Learning Curves

Everybody's better around here. Our collective medications have kicked in. Five years ago, after dot.bust and 9/11, I was disconsolate about losing the greatest share of my life's savings...money built up slowly, painfully, initially penny by penny the way my Scottish grandparents taught me.

I still have most of the coins I earned as a paperboy, lawn mower boy, babysitter, tomato picker, and odd jobs guy in my early teens. Of course, I would have probably been wise to have invested that small (very small) fortune (less than $100) but the truth is I loved the coins too much to part with them.

I only saved "old" ones. I still do.

Even when I use a coin, such as today when I placed a 1969 quarter in a parking meter on 25th Street, so I could go into the school and watch the end of my third-grader's school day, I allow it to act as a sort of time machine, taking me all the way back to, in this case, the year I graduated college, got married, gave my first major public speech (an utter failure) and went into the Peace Corps.


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Five years later, two stocks that remain, albeit in vastly reduced portions than I once held, have been on fire for over a year now: Apple and Amazon. I bought both early because I believed in the companies and their products. I've felt bad every time I had to sell to pay a bill or give the money to a family member, because it felt like eating seed corn.

But the smallish portions I've managed to keep have appreciated greatly. They are subject to the gyrations of the markets, naturally, but I continue to believe in these two businesses, and I hope I can afford to continue owning them.

In general, I've learned, when saving for your retirement, buying individual company stocks is not a good idea. Instead, one should go into mutual funds, especially indexed funds that spread risk and follow the market. They go up slower in a Bull but they fall slower in a Bear.

Your risk is reduced and the long-term prospects for stocks, as always, is positive, so as the rising tides lift all boats, your little rubber raft will be there too!

This financial advice, unasked for, is probably worth as much as you paid for it. :)

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