Rollin’ flush with my single dollar bill. That’s just how I do.

I stole the idea after stumbling across Leffot’s Fold wallet when I was trying to find some shoe porn. Mine isn’t nearly as nice as theirs. On the other hand, it didn’t cost $100, so I’ll call it a draw. I also got the satisfaction of a job-kinda-well-ish done. I made a quick paper prototype and then went to cuttin’. Part of the fun of doing a quick sloppy draft is that often times the quick sloppy draft is surprisingly good enough.

Like they say, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. I loved the stripped-down feel. I will spare you the #lifehack #diy #dailycarry #tips about how I use it. You’re welcome.

The point is, this thing is awesome. Now that I’ve tested and loved the concept, I’m considering making myself an upgrade with nicer leather and non-crooked cuts. And there’s also the expected satisfaction that comes with generally trying harder—not to be underestimated.

Alas, the ascendancy of this wallet means that my previous favorite, the Backpacking Light/Simblissity collaboration, the LiteFOLD XP, is now retired. After 6 or 7 years of hiking and, um, sitting on my ass, the old wallet was showing its age. I still highly recommend Simblissity and will probably pick up another one for multi-day outdoorsy use. My fold is the new king.

So after wrapping up Michael Lewis‘ The Blind Side, this weekend I finished his earlier book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The question at hand: “What is the most efficient way to spend money on baseball players?”

The central character is the hands-on Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane. His story—that of the gifted athlete adored by scouts who crumbles in the majors—sours him on old-school baseball scouting and management. Beane discards baseball’s long heritage of subjectivity and gut instinct (e.g. “the good face“), and tries the objective, stat-crunching approach.

Winding in and out of this story, Lewis explores the work of baseball writer Bill James, the roots of the Society for American Baseball Research, and touches on sabermetrics. If anything, I wish there were more numbers in this book. I would have loved to dig in to some tables and really follow the statistical arguments. But at its heart, Lewis’ book is not a peer-reviewed research article, but a story. A pretty good one.

And as a tangential bonus, Lewis gives an little off-hand bit of writing wisdom:
“If you write well enough about a single subject, even a subject seemingly as trivial as baseball statistics, you needn’t write about anything else.”

I have every admiration for women who choose the selfless task of caring and nurturing the next generation. No, the toxic wife is a completely different species. She is the woman who gives up work as soon as she marries, ostensibly to create a stable home environment for any children that might come along, but who then employs large numbers of staff to do all the domestic work she promised to undertake, leaving her with little to do all day except shop, lunch, luxuriate. Believe me, there is no shortage of the breed and I’ve been inundated with horror tales about them.

1. Make a will
2. Pay off your credit cards
3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement
9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio

Makes sense to me.