Are you too old to be young, but too young to be old? You’re likely from the “baby boomer” generation. Having worked for longer than you have left to work, you’re starting to count down the years to when you don’t have to go into work anymore. It’s still a long ways off but you find yourself thinking of it more and more.
You’ve probably cut back on some on your frivolous spending too, after looking at your weak investment statements. You started saving too late, spent too much over the years, and now have too much time to make up for.
To make things worse, the younger people view you as old, and the gray hairs see you as a young whipper snapper. You’ve already had a mid-life crisis in your forties. You bought the sports car. And you tried some partying like in your youth only to find you’re now a wimp. Your round balding head is protruding ever more, as is your belly.
So what’s left?
Whether you see it or not, you’re actually in your prime. You’re probably still pretty healthy. You’re probably making more money than ever in your life. Your kids are probably grown or mostly so. You’re in a good spot!
Don’t get caught up in things! Get caught up in the moments. Enjoy the simple things each day. Save away all the money you can and forget about it. Instead, make life about enjoying things that don’t cost money. If you had done this when you were younger, you’d be there already. But it’s not too late. Go for it.
I’m not going to tell you yea or nay about whether you should buy silver. You need to read and read some more. Ask questions. Every investment has risk. But I will tell you about a dream I had last night, a pretty intriguing one.
I wouldn’t have even remembered this dream except I happened to scan some titles of articles in a newsletter this morning and noticed one about gold and silver. Then, ping. The dream came back.
Note that I do not own silver, nor to I check on its prices – ever.
Dream April 02, 2013:
I was holding a 1964 Kennedy half dollar and held it up in front of my face, looking at it. I’d seen these silver coins a lot when I was younger so was quite familiar with them. It was a little tarnished looking around the rim.
I was in a pawn shop, and handed it to a guy behind the counter and asked him how much he’d give me for it.
He took a look at it and said, “twenty seven dollars.”
“How much is silver worth now?” I asked.
“Sixty dollars an ounce,” he said. “Do you want to sell it or not.”
I thought about it. Do I sell the coin and hold on to the cash, or keep the coin? I decided to sell it for $27 and immediately felt disappointed.
—end of dream—
So as soon as I remembered the dream this morning, I hopped online. I’m curious what the price of silver is today. The first article I click open is someone predicting that silver will go to $60 per ounce within a few months. That seems strange, because that’s the price it was in my dream.
What is the price of silver is today (April 3, 2013)? $27-28 per ounce.
Next, I’m curious what the weight of a Kennedy half dollar is. Turns out it is 12.5 grams (0.44 ounces). I was not aware of this or had forgotten. At $60 per ounce, if sold purely for its 90% silver content that would be worth about $24 (a pure silver coin that same weight would be worth $26-27 dollars).
Coincidences? I never think about silver. Why did I dream this?
Now I’m a little perplexed. Did my dream something? Should I go out and buy a bunch of silver? Hmmm. Undecided. What would you do?
Have you ever wondered how giddy you might be if you won a big lottery? Would your composure just drift amuck like a young dude’s ego after cutting the cheese in math class with his wannabe girlfriend sitting in the desk behind? Oh, I thought so…and I bet your face would look more like these goobers and schmucks than you’d ever want to admit. :-)
Risk can be fun. Oh, ya! And when you’re young it seems that fun is all about taking risks, which sometimes translates to foolish or outright stupid. Nothing wrong with having some fun necessarily. But it may cost you – not just in hurt pride but in gobs of money for current and future medical treatments should your grand ideas fail!
Broken bones and bruises are easy to shrug off when you’re young and heal fast or otherwise not paying the insurance premiums and deductibles. At some point though, especially as we get older, we start understanding the true cost of our rambunctiousness.
For example, at what age would you NOT be a human wrecking ball anymore? Ha ha! Case in point: How to make your doctor, chiropractor, and a few lawyers richer with one fell swoop…
Okay, here’s what not to do to your neighbor. My wife never laughed so hard. I was a fool and had to eat crow…
First you must understand some background. So imagine this:
The nice neighbors who happen to own two psycho yappy Chihuahuas that seem as if they sleep outside our bedroom window.
Endless yapping at night, during the day, any time anything moves outside, whenever I walk in the yard, whenever I mow, all the bloody time!
Wishing they’d escape into our yard while I’m mowing or weedwacking.
Midnight prayers for an “accident” or miracle to happen.
Then, more fuel to the fire. Every morning we sit in our front room and have tea while slowing waking up and gazing out into the park across the street. Inevitably, the morning dog walkers will stroll on down the sidewalk in front of our house with their furry Fido and Foofoo friends in tow. And like clockwork, the happy mutts will leave a steamer or streamer in the corner of our yard by the light pole. No matter what we plant there or rip out of there, it seems like every dog that passes by is so interested in that bloody corner. Did I mention that we don’t have a dog, so it’s always pleasant to find a brown “wrapped” present in our yard? Or inevitably the lawn mower finds it and flings it at me.
On more than one occasion we’ve opened the window and yelled something during the morning dump and embarrassed the owner. It has become a source of irritation for us, probably worse than That Hated Little Pink Pig. And I refuse to provide the neighborhood doggie toilet!
So imagine my surprise one afternoon as I’m sitting in the front room at the computer sipping my glorious afternoon tea. I see the neighbor clamoring by with the two psycho Chihuahuas. And, yep, like clockwork they stop at the blessed corner. Oh, no you don’t! “Surely you’re not going to let them go right there!,” I thought. But just like a dog taking a slow motion dump on the lawn in the background of an outdoor redneck wedding ceremony, I stared in disbelief at the classic canine squat. Sure enough, a fresh steaming deposit.
The dog’s owner, our neighbor, looked up towards our house and, I could see by the look on his face exactly what he was thinking, “Is anyone looking?” He gazed again toward the house. “No, great” he probably thought. Of course, he couldn’t see that I had come home early and had seen everything. After Foofoo did his thing, his human nonchalantly proceeded to walk Foofoo and Cookie down the sidewalk.
Now we all know the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” routine, so being the church goer that I am, I decided to do unto others. I should say, “doo” unto other. Immediately I marched to our garage, hit the garage opener button, and grabbed a shovel. I wasn’t mad, just determined, with one goal in mind – to return the pile to its rightful owner.
Of course, I don’t really relish confrontation, and by then the neighbor was fifty yards down the street. So I instantly found the foul belongings, scooped them up purposefully, and then marched up the sidewalk towards the neighbor’s driveway. Now, in our youth my brothers and I had been quite fond of the gasoline, dogdoo and bag trick – you know, light the bag on fire on someone’s door step, ring the doorbell and run! The surprise is after the fire is stomped out! Yes, that crossed my mind. But with our neighbor I just wanted to get even, not create an ongoing feud. So I just deposited the soft chunks (three of them) on his driveway in a spot where I was sure he’d see them on his return with his little snarling poop machines.
After putting the shovel away and returning inside the house, I told my wife the whole sequence of events. She seemed quite taken with my story and laughed quite heartily. In fact, she laughed and laughed. Proud of myself, I returned to the front room and the computer.
Not paying attention to the time, maybe ten minutes had passed. And as I glanced up from the computer and looked out the window I saw the neighbor again. “Ah ha,” I thought, “you have a surprise waiting for you at home!” But he was stopped. With Foofoo and Cookie nosing about, he was hunched over in the light pole corner of our yard looking for something. Looking, scanning. Oh, I wish I would have thought to get out my camera to record him looking about for those blasted nuggets! That was so classic. But wait. What’s that? A bag in his hand? “Ahhh, you’re kidding,” I thought. “You actually came back with a bag to pick it up?!” Now that was one thing I didn’t see coming.
On a side note, you know how dog owners (no offense dog lovers!) will turn the bag inside out around their hand like some sort of sick puppet, gobble up the treasure balls like a PacMan game, and then reverse the bag and put it in their pocket afterwards! Have you seen that? Gotta love dog lovers. They don’t mind finishing their walk with a gushy sack of nasty in their belly pack, just waiting to ooze out!
Back to our neighbor, though. He was quite intent on finding the stash and looking a little taken aback as to where it must be! “I knew it was here” I could just hear him thinking. Oh, a movie of this would have been so grand! He crouched and waved his hand puppet around and looked some more, scanning back a third time. He finally gave up and continued walking up the sidewalk towards his house. Oh, I am busted now! By now, I ran to the other room to tell my wife again of this bizarre sequence of events. She laughed even harder (so hard that our daughter was now wondering what the heck was going on), knowing that the neighbor would discover that I had left three presents on his driveway! Ahhhh!
Now what to do? Do I just figure “heck with it, he got what he deserved”? When in actuality he had already made amends for the mutt, at least in intent. Hmmm. I just went back to the computer and shrugged it off. Another ten minutes or so had passed, maybe a half hour. I hear my wife telling our five year old that “Papa should go apologize.” Not thirty seconds later our daughter comes into the front room to tell me “you should go apologize.”
At first I thought, “naaa” no need, no big deal. But I did feel a little guilty about the whole thing. And I realized how this could forever change the dynamic between our neighbors and us. All over some stupid thing. Those blasted little mutts! Now look what they’ve done. :-) So I swallowed my pride and set out on the long trip up the sidewalk. As I reached their driveway I noticed that my present was no longer there. Stepping up to the front door, I pressed my finger on the doorbell switch…Gulp…
Watch the entire narrated, creative, video-enhanced version:
Maybe “hate” is too strong of a word. But annoying just doesn’t do it justice. Either way, anyone who has ever had kids or been around kids probably has a personal experience with a toy that drove them crazy.
You know, that noisy, squeaky, repetitive, grate-on-your-nerves wonder toy that the TV glamorized, your child had to have, and now you are stuck listening to, with the stark reality of waiting for the blasted thing to break while secretly hoping you could drop kick it over the neighbor’s fence.
That being said, one of our “favorite” such toys was this little pink, fuzzy, cutesy, singing porky pig with motorized legs. Our five year old daughter “won” the bloody thing at a Christmas white elephant gift exchange. Sounds harmless enough, huh? But if that’s all there was to it, I wouldn’t be writing this. At its evil core was that song.
Granted, it sang a rather nice Christmas tune. Or rather, normally it would be a nice Christmas tune. And I have absolutely nothing against Christmas jingles. But the song was recorded with the most aggravating cutesy voice and intertwined with the most grating pig snorts and grunts – which continued all the way through the song! Aside from the fact that one could take offense at what may seem like a mockery of a Christmas song, the overall effect was just plain irritating no matter what the song might have been.
So our daughter quickly learned of our displeasure with this toy, though she continued to love it. In fact, she seemed to take pleasure in bringing it out into our presence and pressing that little button on the pig’s ear to watch us squirm. And that was its undoing.
On one such occasion my wife and I were in the kitchen cooking and our daughter was pestering us for something and didn’t like our answer. So she promptly said “hmm” and went and got little piggy, placed it on the kitchen counter, pressed the start button on its ear, and walked away!
As soon as those oh-too-familiar harassing sounds began to pummel us, my wife swiftly reached over and nabbed it off of the counter and placed it high on top of our refrigerator. The trouble is, that blasted pig’s legs were motoring about as it sang and pranced and within a few moments we both glanced up and saw piggy teetered towards the edge.
My wife and I looked quickly at each other and our eyes were saying “are you going to jump to catch it?” I’m sure we both thought “naaaa” at the same time as we watched the little pink blob do a side roll off the front edge of the frig. Like a swimmer’s diving nightmare, little pig landed squarely on its side on the tile floor with a slight snapping sound. And all was a blessed quiet!
As my wife and I grinned at each other, our daughter, who had heard the thump and ran back into the room, burst into tears. We had to turn our heads away to hide the uncontrollable snickering at this neat stroke of luck.
As Dr. Seuss asked many decades ago in his book The Cat In The Hat, “What would you do?” Hey, accidents do happen after all.
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Well, some things really are free. Don’t get me wrong, I like to make money as much as the next guy. But sometimes it’s nice to just give stuff away. Sharing all the topics in this blog about “getting it” with personal finances is rewarding. Getting smarter with money has dramatically changed our lives.
But another lifetime love is music – playing, writing, and recording. Classic rock, guitar music. Some of it is showcased on my music website. And while I love the idea of selling my music on the internet (Amazon, iTunes, Tate Publishing and others), you are welcome to download (for free) any of the songs on my music website. No catch, frills or gimmick.
What’s in a name? Everything. Ever wonder what may have happened if the pop sensation ABBA had instead called themselves The Dimples? What if the rock group Van Halen had instead named themselves The Pen Pals? They would not have been taken seriously. Yes, the music may speak for itself, but would they really have been as successful? With a cheesy name we would have judged them completely differently! We’re very biased that way.
So it seems that names really do matter. Why else would so many music artists and actors create a stage name? Richard Starkey became Ringo Starr. Joan Marie Larkin became Joan Jett. Annie Mae Bullock became Tina Turner. Prince Rogers Nelson became Prince. Robert Ritchie became Kid Rock.
Then there’s Zoned, Sandstorm, Aviator, Debi DeAglio, Tommy Nova, Erwin Erwin, Ean Vianabon, Marcus James, and Patriot. Ever hear of them? If not, check them out – they’re pretty good for “no names.” Bottom line, names matter. And so does the substance behind the name. The music. The acting. But there may be one exception to the importance of names.
In fact, beware of “stage” names and marketing gimmicks when it comes to money management firms and so-called financial experts. Is your money manager/advisor just a cleverly devised stage name stuffed shirt with expensive advertising and empty promises of making you successful, or is there really character and proven experience behind them? You’d better be sure, because your future will be affected so much by who you choose to help you win with your money. And in this case, the name really doesn’t matter.
In fact, the more real the name with money gurus probably the better. Street smarts and substance are everything here. Scott Krivoshein or Raymond James would do quite well. Erwin Erwin or Ean Vianabon…hmmm…
Are you too old to be young, but too young to be old? You’re likely from the “baby boomer” generation. Having worked for longer than you have left to work, you’re starting to count down the years to when you don’t have to go into work anymore. It’s still a long ways off but you find yourself thinking of it more and more.
Bottom line, names matter. And so does the substance behind the name. The music. The acting. But there may be one exception to the importance of names.
