Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and this is not to be considered financial advice. Buyer beware. Mileage may vary. Past performance may have been pure luck or simply misrecorded.

At ICBM we recognize and acknowledge the difficult financial times facing us all. In the past, we have limited access to the following information to our fully matriculated students in ICBM’s Masters of Informaticists course track.

In the spirit of showing and sharing the true power of information, we will present much of the blueprint below.

Students across an international spectrum of backgrounds have used this information to latch onto an accelerated trajectory towards financial freedom and independence.

The Blueprint:

Who remembers PEMDAS? I recall this acronym as: “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” -or more to the point, Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction and it was a clever way to remember the order of operations to ensure you arrived at the correct answer from a sequenced and complex math equation such as:

3 + 7 * 12 + (5 -11^3)

The simplicity behind PEMDAS instructed us that working from left-to-right was seldom the right way to arrive at the correct answer. Instead, we were to operate within parenthesis first, then calculate exponents, and so forth.

I remember learning this in 5th grade and ALL future math depended on understanding PEMDAS. Fail to grasp PEMDAS and instead you’ll be grasping a shovel for the rest of your life.

PEMDAS – it smoothly rolls off the tongue, is easy to remember, and is foundational in our journey through mathematics.

In the world of Personal Finance (especially during these difficult times), there is also an order of operations. A ‘PEMDAS’ for guiding us to safer and more secure financial shores. And like PEMDAS, it rolls right off the tongue

“how do you get through the lean times while waiting for the market to recover?”

As a general rule, you NEVER want to sell your investments in bad times. Let the bad times roll on through and sell your investments when the market is warming our shoulders with financial sunshine and a nice tailwind is furthering our investments forward on the path to prosperity. Even so, waiting to sell when the market is up can lead to a problem: how do you get through the lean times while waiting for the market to recover?

And, THAT is what this Financial Blueprint is ALL ABOUT!

Here it is: FART BIN WIGGLE BANK.

Like PEMDAS, FART BIN WIGGLE BANK is a simple pneumonic device that instructs you what to do first, next, last, and evermore when financial markets sail away from calm shores and head toward darkening skies on a tumultuous sea.

Let’s dive in.

F: Float the payment

• call creditors and try to get payments extended, canceled, and lowered. Call early and often and keep them on the line for 10-15 minutes each time telling them your sob story. If you don’t have one, create one. You are NOT under oath and more importantly you are not in court (at least not yet) so treat this like the experimental theater class you never took in college. Aim for the intersection of emotional, mental, and physical desperation. If you can weep and laugh while pretending to be undergoing a medical procedure you will get an ‘A’ in this class.

A: Adopt a large, lazy child

• Just a metaphor but large & lazy is always best. This can be as figurative or literal as you like. Generally, the larger and lazier, the better. Most states compensate by the pound. Adopting babies is hard, expensive and implies an 18-year commitment. However, adopting a 16-year-old kid requires only a 2-year partnership and is full of cash-up-front incentives: food-bank subsidies, transportation stipends, and all-day & evening school + apprentice programs meant to monitor your kid 16 hours a day while you go have a life. Additionally, you can always give the kid back if it doesn’t work out. Need even more money – try fostering a child termed a ‘legal, physical, and sociological risk to society’. The upfront incentives are tripled but you’ll need some of that to fortify a room with 2 layers of chicken wire and electric fencing. Don’t skimp on the fencing.

R: Revolving credit

• Yup – you don’t need a hearing test, you heard that just fine. Nothing will deal you a financial full house quicker than having a fully stacked deck of credit cards. A good rule of thumb: when you can rubber-band them together and the stack would gag a Clydesdale, you have just barely enough. Consider at least 15-20 different credit cards with limits of $8,000 each a good starting point.
• Legally, each of us is bound (I prefer the term ‘obligated’) to destroy our credit at most, once every 7 years. But, more on that later.

T: Transfer balances

• Now that you have a plethora of credit cards, use them to their fullest extent. Use Peter to PayPal Paul. Appease Patrick and placate Pam. On and on it goes. You know the drill. Take advantage of cash-advance reward bonuses and rack up those travel miles. Since these are economic hard times, those travel points will get you out to see the world on a dime…that you borrowed 5 transfers ago. Frequent flyer miles on top of award vouchers stacked above balance transfer incentives all atop sign-on bonuses. The free money and incentives will only end when you decide to slow down. Preferably after using all those free miles to buy a one-way ticket to a tropical country that doesn’t extradite.

B: Borrow

• We all know and admit transferring balances between cards is just a game of musical chairs. And, when the music stops in the credit game, there are never enough chairs to go around. This is where the magic of Borrowing comes in to conjure a chair custom perfectly sized for the amount of rest your backside needs. Borrow against your house equity, unsecured credit, 401k loan, whatever. Use that cash to pay off the credit cards. Rinse. repeat.

I: Involve a relative

• Find a relative. Preferably one whose abundance of dementia is exceeded by the size of their bank accounts or availability of credit. Create a trust in both of your names and withdraw monies to pay off the aforementioned loans & credit cards. If available money has been exhausted, borrow in their name and deposit it into the trust paying off previous cards and loans. More rinsing. More repeating.

N: New Job. As in…go get A New Job.

• Now, take a deep breath and don’t panic. This isn’t as bad as it seems. I wouldn’t lead you this far into the land of milk-and-honey to leave you alone with an empty cup and stinging bees.
• Do you work independently? Perfect. Begin working independently for two companies at the same time. Simply show up to job-A make the rounds saying good morning so everyone knows you’re on the job and eager to work. Alibi established, proceed to job number two and repeat. Work as much as you want and as little as you can at each job. And remember this is no different than someone selling Girl Scout cookies in the break room! As a bonus, you can deduct any miles spent traveling between jobs on your income taxes.
• Best case – you live near the border of another state and get a job in both states. Our European followers can extend this to another country! Be sure to communicate any ailments with HR and prepare to exaggerate them into full-blown disabilities. Worried about morals and ethics? Don’t be. You don’t have a crystal ball. You could be disabled in any number of exciting and/or horrifying ways today, tomorrow, or the next. Don’t limit tomorrow’s possibilities by today’s lack of vision or imagination.
• After a few days/weeks on the new jobs, start falling behind in your duties. Any time a manager complains or tries to reprimand you, remind them of the number of ways you are nearly-future-disabled. If they do try to fire you, strongly hint at a lawsuit. Better yet, talk to a lawyer ahead of time. Stay strong. Stay the course. Next thing you know – you’ll be collecting unemployment from 2 states. We call this one the Mason-Dixon Double Dip. Boo-yah!

WI: WIthdraw from your cash accounts

• This is last resort number 1.
• Using your hard-earned cash to get you out of a bind isn’t optimal but after exhausting all other avenues will force you into contingency#1.

GG: Go Get your retirement funds

• Now that your cash is depleted you can take money out of what is left of your 401k. If these are indeed economic hard times, there will be laws invoked to avoid paying penalties in this money. Not to worry.

LE: LEts try selling your stuff

• At this stage, whatever you have – you don’t need anymore. Time to sell. Think beyond couches and big-screen TVs. These days big money is forked out for Non-Fungible Tokens. What could be more Non-Fungible than blood, plasma, drug-free urine, and human embryos? Given enough time (and all the free cookies you can force yourself to eat), you can create a nearly limitless supply. You’re limited only by your imagination and what can’t be legally exchanged between anonymous strangers on Craigslist in the backseat of an Uber. Also, looking up at the game clock, this is the time where a little creative thinking can help. You don’t need to be the donor, a middleman will suffice. Sell a scoop or two from the port-a-potty. The money flow ONLY stops when you run out of truly great ideas.

BANK: as in BANKruptcy

• If you think this is the end of the line – you are wrong. This is only the beginning. This is the part in Monopoly where you pass GO and also Collect your $200.
• Like a holistic cleanse for the business end of your wallet where a financial enema helps get things flowing correctly again.

There you have it. FART BIN WIGGLE BANK. You now have a bulletproof blueprint for difficult financial times. May it help you build a foundational fortress for your money and your future.

All the best. DFPF.