While listening to the Martha Stewart segment – and I’m not saying this to be negative about Martha Stewart, in fact I think she has proved time and time again to have great ideas and I esp like her big book she wrote on the basics of how to keep a home looking clean and nice, a lot of good ideas and worth reading – but still, while listening I was reminded of her home confinement.
I was thinking, sort of daydreaming, that if I was confined to be at home all the time, that might be pretty fun. I mean you could watch tv and eat popcorn all day! And you could read books and magazines you never had time to read before. Who has time if they are not home confined to watch tv and eat popcorn all day? And read the National Enquirer and find out what the latest news with Lindsay Lohan. And the like. And it would be fun to see if you could game the system a bit, see if you could get away from home occassionally without being caught. A cat and mouse game.
What do you think? Would being confined to your own home be miserable? Or a sort of fun challenge?
I retired two years ago and I could stay home all the time. However, I find myself as busy as ever. I don’t care for popcorn and most programs on tv I find boring. I can read about Lindsay Lohan’s latest escapades in the check-out line at the grocery store. I volunteered this year to read arts grants proposals for my state’s arts commission. I maintain a study carrel in the library of the university from which I retired. (I didn’t get all my work done before retirement–I have a couple of research papers that I want to complete and hopefully publish). Five days a week, my wife and I get up and walk three miles and try to complete the three miles in 45 minutes. I hope to be able to get to the point where I can run the three miles as I was able to do 20 years ago. I play in two concert bands and a chamber orchestra.
I hope that when my number is up, I go instantly.
Trideq, it looks like you are keeping very busy in retirement. Good on you. I don’t think they’d let you go to the library though. But maybe they’d let you still do your volunteer work. No walks either. I mean if you were home confined.
Hey, I wonder if a person was home confined if they’d let you go into the garage? If they did, since you wouldn’t need to use your car (being home confined), you would have time to take the engine completely apart, clean out all the gummed up passages, put in new valves and rings, put in all new gaskets and seals and all new rubber components. Do a complete brake system rebuild too. Why not? You have the time. Why, at the end of home confinement you’d have practically a new car.
Being confined to Martha Stewart’s home would be a pleasure. Her home has everything one could want for.
However, I also think she got screwed. What she was convicted of, insider trading, was simply acting financially on knowledge not availabe to the general public. The individual that passed that knowledge to her was the only one that did anything wrong in my opinion.
Being “confined” to an extremely large house, on an extremely large piece of land, and having a household staff to attend to the heavy lifting would make that type of sentence far less taxing than home confinement would be for most people. I doubt very much that Ms. Stewart suffered at all from that confinement.
And, I agree that she was given penalties FAR beyond what many other people have received for similar offenses, in that she did serve prison time, prior to her home confinement.
In fact, the brother of NJ’s esteemed governor had far more serious accusations against him from the Securities & Exchange Commision, and “somehow”, he escaped being jailed. I’m sure that Chris Christie’s position at that time–US Attorney for NJ–had nothing to do with brother Todd skating away from any serious penalty.
And, if you believe that, I own a bridge connecting Brooklyn & Manhattan that I will sell you, really cheaply.
Read this, from NJ.com for a capsule description of the situation:
Four of the five who were not indicted worked for Spear Leeds & Kellogg Specialists, including Todd Christie, who was the firm’s co-chief executive officer. The Securities and Exchange Commission accused Todd Christie of more than 1,000 improper trades. The firm eventually paid a fine, but Todd Christie agreed to a settlement with the SEC in which he only acknowledged “inappropriate trading” and was not fined or censured.
And there’s the pool…and the workout room. And the theater to watch movies. And the stables with the horses. And enough money to have anything brought in that her heart desired.
This is not a crticism. The lady has worked for and earned everything she has. And I respect her for her accomplishments. It’s just a comment on how home confinement for someone in her socioeconomic strata isn’t exactly terrible.
I just don’t think being home confined at Martha’s place would be any better than being home confined at any modest home in suburbia. I mean other things being equal, like the company you’d have to keep. If you were home confined with someone annoying, that might be far more miserable than just going to jail. Even at Martha’s place. But in this little home confinement daydream of mine, I’m thinking home confinement with someone who’s company you enjoy.
I don’t see any major advantage of being super-rich. Maybe that’s me. But with servants for example, you have to constantly be managing them. That’s a time consuming job. And it would take away from your tv and hobby time rebuilding your Corolla’s engine. Servant management is a job you wouldn’t have to do in suburbia. To me, that’s a big plus for suburbia. And what would servants do anyway? I mean how big a job is it to turn the dishwasher to “run” anyway? Making the bed? Piece of cake. Vacuum the carpet? No problem, with a small home, takes no more than 10 minutes. We suburunites don’t need servants. That’s a big plus for us. Servants would just get in the way. & horses? You got to feed the horses hay every day. And clean out their stalls. Who has time for all that? Let Martha have her horses if she wants, but none for me.
The other problem w/being super-rich is that there really isn’t anything to buy which will offload the money accumulating in your account. You can’t find anything in Target that costs $150,000. That means the super-rich have to figure something to buy which costs a lot – but really isn’t worth anything near what is paid. Like art. Sure, a Monet water-lilly is a nice painting. But if it were on your wall, you’d be ignoring it by the end of the month. Sure you could purchase one of those mechanical Swiss watches you have to wind up every day for $50,000. But all it does is keep time, and not as well as a $100 quartz watch. The only advantage to having it – is – that you have it I guess. Other than that, it is taking up space is all. I think I read that some movie star purchased the skeletal head of a T Rex. What exactly is the value of owning that? If you want to see a T Rex, you can see a much better version, a live one, by renting Jurassic Park DVD.
Me, my home confinement would be dedicated watching sports like basketball and golf on tv, eating popcorn, and doing various hobbies like rebuilding my Corolla engine, reading, things I don’t usally have time for. And I don’t need a Martha-like abode for all that. I can do all those very comfortably in suburbia.
I enjoy being at home, but being stuck with watching tv would get to be a bore in about 4 hours (ok, 3). Even though I work a lot from home, the idea of “home confinement” means I would miss contact with the outside world, the opportunity for all sorts of new stimuli, experiences, adventure, travel, community activity, friends. There are too many interesting places in this world worth knowing. No tv program can compare with the value of knowing a place first hand . And as for popcorn? Yuck.
I was confined at home for a week after I had surgery. I week of watching TV, Netflix, playing on the computer, reading, and whatever I could invent to do that wasn’t too strenuous. It was fun and peaceful after a non-stop stressful job (the pain meds helped, no doubt), but after a week I was going stir crazy and took off in my car just to get out of the house, even though I wasn’t really supposed to.
I suppose a big difference is whether you’re doing it for some kind of reward to get you through, or at least by choice, or whether you’re stuck there, due to health, lack of mobility, “ankle bracelet”, or whatever.
I have little desire to travel far, go to exotic foreign lands, or anything crazy, but being able to roam around, interact with others, and just not see the same 4 walls, however nice the walls might be, is a basic human right and need.
Shortly after retirement, I went through three surgeries with home bound recoveries. One I had to lie on my stomach for 6 weeks when ever I wasn’t standing. Now, I’m in the second week of a rib injury, and in my wife’s words, whining enough to “embarrass a 9 year old girl” complaining about the pain,
I post and blog way too much and would rather be out dancing, playing golf and anything else then being house bound. This “crapula” seems to happen every 9 months and " I want my mommy…boo hoo" Must be an old guys injury gestation thing.
Let me get out, steal my neighbors Vette and go for a real long ride !!! My wife and youz guyz need the break.
insider trading…“However, I also think she got screwed. What she was convicted of, insider trading, was - simply acting financially on knowledge not availabe to the general public”
Forgive me for disagreeing with majority opinion as usual, but,
Ahhhh, I think that’s illegal. It is hard to prove but without any restraint, what do you think the average ignorant smuck’s chances are that his retirement fund would do any thing but go backwards, stuck in accounts that had been dumped by insiders ? Martha wasn’t “screwed”, she screwed us and if I hold her in high esteem IMVHO, I feel I’m engaging in “serf-dumb” thinking. She stole MY MONEY as did Madeoff. They just did on a different scale and mechanism. Her biggest offense was SHE LIED ABOUT IT !
Insider trading is done ALL THE TIME. It’s so common. Yet it’s so bad for any investors like ME who has no access to that information. There’s a network of friends in some of these corporations where the CEO of company A tells their buddy at company B about a buyout they are about to leverage…then 2 years later their buddy at company B returns the favor.
I’ve been confined to home a few times these past years, twice after heart attacks and recently twice after cataract surgeries. Until the eye stops throbbing and spasming, there’s not much you can do. It would have been much less boring if I lived in Martha Stewart’s mansion.
Dag, condolences on your recent surgery. This repeated medical stuff is definitely a part of growing old. I recall watching my dad get old, and now I really understand what he was going through.