The Amateur Financier

Congratulations!  If you followed my advice earlier on how to catch yourself a leprechaun, you may have found yourself with a magical wish or three that you need to use up.  Or, perhaps you encountered a genie, jinn, fairy, pixie, sprite or one of the numerous other magical entities in folklore whose sole reason for being is to grant wishes to humans who release them from some ancient prison.  (It seems like half the stories in folklore involve these sorts of being; if they were anywhere near that numerous, every week there would be a new ruler of the world lording over us.)

Of course, if there’s one thing in folklore almost as common as wish granting magical beings: ways in which those wishes go horribly wrong.  Whether it’s because the wish granters are actively malevolent, diabolical tricksters, or simply incompetent, there’s lots of ways that magical wishes can go awry.  Be careless with how you phrase your wish, or get too greedy with what you wish for, and you’ll end up as a cautionary tale told to distract a beheading happy sultan.

If your leprechaun looks like this, maybe you should just let him go...

To help you out should you find yourself being asked to make some wishes, here’s a few financial wishes to AVOID making, with the horrifying consequences if you actually went ahead and made them.  (Note: these are only financial wishes; given the nature of this blog, that’s all the help I can give.  For all other types of wishes, just follow the general advice to be careful with how you phrase your wishes, or you’ll end up the subject of a joke discussing your foot tall piano player.)  To first for a great deal of money, as so many of us would:

1) “I Wish For All the Money In the World” – Good first impulse, but you’re being a bit too ambitious.  Getting ALL the money in the world means that you’re going to bankrupt a lot of (formerly) rich, very powerful people.  I hope one of your previous wishes was to be completely indestructible.

Further problems arise because a particularly diabolical wish-granter will spoil even the fun of having so much money.  For example, if you spend some of the money, you’ll no longer have ALL the money in the world; a tricky wish-granter could thus stop you from using any of the money, leaving you with a fortune you can’t spend.  Plus, there’s no telling what will happen to the world economy if all the wealth is concentrated in your hands; my bet is it won’t be pretty.  Let’s try to be more modest; one million dollars or so should cover you quite well.

2) “I Wish For a Million Bucks” – Points for the more modest angle, but you’ve run into trouble by using slang.  Rather than a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills, this wish is likely to get you a million male deer to wreck havoc on your lawn.  (Or a million late model cars if you pronounce it as ‘Buick’.)  Remember, when in doubt, use the proper terms with magical, wish-granting critters.

3) “I Wish for a Million Dollars” - Getting better, but you run into the problem that many countries around the world use the term ‘dollars’ for their currency.  You’re thinking greenbacks (P.S., don’t use the term ‘greenbacks’ in your wish unless you want a football field worth of frogs), the leprechaun gives you Zimbabwe dollars (one million of which is worth less than a penny).  Let’s try that again.

4) “I Wish for One Million United States Dollars” - Alright, now we’re getting somewhere.  You’ll get a sizable amount of money, but not enough to spoil the economy, and we’ve ensured there won’t be any currency related trickery.  There’s still a problem: you haven’t specified the source of your new funds.  A diabolical wish granter might take the last few crumbs from one thousand poor families, or snatch one million from a rich and vindictive miser.  Either way, your money won’t bring the sort of happiness you’re hoping.  Let’s try again.

5) “I wish for one million United States dollars taken from money that no person would miss.” – Pretty good, pretty good.  Plenty of money with no chance of ruining poor families or being hunted for sport by an eccentric billionaire.  We’re nearly perfect, but there’s still one thing you’ve forgotten: the IRS.  Amazingly, the government doesn’t consider ‘given to me by a wish-granting magical critter’ as a legitimate (and more to the point, tax-free) source of income.  Expect to pay taxes out the wazoo (and trust me, you don’t want to know where on the human body THAT is located), or even to find yourself being investigated by the DEA on suspicion of drug running.  (This is probably why most of these wish-granting stories are set well before the modern day; there were fewer people who’d want to investigate the sudden source of your new wealth in say, Ancient Roman times.)

BONG!

I’m sorry, that sound means that you’ve used up all of your wishes trying to get a sizable amount of wealth.  Better luck the next time you find yourself with a magical wish-granting critter in your grasp.  If you ever find yourself needing a perfect wish for those wish granting entities to ensure that you get your money and can keep it too, try this one on for size: “I wish for one million United States dollars taken from money that no person would miss, obtained in a way that all applicable government agencies consider legitimate and tax-free.” That should get you the money you so desire, without any unneeded complications.  (Unless your magical critter is just a jerk, in which case you may end up in a Turkish prison in your underwear no matter how you phrase your wish.)  Turn in tomorrow for even more practical money advice!

In Previous Wacky Wednesday Tales: You traveled to the future as part of a (horribly failed) get-rich scheme, got stuck due to a flawed rental policy (and issues with money disappearing if you withdraw it in the future to prevent yourself from investing it in the past), and finally had to settle on a job grooming talking animals.  Can you finally make it home?

You’ll be the first one to admit it: you hate grooming talking animals.  It would be bad enough having to deal with dozens of cats, dogs, and hamsters everyday even if they never said a word.  Add in the ability to talk, though, and you have all the trouble of dealing with animals AND the joy of having to listen to a constant stream of gossip for the whole day.

It’s not just pets either, as you soon find out.  Animal rights groups, along with those people who promote giving ‘human’ rights to anything with sufficiently sophisticated brainpower, had long since gotten Congress to give full rights to any ‘sufficiently intelligent entity’, be they animal, vegetable, mineral, robot, or sentient ball of light.

Fun thing is, it seemed to be working; while the future was far from a Utopian vision of true and perfect happiness in all things, it seemed to be running pretty well.  In spite of having most of the representatives in Congress being cats and dogs, most issues were settled through calm and rational discussion, rather than screaming, name-calling, and well, fighting like cats and dogs.  You honestly aren’t sure whether to be happy about this seemingly great future, or upset that it took genetically altered house pets to restore civility to government.

Poker Night, circa 2205

Of course, perhaps all is not as it seems; you do hear stories about an insidious ‘Master Computer‘ that’s in charge of everything and secretly runs the entire world (nay, the Multiverse) from its ultra-secret location.  You’re not sure you believe any of these stories, though, because (a) the only ones you hear talking about this type of thing are hamsters (paranoid hamsters, no less), (b) if it were true, wouldn’t the Master Computer try to prevent knowledge of its existence from coming to light (or conversely, just announce its existence to the world and be done with it), and (c) the hamsters claim that the Master Computer was made by Microsoft, so you figure if there WAS a Master Computer, it’s only a matter of time before it crashes.  (Rimshot!)

None of this frivolity or the tedium of styling hamster hair distracts you from your main goal, though: getting enough money to rent a time machine and return home.  (With a possible side trip or two to gather up information to make all your future bets pay off.)  Luckily, although you can’t use the money from your investment scheme to travel back in time, the universe seems to have no problem with you spending that money to survive while accumulating ‘new’ money with which to travel back in time.  You try not to think about this too much, because it makes your head start to hurt when you do.

Still, your hard work pays off.  Thanks to the healthy supply of money you had available from your time travel exploits, your hard work, and the relatively low expense of renting a time machine in the early twenty-third century, you are soon able to save up enough to rent one and put your plans into motion.  (Not a moment too soon; if you had to trim Freddy the Ferret’s nails one more time while listening to his high-pitched insults of your mother, the stabbing would begin.)

You return to the Time Travel Rental Company, busily making your plans to become fabulously wealthy.  Drop a few results of future sporting events in the lap of a younger you along with any money you can spare, travel elsewhere in time (elsewhen?  You never got around to purchasing that time travel grammar book you wanted) and draw away the Time Cops’ attention (by trying to kill Hilter).  Such a great plan, you’re glad you thought of it first.

You open the door to your newly rented time machine when a flash of light appears and WHAM!  A group of time cops are standing there, along with two other versions of you, from the future.  (Or the past?  Really, you’ve completely lost track of the flow of time now.)  They pull out the file they created for your attempt on Hitler’s life (‘Attempted Hitler Assassin #306,751′, it reads), then detail how they found out about your scheme from the future version of you they picked up in the past.

You are about to ask how they caught you before you did anything, before realizing that, ‘Hey, Time Cops’ pretty much sums it up.  Since you didn’t actually do anything seriously wrong (attempting to assassinate Hitler was ruled a misdemeanor a few years after time travel became commonplace), the time police told you that they’d simply release you a few days after you first tried to time travel…

“And that’s why I’m so late getting here.”  You finish telling your story to your fiancee, hoping that this will get you out of trouble for being so late.  After pleading (from you), throwing things (from them), crying (from both), and screaming like a little child (that’d be you again), you realize that maybe telling your beloved about a plan to permanently travel into the future wouldn’t cause less trouble than simply saying you lose your phone.

To Quote Porky Pig, ‘T-T-T-That’s All, Folks!’; hope you had a good time with my somewhat wacky look at the future (here’s hoping I’m wrong about everything!)

Previously, on Wacky Wednesday…You know what?  No, we’re not going back to the future this week.  Instead, we’re going to take a little break and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in the finest Irish tradition.  No, not drunk and singing in the local pub; catching a leprechaun!

So, you’ve finally sat down and figured out your finances, and it looks like you need a miracle to make ends meet.  No, scratch that; a miracle is far too subtle a word for what you need.  You need a sizable amount of pure magic squeezed into the shape of a funny little man wearing green clothing.

You’ve probably guessed it by now, but this week, we’re looking into how to hunt leprechauns!  (I only put it in the title and mentioned it in the introduction; how many more hints do you need?)  Now, these little buggers are diabolically tricky to catch, and leprechaun traps aren’t exactly sold in the corner store, so you’re going to need to follow these steps exactly:

1) Get thee to Ireland: While leprechauns can be found anywhere that the children of the Emerald Isle call home (and occasionally, wherever people wear ‘Kiss Me, I’m Irish’ shirts as a way to get some first base action), the largest number can still be found in their native land.  If you want the best chance of catching one (or more), you’ll need to get to Ireland as soon as possible.

2) Find a Good Hunting Ground: With so few reported leprechaun sightings, it’s difficult to get an exact bead on where they might be located.  It is worth remembering that besides being known for hiding gold and an inexplicable fondness for children’s cereals, leprechauns are cobblers, first and foremost.  Find somewhere with plenty of handmade shoes (try an old-fashioned shoe store), and you’ve got a good start on finding your leprechaun.

3) Creating a Trap: Are you supernaturally strong, fast, and otherwise physically adept?  If not, then you’ll probably want to set a trap rather than try to catch one of the wily buggers on your own.  There are plenty of sites that claim to show you how to build a leprechaun trap, but don’t believe them; if you knew how to catch a magical, gold-hoarding creature, would you reveal the secret?  On that note, my suggestion is a non-lethal, catch and release trap of some kind; you want something that will capture the leprechaun without killing or seriously hurting the little person.

4) Bait the Trap: Here’s the tough part (well, one of many, I suppose): how do you entice a centuries-old, frail looking, miniature fairy man whose biggest hobbies are making shoes, hoarding treasure, and drinking punks like you under the table?  Gold is a popular suggestion, but then, if you had a chunk of gold just sitting around, you wouldn’t need a leprechaun, would you?  For better luck, try using some postcards by Amy Brown or Nene Thomas; if pictures of scantily clad fairy girls don’t get your leprechaun’s attention, I don’t know what will.

5) Success! - If you followed the first several steps, it should just be a matter of time before a leprechaun falls for your trap; if you took my advice on the type of bait to use, listen for a wolf whistle followed by a lot of cursing in Gaelic to indicate that its sprung successfully.  Congratulations, you’ve caught a leprechaun!

Now, you have to be very, very, VERY careful from this point on; leprechauns, like all fairy folk, are diabolically tricky, and will use every attempt to escape.  You need to (carefully) remove him from the trap, while keeping a tight (but careful) grip on him to prevent him from escaping.  There’s a number of issues you’ll need to be concerned with while you try to get the truth out of your leprechaun captive, including:

• The leprechaun may offer you a gold or silver coin from his pocket in lieu of taking you to his treasure.  DON’T DO IT!  The coins he carries with him are magic and not for human use (the silver coin returned to his pocket each time it is spent, the gold coin turns into a rock).
• Don’t accept his ‘treasure’ at face value, either; it might be ‘leprechaun gold’, which will disappear at dawn.  Keep a good grip on the little sprite until you’ve ensured that the gold is real.
• You have to keep an eye on the leprechaun, as well; the moment you blink or otherwise turn away, he’ll flee away with the speed of a rabbit.  For that reason, it’d be good to work with one or more partners and practice blinking in turn; that way, there will always be at least one of you looking at the leprechaun.
• When it comes down to it, there’s only one really, truly good way to ensure that you get what you want out of a leprechaun, and that is… hunh?  What did you say?

DID YOU JUST LOSE THE LEPRECHAUN?

How’d that happen?  Never mind, what’s done is done; I was afraid of this happening, anyway.  Of course, the next step is the same whether you were successful or not:

6) Go to the Pub and Have a Few Drinks: So, you had the leprechaun, but you ended up losing it.  Or maybe you successfully managed to get a hold of the pot of gold and want to go out and celebrate.  Either way, the next place you should go is to the nearest pub.  A nice, stiff drink will ease your sorrows, while buying a round for the house is a great way to celebrate your new fortune.  If you do get the leprechaun gold, though, be careful of people offering to watch the pot for you while you hit the head; they might be genuine, but they could also be thieves (or even the wee folk, reclaiming what’s theirs).

Note: As you might have guessed; this post was entirely tongue in cheek.  It’s just a little something to have some fun.  No offense was meant to anyone, human, leprechaun, or scantily clad fairy girl.  Have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!

Shout Outs I Missed

As I was going over my list of links yesterday, I realized that I missed a few people who took the time to promote my blog.  Since I always try to return a favor like that (when I’m aware of it, at least; sometimes these things are never brought to my attention), here’s their shout outs:

Money Beagle (a blog title that makes me think of Snoopy) mentioned my Aesop post in an article about not spending money to save money.

Also, I did a guest post on ways to preserve your emergency fund, which was posted on a snazzy looking new site, Cash Flow Sherpas.  Give it (the article, and the site) a look.