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Fitness: I was hoping to make it to 195 today, but I didn’t quite achieve my goal. I did get to 195.4, which is a new lowest weight and it’s close to my current target, so I should be able to hit 195 sometime next week. Perseverance is key! Mouse: Sadly, he can no longer eat or drink water on his own and has a really hard time with being fed or given water through a dropper. He’s lost about 25% of his weight this month and is sleeping a lot now. The time has come to end his suffering. He’ll be going to the vet tomorrow morning at 10 AM and I’ll be with him right until the end. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this so soon, but the deciding line was crossed when he became unable to eat on his own. His tongue now sticks out of the right side of his mouth and he’s getting weak from the hunger. I’ve got him on my lap right now and I’m going to cherish the short amount of time that I have left with him. I wish I didn’t have to go to work today, but money’s gotta be made and bills have gotta be paid. On to finance! |
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I made a brief mention of my interest in finances in Wednesday’s blog, but I didn’t really go into any detail. I plan to do so today! Now you may be expecting a giant screed like the other “For the Love of…” posts concerning music and fitness, but there’s not as much to talk about in this realm. Academy of Finance My first real introduction to the world of finance was in my junior year of high school. I had some extra time in my school schedule that year as I had passed the tests to get into the Running Start program and take my English classes at community college, so I signed up for the Academy of Finance program. It was comprised of two classes per semester my junior year and one class per semester my senior year, wherein we learned lots of useful information like how to do our taxes, how to write a check, how to balance a checkbook, how banks and credit cards work, the basics of marketing and accounting, and how to play the stock market (among other things). We even had a mock stock market game going during the senior year, but I don’t quite remember how my team did. I think we came in 2nd out of 4 teams. Finance was a subject that I did well in, as I’ve always had a head for numbers. I got mostly As and a couple Bs, but after I got out of high school, I didn’t really follow up with it. I took an overview of Economics class at the community college which I got a 4.0 in, but I was headed towards the hard sciences at that time thanks to an awesome teacher. The Era of Consumption I didn’t get my first job until the last half of my senior year, and armed with all this knowledge and a new found income, I decided to blow most of it on CDs and video games. Well done indeed. It wasn’t all frivolity, as I did have a savings account that I’d occasionally put money into, but the interest rate was (and still is) negligible. After a couple of years working at my job in pizza, I had enough money to invest in a Certificate of Deposit when the interest rates were still good (above 5%). I saved a little more through the pizza job, but I was still spending money like gangbusters on things I didn’t really need. I never got into debt because of it, but my reserves were a lot lower than they should have been. Once I got to my job in the educational research field, I was given a 401k that I didn’t have to pay into and they paid 30 cents into it for every dollar I made. I received a good amount from that arrangement, though I can’t touch that money for another 29+ years unless I want to lose a big chunk of it and get taxed on it as well. The next 401k was through my current job but through my old contractor, so once the contractors changed, they closed that one up and I had to start yet another 401k plan. I’ve been thinking about dumping the first two into an annuity through my bank, but there’s another venue that I’m more interested in investing in, and I’ll talk about it in a minute. As the years have passed, I’ve become more knowledgeable with my savings, though I’ve still spent a lot of money on myself since starting my new job. The pricy expenditures have changed from CDs and video games (which I still get on occasion) to health and fitness. It’s definitely a more beneficial expenditure, as it should let me enjoy all those CDs and video games for a longer period of time, but those purchases have still impeded some of my savings goals. The Era of Frugality I’d say that I’ve been heading this way for a couple years, but it was Steve Pavlina’s article entitled [10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job] and browsing more of his posts that really kickstarted this whole thing. It wasn’t the thought of quitting my job that stuck with me (and it’s definitely not now as I have more responsibility and things to do) – it was using my time more efficiently to develop sources of passive income. I do have a few smaller streams working for me already, but I’ve been hunting for a bigger one. It didn’t dawn on me until a couple weeks ago when I stumbled on a blog posted on Steve Pavlina’s forums talking about stocks with dividends ([this blog] in particular). It was something that we’d talked about in the Academy of Finance, but I hadn’t done anything with that knowledge before reading the dividend blog. I had already been investing in some green energy stocks through [Sharebuilder] when I read that, so I went to see if any of the ones I’d been investing in had them, and sure enough a couple did. As a side note, I didn’t start investing in the market until reading the aforementioned post by Mr. Pavlina – I’d been thinking about doing it for a long while, but I never got around to it until being inspired to. Anyway, reading about dividends and yields got me interested in what other green energy stocks had dividends and what their yields were, so I went through the entire list of them (found [here]) and was blown away that there were green energy stocks that had about four times the yield (yearly dividend value divided by the stock price) of the ones I was investing in. My next stock purchase included a couple shares of that stock with the larger yield, which got me thinking outside of the green energy arena and into the rest of the market. I was wondering if there were any other stocks with higher yields, and when I ran across stocks that had over three times the yield that the one I had just invested in did, my eyes about bugged out of my head. After that, I started poring over lists, researching companies, calculating yields and dividend amounts – my head was awash with numbers and ideas. The path to the what I have been striving for over these past months was right in front of my eyes. Sacrifices to Be Made I’m well aware it’s going to take a lot of hard work and frugality to achieve my goal of getting to the point where I have more time for my true passion (see the name of the blog for what that is), but I barely spend anything on myself any more and I’m cutting all of my fitness spending (save for my chiropractic) out. I’m going to spend quite a few quarters (most dividends pay out every three months) reinvesting said dividends to build up my portfolio more, along with contributing a fair share every month to building my portfolio in a way that spreads the wealth around. By focusing a good chunk of my job income and all of my smaller streams of income into this larger one, I will make my dream become a reality. If I can lose 110 pounds, I can do this. Wish me luck! Discuss this post at [The Forum of Jason Vincion]! Posted on March 26th, 2010. |
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