Our next blog

One of these days, when we decide to leave academia or decide it’s time to sell our souls for more income…

We’re going to create a new blog.  We’re going to call the guy who owns the blog, Steve.  That way we won’t have to put up with patriarchal BS.  (Shhh “Steve” doesn’t really exist.  He’s just a front man.)

Steve will run a personal finance blog.  He will recycle our old and extremely awesome money posts.  We’ll disappear them from this blog so if anybody notices that there might be plagiarism, only google cache will be able to help.  We may even say that we sold the posts to Steve, so he’s not actually stealing our work.  In theory the controversy would drive up hits, and we could even write a guest post for Steve explaining that we love his blog and sold him a few posts.  Something like that.

We’re thinking of some version of  quitmydayjob.com for the blog host.  We’ve got some back-up plans in case that turns out to be too expensive.

He’s going to start with the plan of making moneys.  He’s going to have advertising.  He’ll do the Yakezie challenge.  He’ll accept sponsored guest posts.  He’ll do all the things that Nicole and Maggie don’t have time to or don’t want to sell their souls to do.  Heck, depending on how much time we have, he might even write paid posts for other blogs!  We’ll see.

Readers will be able to cheer him on as he works to make money so he can quit his soul-sucking dayjob.  We haven’t decided what his current job is, but we know he doesn’t like it.

We’re not sure if he’s single or married or if he has kids yet.  Probably if he has kids, there’s only one.  Hm… maybe he could be a divorced single dad with custody, but the kid has insurance through the ex-wife.  I dunno.  Or maybe he’ll just be a single guy.  So many decisions!

It’ll be awesome.  One of these days when one of us quits her dayjob.

Until then…

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 170,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 3 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!

In 2012, there were 280 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 873 posts. There were 19 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2 MB. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was October 3rd with 1,157 views. The most popular post that day was It’s not really your money if you’re in debt.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2012.

• 1 You know you’re in the South when… 58 comments July 2011
• 2 How to write a response to reviewers 17 comments February 2011
• 3 Are professors off during the summer? 18 comments March 2011
• 4 Graduate school grades 17 comments April 2011
• 5 It’s not really your money if you’re in debt 33 comments September 2012

Some of your most popular posts were written before 2012. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

The top referring sites in 2012 were:

1. Google Reader
2. bardiac.blogspot.com
3. getrichslowly.org
4. scientopia.org
5. reassignedtime.wordpress.com

Most visitors came from The United States. The United Kingdom & Canada were not far behind.

Your most commented on post in 2012 was Musings on why weight targets bother me

These were your 5 most active commenters:

• 1 bogart
• 2 Cloud
• 3 MutantSupermodel
• 4 rented life
• 5 chacha1

What were your favorite grumpy rumblings posts this past year?

Mr. Money Moustache vs. Laura Vanderkam

Ignoring academic blogs for the nonce, the blogs we read generally fit into two categories:  super-frugal people and high-powered career women.

Sometimes this causes a bit of schizophrenia when it comes to the money-time trade-off.  Half the blogs tell us to keep our expenses low, do everything ourselves, earn less money to buy ourselves time.  The other half tell us to work hard, invest in our careers, live that upper-middle class lifestyle (saving responsibly on the big and/or important stuff, of course), and outsource anything that takes time away from what we want to be doing.

After reading the former I always feel a little guilty.  Surely there’s someplace more we can cut.  Maybe I could force myself to eat greens instead of just not taking them at the CSA.  After reading the latter I worry, am I not doing enough to make more money?  Am I not outsourcing enough?  Am I spending too much mental power worrying about those former blogs when I should just relax, or am I spending too much mental power worrying that I shouldn’t be worrying?

But, of course, after some soul-searching I always realize that no, I’ve been optimizing my utility subject to my budget constraints and my time constraints all along.  It’s only when there’s a change coming ahead (like DH quitting his job…) that I need to think about re-optimizing.  Mr. Money Moustache is very persuasive, but in the end I don’t really want his life.  I want *my* career.  And my career means that’s where the bulk of my time goes, so some outsourcing makes sense.  I don’t want to do it part-time (though after tenure some people do).  But I also haven’t taken my career or money making to extremes and doing so might stress me out.

I think most of us are probably somewhere in between the two extremes of minimizing spending and maximizing earning.  And that’s probably healthy, and given diminishing rates of marginal utility, that’s probably utility maximizing.  If we’re off the equilibrium, we can cut some spending to get more time or use more time to get more money and we’ll be happier.

However, it’s really intriguing to read blogs from people who are extreme on one end or the other.  They show what’s possible.  And it’s compelling to read authors who are 100% sure of themselves and tell other folks what they should do.  Martha Stewart didn’t build an empire with doubts, but with her way being a good thing.*  Mr. Money Moustache has his dictatorial Moustachian way, many parts of which I completely disagree with (despite being in his target demo in terms of income).  Laura Vanderkam has hers with making the most of every one of those 168 hours.

Funnily, Mr. Money Moustache makes this comparison on his own blog but with the I will teach you to be rich guy and the 4 hour work-week guy.  But for me, Laura Vanderkam is a more realistic proponent of outsourcing and careerism/money making.  (Just like Mr. Money Moustache is a more realistic version of financial independence than Early Retirement Extreme was.)

*Hilarious interview with Martha Stewart on Wait Wait Don’t tell me the other weekend– she admits that there are multiple correct ways to get seeds out of a pomegranate, but there are also very wrong ways.  My sister left us a pomegranate at Thanksgiving that I am too scared to open for fear of doing it wrong.  The instructions she gave were complicated!

Where do you fall on the early retirement vs. work hard/play hard spectrum?  Who are your favorite extreme bloggers and other personalities?

Nicole and Maggie gossip about bloggers

#1: when she whines, I feel Schadenfreude
#2: and her husband is just as bad
it’s not like Mutant Supermodel
where she’s doing her best and life keeps kicking her
but she’s going to do just fine one of these days
#1: right
#2: mutant super model has 3 kids, lives in a more expensive area, and does not make 6 figures… but she makes good choices and isn’t all entitled
#1: I like to read The Little Professor. She amuses me.
#2: me too
the little professor doesn’t seem to have any issues
#1: nope
stable, professional, amusing, is Little Prof’s blogpersona
#2: I have to say my current voyeur blog reading is coming from one bright star.
She seems to be making reasonably good choices… or at least averting disaster. I’m glad she dumped the biochemist. I want to tell her of course it seemed like they clicked– you don’t get to have that many marriages and affairs unless you can click with women! But I kind of swore off doing anything but watching other people’s romances many moons ago.
So far I’m rooting for CPA, but military guy intrigues me
#1: heheheheheh
#2: (I think it’s CPA, the one without any red flags)
#1: it’s like reality TV without looking at ugly people
#2: haha yes
like the early real world episodes, before they realized crazy sold
In any case, I’m totally hooked. Even if 1B* is actually a happily married 65 year old gentleman retired ice fisher playing a hoax on the internet community. It’s making for a good story and I want to know how it ends.

Grumpy rumblings wants to know if you have any good gossip about bloggers to share.  We’ll be very discreet… (or at least as discreet as posting on a public forum can be).  Where are you getting your vvoyeuristic kicks?  Please nothing too slanderous or libelous.  Unless it’s about CPP.

Accusing people of lying

We’re from the Midwest, and in our part of the Midwest we don’t lie, we don’t dissimulate, and silence is deadly because if you can’t say anything nice, you don’t say anything at all.  In the Midwest one of the rudest things a person can do is say someone is lying (without proof). We don’t *do* that.  We’re not always the softest-tongued people, but you can trust what we say when we say it.

So when someone accuses someone else of lying, especially when the accused person is not there to defend hirself, we don’t really feel a need to be nice to that someone. That’s one reason people who say that “parents who say their kids are gifted are liars” are not welcome to say such things here. And we’re not happy when people make statements that they know people IRL who pretend to be happy or pretend to be balanced. Those are horrible bitchy things to say, especially if you don’t have any proof. And they’re worse when you’re telling them to someone from the Midwest where lying is taboo.

One of us has also lived in SoCal and knows that saying things people want to hear is more the social order and there isn’t as big a taboo on bending the truth. There was a period of adjustment for her learning that. Of course, she didn’t change herself to start bending the truth (when she said, “Let’s do lunch,” she really meant it– especially if she said it 3 times), but she learned the social cues that put truth probabilities to people’s statements so she could figure out what was actually going to happen and what people thought might be nice to happen if the stars aligned. That sort of thing.  So perhaps our reaction to accusing people of lying behind their backs isn’t at the same level as or as understandable for everyone on the internet.

Still, if you’re going to accuse people of lying without proof… here is not a good place to do it.  We’re likely to get out the big stick of moderation after warning you politely.  Go find a blog with other assholes and you can complain about whatever you want behind peoples’ backs.  That’s the beauty of the internet.  But you’re not worth our time, and despite Midwesterners being a generally hospitable people, you’re not welcome here unless you can learn some manners.

Why do we blog?

A good question posed by undine.  Or at least, the purpose of the blog can’t change unless there was a purpose to begin with.

We started the blog on a whim.  Apparently one of us wanted money, though that has not happened (or not yet happened).  Money takes effort.  And possibly some dirtying of the soul.

The goal was to become famous on the internet.  I suppose we’ve picked up some moderate fame.  There’s a lot more fame out there, but whenever we generate a bunch of hits we tend to feel like it’s time to tone down a bit.  Too much fame can be scary.  (Though it would be nice to get oodles of money just for being… still, dividends are a more comfortable way of doing that.  If only we had a huge pot of cash to start with!)

Early on we searched for some meaning or some reason for our rumblings.  But really it’s just a hobby.  One of us has addictions and the blog is just the latest in that.  If not blogging, then it would be something else.  So far blogging hasn’t been dangerous (yet).  It does seem to be an excellent method of procrastination, especially while one is say, running pokey statistical programs.

So to sum:  We don’t really have any good reason for blogging.  We’re not trying to quit our day-jobs or change the world or gain deep insights into our innermost beings.  Apparently it’s just a hobby without any purpose.  Well, that and, of course, we get to interact with all our fantabulous readers!

In fact, we are sure much of our esteemed blogging readership are answering higher callings!

FeMOMhist even has a syllabus for her blog!  w00t!

Why do you blog (if you do)?  Or why don’t you (if you don’t)?

 

Cutting down on the blog

There comes a time in many blog’s life when real life gets too busy for a full-time hobby.  We’re not making any money from this, so there’s no incentive to let the hobby become unpleasant.  Sorry to have disappointed you, CPP, but the blog just isn’t a priority compared to our academic work, families, new hobbies, etc.

So we will be moving from six days a week to erratic updating.  Just like most academic bloggers.  (Or maybe we’ll just drop Thursdays… it’ll be like one of those Skinner boxes where you either have to sign up for an RSS feed or come back at random intervals/press the lever to find out.)

The one of us who is a mother will be cutting off mothering blogs.  She’s really tired of being told that she’s not allowed to be happy (or that she’s a deluded liar) and no longer has enough energy to fight the patriarchy on this subject.  Especially when people are being told it’s their feminist right to be miserable and to bring all other women down with them.  Whatever.  It’s my feminist right to let them bring each other down and ignore it.  Putting on my own mask and making sure I’m on a different plane than the anti-mask people.

We will try to keep up the Monday Money posts, and we got a lot of good questions for Ask the Grumpies Fridays.  So not a complete disappearance!

Who are Nicole and Maggie?

Let’s ask Google…

A girl and her dog.
Singers.
A bridal gown.
Fat ladies in space.

Youtube has some disturbing answers. I think we will not link directly.  Except this one which is not particularly disturbing and is kind of cute (in the way that other people’s small children are kind of cute).

We’re actually none of the above.  But it is interesting how all these other paired Maggie/Nicoles have popped up since we started the blog (though the singers pre-dated us).  We believe it signifies something cosmic.

We will take over the world.

Be afraid.

Very afraid.

Ask the Grumpies: Fame

First Generation American:

You say you want to be famous on the internet, but would you really like fame in real life? Why or why not? Ie..if your blog hit the big time, would you want to be outed?

#1:  I am famous… not a household name among normal folks, but people in my career area know who I am.  Which is kind of disconcerting.  But it is nice being respected in the field– I do good work and I’m getting a little credit for it.  Or at least getting credit for sticking around (which is probably 80%, right?).  If our blog hit the big time enough to be outed I would totally disavow it.  #2 wrote the whole thing.  Famous on the internet is fun when it’s anonymous, because it’s fame you can turn on and off.  Stalkers, not so much with the fun.

#2:  probably not, because then I couldn’t bitch about work

Would you like fame in real life?

What should we call our regular readers?

What should we call our regular readers?

Zuska calls hers Zuskateers…

Rumblers?

#2 says:  THE GRUMPIES!

#1:  We’re the grumpies… can our readers also be grumpies?  Or maybe just grumps…

Yeah, while we’re at it, what should our official nickname be?  We like the Grumpies, but we’ve noticed other nicknames popping up around the interblogs.  The Grumpy Gals.  The Grumpy Girls… What say you?