Been Wasting Money Lately

Bit of a low point for me lately. Just been wasting money. I bought a new sprinkler for the backyard as the missus broke the connector on the old one. And what should happen the next week? There is a ban on using sprinklers during winter. At least my new sprinkler will still appear to be new come spring.

Second bit of wastage came when I purchased Unreal Anthology, a set of computer games, from EB Games. Picked it up for only $20 and it is the early versions of Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament, Unreal II and Unreal Tournament 2004. Quite a good game still and one which we, The Boy and I, enjoy playing. In the city for some lunch and shopping last weekend and we wandered into EB Games. Imagine my shock when I discovered that nearly all of the games were half price! Dammit! So I bought Command & Conquer Saga - The First Decade and Tiberium Wars. It had been $50 and I'd had my eye on it for a while but couldn't go past it for only $25.

So, it's not all bad.

What Would You Do With A Lazy $110 Billion?

It would seem that the US of A has more money than it knows what to do with. Well, it has some useless money, some $110b of it, that it has to guard as it wasn't printed properly. And to think that they cost in the vicinity of $120m to produce it's a rather costly exercise. They aren't sure how the money should be disposed of. Might have to look at making a few suggestions.

What would you do with a lazy US$110b?

- The Yanks could pay off about 0.0795% of their national debt.
- You could buy-out Carlos (Slim) Helú and Bill Gates - Forbes list of billionaires.
- You could get about 75% of BHP Billiton Limited at current market capitalisation.
Argentina's foreign debt could be paid off - Wikipedia List of countries by external debt
- Plenty of nice Pacific islands going cheap enough.
- You may have enough to buy Chelski, er Chelsea.
Put the money in a high interest rate account, say 6.20% at Bankwest, and live off the $6.82b/yr it would pay. But seeing as the maximum in the account is $2m you'd need to set up 5,500 term deposits. And the term is only for 7 months. That would keep you rather busy. Too busy to enjoy your money perhaps.
- Might buy my son an ice cream. Might even buy the Mr Whippy van.
- Pay off my home loan. Buy the bank too.
- Maybe the Yanks could buy the Wikileaks Website.
- Purchase 57.8% of Google.

Any suggestions?

Could One Million Dollars Be Worse Than One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars?

Ask yourself this question. Would US$1m be worse to receive than US$150k? Ninety nine out of 100 would answer no but I'll answer yes. That's because I know what is behind the question.

Tiger Woods, whom, I believe, has changed his nickname to Cheetah, by some media accounts has paid one million dollars to one mistress, named by others as Rachel Uchitel, to keep quiet about their alleged affair, and Us Weekly paid Jaimee Grubbs $150,000 to spill her guts about her affair with him.

I think Jaimee Grubbs is in the better position. She's told her story and people can accept that. Rachel Uchital, allegedly, has received more money but is not in a position to tell her story. Ever. How could you live with that scenario? People would be second-guessing you all the time and asking you questions about the (alleged) incident.

I would find it hard to live with myself after that. After all, if I had had an illicit romance with Tiger Woods I'd want to keep it to myself. Stuff the money.