My Heritage Cherry Sunburst - it's lonely!
I thought the recent price break on 2013 Les Paul Specials (the faded Desert Burst double humbucker models) were the steal of the century - American made Les Pauls, marked down to $499 on Easter, with a 5% off coupon at Guitar Center that worked on Gibson (that's the real trick on coupons), and 2% cashback on all online purchases at Discover plus 5% cashback at... Guitar Center.
Well, the product photo had the 'Les Paul model' silkscreen, but the guitar arrived at my house sans-signature. I returned it.
I guess you could say "I'm so vain" - that song was about me. I'm on tilt now and I bet I end up with another LP in the next 6 months.
Links We Liked!
- The articles defining Retirement may come in staccato bursts, but this last few saw a few notable entries in the blogger version of Urban Dictionary. New to me Grumpy Rumblings posted on the topic Monday, followed by our pal Pauline at Reach Financial Independence. Also notable is Darwin's entry from a few weeks back on Darwin's Money. I suppose it isn't settled, then?
- Some weeks ago, one of the stocks we chose in the Financial Uproar 2013 Stock Picking Contest was hit by an anonymous short seller in a 60+ page document anonymously posted on Seeking Alpha. As our friend JT points out, Seeking Alpha has become quite a potential catalyst for activist investors. (Said short seller was registered as a corporation in Delaware right before the post - and most public information about the company pulled heavily from the Batman Universe.)
- The epic story of Bitcoin - a digital crypto-currency (ahem, commodity) - which crashed from Intra-day highs of ~$260/coin on 4/10 to ~$100 currently (a price which, by the way, was never even seen until this month) has caused more than a few Econ ramblings. Read the primer in The Economist. (SOMEONE should make a daily return calculator for Bitcoin! Who knows how to do such a thing?!)
- We've covered it a few times in the last year and a half or so, but the declining labor force participation rate is really the hidden story of employment in our time. And, no, retirement doesn't explain it.
- It's always nice to see our friend Bret at Hope to Prosper posting articles on investing again. As the quote goes, Bret doesn't say much, but when he talks you should listen. He picks his moments.
- Greg at Control Your Cash starts a new Madden Cover tradition for basketball by calling out Kobe Bryant's salary right before he goes down with a season ending injury. (Yeah, you'll need to read it. And yes, I'm a Celtics fan, but I'm not into rooting for injuries.)
- Steven Levitt spikes the football on drunk walking legislation in Bethel, Alaska - imbibed ambling, of course, one of the secret dangerous activities found to be more dangerous that drunk driving in the last [amazon-product text="Freakonomics" type="text"]0060889578[/amazon-product] entry.
- At Wealth Informatics, Suba wrote a great ode to her now former state. This state will miss you - but I wouldn't count the HQ of this site moving at some point in the future (but no, not in the near future).
- Joe at Timeless Finance knows where the money is (I mean, other than the Banana Stand), or at least where to save money on Netflix. 28 episodes of Netflix-series watching is an ambitious undertaking - don't make me tell you how much our Satellite subscription costs, haha.
Links to Us!
- Carnival of Wealth
- Carnival of Personal Finance
- The Simple Dollar
- Reach Financial Independence
- Hope to Prosper
- Money Smart Guides
- Life and My Finances
