This story comes from my friend   He has really finished working and is now traveling around Asia like a retirement hobo should.  He is sending his friends emails and I really liked this story so I asked him if I could post this story on my blog.  He said YAHHH!!! So here it is!
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Just wanted to share one day with you all.

A few days ago, a friend introduced me to his private mountain.  That’s right, a mountain.  He bought it years ago as an investment property but the license fell through and now he turned it into a farm where he and his family can camp out and eat fresh organic vegetables and tropical fruits he grows and barbecue fresh farmed trout from their pond.

We entered the gate that marked the mountain he owned…that’s right, a mountain…and it was so nice.  The weather was semi-tropical, a slight mist in the air, with the sunset beaming the day’s last rays through the myriad of trees, scattering light onto the stone path.  We drove a few hundred meters and reached his man-made cottage and barn.  There was some ducks and geese chilling by the lake and a bunch of vegetables and fruits growing in an orchard.

One of the fruits, when literally translated from Chinese (neither of us knew the English name) is called the “Fire Dragon Fruit” and was named because of its fire-reddish color that mixed in shades of orange and yellow (kinda like a mango) and it’s skin made it seem like it had scales (kinda like an artichoke).  It grew on a huge cactus that vined around and its flower was a huge tropical-looking red blossom (kinda like that plant that kills you in the movie, Jumanji).

His cottage had electricity and running water somehow (I’m guessing magic), and he put on a hot pot of water to boil some organic fresh tea he picked straight up from the garden.  We took a little hike and he pointed out the pond of fish, a waterfall and a creek, and various small reptiles and lizards.

We settle down on his porch and he tells me to get ready for some show that his magical mountain…that’s right, a magical mountain…was about to start.  He turns off all the lights and we wait.  A steady stream of water, frogs ribits, and other loud insects keeps the silence away while we wait.  Then a flicker of light flashes in the trees…too quick and sudden to be the sun, which has already completely set.  Then slowly, a chorus of small flashing lights, like lighters at a P-Diddy concert remembering B.I.G. while he raps “I’ll be missing you”, lights up the mountain.  Turns out, it was mating season for fireflies and his private mountain….that’s right, fireflies….was one of the few places left that had the right amount of water, humidity, firefly food for us to view them in the density that we saw.

Thousands of lights twinkle on and off lighting the forest.  We were able to catch them in our hands and make them flash lights to the music of Kanye West’s “Stronger” bumping from my iphone.  Well….not really, but we were able to catch them and that was kinda cool.

Anyways, that was one of my better days.  I hope the excruciatingly painful details I provided was a good alternative to my usual banter of falling off fences, psychobabble about father and son, and dudes that looks like ladies.  I’ll write some direct replies to your emails now too since I have all day on the internet today.

Until next time, kids.

So my dad wrote a comment on my earlier post saying that there is good and bad debt, and not having debt doesn’t mean you are good at managing your money.  That is definitely true, and I feel like I need to address what I think the nuances between good and bad debt are.

First of all, I am pretty sick of people telling me that a mortgage is good debt, because it is not that simple.  I think a mortgage can be good debt if the property you purchased  generates cash flow. In the case of a primary residence, this means that the cost of your monthly mortgage is less than the cost to rent a similar home. In the case of a rental or investment property, this means the rent you collect covers your mortgage and maintenance costs.  Additionally there is the possibility of asset appreciation, but that is an uncertain factor that should be measured conservatively.  A mortgage is definitely bad debt if you can’t afford it or if you have to  stretch your finances extremely thin to afford it.  If you are losing buckets of money by taking on a mortgage, then it is bad debt.

Another iffy type of debt is student loans.  A lot of people consider them to be good debt because they financed an education, but I think student loans can also be bad debt if the education was never put to use or if the interest rates are extraordinarily high.  Then again, it’s hard to gauge the future when you are young, idealistic, and have a passion for learning. However, it is possible to figure out the approximate salary you could potentially receive by finishing a certain degree.

Credit card debt is another thing that could be good or bad.  If your credit card debt has 0% interest, it is possible to leverage that money into safe investments and pay the credit card company back.  In fact a whole group of people have taken advantage of this in the past few years when bank interest rates were high.  However, most people who have credit card debt are in a situation where they are paying extremely high interest rates on purchases of useless items.  That is extremely bad debt.

So what’s the bottom line?  I think good debt is basically debt you could make a profit on and bad debt is the debt that make you have less than what you started with.  It is hard to figure out which is which in some situations, but when you realize you have bad debt you should work on eliminating it as soon as possible.

In part one I talked about , and I got some pretty interesting comments. I encourage you guys to check it out. In this part I want to talk about the reasons why in some instances you shouldn’t try so hard to fit in. Granted, everyone wants to be “normal”, and I expressed that feeling in a previous post about . However, being “normal” is not always wise, and you shouldn’t follow along for the sake of being part of the majority.

It all started when I was a kid. I was never into fashion and I was fine with wearing things I picked out at church sales for 25 cents. Heck, I still have one of those shirts and I wear it sometimes. I have been teased about my clothing in elementary school, but it didn’t matter to me. I knew that having brand name clothes and shoes wouldn’t really affect my schoolwork and I had good friends anyway.  Additionally, my parents really didn’t have money to buy me new clothes so there was no reason for me to unnecessarily add to their expenses.

Now that I am an adult, I think I still tend to shy away from what is considered popular. For example, I still don’t have an iPod, and I don’t intend to ever get one. I could afford a very nice car, but I have no need for it. Considering how many of my coworkers have extremely luxury cars I would say that I am in the minority. I’m not in a car contest with them, so I don’t feel the need to join in and fit in. I have to confess that as a teenager I wanted a Porsche, but now I understand that fancy cars are not necessarily a mark of success because most of them are financed by debt.

Another way that I am a minority right now is that I am a renter. I have written quite a few articles on why I am not buying a house now, and I truly believe that in I am building more wealth by renting rather than buying. Even though I will buy a house some day, I think it is good to have a different mindset right now.   I know many people jumped in to real estate because everyone was doing it in the past couple years.  Now many of the same people are regretting their decisions.  So in the particular case of real estate, I am glad that my husband and I did not decide to buy anything when we got married even though .

Finally, what is scary to me is that in America debt is considered normal. Dave Ramsey actually has a funny sticker that says, “Debt is normal, be weird!”. So when it comes to things such as debt and fashion, I don’t mind being in the minority. In fact, I think many people would be much more successful than they already are if they stopped trying to fit in and do their own thing.  I know that peer pressure is a powerful force, but we have to be level headed and see if “normal” is really the best thing for our goals.

Hello everyone, welcome to the Carnival of Twenty Something Finances for the week of April 7th, 2008. In this edition we have more than forty articles on a variety of financial subjects that twenty somethings could learn about. Read on for some financial enlightenment!

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Investing Man presents posted at . This reminds of my post where . Investing Man’s article expands the idea to all types of negotiation.

Finance Girl presents posted at . Finance Girl followed and wrote about her childhood money memories. There are some great stories here!.

Monevator presents posted at . Monevator gives great advice about not panicking in this economic environment. This is a very detailed and well written article.

Tip Diva presents posted at . This is a pretty interesting list of tips. I haven’t gone dumpster diving, but in the past I have gotten clothes, furniture, and books that were discarded on the side of the street. I am wearing a pair of my neighbor’s unwanted jeans right now.

Sarah presents where she discusses how expensive a diploma really is! I never got my diploma because I was too lazy to order it. I think it’s still in Sproul Hall somewhere and employers verify everything online these days so I never needed my physical paper diploma.

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That is all for this edition. Thank you all for submitting your wonderful articles and make sure to link back and promote the carnival via social bookmarks! If you want to participate in the next carnival it will happen in two weeks and you can .

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An it might be, is not the answer to situation. The solution is learning to spend wisely. This means resisting borrowing a of any sort on your . Even if you have a , retaining it is the best measure.

Wow, spring is almost upon us, and there are more San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble, too. This is the most distressed properties I have ever seen in a 4 week period. 135 properties is almost 30% of all the listings in our small county.

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I have decided that I may startand update it more frequently to record these properties. The blog would be a good service to my community and it would be easier to navigate than . Each home will have its own post and I can categorize the homes much better via blog categories!

Anyway, today I read a really good article by a teenage girl about the foreclosure situation: I am glad to see there is still hope for the younger generation!