Financially Planning Downton

We're still a couple episodes from the end of Season 3 of Downton Abbey, being in that limbo state of generally wanting to finish seeing it but never feeling like devoting the hour on any given night. However, I much enjoyed this slightly tongue-in-cheek analysis of the series from a financial planner point of view. [Some spoilers in full article.]

"It's like a law-school exam in what not to do," says Jonathan Forster, national wealth-management chairman at law firm Greenberg Traurig in McLean, Va.

The show has become something of a sensation among financial planners and lawyers, who see parallels in their clients' lives. "We're always very interested in wealthy people and how they handle and manage their problems," says Carol Harrington, head of the private-client group at law firm McDermott Will & Emery in Chicago. Ms Harrington even got tickets to tour England's Highclere Castle, the real-life setting for the show, in July as a birthday present from her husband.

The Not-So Cut Cord

Now that I have a commute again (and until I get audio courses and books unpacked) I find myself listening to NPR at times on the road. The basic approach of NPR appeals to me far more than the conservative alternatives, though I find it's politics very annoying. (Now if there were a radio network that filled the audio niche which the Wall Street Journal fills in print...) But most amusing of all is when they run a story on what they consider to be some culturally emergent phenomenon which really just shows how far inside the bubble the NPR world is.

Such an example was a story this morning about people taking the radical (radical!) step of stopping their cable TV subscriptions. Yes, you see, some people just don't get cable TV. Have you heard of this?

To show what this radical new lifestyle is like, they interviewed a CNET editor whose blog Diary of a Cable Cord Cutter chronicled his life without cable TV... for one month. Yes, you see, he was going to go without cable in order to save money, but he and his wife found it's hard to watch a lot of TV if you don't have cable. So they got it back.

Perhaps, some day, if they search very hard in the hinterlands of this wide country, they will find someone who has pursued the even more mysterious path of not watching much TV.

Though I don't know, someone like that might be, I don't know, religious or something. Or read books. Or... Well, clearly be a pretty odd person.

Personally, I'm finding it quite relaxing to not have cable again after three months of having it while in temporary digs. Though we will be glad to have the high speed internet hooked up on Friday.

For Your High Brow Trashy Fix

I regret to inform that your numble correspondent is ending up completely brain fried today, via a combination of lots of competitive price analysis and even more mortgage and house-buying paperwork. Thus, my intent is not to write tonight but rather to veg out over a bottle of Trader Joe's Holiday Ale and a set of DVDs from the library.

And so, seeking something less mentally demanding than a movie and yet higher brow than network TV I ask them as might be willing to venture an opinion: Sopranos, Six Feet Under or Big Love -- which one and why? (I've never seen any of any of them, but having a number of non-kid-present hours and a lot of tired braincells to un-wind, I thought I might give one a try as the library seems well provided with DVD sets.)