pet happier, including gourmet pet food, spa treatments, trust funds, plastic surgery, designer clothes, footwear, physical therapists, psychologists and—I am not making this u
p—pet psychics. That is correct: There are people out there who will pay somebody good money to tell them what their dog is thinking. Let me just say, as a person who has owned a number of dogs: If you can’t figure out what a dog is thinking, you are, with all due respect, dumber than ketchup. Without even knowing your specific dog, I can tell you right now what it’s thinking. It’s thinking one of the Ten Basic Dog Thoughts.

  THE TEN BASIC DOG THOUGHTS

  1.

  “Bark!”

  2.

  “Time to eat!”

  3.

  “Bark! Bark!”

  4.

  “Here’s an object! I’d better pee on it!

  5.

  “Or have sex with it!”

  6.

  “Bark Bark! Bark!”

  7.

  “Mmmm! Crotch!”

  8.

  “Time to eat again!”

  9.

  “Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!

  10.

  “Barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark!”

  SOURCE: PETA

  If you can come up with a product or service that pet owners will think their pets need or want, you will get rich. One idea I had, which you are welcome to use, is: Dead Squirrels by Mail. There are few things in the world that make a dog happier than getting hold of a squirrel, and yet very few dogs ever get to enjoy this pleasure, because the brain of a standard squirrel is nearly one molecule in diameter, which means squirrels seriously outclass dogs in the tactical thinking department. Go to any park, and you will see dogs racing around at top speed, nearly insane with frustration, ramming headfirst into trees at speeds upwards of 30 miles per hour in their fruitless efforts to catch squirrels, while the squirrels themselves are safely up in their trees laughing so hard that the ground beneath them is damp with squirrel drool.* 28

  So the idea is, to make these dogs—and of course their owners—happy, you would start a business that would, each month, mail your customers a dead squirrel. I guarantee that the arrival of this package would be WAY more exciting for the dog than any dog-spa treatment. There would be urine everywhere.

  The reason it has to be a dead squirrel, of course, is that if it was alive, it would easily elude the dog. Another possibility would be to mail live squirrels, but hobble them by putting tiny shackles on their paws so the dogs could catch them. The problem there is that the dog might be one of those mutant miniature breeds that look like the result of a biological experiment to see what happens when you mate a gerbil with a ball of lint:

  Photography Credits

  Even a hobbled squirrel would take about four seconds to reduce this dog to Purina Squirrel Chow. No, dead squirrels are definitely the way you want to go. Fortunately, there is an abundant supply of them occurring naturally all around you, if you just look.

  Photography Credits

  Another potentially huge moneymaker is cell phones for pets. You know how you often see businesspeople walking around in public talking on those cell-phone headsets, which enable them to harness the awesome power of global communications technology to look like total assholes? It is only a matter of time before pet owners start wanting these things for their pets:

  Photography Credits

  If your pet was wearing a cell phone with a headset, you could always stay in constant contact with it and find out exactly what it was thinking (“barkbarkbarkbarkbark”).

  Yet another pet-related business you could make big money in is pet cloning. I found out about this from the New York Times,* 29 which had a story about this person who loved his cat so much that he was planning to pay a pet-cloning company $32,000 for a new one. That is correct: $32,000. For a cat. We have to ask ourselves, as a society, what has happened to our priorities and our values when—at a time when many young people in this country cannot afford to go to college—a person is willing to spend, to replace a cat, an amount of money that could be used to buy—and this is a conservative estimate—9,000 gallons of beer.

  This is a horrible misuse of resources. You definitely should cash in on it. What you do is start a company called Discount Scientific Pet Cloning. Your competitive edge would be that you’d charge half what the “big boys” were charging for pet clones. Here’s how your business would work: You’d tell your customers to mail you a photo of their pet, plus a plastic baggie containing some of the pet’s DNA, which could be in the form of a hair, a saliva-soaked tennis ball, a tapeworm, a poop, some fabric from a piece of furniture that the pet was fond of attempting to mate with, etc. You would take these items into your Scientific Cloning Laboratory, which would be your garage. There, using a pair of sterile tongs, you would throw the baggie away. Then you would go to an animal shelter and get a replacement pet. This is why you need the photograph: You want the replacement to look at least vaguely like the pet that it is replacing. At the very least you want it to be the same species. Like, if the original pet was a cat, you don’t want to be sending the owner a llama. For one thing, llamas are really hard to mail.

  Perhaps you are thinking: “Wait a minute: If you’re not actually cloning the pets, isn’t that . . . fraud?” Well, if you want to use a picky legalistic definition of “fraud”—i.e., committing an act of fraud—the answer is, technically, yes. But trust me: Once your customer receives the “cloned” pet, he or she will immediately fall in love with it, because (1) all animals are capable of touching the hearts of humans on a deep emotional level, and (2) your customer is an idiot, which is why he or she is attempting to clone a pet by mail in the first place.

  OK, I’ve given you some practical, “can’t miss” business ideas. If you try them, and they work out for you, I ask for nothing in return except for your thanks, and a large amount of money. Also, if you find any reading glasses, those are mine.

  12

  HOW TO GET RICH IN THE STOCK MARKET

  Or: Not

  THE STOCK MARKET, or “Wall Street,” is the most prominent symbol of our national wealth, bestriding the American economy, in the words of Walt Whitman, “like some kind of big thing that bestrides something else.”

  But what, exactly, is the stock market? In technical economic terms, it is a building in New York City where hundreds of excited men and women gather to shout at one another until they have armpit stains the size of catchers’ mitts. These people are called “traders,” and they are trading “stocks,” which are pieces of “paper” that say the “bearer” owns a tiny fraction, or “share,” of a company.

  For example, if you buy one share of Microsoft, and Microsoft has ten billion shares outstanding, you—even if you are just some dirtbag—literally own one ten-billionth of Microsoft. Does this mean you can go to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and exchange your share for, say, a coffeemaker? Of course not. A coffeemaker is three shares.* 30 For one share, you get an acoustic ceiling tile.

  But the real value of stocks doesn’t come from trading them in; it comes from holding on to them while they appreciate in value. For example, suppose that, back in 1950, you had $10 to invest. If you had put that $10 into a bank passbook-savings account at 2 percent compound interest, and you kept it there, today it would be worth, allowing for inflation, $238.62.* 31

  Sounds pretty good, right? But if you had taken that same $10 and invested it in IBM stock in 1950, today it would be worth, geez, probably a lot of money. Of course you can’t use this money, because by this point, if you’re still alive, you’re sitting in a nursing home watching Wheel of Fortune, with a streamer of drool from your mouth to your lap, wondering what the hell you did with your teeth.

  So, the financial lesson we learn from this example is that you should never leave your money anywhere for too long. Your best use of this particular $10
would have been to blow the whole thing on a steak dinner back in 1950, when good steak was cheap and nobody gave a damn about cholesterol.

  But getting back to the stock market: It can be a good way to make money, but only if you know what you’re doing. You do NOT buy stocks based on the latest fad, or some “hot tip” from your uncle Herb. For one thing, you don’t have an uncle Herb. For another thing, the only way to make money in the stock market is to use a rational system, based on solid information, not guesswork. The only proven way to make money in the market is to follow this three-step procedure:

  Step 1: Gather all available financial data on the top one thousand stocks for the past twenty-five years.

  Step 2: By conducting a thorough analysis of each stock—taking into consideration its performance against the overall market, splits, price/earnings ratio, earned-run average, etc.—select the ten stocks that have performed best in this time period.

  Step 3: Using a time machine, go back twenty-five years and buy these stocks.

  This system is pretty much foolproof except for one teensy flaw, which you may have already detected: You are way too lazy to do the research. Most people are. This is why most people use stockbrokers.

  A stockbroker is a person who has been trained to analyze your personal situation and develop a unique financial strategy that is tailored specifically to your needs and your goals, using the following chart: