The Emerald Rose

“Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting “..holy shit…what a ride!”  Missy”

      Kudos to Missy!!!!

AND…

Keep your eyes on the prize.  Don’t look down, you’re not going that way.

        God I have a weakness for “pithy” sayings!!

      Anyway 2009 is the year that I “make” the government start paying for my retirement, only because it is me, “Commander Assbackwards”, we will require things to be a little different. Ok, here’s how it will work.

      I’m still relatively healthy, can get more healthy with some personal commitment and effort, but why wait any longer for my money from the government number 1, and I certainly am not the dullest bulb in the chandelier, so let’s make it make even more money for us, number 2.

      First step: sign up for the Social Security payment itself. (at “full retirement age”, in my case 66, it would produce “x” amount per month, but if you take it early there is a decreasing amount that you would get or “x”- “y”. The bad news is that it stays at level for the rest of your life, it never goes up anymore than the normal “cost of living” increase each year (COLA). Well the difference for me is not that much so I’m through waiting til I’m 66, and “NO” I don;t consider it “instant gratification. It’s supposedly all the money the damn government has been taking out of my paychecks since I was 14 years old, that’s FIFTY year, give it back! Now I could have been persuaded to wait two more years until this past year 2008, I realized the damn government is the “dullest bulb” in the chandelier! So time for me to take over, like I don’t have enough to o ,….but I have to straighten out the government screw ups as well?

      Anyway, I’ve decided to just have the monthly check sent to a brokerage account every month, take up a new layer of self education and handle the investing myself. (I know ” a doctor is his own worst patient”, and ” a lawyer is his own worst client”, Thank God I’m neither a Doctor or a Lawyer, just a run of the mill “joe average”!)

      I’ve already begun to look for the three or four main things you need to control your own destiny in the investment field, they are;

           1. An account where you can trade and not be making the payments on some damn stockbrokers Mercedes, and Summerhouse in the Hamptons. (Which ones do you like?)

           2. Some type of computer program or “system” that is a) easy to understand, b) will automatically control things if they get out of hand, c) don;t cost 63 Gabillion dollars a month to “rent” (i.e. Vectorvest, and the like)

           3. A “Yoda”, (I have one in mind and I’ll be chatting with him when he gets back in town)

            4, And last but probably most important a “strategy for my investing” that makes sense.

          See I don’t want to touch this money as long as I possibly can avoid it. It would be nice to grow it to the point that I can pay “smaller” monthly bills with the “earnings” or dividends without touching the capital portion of it. In fact I guess the theory is to have this “pile of capital” paying all your bills so you CAN retire a bit. (I can always learn”Do you want fries with that?”) to earn my beer money. Or “Welcome to Walmart, here’s a freaking carriage” for a little  spending or “walk about” money.

        So any ideas, comments, etc. ? I’ll probably spin it off to a separate blog and chronicle things for everyone just to see if it can be done. Maybe call it “At 64 I gotta have more! – one man’s struggle to live after government and financial industry debacles!” Any suggestions for the title as well, (and I’m serious abut this. There are by press counts and common sense hundreds of thousands, even a million or so Americans who are looking at nothing but Social Security, and have no choice but to work until a Doctor somewhere says, “I’m calling it, time of death 3:47 pm”, and even after that the loved ones will first say, “How am I going to make it now?”

-30-

         And thanks to all my “blog buddies” you’ll never know how much you are really appreciated for your honesty and caring. That’s what life should be all about.