Coffee heat rising

Annuities?

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What d’you know about the annuity as a vehicle for retirement strategy?

I’ve always been dubious about them. However… I have a friend, whom I’ve now known for five or six years and whom I believe to be fundamentally honest and above board. Part of his business is financial management, and one his favorite strategies entails setting clients up with annuities.

He points out that if I took about $300,000 of my vast riches — approximately half of investments and cash holdings — and put it in a lifetime annuity with a death benefit of 300 grand, I could generate more than the amount I need to live on for the rest of my life, still have money invested in securities, and leave a guaranteed $300,000 to my son when I croak over.

Given my chronic bag lady syndrome, this sounds pretty tempting.

My concern is that if the prominent oncologist who de-boobed me is right — that I should live to about 95, barring accidents and unforeseen circumstances — I will outlive my money by ten or twenty years and than spend advanced old age in serious poverty.

I do not want to continue teaching freshman comp courses, a job I truly dislike whether in the classroom or online, and I’m certainly not betting that publishing Racy Books for Racy Readers is going to make me rich. Right now I can’t even get accursed Amazon to let me create an Author’s Page for our pseudonymous scribbler, Roberta Stuart.

So, assuming no money is going to come in from side gigs or the S-corp, and knowing the government is shearing the hell out of my savings by forcing me to take large required minimum drawdowns just as the stock market heads back into negative territory, I’m thinking an annuity that would return enough to live on would give me some peace of mind and also allow me to preserve at least SOME capital as I age. And also leave at least something for my son.

Two drawbacks come to mind, as I consider this scheme:

a) it locks up $300,000, which presumably I will never be able to access again; and
b) the payouts do not seem to be inflation-adjusted.

Even though we’re not seeing much inflation now, it would be absurd to assume that we won’t in the future. My father’s retirement was devastated by the inflationary period of the 1970s, which reduced a healthy savings account to…well, not enough to live on. He had signed himself into a life-care community just as that period started, so at least he had a roof over his head and a couple of meals a day. But because of the loss of his dollars’ buying power, he did not have enough to do much other than stay underneath that communal roof and eat in the (awful!) institutional dining hall. That’s even though he started out with the 1960s equivalent of just over a million dollars!

That, IMHO, makes for quite the dreary lifestyle.

US politics grow increasingly negative. Some extremely dangerous fools are trying to attain power, and sooner or later they will succeed. When that happens, the US economy will become even more unstable than it is. So, runaway inflation — or another profound recession like the one that’s taken us 8 or 10 years to come out of — is a distinct possibility. I have no faith in the country’s economic future, and I do not believe the stock market alone is a safe place to keep all of one’s savings.

Nor, obviously, is stuffing the mattress with gold bullion a great idea. The insomnia factor aside, gold bars are too heavy for an old bat to haul to the grocery store.

I’ve talked with WonderAcccountant about the annuity question, as well as the highly knowledgeable Evan at My Journey to Millions.

WonderAccountant thinks I don’t really need to set up an annuity, as she believes there’s enough money in securities to support me into my old age, no matter how much I take out, but she suggests the peace of mind could be worth the hassle and the risk. Evan observes that some annuities are excellent retirement strategies and some are not: they’re complicated instruments that you need to understand fully before you buy.

So, I’m thinking about it.

Even if most of my money were drawn down by the time I died, if I invested half of it in an annuity, my son would inherit my paid-off house and also the $300,000 death benefit. The house is probably worth $280,000 or $300,000 now — but we know how reliable those figures can be. Nevertheless, with a paid off house in hand, he could either sell the house he’s in or rent it, providing a little cash flow for him. Or he could sell this house and use the proceeds to salt his own retirement savings.

But…do I really want to tie up half my savings in an instrument that’s not inflation-adjusted? Twenty-five or thirty grand now sounds, well, just grand. But in ten years, even if inflation stays low, it won’t be enough to keep me going. In 20 years, when I’m 90, I‘ll need over $45,000 to buy what $25,000 buys today. And as for that $300,000 death benefit: if I die at age 90, it will take $541,833 to equate to today’s 300 grand. It will be worth a little more than half of what it’s worth now.

That assumes an inflation rate of just 3%, staying stable over two decades…

 

INSIGHT: Marketing

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Suspicions confirmed: Twitter and Facebook are time-sucking wastes of your marketing energy.

Here’s a fellow that I stumbled upon at (where else?) Twitter: a gent named Derek Haines, who not only mounts endless social media and other types of campaigns to market his bookoids, but who largely advises against the same.

To stuff his message into a nutshell, he says that the sole purpose of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and waypoints is to drive readers to your blogs.

Flogging your books on Twitter, as so many people do, may or may not be a waste of time (his opinion is mixed; I’d suggest it is a waste of time, but only from a subjective viewpoint: my brain filters out anything that looks like an ad). Post your content and your message not on Twitter but on your blogsite. Then at the bleatfests, post cogent “hooks” of reasonably entertaining or useful messages with links to your site.

Furthermore, Haines suggests that Google+ is far more effective than Twitter as a way to build visibility, because Google puts (correctly designed) Google+ bleats in its search rankings. Apparently it does not do that with all the other social bleating.

That notwithstanding, says he, what you need is not brain-banging time-sucking social media campaigns. What you need is a decent mailing list.

Dayum!

Do you have a clue to how much time this will save? I have been wasting SO goddamn much time on Twitter! Ugh, ugh, and ugh!

And you know, down at the Small Business Administration, one of the mentor/instructors remarked that for any given small business owner, an hour of one’s time is worth (hang onto your hats, folks), TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS.

In that scenario, I’ve probably lost $78,000± over the past few weeks, diddled away on trying to make an impression in the bleatfest of social media.

So, here’s what I think to be the case, when it comes to marketing b2c: business to customer:

  1. Get on Google+
  2. Maintain a Twitter presence, if you must
  3. Build one or two excellent blogs, in which you  post content that someone, somewhere wants to read.
  4. Advertise the product on those blogs as an apparent afterthought (heh!)
  5. Use Google+ and Twitter to direct people to your blogsites.
  6. Once they’re at the site, provide them with useful information or entertainment.
  7. Have ads for the product available at the website
  8. Provide mailing list sign-ups for readers, and send worthwhile content to those who agree to subscribe.
  9. If what you’re selling b2c is books, build a platform at Amazon Author and Goodreads…and what? Yes: use them to direct people to your blogsites.

Duh!

This is SO much less work, SO much less tedium, and SO much easier than dorking with Twitter and FB four or five or six times a day…it defies belief.

It is after 10 p.m. I have devoted the requisite 3 hours to marketing, 3 hours to editing, 3 hours to writing, and then some, then some, and then some. And so, my friends, to bed. Watch this site for more and better content!

Overworked and Underpaid…

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😀 As usual!

Don’t forget, if you’d like to get me paid, that the FIRST THREE FIRE-RIDER BOOKS ARE ON SALE: just 99 cents!!

That would be A Gift for the Kubna, The Spoils of War, and The Journey Begins. So buy them — reviews are good already, and so there’s a mighty good chance you’ll enjoy them.

A-n-n-d… Over at Camptown Races Press, we’re giving away a free advance copy of Janet and the Djinn to anyone who signs up for our newsletter. It’s a whimsical story of a sad lady whose Craig’s List adventure plays right into October’s spooky Halloween mood. Very fun. If you like your erotic romance spiced with magical realism, you’ll love this story!

Time to get up and start working right now. If you wonder what’s been up the past couple of days, check out The Writing Life at Writers Plain & Simple. Whew!

 

Why a “connected” home is a bad idea

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appleairportthingieSo yesterday afternoon I came home from a three-hour meeting (+ two hours of commute time) to find the wireless connection was down. Apparently the power was out for about an hour and a half.

The fix for this is to shut everything down on both the laptop and the desktop (quite a time-suck, since I always have a bunch of files open at once — the joys of multitasking!), disconnect the modem and the router, wait for a few minutes, replug the modem and router, and reboot the computers.

This worked last night…for about ten minutes. The wireless network came up for about ten minutes and then disappeared again. Several attempts had the same result.

Finally, I had to go to bed. So I left the modem and router disconnected overnight and rebooted again this morning. Same story.

When I got up this morning, the Nest thermostat informed me that it couldn’t find the wireless connnection.

Fortunately, it will drive the AC without being “connected” to the Internet. But…uhmmmm…. What if it didn’t?

Yeah. What if it didn’t? What if the refrigerator and the stove and the freezer and the lights and the locks on the doors and the watering system and the car and for godsake maybe even the toilet were connected to the Internet? The way, say, Google would like them to be?

What would happen if your modem went down then? You not only wouldn’t be able to publish and advertise your books on the Internet, you wouldn’t be able to effing LIVE.

Connecting your entire life to the Internet not only means you dispense with privacy, it means you dispense with the basic ability to survive autonomously. Or more or less autonomously — obviously you depend to a large degree on the power grid and the transportation system to go about your daily life. But…do we really need another system to have to depend on? Another system that leaves us in deep sh!t every time it goes down?

When the power goes down, you have a few headaches, but — assuming you don’t depend on it to operate a life-sustaining tool like a breathing aid — the hassles are inconvenient but minor. When the wireless goes down, you can’t do business at all.

To get online to all the sites I have to operate, I need a collection of passwords that is FIFTEEN SINGLE-SPACED PAGES LONG. To get into Amazon to post the next Racy Book we’re about to put online, I need an Excel workbook that contains ELEVEN SPREADSHEETS, one of which winds out like toilet paper. These things need to be open and on the terminal where I’m working in order for me to navigate the tasks I have to do. I also need access to folders that contain not only each book’s contents in PDF, .mobi, ePub, and Wyrd formats, but its cover image in Powerpoint, a high-resolution TIFF file sized for Amazon, a high-res JPEG sized for Smashwords, a low-res JPEG sized for Bowker, and a low-res JPEG sized for thumbnails. Just now there are eight books actively in play.

To move from one computer to another — as I had to do overnight — I have to transfer TWENTY-ONE GIGABYTES of data!

Fortunately, just a week or so ago I bought a large flash drive, since I wanted to back that data up not only to a thumb drive that could be disconnected and kept safely out of reach of hackers but also to the big desktop, which is connected to Time Machine, which not only backs up but encrypts your data as you type.

The desktop iMac, a fantastic piece of equipment, is hardwired to the Internet. However…

Yesh. However. The problem is, I can’t work at it for any length of time because the back and hip pain flare up (with a fuckin’ VENGEANCE) every time I sit in a desk chair for longer than ten or fifteen minutes. Just writing this blog post is gonna freaking cripple me.

Consider: I’ve been putting in twelve and fourteen-hour days, seven days a week! If I can’t get back online with the laptop, I’m essentially out of business.

Now transfer that thought to “no wireless connection” to operate the air-conditioning and the heat and the refrigerator and the stove and the freezer and the lights and the locks on the doors and the watering system and the car and for godsake maybe even the toilet.

To be fair, Google proposes to use the Nest thermostat as a kind of hub that will allow a “smart” home’s devices to keep talking to each other even if the wireless is down. But…has anyone noticed what Google DID to the Nest device after it purchased the company? The Nest on my wall was originally fairly simple to operate — certainly not as easy as an old Honeywell round bump on the wall, but once you figured it out, not a freaking nightmare. Shortly after Google took over, they force-fed new software into the thing, and it’s now screaming incomprehensible. I can no longer program it — that’s way, way beyond my skills and patience. It’s all I can do to turn it on and off and change the temperature setting.

Why would anyone want to depend on a complicated nightmare of a gadget that requires a degree in computer engineering to operate?

The last thing on this earth we need is to have to be “connected” to go about our daily lives. It’s risky enough that our business lives depend on this technology.

It’s HERE!

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Hot diggety, folks. Camptown Races’ VERY FIRST Racy Book for Racy Readers is live and online at Amazon!! WooHOO! And how silly and fun can you get?

Really, I’m pretty proud of this little gem. The story is entertaining and promises to develop into something much more entertaining as the series progresses (we have a murder…accident?…in the Bobbi’s future), the writing is better than most of my efforts (IMHO), and the characters are a hoot.

Full-size BB1 jpeg

Oh! What a hunk, eh?

One of the most prominent publishing experts in the industry looked at that image and remarked, “Excellent cover, by the way. Even if most bikers have beer bellies and b.o. It’s fantasy, right!”

LOL!

So how does the Bobbi thing go?  After her car and her cell phone die in 115-degree heat, Professor Bobbi Stuart is rescued by an alarming man. Things heat up from there…

So…if you don’t mind reading erotica for the sheer joy of erotica, you really must buy this book.

 

 

Today’s the Day!

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TODAY our first Racy Book for Racy Readers gets “published” at Amazon. It probably won’t be available until later in the day or tomorrow. Will let you know with a link when it’s online.

We now have four, possibly five writers working for Camptown Races Press. We have enough copy to post eight books (possibly nine) this month and that many again next month. And we’ll be working toward meeting our goal of ten a month between now and next March, when we either start to make a profit or go broke.

😀

I just picked up three editorial projects that will stave off brokitude another month or so, plus enough money came in from the blog to cover the corporation’s September bills.

We shall soon see, then, if it’s true that erotica sells, and sells in enough quantity to support its scribblers.

Yesterday I met with a social media specialist. She likes The Girls’ Twitter page (@RacyLadies) but wasn’t so crazy about their blogsite, which we had to admit was pretty lame. (That would be why we were meeting with a social media specialist!) She had a few great suggestions, most of which will have to be implemented by our web guru, Grayson. In the interim — until he can get around to making some of her ideas happen — I adjusted the banner to echo the elements she liked on the Twitter presence. Just those small changes make a difference. But I hope Grayson will be able to improve it significantly, given the advice we received yesterday.

Funny about Money has been neglected — as has most of the rest of my life — while I struggle with the enormous workload. Starting a business is a project that sucks all the time out of a room. Incredible!

I’ve decided to break the day into four three-hour chunks: three hours on editing, three hours on social media marketing, three hours on preparing copy for press, three hours on everything else. We’ll see if that works better than the usual listing.

Lists, as usual, work for me. But there’s so damn MUCH to have to get done every day that I still find myself feeling pretty frantic. You know…that “life is totally out of control” feeling?

Ugh, I hate that sensation!

Anyway, I haven’t forgotten about Funny’s readers!

And for your delectation: it’s still not too late to get an advance copy of Billy and the Biker, since it will be half a day or more before the book goes live at Amazon. Come on over to The Ladies’ website, sign up for their newsletter, and we’ll send you a copy in .mobi and PDF forms! The link to sign up is at the VERY tip-top of the page — a little hard to see just now. That’s one of the things we have to fix. But if you can’t find it, just leave a comment to that post, and we’ll sign you up and send you a copy.