This weekend I attended my high school reunion. I shant say which one, but suffice it to say, Michael Jackson videos were being played (and it was the Michael before the plastic surgery.)

I won’t bore you with all of the exciting details. Two of my classmates, and fellow bloggers, CTK and Ubermilf, have posted nice recaps of all of the shenanigans so you can check them out there.

Our high school was a large public suburban high school in the western suburbs of Chicago with a class size of 683 students. For some reason, we had quite a few honors type students in our class. The high school actually had to add more honors and AP courses to handle all of us.

One of our classmates was named to the first USA-Today All Academic Team. Another classmate, and, actually, my prom date (claim to fame points!), had a perfect on the SAT, one of only 9 students in the country to have a perfect score that year. And they were NOT the same person.

We had talented musicians, actors, and writers.

Like any high school we had various cliques, like the brains, the popular girls, the jocks, the burn-outs, and the band geeks. Sometimes, you could overlap in several categories (be both a brain AND a band geek, for instance.) I was one of those- both a brain and a band geek. There. I admit it.

What I noticed this weekend was that those “brains”- as I’ll call them- turned out to be what is now termed by Richard Florida as the “Creative Class”. I’ve talked about the Creative Class before and how they will shape the future of our cities. Every city is desperately trying to position itself to attract these creative type of workers. Wikipedia describes the Creative Class as:

The Creative Class describes 40 million workers - 30% of the U.S. workforce - and includes of two segments of workers:

Creative Professionals - These professionals are the classic knowledge-based workers and include those working in healthcare, business and finance, the legal sector, and education.

Super-Creative Core - These workers include scientists, engineers, technies, innovators, and researchers, as well as artists, designers, writers and musicians.

It begs the question then: where did the “brains” from our class, aka the creative class, wander to?

From a non-scientific survey based on word of mouth and the info the reunion committee provided it seems like quite a few from the class got an advanced degree. Most of those, but not all, were in the “brains” group while in high school (not surprising- some kind of destiny fulfillment thing.)

Number of PHDs: 7
Number of MAs: 11
Number of MBAs: 7
Number of JDs: 8
Number of MDs: 3

The number one city for the brains to reside is still Chicago and the Chicagoland area. About 10 of the brains still lived in the Chicago area. But out of those ten, several had wandered to other cities, including New York, San Francisco and Paris, since high school, to work and then had moved back to Chicago at a later time.

Not surprisingly, a good number of people were in the cities that are adapt at attracting the Creative Class types such as San Francisco (3 are there now, including perfect SAT score classmate, and several others have lived there in the past), Seattle (2 are there), New York City (3), Washington DC (2), Boston (2), and Los Angeles (2).

This is, as I said, completely unscientific. This only represents about half of the “brain” group. I don’t know where the other half of the “brain” group is at the moment. But based on those I talked to- it gives you a good idea.

Not a single one was in a city like St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, or Philadelphia- all cities that have struggled to attract the creative class.

Our USA-Today All Academic Team star (one of only 20 from around the nation that year) is in Australia trying to find a cure for Parkinsons. Fitting. And again, he symbolizes the global quest for talent that sets the Creative Class apart. Our valedictorian is trying to cure cancer in Houston. There are a smattering in small town America, mainly working as professors at universities.

Chicago, then, has done a decent job in keeping some of its Creative Class talent. We are reaching our peak earnings years. Will it keep us into the future?

Techies are going ga-ga over Microsoft’s gangbuster earnings. Nearly every analyst has commented how much better they were- far beyond anything they were expecting.

It’s nice to surprise the analysts to the upside, for once.

You’d think the question going forward would be- can they do it again next quarter and the quarter after that? And some investors are asking that. But many are simply obsessed with beating Google (for justifiable reasons.)

As this poster, pirranhajo said on the Yahoo Message Board under a message called “Congratulations! Now time to beat GOOG”:

Basically from now on ,the war will be online ad field. GOOG got DCLK we got AQNT. Still GOOG has edge over MSFT. We shouldn’t let them take over DCLK at the beginning, anyway it doesn’t matter now, we may see minor ad -company aquisitions like VCLK, then we are set to beat GOOG in his own game imo. Bottomline is that MSFT gotta get bigger pie from ad markets .I believe if management executes wisely we may see 50$ in 6 month.

Is this right? Is the “war” really in advertising?

Because Google isn’t much more than one big advertising company. That’s how they make their money- by being the conduit for ads. Is that all that Microsoft is or aspires to be? And if so- what kind of a company is that?

I’m not saying the money isn’t there- because it is. But, again, advertising is NOT a “product” -per say. Halo is a product. XBox is a product. Vista is a product. A Google ad is not a product.

Perhaps Microsoft can win the “war” by doing what Apple is doing: focusing on the product.

I’m just saying.

Did you see the Oprah show this week where the family who lived in California whose take-home income was about $6,000 a month was spending $15,000 a month?

The audience was all agog. Oprah had on Suze Orman to “help” the couple.

But can they really be helped? Here’s their spending habits:

Current mortgage: $1800 (It’s a negative amoritization loan that is about to “correct.” The payments will be $3500.)

Starbucks “runs” every month: $300-$400

Manicures/tanning for the mother: $50 a week

Shopping at the mall: Several hundred a week

Cars: 3 cars (even though the kids are all under age 16.)

Suze Orman calculated that they really have about $135,000 in credit card debt. They can’t afford health insurance for their family and haven’t taken their kids to the dentist in years.

Yet they’re living in an over $600,000 home in Southern California.

The California Dream, baby!

Except, it’s all an illusion.

Suze tried to give them tough love. They’re already 2 weeks behind on the mortgage. She told them to put the house on the market now and move out of California to a “cheaper” state where there is no income tax (such as Washington State.) Suze also told the wife, who is a stay at home mother with 5 or 6 kids, to go to work at Starbucks part-time so she can get their health insurance.

Somehow, watching the wife on the show with her fake tan and hair extensions, I didn’t think she would be able to EVER work at a place like Starbucks. But desperate people sometimes surprise.

The reality is: this family will go into foreclosure on their house. And then they’ll have to declare bankruptcy.

When you look around your neighborhood and wonder “how are all these people affording these cars and houses?” you can bet: they’re not.

The sad thing is, the money is going towards manicures, $900 shoes, $600 a month car payments. Nothing is saved. There is no pride in having investments. They are buying “things.” Things with no value.

Do you wonder why some people never get ahead? Too many “things.” Not enough stocks.

But after hearing about how the one mother was spending $400 a month at Starbucks, I thought, “hm…I should be buying more of that stock.”

Mom and Pop Investors is moving to a new site. We’re having some bugs right now- but hopefully that should be straightened out shortly.

I think you all will really like this new site. It will be much more interactive than Mom and Pop and will be easier to find the older archived articles on investing.

Same great content! You just have to be patient while I’m getting everything up and running.

Real articles to come shortly.