Dilbert on Investing

[Bylo Selhi]

No not this, (although it too demonstrates remarkable insights), but this...

The "Dilbert" guide to personal finance [edits by bylo]

Wouldn't it be great if someone reduced financial planning to a few simple rules? A list that you could send to a recent college graduate or to a friend who struggles with money? Well, someone has compiled just such a list for first-time investors. It's called "Everything you need to know about money," and you might be surprised at how short it is—and who wrote it. The list is the work of Scott Adams, the cartoonist famous for creating Dilbert...

Everything you need to know about financial planning
* Make a will.
* Pay off your credit cards.
* Get term life insurance if you have a family to support.
* Fund your [s]401(k)[/s]DC pension plan to the maximum.
* Fund your [s]IRA[/s]RRSP to the maximum.
* Buy a house if you want to live in a house and you can afford it.
* Put six months' expenses in a money market fund.
* Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker, and never touch it until retirement.

If any of this confuses you or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues) hire a [s]fee-based[/s]fee-only financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

[Shakespeare]

Judge sides with man fired for posting Dilbert comic on office bulletin board

A man fired for posting a Dilbert comic strip on a office bulletin board is getting the last laugh....

Administrative Law Judge Lynette Donner sided with Steward, ruling it was "a good-faith error in judgment," not intentional misbehaviour.

[Bylo Selhi]

So the decision by managers of the Catfish Bend Casino to launch the lawsuit only serves to substantiate Dilbert's assertion?

[AltaRed]

So the decision by managers of the Catfish Bend Casino to launch the lawsuit only serves to substantiate Dilbert's assertion?

It would appear to do so in spades.

[WishingWealth]

On the employee BB at work I once posted one of those Dilberts.

Don't remember what exactly it was about but it was promptly removed by the powers since it was controversial.

A 3 day email skirmish started between HR and WW with me asking what were the rules, who'se rules they were etc etc ...
Since this was a nice job, with a substantial DB pension, and only a few years to go I gave up. But a new note appeared on the BB; postings to be approved by mgmt.

WW

[Shakespeare]

A friend of mine had a poster in his office. It showed a two-level outhouse, "Management" on top and "Employees" below.

He was ordered to take it down.

[Bylo Selhi]

But a new note appeared on the BB; postings to be approved by mgmt.

Another Dilbert moment. At the large company where I worked some decades ago, managers would routinely send memos "To all staff." By default every employee got a personal copy, but often they'd include cc: bulletin boards so the memos would appear only on bulletin boards. (Do you really need a personal copy of a memo that informs you that a john on the third floor would be closed on Friday for repairs?)

An ego war ensued whereby certain self-important managers started to send copies of even their most trivial memos to every employee, not just in their department or division, but company-wide. It got so bad that a senior admin manager had to send out a memo asking that people, in the interests of saving money, use cc: bulletin boards unless it was absolutely necessary to send individual copies.

Of course she left out the cc: bulletin boards on that memo. D'oh!

[Peculiar_Investor]

My favorite was when I worked at Nortel. One of our managers had posted, in his office a set of quotes from a book by our CEO (Paul Stern):

- There is no such thing as corporate loyalty.
- To get to the top must be a burning, ever-present passion in your life, the stuff of dreams
- To advance rapidly, you need to create an image that will distinguish you from your colleagues.
- Train yourself not to be afraid of getting fired.
- Gaining control over the information flow in your office is one of the most important things you can do.
- It is up to you to manage your boss.
- Keep your superiors on edge by making them understand that if you are not continually challeged and rewarded, you'll leave.
- The more demanding you are, the more respect you will get.
- What matterrs more than being right or wrong is being decisive.
- Money is not the only reward [but] it's quite a but ahead of whatever is in second place.

Well guess what happens next, Paul Stern, CEO comes to tour our office. HR had a fit about the inappropriate quotes on the managers wall . They made him take the poster down. I guess that didn't know where the quotes were from. I always thought that was the ultimate Dilbert moment.

[kcowan]

I had a friend who worked directly for Stern. Imagine the culture shock after so many years under the leadership of Walter Light! He described Stern as an egomaniac who was unstable emotionally.

He referred to my friend as F*ckhead so on one trip to visit them in Nashville, we took them t-shirts, one for him and one for his DW (F*ckhead's Wife). The only saving grace was that Stern's office was in DC so they only grappled once a month or less.

(BTW Stern's list is very good for surviving the corporate world as long as you have the guts to leave. I once commented to a boss during my annual performance review that it gave good insights in to the effectiveness of different management styles since he was my 12th boss. It was fun to watch him squirm. But I knew he would soon be gone.)

[ig17]

[desk4811]

That joke isn't quite so funny when another boss had a pair of sneakers thrown at him the other day, who isn't unlike Dilbert's boss, only he's got his finger on the nuclear trigger. They had a Dilbert cartoon on TV, but I guess it wasn't popular, although a few episodes were good. It's a good comic.

[Darrell Greenwood]

"According to Google Alerts that comic has been posted to more blogs than any comic I have ever created." -- Scott Adams, Dec 15, 2008

[gummy]

In an e-mail, my son-in-law mentioned Scott Adams' comment that, maybe, it should be
"illegal for untrained citizens to invest in stocks".
and
"It is entirely consistent to restrict the untrained from making risky stock investments."

I replied: