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Contributor Nick Kaye Archive

Budgeting in the City

Monday, June 15th, 2009 by Nick Kaye

It’s no surprise to read in today’s Times that New York City’s economy has been hit hard by recession-reduced subsidy checks from parents to 20-somethings.
Parents whose money helped fuel one of the city’s most radical gentrifications in recent years have stopped buying their children new luxury condos, subsidizing rents and providing cash to spend at [...]

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Who are these DIY bank execs?

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 by Nick Kaye

saw a headline today:
“Bank of America May Need $34 Billion in New Capital”

WAIT, isn’t that just another way of saying:
“Bank of America Fails To The Tune of At Least $34 Billion Dollars”

And in a parallel dimension the same “story” might headline thus:
“All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Cached; Please Restock”

Who are these DIY bank execs? [...]

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Budgets Don’t Work

Friday, April 3rd, 2009 by Nick Kaye

The single most helpful idea I’ve come up with — instead of monthly budgeting, which I found useless — is thinking about my cash flow one day at a time. It’s surprisingly easy to calculate.

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The Challenge of Self-organization

Friday, April 3rd, 2009 by Nick Kaye

Freelancing sounds fantastic—choose your hours, work from home, be your own boss—but the truth is, you’ll have a dozen bosses competing for all your hours, making conflicting demands and chaining you to your desk. Furthermore, even when you have a great month and bill a lot of work, that doesn’t mean you get the checks any time soon.

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Believing I Could Do the Job

Friday, April 3rd, 2009 by Nick Kaye

My first job in the adult world was a summer job when I was sixteen, in the main offices of Ameritech. I got hired to work on their website, only because my brother was the head of that department. My boss, who was about forty years old, reported to my twenty-eight-year-old brother, which made me even more nervous. The first day, the guy handed me a four hundred page operations manual with a million tabs all down the side, in a binder, and told me to make an exact replica of the thing.

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