http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/nyregion/17rosenbergs.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
I saw this headline and read the story in the NY Times and was pretty surprised.
The most major part of the story, I believe, was the decryption of the Soviet cables from New York to Moscow, which is only a minor footnote in this piece on the second page. That, coupled with the testimony of ex-KGB agents who have spoken frankly about the Rosenbergs' case since the fall of the former Soviet Union (and are somehow not mentioned in this article), long settled the twin issues of whether the Rosenbergs were really involved in espionage and how the U.S. government knew what it did.
It's never been entirely clear to me, though, where Ethel figured in (and the Greenglass testimony supports the idea of Julius but not Ethel being the real link to the Russkies).
The Mort Sobell confession only echoes what is already common knowledge, though somehow it seals the deal for the Rosenbergs' kids.
I'm against the death penalty so it doesn't matter whether you're Jeffrey Dahmer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Julius Rosenberg, or Karla Faye Tucker -- I don't think the government ought to decide whether, or how, you will die.
That's one of the only truly unshakable beliefs I have, even if it puts me in a distinct minority of Americans (and even, amazingly, if it puts me in a minority among American Christians).
That fact alone gives me common cause with those who support certain causes celebres, but that's where I'll draw the line -- I definitely don't see anything 'cool' or 'heroic' about selling sensitive secrets to evil regimes or murdering police officers in Philadelphia.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Beware the Ides of September
Fighting the urge to be a momentum investor becomes increasingly difficult as the momentum swings in any one direction.
When ALL the experts on the news says real estate is a sure thing to appreciate at 10% annually, beware.
When ALL the experts say the dot.com craze justifies sky-high P/E ratios, beware.
...And when ALL the experts say the sky is falling all across the financial sector, beware.
Those first two, of course, are obvious in hindsight, but the third should be obvious in present-sight (or at least whatever you would call what's not hindsight or foresight).
I actually heard someone say today, "I'm going to dump all my money out of financials and my S & P Index Funds and stick it all in precious metals, which have appreciated nicely over the last five years."
That's a terrible idea.
Unless you've got some plutonium, a flux capacitor, a wacky scientist and a built-in Huey Lewis and the News soundtrack, that advice just doesn't apply to you.
Now is the time to grab the bargains that are everywhere in the financial and real estate sectors. If you've done phenomenally well in energy and defense, and don't think you can sustain it, now might be a good time to start hedging your position a bit by chipping away at it and walking away with some gains.
But for Pete's sake, don't just walk off the cliff behind every Lemming who would just bail out of all their stocks that are down 30%+ in this bizarre year.
Legendary early 20th-century outfielder Wee Willie Keeler hit over .400 once, hit over .300 16 times, and finished with a career average of .341.
When asked what made him such a good hitter, his famously laconic reply was just this: "I hit 'em where they ain't."
If you want to hit 'em where they ain't, go find some large-cap financials that have taken heavies all year long and are sitting down in the sewer somewhere.
Reinvest your dividends and sit back as your share values climb out of the gutter and back up on to the sidewalk.
But please don't be a momentum investor.
When ALL the experts on the news says real estate is a sure thing to appreciate at 10% annually, beware.
When ALL the experts say the dot.com craze justifies sky-high P/E ratios, beware.
...And when ALL the experts say the sky is falling all across the financial sector, beware.
Those first two, of course, are obvious in hindsight, but the third should be obvious in present-sight (or at least whatever you would call what's not hindsight or foresight).
I actually heard someone say today, "I'm going to dump all my money out of financials and my S & P Index Funds and stick it all in precious metals, which have appreciated nicely over the last five years."
That's a terrible idea.
Unless you've got some plutonium, a flux capacitor, a wacky scientist and a built-in Huey Lewis and the News soundtrack, that advice just doesn't apply to you.
Now is the time to grab the bargains that are everywhere in the financial and real estate sectors. If you've done phenomenally well in energy and defense, and don't think you can sustain it, now might be a good time to start hedging your position a bit by chipping away at it and walking away with some gains.
But for Pete's sake, don't just walk off the cliff behind every Lemming who would just bail out of all their stocks that are down 30%+ in this bizarre year.
Legendary early 20th-century outfielder Wee Willie Keeler hit over .400 once, hit over .300 16 times, and finished with a career average of .341.
When asked what made him such a good hitter, his famously laconic reply was just this: "I hit 'em where they ain't."
If you want to hit 'em where they ain't, go find some large-cap financials that have taken heavies all year long and are sitting down in the sewer somewhere.
Reinvest your dividends and sit back as your share values climb out of the gutter and back up on to the sidewalk.
But please don't be a momentum investor.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
So You Know This Lady?
The 2008 Presidential campaign is shaping up to be one of our most exciting, ever. Yes, that gets said on a quadrennial basis (almost as much as the insta-punditry of the "lesser of two evils" quip) but no, this time I mean it, I swear.
I'm no stranger to -isms. I spent a year at Marxist Indoctrination School (no really, it was Ed School, where I stuck around just long enough for the Master's) and some very up close and personal experience with the dangers of identity politics and a realization that the Far Left's bigotry is just as awful as that of the Far Right, only more dangerous for the people it claims to want to *help.*
Anyway, back to my point. As much as the extremism of Ed School repulsed me, if you don't think our society is infused with large quantities of racism and sexism, I think you're in some serious denial.
This year's election carries the extra excitement of three non-traditional (i.e. not gray or graying Protestant white males) on the major parties' tickets. So of course, that opens up the possibility of racism, sexism, or anti-Catholicism finding their way into the rhetoric.
Let me give two real live examples I've witnessed since Gov. Sarah Palin's place on the GOP ticket was announced:
1. The morning after her speech at the GOP convention, I heard multiple pundits quickly follow their praise of her speech and her bons mots with qualifiers about how she "of course didn't write it though."
Well, who does? Some politicians do write a lot of their stuff (Barack Obama and Robert Torricelli come quickly to mind) but there ain't no such thing as a modern pol who doesn't get help with speeches. Even the most overrated public speaker of the last century, Bill Clinton, didn't write his own stuff (though he did sometimes edit it).
I think part of this can be attributed to newcomer-ism (people said similar things about the Governator at first) but I also think you have to admit that sexism factored right into it. I think that even if some unknown male Governor suddenly came from nowhere to start cracking jokes at a convention, people would've given him more credit.
2. Secondly, and far more subtly, I've noticed the talking heads on the cable news channels (yes, it's on half the day in my office as white noise) refer to Gov. Palin as "Sarah" on multiple occasions.
It's like, do you know this lady? How presumptuous is that type of speech? I've never heard any of these types say "John," "Barack," or "Joe" unless they were referring to one of the Senators as a personal friend. Usually, those who are building her up will refer to her as "Gov. Palin" while those who are putting her down will remind us that "Sarah is just [insert unflattering adjective here]."
The same thing happened with "Hillary" but the key difference there is that her husband was once POTUS, so the use of "Hillary" as been with her as long as she's been in the public eye, in part to distinguish her from the other Clinton.
You'd be right to point out that gender discrimination works both ways. For some reason, it was once okay for John McCain to use "lipstick on a pig" in reference to Bush, but somehow it's not okay now that Gov. Palin made a single quip about "lipstick."
As I've written and said many times, I believe that Sociology Departments 'round the world will ultimately over-attribute the final results of the 2008 campaign to race and gender by drawing sweeping, deterministic conclusions about the American body politic once the dust settles from this election.
I'll challenge those pat assertions -- voter preferences are more complicated than most realize --but that doesn't make me right, either.
But what I do know is that both the "she didn't write it" and the "Sarah" stuff made me cringe just a bit.
Kind of like I cringed when I heard Senator Biden's "clean, fresh and articulate" line.
I'm no stranger to -isms. I spent a year at Marxist Indoctrination School (no really, it was Ed School, where I stuck around just long enough for the Master's) and some very up close and personal experience with the dangers of identity politics and a realization that the Far Left's bigotry is just as awful as that of the Far Right, only more dangerous for the people it claims to want to *help.*
Anyway, back to my point. As much as the extremism of Ed School repulsed me, if you don't think our society is infused with large quantities of racism and sexism, I think you're in some serious denial.
This year's election carries the extra excitement of three non-traditional (i.e. not gray or graying Protestant white males) on the major parties' tickets. So of course, that opens up the possibility of racism, sexism, or anti-Catholicism finding their way into the rhetoric.
Let me give two real live examples I've witnessed since Gov. Sarah Palin's place on the GOP ticket was announced:
1. The morning after her speech at the GOP convention, I heard multiple pundits quickly follow their praise of her speech and her bons mots with qualifiers about how she "of course didn't write it though."
Well, who does? Some politicians do write a lot of their stuff (Barack Obama and Robert Torricelli come quickly to mind) but there ain't no such thing as a modern pol who doesn't get help with speeches. Even the most overrated public speaker of the last century, Bill Clinton, didn't write his own stuff (though he did sometimes edit it).
I think part of this can be attributed to newcomer-ism (people said similar things about the Governator at first) but I also think you have to admit that sexism factored right into it. I think that even if some unknown male Governor suddenly came from nowhere to start cracking jokes at a convention, people would've given him more credit.
2. Secondly, and far more subtly, I've noticed the talking heads on the cable news channels (yes, it's on half the day in my office as white noise) refer to Gov. Palin as "Sarah" on multiple occasions.
It's like, do you know this lady? How presumptuous is that type of speech? I've never heard any of these types say "John," "Barack," or "Joe" unless they were referring to one of the Senators as a personal friend. Usually, those who are building her up will refer to her as "Gov. Palin" while those who are putting her down will remind us that "Sarah is just [insert unflattering adjective here]."
The same thing happened with "Hillary" but the key difference there is that her husband was once POTUS, so the use of "Hillary" as been with her as long as she's been in the public eye, in part to distinguish her from the other Clinton.
You'd be right to point out that gender discrimination works both ways. For some reason, it was once okay for John McCain to use "lipstick on a pig" in reference to Bush, but somehow it's not okay now that Gov. Palin made a single quip about "lipstick."
As I've written and said many times, I believe that Sociology Departments 'round the world will ultimately over-attribute the final results of the 2008 campaign to race and gender by drawing sweeping, deterministic conclusions about the American body politic once the dust settles from this election.
I'll challenge those pat assertions -- voter preferences are more complicated than most realize --but that doesn't make me right, either.
But what I do know is that both the "she didn't write it" and the "Sarah" stuff made me cringe just a bit.
Kind of like I cringed when I heard Senator Biden's "clean, fresh and articulate" line.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Avoiding Spin-Ups
Twice in the past two weeks at work, I've been on the receiving end of a not-so-cheery phone call or e-mail from someone senior to me because of something I put out in an e-mail.
In one case, it was clearly my fault. I attached an old set of instructions to something that I just didn't bother to check; as a result, the e-mail contained incorrect information about a procedure (trust me, we're not talking life or death here, but still, I'll admit that bad information has no proper place and I certainly deserved the 'correctional instruction' I received).
In the second case, I sent out a query about something in which I indicated that someone far higher than me in the hierarchy was interested in seeing a presentation, if it could be arranged. All I meant was that the person was interested in it if it could be done, certainly not that it was some sort of sudden imperative.
But both cases had a common thread -- the recipient got wildly animated and brought many others into the fray to clarify where there had been confusion. In the first case, I had my posterior chewed by a Commodore (that's just below an Admiral), and in the second case, I just got a series of very confused phone calls and e-mails from someone who I had never met and, to be frank, never needed to be involved in the situation in the first place.
I know the term "common sense" is a loaded and dangerous one, so I'll just say this -- If I got an e-mail or phone call from someone with information that I believe to be incorrect, misleading, or unclear, what I would do -- hold onto your hats here -- is get back to the person who sent it for clarification.
I might just start by asking questions like, "Are you sure that's the right way to do this? I've got something that indicates otherwise" or, in the other case, "Is this just a 'nice-to-have' sort of request, or am I being mandated to fly halfway across the world to do this?"
If either case had been handled that way -- the one where I really was at fault, or the one where I was just a bit too ambiguous in the way I worded something -- no one would have ever gotten 'spun up.'
The entire thing could have been resolved at the lowest possible level with one part 'benefit of the doubt' and one part 'common sense.'
Yes, I said it -- to me, that's common sense.
And lest this sound like a "Dear Diary" entry, it's not -- my point here is just to remind anyone reading this not to get spun up the next time they perceive that someone you work with has put out bad info. At least go to the source first and check!
** Oh, and speaking of the 'benefit of the doubt' just want to use this forum to put out to friends that my PC is down hard right now. I have no access to either e-mail account from this network so if you've sent me a yahoo or other e-mail in the past couple weeks, that's why you ain't heard back...and thanks in advance for the lack of a spin-up!**
In one case, it was clearly my fault. I attached an old set of instructions to something that I just didn't bother to check; as a result, the e-mail contained incorrect information about a procedure (trust me, we're not talking life or death here, but still, I'll admit that bad information has no proper place and I certainly deserved the 'correctional instruction' I received).
In the second case, I sent out a query about something in which I indicated that someone far higher than me in the hierarchy was interested in seeing a presentation, if it could be arranged. All I meant was that the person was interested in it if it could be done, certainly not that it was some sort of sudden imperative.
But both cases had a common thread -- the recipient got wildly animated and brought many others into the fray to clarify where there had been confusion. In the first case, I had my posterior chewed by a Commodore (that's just below an Admiral), and in the second case, I just got a series of very confused phone calls and e-mails from someone who I had never met and, to be frank, never needed to be involved in the situation in the first place.
I know the term "common sense" is a loaded and dangerous one, so I'll just say this -- If I got an e-mail or phone call from someone with information that I believe to be incorrect, misleading, or unclear, what I would do -- hold onto your hats here -- is get back to the person who sent it for clarification.
I might just start by asking questions like, "Are you sure that's the right way to do this? I've got something that indicates otherwise" or, in the other case, "Is this just a 'nice-to-have' sort of request, or am I being mandated to fly halfway across the world to do this?"
If either case had been handled that way -- the one where I really was at fault, or the one where I was just a bit too ambiguous in the way I worded something -- no one would have ever gotten 'spun up.'
The entire thing could have been resolved at the lowest possible level with one part 'benefit of the doubt' and one part 'common sense.'
Yes, I said it -- to me, that's common sense.
And lest this sound like a "Dear Diary" entry, it's not -- my point here is just to remind anyone reading this not to get spun up the next time they perceive that someone you work with has put out bad info. At least go to the source first and check!
** Oh, and speaking of the 'benefit of the doubt' just want to use this forum to put out to friends that my PC is down hard right now. I have no access to either e-mail account from this network so if you've sent me a yahoo or other e-mail in the past couple weeks, that's why you ain't heard back...and thanks in advance for the lack of a spin-up!**
Monday, September 8, 2008
Borat: Take Two
I wasn't a huge fan of the movie "Borat" the first time I saw it. I'm a big fan of "Ali G" and the different characters that Sasha Baron Cohen brings into the show, so I thought I would love Borat. It definitely had its laugh-out-loud moments, but after a while I just got tired of the way it repeated itself and forced the same big idea/big joke on the audience -- Americans, especially those of us who live in non-coastal states, are a bunch of boorish intolerant rednecks.
My friend Nick (who, incidentally, reads and sometimes posts on this blog) heard me say that I found it only "so-so" and, when I offered him my reasoning, gave me a totally different way to interpret the movie.
"Yeah, I *get it*, too" he said, "it's supposed to cast Americans in a bad light, it's obviously edited that way, and the points just get made over and over again....but look at this way -- here's this heavily-accented guy saying he's from Kazakhstan acting rudely and thrusting himself into all kinds of strange social situations, but he's mostly being welcomed everywhere he goes. If you want to watch the movie to better understand America, just take notice of how welcoming and open everyone is to him."
I watched "Borat" again this weekend from that perspective and was amazed by it. Time and again in the movie, Cohen's character loudly throws himself into bizarre situations with people who, by and large, *go with it.* Nearly everyone from the shop owner whose goods Borat breaks, to the people he introduces himself to in the street, to the southern socialites whose house he enters, to the people he meets at public gatherings, etc. welcomes him with open arms even after he acts in a way that most would find offensive. When he's really offensive -- running naked through a hotel reception area or trying to kidnap Pamela Anderson -- the reception is far from warm, but that ought to be expected anyway.
I'm not going to defend the xenophobes and bigots that Borat "exposes" -- even though I do sympathize somewhat, because many were apparently duped into appearing on the film, and (most notably in the case of the southern frat boys) will be in some way pockmarked by it forever.
However, even a fourth-grader should realize that careful video editing allows someone to portray any group of people just about any way they want to. And at the end of the day, I trust Sasha Baron Cohen's revelations about American values about as much as I trust Michael Moore's comparison of American and Canadian news broadcasts in "Fahrenheit 9/11," which is to say, not a whole heck of a lot.
American society, like any other, is full of its faults and contradictions. But by and large, it's an open-minded one with a long and storied history of welcoming outsiders.
You may scoff at that.
You may come back with things like Sacco and Vanzetti, the Chinese Exclusion Act, or the turning back of the St. Louis by FDR in 1939. You'd be fair to make any of those points.
But show me another country where there are multiple first- and second-generation immigrant groups whose median income is more than double the national average. Show me another country where millions from every inhabited continent queue up to enter each year. Show me another country where the Governor of its largest state (by population) with the largest economy is foreign-born and arrived in his teens without a word of the language or a dollar of the currency.
If you're still scoffing, I can't stop you. But if you can take the leap of faith, trust me when I say it can't be done.
My friend Nick (who, incidentally, reads and sometimes posts on this blog) heard me say that I found it only "so-so" and, when I offered him my reasoning, gave me a totally different way to interpret the movie.
"Yeah, I *get it*, too" he said, "it's supposed to cast Americans in a bad light, it's obviously edited that way, and the points just get made over and over again....but look at this way -- here's this heavily-accented guy saying he's from Kazakhstan acting rudely and thrusting himself into all kinds of strange social situations, but he's mostly being welcomed everywhere he goes. If you want to watch the movie to better understand America, just take notice of how welcoming and open everyone is to him."
I watched "Borat" again this weekend from that perspective and was amazed by it. Time and again in the movie, Cohen's character loudly throws himself into bizarre situations with people who, by and large, *go with it.* Nearly everyone from the shop owner whose goods Borat breaks, to the people he introduces himself to in the street, to the southern socialites whose house he enters, to the people he meets at public gatherings, etc. welcomes him with open arms even after he acts in a way that most would find offensive. When he's really offensive -- running naked through a hotel reception area or trying to kidnap Pamela Anderson -- the reception is far from warm, but that ought to be expected anyway.
I'm not going to defend the xenophobes and bigots that Borat "exposes" -- even though I do sympathize somewhat, because many were apparently duped into appearing on the film, and (most notably in the case of the southern frat boys) will be in some way pockmarked by it forever.
However, even a fourth-grader should realize that careful video editing allows someone to portray any group of people just about any way they want to. And at the end of the day, I trust Sasha Baron Cohen's revelations about American values about as much as I trust Michael Moore's comparison of American and Canadian news broadcasts in "Fahrenheit 9/11," which is to say, not a whole heck of a lot.
American society, like any other, is full of its faults and contradictions. But by and large, it's an open-minded one with a long and storied history of welcoming outsiders.
You may scoff at that.
You may come back with things like Sacco and Vanzetti, the Chinese Exclusion Act, or the turning back of the St. Louis by FDR in 1939. You'd be fair to make any of those points.
But show me another country where there are multiple first- and second-generation immigrant groups whose median income is more than double the national average. Show me another country where millions from every inhabited continent queue up to enter each year. Show me another country where the Governor of its largest state (by population) with the largest economy is foreign-born and arrived in his teens without a word of the language or a dollar of the currency.
If you're still scoffing, I can't stop you. But if you can take the leap of faith, trust me when I say it can't be done.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Palin Family Values
Like you, I'm finding the media's fascination/titillation with Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter to be nauseating.
The only thing more nauseating, however, are the specious comparisons to sex scandals made by junior varsity-level pundits that usually go something like this:
"The Republicans are trying to be this holier-than-thou party that is obsessed with other people's personal lives, yet here they are with this type of thing going on in their own home. This just shows how [insert unflattering adjective here] they are."
Let me see if I get this straight:
Sarah Palin has a teenage daughter. Check.
That teenage daughter has a boyfriend. Got it.
Hormones being what they are, the teenage daughter and her teenage boyfriend have intercourse. Okay.
Biology being what it is, that act leads her teenage daughter to get pregnant. Still tracking, and still not finding either of my eyebrows raised even a nanometer.
The teenage daughter makes a personal and emotional choice to follow her heart and values and bear the child. Good copy.
So far I understood everything. But here's the part I don't get:
Where's the scandal?
First of all, no one broke any laws (unlike, say, Eliot Spitzer) and second of all, no one lied about anything (unlike, say, Bill Clinton, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Gary Hart, etc.)
On top of all this, it wasn't even the candidate herself.
No one held Bill Clinton accountable for Roger's drug involvement (and rightly so). No one made a huge deal when Al Gore's kid got busted with pot (and rightly so). And I don't think anyone should make a big deal over a 17 year-old girl doing something far more "normal," completely within the law, and then having the courage to forsake her own public image/privacy to do what she believed was the right thing.
So I just don't see the scandal here in the first place, but I especially don't see some kind of bogus moral equivalency with other, actual scandals involving leaders who hold, or seek to hold, the trust of the American public.
The only thing more nauseating, however, are the specious comparisons to sex scandals made by junior varsity-level pundits that usually go something like this:
"The Republicans are trying to be this holier-than-thou party that is obsessed with other people's personal lives, yet here they are with this type of thing going on in their own home. This just shows how [insert unflattering adjective here] they are."
Let me see if I get this straight:
Sarah Palin has a teenage daughter. Check.
That teenage daughter has a boyfriend. Got it.
Hormones being what they are, the teenage daughter and her teenage boyfriend have intercourse. Okay.
Biology being what it is, that act leads her teenage daughter to get pregnant. Still tracking, and still not finding either of my eyebrows raised even a nanometer.
The teenage daughter makes a personal and emotional choice to follow her heart and values and bear the child. Good copy.
So far I understood everything. But here's the part I don't get:
Where's the scandal?
First of all, no one broke any laws (unlike, say, Eliot Spitzer) and second of all, no one lied about anything (unlike, say, Bill Clinton, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Gary Hart, etc.)
On top of all this, it wasn't even the candidate herself.
No one held Bill Clinton accountable for Roger's drug involvement (and rightly so). No one made a huge deal when Al Gore's kid got busted with pot (and rightly so). And I don't think anyone should make a big deal over a 17 year-old girl doing something far more "normal," completely within the law, and then having the courage to forsake her own public image/privacy to do what she believed was the right thing.
So I just don't see the scandal here in the first place, but I especially don't see some kind of bogus moral equivalency with other, actual scandals involving leaders who hold, or seek to hold, the trust of the American public.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Jim Cramer and Madness
I listened to Jim Cramer's "Stay Mad for Life" on the way to work this morning. I generally like his principles about saving and budgeting, and I like his willingness to stick to tried-and-true principles on the subject. To paraphrase, he says that he'd "rather stick to old truths and be right than try to be original and be dead-wrong." Fair enough. Being contrarian is great but it's
never a good idea for its own sake -- that's a good way to land yourself in a lot of trouble.
My only point of departure with Cramer, and with a lot of other literature you would find on a library or bookshelf about personal finance, is that it starts with the basic premise that your desire is not to work. It's all geared towards retirement savings, which seems based on the idea that at some point in the reader's (or listener's) fifties or sixties, he or she wants to withdraw from the workforce in order to sip margaritas on a beach somewhere, buy an RV, or sit around doting on grandkids.
Now, I say this with the all-too-obvious caveat that it's coming from a 27 year-old who only entered the workforce four years ago, but NOT working is not my goal at all.
I have no idea what the world will look like, or what I'll look like, when I turn 65 in 2045. The whole concept of "work" may become even more flexible, as there may be entirely new industries created, more opportunities to work part-time, and more opportunities to work away from a traditional office.
I just don't know. But if I had to guess, or bet, I think I'll be "working" in some form right up to the point that the ticker stops ticking.
In the meantime, what I do know -- or, at least, what I think I know -- is that savings are a great thing to have for an "in case of emergency, break glass" type of situation. Based on the way my school, job, and/or Guard schedules might or might not converge, there could be a several-month period where I could find myself unemployed in the next few years. That seems like a great time to dip into some savings, especially provided that they're liquid enough to be dipped-into in the first place.
For that reason alone, I'm keeping tabs on those stocks and REITs that I've written about before (and yes, those REITs and the financials have taken heavies, but it's the dividends that are keeping me afloat). On top of that, every month I'm pumping money into the best investment I could have anyway -- my home, a wonderful cause of forced savings and probably the best future wealth-builder I could have.
I realize, of course, my dream of being an old codger who can still earn a good income via freelance writing or consulting might not come into fruition the way I imagine it. Further, I realize that not wanting to stop working probably puts me in a distinct minority of American workers.
Still, it makes the advice given by most Personal Finance 101 screeds not 100% applicable.
never a good idea for its own sake -- that's a good way to land yourself in a lot of trouble.
My only point of departure with Cramer, and with a lot of other literature you would find on a library or bookshelf about personal finance, is that it starts with the basic premise that your desire is not to work. It's all geared towards retirement savings, which seems based on the idea that at some point in the reader's (or listener's) fifties or sixties, he or she wants to withdraw from the workforce in order to sip margaritas on a beach somewhere, buy an RV, or sit around doting on grandkids.
Now, I say this with the all-too-obvious caveat that it's coming from a 27 year-old who only entered the workforce four years ago, but NOT working is not my goal at all.
I have no idea what the world will look like, or what I'll look like, when I turn 65 in 2045. The whole concept of "work" may become even more flexible, as there may be entirely new industries created, more opportunities to work part-time, and more opportunities to work away from a traditional office.
I just don't know. But if I had to guess, or bet, I think I'll be "working" in some form right up to the point that the ticker stops ticking.
In the meantime, what I do know -- or, at least, what I think I know -- is that savings are a great thing to have for an "in case of emergency, break glass" type of situation. Based on the way my school, job, and/or Guard schedules might or might not converge, there could be a several-month period where I could find myself unemployed in the next few years. That seems like a great time to dip into some savings, especially provided that they're liquid enough to be dipped-into in the first place.
For that reason alone, I'm keeping tabs on those stocks and REITs that I've written about before (and yes, those REITs and the financials have taken heavies, but it's the dividends that are keeping me afloat). On top of that, every month I'm pumping money into the best investment I could have anyway -- my home, a wonderful cause of forced savings and probably the best future wealth-builder I could have.
I realize, of course, my dream of being an old codger who can still earn a good income via freelance writing or consulting might not come into fruition the way I imagine it. Further, I realize that not wanting to stop working probably puts me in a distinct minority of American workers.
Still, it makes the advice given by most Personal Finance 101 screeds not 100% applicable.
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