Thanksgiving at the Yoga Farm

I have written several posts about the Yoga Farm, including how I found it and how I became a regular visitor every Saturday.  For the last several years, I have been going there to spend Thanksgiving evening.  They have a sumptuous dinner comprising 8 - 10 different dishes including a couple of different pies that conforms to the yogic diet.  What makes this event particularly fun, is that it often has a very large attendance (50-100 people), many of whom have had past association with the ashram as visitors, students, or staff, and as a result there's a lot of running into old faces.

Following the dinner is an evening satsang -- meditation followed by chanting and a concert or a guest speaker.  This year, the speaker was Dr. Edwin Bryant, who is currently a professor of Religions of India at Rutgers University.  He taught several classes during the day, but since I visited only for the evening, I was able to listen only to his evening talks both on Thursday and Friday.  He talked about a variety of subjects including the origins of Hinduism, the various texts such as the vedas and the puranas, the epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the origins of asana practice in yoga, and many other topics.  It was truly a treat to hear an accomplished scholar with in-depth and precise knowledge of these subjects who was able to put all of these ancient texts in perspective (e.g. how they're related).  At the end of each talk, he took a number of questions from the audience giving patient, in-depth responses to each.

One of things that I learnt from this is that documented asana practice is fairly recent.  Most of the older texts (vedas and puranas) don't say much about this subject.  Another interesting takeaway was the concept of yogamaya and mahamaya.  Up until now, I was only aware of maya, the term used to describe the illusory material world that we live in.  Yogamaya and mahamaya are terms to used to describe illusion that, for example, Lord Krishna creates so that people can have a relationship with him (such as a that of a parent or lover), and illusions such as the one created when Lord Krishna's mother looks into his open mouth and sees the whole universe.

Opting out of interest-based ads in iOS 6

I came across this in message boards on macrumors.com.

Apple decided to enable tracking by default in iOS 6.  To opt out, go to Settings -> General -> About -> Advertising and turn ON the Limit Ad Tracking option (OFF by default).

There's more information on what this is all about on Apple's website.  The tracking information is used to tailor advertising from the iAd network.  By disabling this, you'd still get advertisements, but they will be random rather than tailored based on information in an application or other non-personal information on the phone.

If you ever restore the phone, the setting will default back to OFF and must be enabled again.

Opting out of AT&T's ads and information sharing

You can opt out of receiving interest-based ads from AT&T by updating your preferences here.

Ways to own gold

(Some interesting quotes on gold in literature can be found here.)

This is not a post advocating that the reader buy gold.  This is simply a summary of my research on the different ways to own gold.  There was a period of time around the financial crisis in 2007-2008 when there were a number of people talking about why it's a good reason to own gold.  That got me into doing some research.  So here's what I came up with when I researched this subject back then.

There are several ways to own gold.

• Gold bullion
• Gold-backed exchange traded funds
• Leveraged exchange traded funds
• Online gold accounts
• Gold-linked CDs

Each of these has its pros and cons.  Let's take a look.

Gold bullion

In this case one would buy actual physical gold (coins, bars, etc.) from a reputable dealer and find a place to store it.  Most proponents of gold bullion fall into two categories.

• People who believe in an "economic armageddon" scenario.  They prefer to store it outside the banking system.  Of course, at that point, the safety of anything, anywhere is going to be questionable, so one would have to come up with creative and diverse ways of storing one's holdings.
• People who don't trust the "paper gold" varieties.  They prefer to be able to see and touch their physical gold.  For such people storing gold in a bank locker is probably acceptable.

The issues around theft of gold bullion from one's home is complicated; I haven't really looked into things like whether or not insurance would cover it.

So, in summary, one should be aware of several expenses -- there is a commission when buying (usually resulting in a premium over the spot price of gold), there may be storage-related costs (e.g. locker rent at a bank), there may be insurance costs, and finally, there would be a commission involved when selling it (usually resulting a getting a price slightly lower than the spot value).

Unfortunately, even with gold bullion there can be fraud (see #1, #2).  So if one goes the bullion route, one has to make sure the source is good and perhaps even get it tested.

Gold-backed exchanged traded funds

In this case, one would hold shares of an exchange traded fund.  There are several such funds.  The most popular and largest of these is GLD, but there's also SGOL, PHYS, and IAU.  These funds are reportedly backed by physical gold bars at vaults in places like London, New York, or Zurich.

OUNZ is an interesting option for those that might want to convert their ETF holdings into physical gold without tax consequences.  This page discusses some of the costs associated with doing this.

The pros of using this approach are clear.  It's easy to get in and out of the fund.  There's no premium when buying or selling (other than the fee by the brokerage for the stock trade).  However, there is a management fee for owning these funds (as there is for all types of funds) so there is an ongoing expense, although it's typically taken out by adjusting the net asset value of the fund.

The cons here are that even though the funds claim that their shares are backed by gold, there are some cynics that say there could be fraud involved and, in a doomsday scenario, the fund would simply report that bars of gold just aren't there, or that some number of them are missing.  The funds do state that the bullion is insured and audited -- would be one of the things to check in the prospectus.

Leveraged exchanged traded funds

These include funds such as UGL which use leverage to move at twice the percentage change in the price of gold.  As a personal opinion, I think this is getting into gambling territory, so I wouldn't touch something like this for investment purposes.

Online gold accounts

These include sites such as GoldMoney, BullionVault, and the Perth Mint Depository.  These often offer allocated and unallocated accounts, and in some scenarios will allow the account holder to take delivery in physical form, for a fee, if they should so choose.

The cons with these are similar to that of ETFs.  One has to place trust that they are being run in an ethical and well-managed fashion.

Of these, the Perth Mint Depository is interesting because it is the only one that is backed by a government -- the Government of Western Australia -- which would be the equivalent of something being backed by a state government in the US (as opposed to the federal government).

Gold-linked CDs

Some banks have either offered in the past, or currently offer, what is referred to as gold-linked CDs.  In other words, the returns of the CD are tied to the price of gold.  Often, the principal will be FDIC insured, and there is some, usually complex, formula that determines how the returns of the CD will be calculated based on the movement in the price of gold.

Here's a word of warning from the FDIC on market-linked CDs in general, so make sure that the terms of the CD are well understood before investing in them.

Additionally, with such CDs you typically have to pay income taxes on expected returns which may never actually materialize because the price of gold went up for a while, but then went down by the time the CD matured.

Is owning gold a good idea?

Even as of this writing, some of the blogs that I read such as ZeroHedge, Mish's Global Economic Analysis, and iTulip, talk about gold being an essential part of one's portfolio.  However, there are others such as Warren Buffett who don't think very much of the idea of owning gold.  More recently, there was this article by PIMCO which discusses a viewpoint on gold.

Just as with every investment, it seems like you'll find people on either extreme ("it's the only investment worth owning", or "stay away"), to those that have more moderate views ("it makes sense to have a percentage of one's portfolio in gold").

Personally, I'm much more comfortable with the approach detailed in my post on worry-free investing, sticking with instruments such as TIPS and I-Bonds.  They might not be ideal, but at least I wouldn't have to worry about all the fraud-related risks related to buying and storing of gold.  Of course, as with everything else I write about, this is subject to change.

A word about taxes

It is probably worth noting that any gains for gold holdings are taxed as a collectible rather than as long/short-term capital gains from a regular security.

Disclaimer:  I am not a financial advisor and it is possible that what I have written may contain errors so please do your own research and form your own opinions and/or action plan about this subject.  This post is just my way of documenting and sharing what I have learned.

The Yoga Farm: Lineage

In an earlier post, I had written about how I found the Yoga Farm and how I started spending all of my Saturday evenings there.  This evening, being Swami Sivananda's birthday, instead of the usual chanting and discourse following the evening meditation, they showed a couple of short films -- one was on the life of Swami Sivananda, and the other one was about Swami Vishnudevananda.  Swami Vishnudevananda  is the founder of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers, of which the Yoga Farm is a part.  He was a disciple of Swami Sivananda.

The screening of those movies inspired me to write a brief post about the lineage of the teachings at this ashram.  Since I have been going there for many years, I have seen both of the movies several times.  For the purpose of this post, I tried locating them on YouTube.  I couldn't find the one on Swami Sivananda, but this clip on YouTube contains some representative material.  The movie on Swami Vishnudevananda was called In the Name of Peace, and the entire movie is available on YouTube.

Incidentally, I came across this chart depicting A Brief and Incomplete History of Yoga.  I'm no scholar on Yoga and its origins, so I have absolutely no idea how good this chart is.  But, in this chart, Swami Sivanada is shown to be a disciple of Vishwananda Saraswati.

Swami Sivananda founded The Divine Life Society in Rishikesh in the Himalayas in India.  They have made available for free many of the books written by Swami Sivananda.

Here are some ashrams in this lineage:

• Yogi Hari's Ashram in Florida (disciple of Swami Vishnudevanada)

Going green, living healthy: Clothing

This is part of a series of posts on Going green, living healthy. The first post is here. I'm not an expert on this subject, so if you find errors please let me know. I have tried to provide pointers to my sources where possible.

My first awareness into the materials used for clothing came about when I was using a number wrinkle-free and wrinkle-resistant products.  Many of these were labeled at being 100% cotton, so why is it that everything that's made of cotton is wrinkle free or at least wrinkle resistant.  A bit of research on the Internet showed that these clothes are made using fabrics treated with toxic chemicals,  For example, this article in the The New York Times states:

Though it is not obvious from the label, the antiwrinkle finish comes from a resin that releases formaldehyde, the chemical that is usually associated with embalming fluids in dissected frogs in biology class.

For me, there were two takeaways from this:

• Clothing labels can be misleading because they don't require a full disclosure of chemicals used in the processing.
• Simply buying organic cotton clothing does not mean that such chemicals were not used.

This has meant that while I try and stick with organic cotton clothing, I am not paranoid about it.  Instead, I try to look for manufacturers that care about the environment and focus on using simple fabrics that are not heavily treated with chemicals.  I've noticed organic cotton tends to be a lot softer.

I haven't found many mainstream brands that offer such clothing, but fortunately there are a few.  Patagonia is one that seems to use organic cotton exclusively (i.e. they don't use cotton that is not organic), but they tend to blend it with synthetic fabrics such as polyester.  But they do offer a few pieces that are 100% organic cotton.  Timberland also offers some organic cotton clothing under their Earthkeepers line, but for some reason their selection is very limited in the USA and they are often blends of organic and regular cotton, or organic cotton and polyester.  On the other hand, in Europe and Asia, almost everything that they offer is 100% organic cotton, but they also tend to be more expensive.  Why is it that the US has such a limited selection?  In an email exchange with them, they cited "market demand and other factors."

Greenroom Voice lists a bunch of brands and apparel that meet its standards for eco-friendliness.  Most are European.

The backdoor Roth IRA

If one's income exceeds the limits for contributing to a Roth IRA, there's still a backdoor approach for making a contribution.  The method, outlined in this article by Fidelity, shows that one can contribute to a non-deductible IRA (which has no income limit), and immediately convert that to a Roth IRA (which also does not have any income limits).

That catch here is that one must not have any other IRA -- Traditional or Rollover.  Otherwise, that will complicate tax matters since the tax liability is calculated as a percentage of all funds that are eligible for rollover.  If one has a Rollover IRA, usually from rolling over funds from 401(k) plans at previous employers, then to get the most benefit out of this, one would have to roll over the funds from the Rollover IRA into the current employer's 401(k) plan.  Most 401(k) plans allow that.  The down side to such a roll over is that, unlike an IRA at a traditional brokerage which typically has nearly limitless investment options, one would be restricted to the investment choices offered by the current 401(k) plan.

Useful reading

• Backdoor Roth IRA @ Bogleheads

Disclaimer: I am neither an investment advisor nor a tax preparer.  If you think this applies to you, please do your own homework to decide whether it works for your situation.  Otherwise, it can land you in a tax mess.  At the very least, it is a bit more paperwork since it requires filing IRS form 8606 which will show the contribution to the non-deductible IRA, the conversion to the Roth, and report that there are no other IRA funds.  Here is an article warning about some of gotchas to watch out for.

Update 3/21/2016

I recently came across an article which throws another wrench in the works--the Step Transaction Doctrine.  Read the article for details.  This article is the subject of a heated discussion over at Bogleheads.

Going green, living healthy -- Household cleaners and personal care

This is part of a series of posts on Going green, living healthy. The first post is here. I'm not an expert on this subject, so if you find errors please let me know. I have tried to provide pointers to my sources where possible.

I first stumbled in the area of non-conventional personal care items when I became aware that most traditional soaps contain animal byproducts such as animal fat.  Since then I have switched a lot of household cleaners and personal care items to brands that seem to care about the environment and what goes into the product.  Some of the considerations are:

• Getting away from harsh chemicals;
• No animal byproducts in the ingredients;
• Environmental responsibility.

The problem with harsh chemicals is that while it may be OK to have a little exposure to them, if everything around us contains these kinds of chemicals, eventually the body will break down and develop sensitivities to them, usually creating hard-to--diagnose conditions.  At least that's my belief.  I have no way to verify it.  The skin is the largest organ in the body and anything we apply to the skin is quickly absorbed by it.  Likewise, exposure to volatile chemical compounds found in cleaners will quickly find their way into our lungs.

Household cleaners

Using regular cleaners would cause my eyes to get red and itchy by the time I was done cleaning.  That's what made me look for something different. I tried Ecover and Seventh Generation.  Both work pretty well, but I like Seventh Generation better.

There are people that make their own household cleaners, but it doesn't seem worth the time and effort for me since I don't use very much of them.

Laundry supplies

I switched from using conventional laundry supplies because I became aware of their use of animal byproducts and I was concerned that a chronic rash I had developed was due to exposure to synthetic chemicals.  I was very surprised to find out that conventional dryer sheets contained animal tallow.

Finding a good detergent was a challenge.  Over the years, I have tried several brands including Ecover, ECOs, Planet, and Seventh Generation.  I finally gave in to the fact that none of these "green" cleaners was going to be able to match the performance of conventional cleaners -- the clothes just don't seem as bright and with a couple of these brands, the clothes sometimes felt like they came out dirtier than when they went in.  I eventually settled on using Seventh Generation Free & Clear as my regular detergent which seems to work reasonably well and also has good ratings with Consumer Reports magazine.

Update 12/30/2018: I have since switched to using Sonett.  I find that it works much better than Seventh Generation.

Dryer sheets was another challenge.  When I first started looking for alternatives, I tried Mrs. Meyers Clean Day Dryer Sheets, but I found the scent in those too overpowering.  I then tried moist dryer sheets from Method which were OK for a while, but I didn't care for the moistness.  Eventually, Seventh Generation introduced dryer sheets and I find that these work pretty well.

Update 2/8/2017: I have since started using a Miele condensation dryer which actually prohibits the use of dryer sheets!

Personal care

Just as with other cleaners, I made changes to my personal care items - bath soap, shampoo, shaving soap, etc.  Here, one of things I look for is absence of parabens from the list of ingredients.  Most mainstream brands seem to contain them, but many are slowly excluding them from new formulas.  However, regardless of whether I've used a brand before, I always check the ingredients when I buy it.  Companies are constantly changing their formulations whether to cut costs or "improve" their product and I have had more than one occasion where I noticed a change in the ingredients.  A notable one was the Art of Shaving, which got acquired by Procter & Gamble and subsequently changed the formulation of their shaving cream to include parabens.  The other thing that I generally prefer to see is products that have a short list of ingredients that I can understand.

Also, even though the all of the ingredients used may be natural and organic, it doesn't say anything about the freshness.  Use of rancid oils in personal care items (or products themselves going rancid) is likely to cause irritation when used.  So even with natural products that meet a certification, e.g. that from EWG, one still has to be careful about freshness of the ingredients and the freshness of the finished product.  Such products may also be sensitive to how they stored and transported with respect to light and temperature.  In general, I think it's best to stick with well-known brands even for natural products because they are likely to have decent quality control and would have solved some of these issues.

Garbage bags

I tried using Seventh Generation's garbage bags because they claim to be more environmentally friendly since they use recycled plastic.  However, on many occasions I noticed punctures in the bag when pulling it out of the trash container for disposal.  I contacted Seventh Generation about this and they said their bags are thinner and not as strong because of the use of recycled plastic.  As a result, I ended up switching to conventional bags.

Labels cannot always be trusted

This is where things get really tricky.  A number of products that claim, for example, to be organic are not. Because this is a niche market that is not well-regulated, there are manufacturers that sometimes claim their products to be organic when they may not be.

Update 10/01/2012

I recently received an email from Seventh Generation about a discussion titled The Importance of Removing Toxins from Our Lives with Deepak Chopra.