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August 26, 2010
The Stock Market Is For Suckers
I really like the title of this blog entry by Marc Cuban: The Stock Market is still for Suckers and why you should put your money in the bank. But it's more than just a long rant in a blog title, it's a good article. I've already written about The Day I Decided The Stock Market Was Gambling (see Marc? I can rant in blog titles, too!) but that was a virtual stock market competition decades ago... since then, my opinion about stocks has gotten even worse.
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I would revise Marc's advice from "[...] you should put your money in the bank" to "[...] you should pay off your debt". This includes the mortgage on your home. Any amount that you make on the stock market isn't actually earned until you sell your stocks, but the amount that you owe on credit cards and mortgage is real. And from what I've seen most people don't manage to sell at the right time - whenever that is! Sure a few do manage to do so, but for the majority of us when we sell is dictated by something else in our lives. Usually retirement. I know a lot of people who were supposed to retire in the last few years but they couldn't, and now they are still working because their money is tied up in stocks.
The other reason that I think debt should be paid off is that the interest rates that we are charged on our outstanding debt is again usually fixed, and sometimes high. The amount that people can earn or lose from the stock market is highly variable. It seems outrageous to me that all of the mutual fund companies always say that "past performance does not guarantee future results", yet I have never met a financial advisor who truly believed that. Whenever I talk with financial advisors, they always tell me that I should invest in mutual funds because they will make me more money in interest than I am paying on my mortgage. When I ask them how they know this, they point to the past performance of the mutual fund. How blissfully ironic, and to me somewhat insulting.
No thanks, I'm paying down my mortgage because I am positive that I owe that money. That I CAN guarantee.
Posted by Hammer at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2010
Summer of Sand Art 2010
This is the fifth summer of sand sculpting for me, and it's still interesting and rewarding. My children are getting more involved, which is gratifying... and makes it much more of a family activity.
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This one could be called "hand holding a soccer ball", except I have to admit that real soccer balls do not have triangles... they are all hexagons and pentagons. Oops. Well, I was close, for going from memory. I wanted to make the wrist thinner, but didn't think I could shave any more off without the whole thing collapsing from being top-heavy.
This was supposed to be the Olympic rings. At least it was, until one of the outside rings just fell right off, and I was forced to trim five rings down to three. Then it was three donuts, how boring. Finally I decided to add tire treads, and it was three tires stacked on each other. Moderately interesting.
The sand at Waskesiu beach was not great - it wasn't fine enough, and contained a LOT of debris and rocks. So I went with a piece where it didn't matter if there were rocks and weeds sticking out of it... a zombie crawling out of a grave! My daughter and another girl were both helping me on this one, and they both thought the zombie as a subject was hilarious. Other people who passed by were either quite impressed, or mildly disturbed. :)
This is a cute sand worm, about to eat a snack. Nobody knew what this was from behind, but everyone got it when they moved around front. He wasn't hard to carve, and the puffy segmented body turned out to be very appealing. I tried to name him "Fred", but the girls didn't think that was an appropriate worm name, so he ended up being nameless.
Posted by Hammer at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)
August 06, 2010
My Dad Was Lucky To Walk Away
On Friday July 30, 2010, my sister called me at work. "Dad's been in an accident!" were not the words I expected to hear from her. Over the next few hours she sent me updates, eventually from the hospital where the ambulance took him. The final word was that he was going to be okay.
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My Dad was driving on the highway - single lane both directions and not divided - when a car in the oncoming traffic moved out to pass. The problem was that he went to pass almost immediately before coming upon my Dad, leaving no time for him to react at all. It was a head-on collision at full highway speed (100 Km/h for both vehicles).
Dad survived with a sprained right ankle, sprained left knee, and a whole lot of bruises all over. The other driver died on impact.
We learned later that the other driver was 86 years old, and should not have been driving.... he was living in a care home because his diabetes was so bad he needed insulin shots, which to me implies that his vision was probably very bad. We were also told that the RCMP had taken his driver's license away a few times in the past decade, only to have his family appeal and have it re-instated every time. In the small town where he lives, it seems to be quite well known that he was a horrible driver, having almost run over pedestrians a few times, and almost put his car through the front window of a local business. I guess it was finally time, given the odds, that he would stop having near-accidents and finally end up in a bad accident... unfortunately also involving my Father.
A few days after the accident, my Dad sent me some pictures that he received of the scene of the accident. Here is what his truck looked like:
That's a pretty messed up truck. The ambulance people and the tow truck driver both said they were amazed that my Dad survived. Me, I'm just thankful.
Posted by Hammer at 08:52 PM | Comments (1)