When Enough's Enough

I recently heard a story about the great detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant John Watson, it goes like this:

Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Watson have taken a trip to the rural countryside together to investigate another unsolveable crime. After a hard day of investigating, the two decide to bed down for the night in a field nearby where they are working. After a few moments of preparing their camp site Holmes, while still rummaging through the duo's belongs, without looking up, asks Watson what he thinks of the millions of stars shining above them. Watson, being the insightful man that he was responds, "Well judging by the number of them and their distance from us I know that something bigger than myself created them. I also know that there are too many to readily count, and that there must be more to why they exist than I can currently comprehend without further study. Judging by how well I can see them, I can reasonably say that I know tomorrow will be a great day for our investigation because the weather will favorable, and because of that I deduce that we'll get a good nights rest as it will almost certainly not rain this evening." Then stopping in the middle of his rummaging to look over at Watson, Sherlock Holmes responds to his side-kicks' observations. "Very astute observations my dear Watson, very astute indeed. However, I'll say I do take issue with your idea of us sleeping well tonight because the only reason you're looking at the stars right now in the first place is because you have forgotten to pack our tent."

So after thinking about Mr. Holmes and his understudy Watson further I came to the realization that we all (to some extent anyway) act as Watson did in the story. It's easy during times like these to get caught up looking at the bigger picture based on what we read or hear in the news. It becomes simple to get choked by all of the negativity surrounding us and coaxed into believing that its not OUR problem. Rather we like to believe that its THEIR problem however in doing so we forget that the very reason we were looking around us for answers in the first place is because of our own actions and depravity to begin with. In reality this whole economic crisis when you get to the root of it comes from one undeniable thing; OUR lack of personal responsibility, moral integrity, and the inability of each and everyone of us to recognize that we were all part of the problem (in some form or another) and are now all required to be part of the solution.

So rather than be another source of negativity I have chosen to devote Fridays to trying to make a difference. Economically there are hundreds of things I could choose to write about that are going wrong within our world at the moment. I could focus on some aspect of a bailout plan for some group somewhere in the world, discuss how bad the payroll jobs figures announced this morning were, or even dive into some area of personal finance that people are undoubtedly mismanaging as Dave Ramsey does. But I won't. Not today. Not on Fridays. Fridays on this blog are going to be about the positive things in our economy no matter how few and far those possitive things may be.

Today MSNBC published a story about a British scientific study that revealed individual happiness may in fact be contagious. The story reads:

"Feeling inexplicably cheery today? Thank your friends. And your friends’ friends. And your friends’ friends’ friends.

New research shows that happiness isn’t just an individual phenomenon; we can catch happiness from friends and family members like an emotional virus. When just one person in a group becomes happy, researchers were able to measure a three-degree spread of that person’s cheer. In other words, our moods can brighten thanks to someone we haven’t even met.

“Especially in the United States, we’re very used to thinking of ourselves as rugged individuals. But even very small things that happen to us have big impacts on dozens and hundreds of other people,” says James Fowler, a University of California, San Diego, political scientist, who co-authored the study with Harvard University medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis. “The things that we do and the things that we feel are going to reverberate throughout our social network.”

On average, every happy person in your social network increases your own chance of cheer by 9 percent — and the effects of catching someone else’s happiness lasts up to one year. The study, which looked at nearly 5,000 individuals over 20 years, was published online Thursday in the British Medical Journal.

Wow. Now lets all try to be happy for a moment and see if it catches on over the weekend.

1) The US Dollar is trading near some of its highest levels in about 5 years. Although this may be short lived and fundamentally unsupportable for the long term it is good for us as individual US citizens right now. This means that if you have money saved up, are holding a stable job, or are just deciding to live life as its dealt to you because you've realized that their is no way you can materially change your current financial situation regardless of what happens: IT COULD BE TIME TO TRAVEL INTERNATIONALLY!!!!!

I propose investing in your self, your experiences, and expanding your horizons if your in the position to do so. Go visit South America, Asia, Europe, or wherever your heart desires! Its probably not going to get much cheaper than it is right now and if this thing gets any worse the few thousand dollars you'll spend to go do it won't make a difference anyway. Think about it, what would this money get for you in a personal financial crisis anyway? If you have less money in readily available cash than it takes to live for 2, 3, 4, maybe even 6 months to find a new job if you can find one at all whats an extra few months before the inevitible?

2) If you can't reasonably afford to take an international trip right now then take a trip domestically! Gas is as cheap as its been in nearly 4 years and is continuing to drop with the price of crude oil falling off the map. In addition to this, hotel chains and airlines are suffering, state tourism is down, and there are many deals to be had; see for yourself at http://www.kayak.com/. With the National Average for Gas now below $1.80, hotel stays in and at nice locations available for as little as $400 a week, and airline tickets as cheap as they've been in years why not?

I'm sure you're thinking I'm nuts on points 1 and 2 to be pushing you to take a vacation at at a time like this but before you think that consider the following: we are in a consumer led recession. What this means (for a lot of people and companies anyway) is that as a nation (and globally) we are all simultaneously clamming up and not spending. We are doing this even while some of us still have the capacity to spend and the reason for that is because we are in a deflationary spiral. For those of you who don't understand deflation the following is a very basic overview of how we got into the deflationary period we are in now:

The US Government, in an effort to make housing affordable for everyone encouraged the expansion and distribution of cheap, readily available credit. Then WE as a nation being irresponsible gobbled up as much credit as we could get our hands on. -> Financial Companies, (run by you, your friends, and your neighbors read ALL of us) and Individuals (yes individuals too, remember we are here because of a lack of personal responsibility) made poor choices on mortgages, housing purchases, and our personal credit positions -> Then Financial Companies began to lose money because of these poor choices when the realization set in that the cheap available credit for everyone idea wasn't a good one -> Financial workers get laid off -> People get scared and spend less -> spending less means all companies make less -> more workers get laid off to compensate for less income -> more people get scared and spend less money -> more people lose jobs -> more job losses increase home defaults and scare financial companies into not lending to each other as they start to collapse -> Financial companies lose more money....wash. rinse. repeat. DEFLATION.

Of course I'm not advocating in points 1 and 2 that you should let your money burn a hole in your pocket and throw it out haphazardly. I'm also not trying to say its time to give up and put your head in the sand; im not saying that at all. I'm simply suggesting that if you are in a position where you can afford it you might consider taking a trip. If you are from the USA you might even consider taking that trip here instead of an international one to help out at home. Whatever you decide I can assure you its not going to get much cheaper and sitting on money for the sake of sitting on it hurts everyone.

So be prudent, be wise, and guard your hard earned money! Most importantly though take responsibility for your financial choices and don't spend more money on credit than you can afford! Think it over, make a sound choice, and consider taking advantage of the low costs right now. Then plan your trip, spend some money, and have a great weekend.