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My Investment Portfolio

Business

I’m not a financial adviser.  I haven’t taken any of the classes or certifications that allow me to give investment advice.   Please don’t take this post as advice.

This is me, sharing what I have chosen to invest in.   These investments are scattered across a few different IRAs and brokerage accounts.  Copy me at your own risk.

BAC – Bank of America: I bought this low.  When any major bank is low, it’s time to buy.  I bought in stages starting at about $5 per share.  What I’ve got now has given me a 57% return.

CVS – CVS Caremark: I bought this on the advice of a friend.  It’s shown a 6% return over the past few months.

IAU & GLD – Gold ETFs: I wanted a way to get some precious metals into my IRA, so I bought a gold fund.  It’s down 7%, but I’m confident it’s going to come back.

MSFT – Microsoft:  This is one of the first stocks I bought with my 401k 10 years ago.  It’s up about 5% since I rolled it into my current IRA.

PAYX -Paychex Inc: I hate payday loans, but a friend recommended this stock and it has given me a 10% return.

SIRI –  Another recommendation from a different friend.  I don’t think it will ever hit the moon, but you won’t see me complain about the 60% return, either.

SLV – Silver ETF:  Another precious metals venture.  It’s down 3% overall, but that’s varying day to day.   A couple of weeks ago, it was around $19 per share, so it’s up nicely since then.  I predict it will continue to rise.

SYK: Stryker Corp: Another friendly recommendation.  This one is down 2%, but the recommender thinks it’s a good long-term bet, so I’ll hold it for a while.

VB – Vanguard Small-Cap ETF: I like Vanguard funds in general.  This one has given me a 5% return.

VIG – Vanguard Dividend ETF: This one pays dividends, which is usually a sign of a strong stock.  1% return.

VWO -: Vanguard Emerging Market ETF: If our economy has problems, emerging markets tend to thrive in response, so I’m hedging my bets with this.  It has lost 4% so far.

IDMOX – An ING family fund that has served me well.  13% return.

VFINX – Vanguard S&P index fund.  2% return.

RICK – Rick’s Cabaret: A few days ago, I read an article about Rick’s Cabaret losing a lawsuit that made all of it’s New York strippers into full employees entitled to minimum wage.  The article mentioned that Rick’s is publicly traded, which amused me, so I bought a few shares.

Those are the positions I have with one brokerage, across three accounts.   I didn’t share the balances, but overall, I have had a 10% return on these investments.

Now, I’ll share the contents of my wife’s inherited IRA.   This money was entirely in a money market when she inherited it last year.  She got nervous and would only let me play with half of it.  That half has averaged a 20% return since June 2012, with part of it hitting 29%.

These are all Fidelity funds for a specific 401k program.  I have no idea our accessible the funds are to the general public.  We are working on an IRA-mandated withdrawal of this money, so it will be moving over the course of years.

PYR INX LFC 2010/2035/2040/2045/2050 – These are targeted date funds.  Each of them has had at least a 20% return.

SM&MID Cap Equity – This fund currently has a 29% 1 year return.

That’s my investment portfolio.  Some gambles, some amusement, some solid investments.   I think I’m doing pretty well.  What do you think?

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Sammy’s Story, Part 4

Business, Finance, Life

If you haven’t been following along with Sammy’s story, please take a few minutes to do so here, here, and here.

Photo of underside of electric lawn mover
Photo of underside of electric lawn mover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We left off in September, with the yard done and the house almost ready to rent.  Sammy and his guys worked their butts off getting the work done.  It cost more than we had expected, but it got done.

Over the winter, we hired the crew to handle the snow at both of our properties.  We paid Sammy a flat fee and he made sure the driveways and sidewalks were clear every time it snowed.   We started paying him in November, and ran through until March, so he got a pretty good deal and we didn’t have to worry about the snow.

When spring came, Sammy told me he needed to take a break from his business.   Putting a yard care business on hold when spring hits is a bad idea, but it happened.  He was dealing with some problems with his housing and couldn’t focus on anything else, even though the money would have helped him a lot.

When he lost his apartment, we let him store some of his things in the extra garage stall at the rental.  This stall was reserved in the lease for us to use, and was the base of operations for the yard care business, since he was using our lawn mower and snow blower anyway.

And that was the last we saw of him for a month.

When we started nagging him to take care of his stuff, he kept telling us that he wanted to keep his business going, but he couldn’t, yet.

Then he’d leave his stuff for another month.

By the end of the summer, he’d gotten most of his stuff out and we’d only hear from him if he thought he could borrow money from us, which didn’t happen.

Finally, my wife called him and told him to get his crap out by the end of September.

Or else.

A week into October, we found out that he’d spent September in jail.  Supposedly, he broke up with his(literal) crackhead girlfriend and she called the police and made up stories.  He got arrested and couldn’t make bail.

Last week, he came to borrow our trailer to get the last of his stuff out, then returned it in the evening without moving any of his stuff.  He said he was moving the stuff he had stored elsewhere and he’d be back on Monday.

Monday?  Nothing.

Our relationship with Sammy has gone from helping him launch a business that helps fatherless teens, recovering crackheads, and the homeless to lies and getting begged for money.

My wife is ready to put his stuff on the curb.

What would you do?  Toss his stuff?  Give him another chance?

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Not the Center of the Universe

Parenting, Relationships

On Sunday, I dropped Punk #3 off at a birthday party.  She walked into the yard, saw her friends and took off running.  I confirmed times with the birthday girl’s mother and left.  I went home and had Punk #2 help me with repairs to Coffin #1.  It is Halloween season, after all.

Birthday Party Bash
Birthday Party Bash (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I came back two hours later, they had just finished eating cake and were about to open up presents, so I got to hang around for a while.

I noticed some amazing things:

  • Fully 75% of this family’s living room was devoted to play space for the kid.  As you walk in the front door, you get to see a giant pile of toys and kid-craft crap.  Most of what is traditionally a gathering area was taken over by kid.
  • Of the dozen or so children who came to the party, close to half of the parents stayed.  Really, is your precious little snowflake so endangered by her friends that you can’t come up with something better to do that watch her play with her friends and ignore you for two hours while under the supervision of the resident parent?
  • Clowns.  Ok, it wasn’t technically a clown, but a guy named Mr. Fun who hands out whoopie cushions and entertains kids while wearing odd clothes counts as a clown, to me.  I get it, you want your special little snowflake to have a memorable birthday, but if every party is big and over-the-top, which one will she remember?  Maybe she’ll only remember a sense of entitlement.

I very firmly believe that children should not be raised to feel like they are the center of the universe.  Not even to Mom & Dad.   They need to know that we have lives and interests that aren’t them.

Mothers and fathers NEED to have lives and interests that are entirely separate from their children.  If your entire focus for 20+years is on the lives of your little brats, what is going to happen to you when they move out?  Are you prepared to abandon two decades of self-training and suddenly become your own person again?

Husbands and wives need to have time to themselves that excludes the children.  When the monsters finally leave, you need to be able to have a relationship that doesn’t revolve around who spilled what where and who’s turn is it to clean it up.

Children are not–and should not be–the focal point of a household.  Leave them at a birthday party.  Let them find a way to entertain themselves for a few hours.  Go on a date.

I promise you, letting your kids see their parents happily doing things together–even if it’s gleefully leaving them with a sitter–will do more for their long-term well-being than knowing you’re standing in the corner at a birthday party watching her fake a fart with a 25 cent toy.

Let her be independent.  Let her know that other priorities do exist for other people.  Let her fall down and scrape her knees.  Let her figure out how things work for herself.

That is life, after all.  Let her live it and don’t forget to live it for yourself.

Tootsie – Does Beauty Have to be Expensive?

Celebrities

Cover of "Tootsie - 25th Anniversary Edit...
Cover of Tootsie – 25th Anniversary Edition

Many remember Dustin Hoffman dressed in drag in the classic film Tootsie, a movie that he now says made him realize how many women he’s missed out on meeting in life simply because he judged them by their looks. Every year women spend thousands of dollars on beauty products and cosmetics, hoping to increase their appearance and become attractive enough to the outside world. Although there are various degrees of beauty, it undoubtedly is usually determined by the amount of money spent to enhance features and upkeep the overall look.

Although natural beauty does exist in our society, it is few and far between to find a woman who needs a minimal amount of makeup and hair product to appear beautiful enough to meet society’s standards. Styled, highlighted hair is crucial for an attractive look, requiring professional services to be done on the hair by a salon. Although it may be cheaper to spend $5 on a box of hair dye at the supermarket, the hair won’t look as full or healthy without a professional technique applied. A woman’s hair is bound to look more attractive by spending the extra $100 by visiting a stylist who knows their craft.

The length of a woman’s hair often creates a more attractive look in the U.S., which is difficult to achieve with flat irons and curlers that create breakage and brittle hair from the heat. Women are now resorting to having hair extensions installed every three to five months to achieve beautiful hair that has a fuller texture and longer length, costing an average of $700. They can resort to shorter hair that saves a large amount of money, but they’re ultimately compromising a large part of their looks.

There’s a reason that celebrities appear more beautiful than the rest of the population, as their high school photos often show them to look like typical people. By spending thousands of dollars on personal trainers, stylists, and makeup artists, their appearance is immediately enhanced with the finest tools and products on the market. They are also able to have help with experts who have more knowledge on what creates the best look for their features.

Although beauty does not have to be expensive (just look at exotic women in Columbia and Brazil who are anything but high maintenance), it unfortunately is a requirement in the U.S. where rich housewives rule the reality shows and runways. True beauty is often defined by breast and waist sized, which few women can live up to, resulting in thousands of dollars spent on breast implants and liposuction, often impossible to attain otherwise.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but few men will argue that Angelina Jolie is unattractive or that Heidi Klum looks homely. The majority of men can agree when a woman is beautiful, and few women catch attention with a homemade manicure and dyed hair that came from a box. Perhaps going au natural will become a new trend in the coming years, but for now it’s expensive to be a woman, and even more costly to be a beautiful one.

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Peter Capaldi: The New Dr. Who’s Filmography

News

If you’re new to Dr. Who, one of the odder concepts in the program is that The Doctor periodically regenerates. This is a lampshade on the reality that the actors playing the lead character don’t want to be saddled with the role

Doctor Who?
Doctor Who? (Photo credit: skuds)

for the entirety of their careers, and it allows an “in-universe” canonical way for the writers and show-runners to allow this change to happen. In fan circles, Matt Smith, the outgoing doctor, was “The Eleventh Doctor” (because he’s the eleventh actor to take on the role) and is going to be replaced, when the series comes on again, with Peter Capaldi, a Scots veteran of several BBC productions.

Capaldi returns to one of the traditions of the program – in casting an actor who’s a bit older — 55 as of 2013 – to play a 900-year-old time traveling alien. His acting career stretches back to 1983, with a role as Danny Oldsen in Local Hero. His early acting career included bit parts in the British underworld-themed dramaedy Minder, and the horror film The Lair of the White Worm, starring Hugh Grant and Amanda Donohoe.His ambitions with film include work behind the camera – he won an Oscar for Live Action Short Film Subjects with Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life in 1995, becoming the only actor to play The Doctor to have an Oscar on his mantel. He has also written films, including Soft Top, Hard Shoulder.Back in front of the camera, his first starring role was as Luke Wakefield, in Mr. Wakefield’s Crusade, where a closeted gay man thinks he’s witnessed a crime. When that series ran its course, he did rolls as a mad mathematician (Psychos), and an angel in the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

2005 saw Capaldi’s most famous role, before assuming the mantle of a Time Lord: That of spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the BBC series “The Thick of It,” a role he inhabited through 2012. In that role, he plays a profoundly profane director of communications for the British Government, charged with public relations, cleaning up political gaffes, and ensuring that any dirt about an opposition party member is aired at the most politically advantageous moment. His role was noted for bringing nuance and complexity to a character described as a rabid political hatchetman who didn’t carry grudges – he had them stuffed and mounted on the wall.

Capaldi has previously appeared in Dr. Who as Caecilius in the episode “The Fires of Pompeii,’ which marked the first appearance of Karen Gillan, who went on to play the Doctor’s companion, Amy Pond. Later, he returned to Dr. Who spinoff Torchwood: Children of Earth as John Frobisher, who had a particularly dark turn, killing his own family rather than letting the 456 aliens use them as a human sacrifice.

In the press event where he was announced has having landed the role, Capaldi admitted to having been a fan of the series ever since he was a small boy. For fans of the long running franchise, this promises to be a very enthusiastic incarnation of the Doctor.

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