Day: February 24, 2005

A young friend is starting a career in Los Angeles.  His goals are the following:

• fun to drive
  
• favorably impress superiors at work
  
• appeal to single women
  
• spend less than $60,000 and ideally much less

What should he buy?

[Update:  I hadn’t wanted to prejudice anyone so I withheld my suggestion… the new Ford Mustang convertible.  He will be in California, where driving on the backroads in a convertible can be a lot of fun.  The fanciest V6 convertible lists for only $25,000.  There is a small back seat for a Golden Retriever.  The solid rear axle isn’t an issue considering that California has no potholes.  He doesn’t need the big V8 engine because California traffic is generally so heavy that he’ll be lucky to hit 30 mph.  To me this is a fun car that doesn’t say “I’m trying to impress you with my wealth” (which is always a failure in LA because there is always someone richer in the next lane with a $100,000+ car).  What do folks think of the Mustang idea?  Am I totally out of touch with youth?]

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This article on the founder of IKEA reveals some interesting tidbits…

• one can move to Switzerland and negotiate a fixed income tax rate related to the value of one’s house


• Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, is richer than Bill Gates now, partly because of the slide of the dollar and partly because Billg has been giving money away; the 77-year-old guy is worth roughly $50 billion


• like our local hero George W., Mr. Kamprad has had trouble with alcoholism (perhaps we need to encourage young people to drink more?)

Alcohol is supposed to be so bad for brain cells, productivity, etc.  How can we explain the fact that so many hypersuccessful people are or were alcoholics?

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