Better to Be Lucky Than Smart

My brother always says it's better to be lucky than smart. So my neighborhood dodged Irene's bullet last night. My building never lost power or water, which is good for me because the bathtub-full-of-water trick didn't work. I should have checked the plug, which apparently was designed only to stop the water from draining long enough to let someone take a bath. The tub was bone dry this morning.

Anyway, I took my copy of Barron's to the Tastee Diner this morning. (I had a pocket full of quarters in case the Washington Post's delivery person made it to my building; no surprises, she/he didn't.)

Barron's isn't something I normally read on my own, but I got a gift subscription from a friend with points of some kind. Anyway, I normally can't decipher my way past the front editorial, but this week's Streetwise piece by Jacqueline Doherty, "Prospering in a Weak Economy," contained some interesting perspective.

Citing analyst Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research and the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, Doherty notes that unemployment is only 4% for Americans with college degrees and 14% for those with only high-school diplomas. Moffett concludes that 40% of Americans have no discretionary income.

What does this mean to Barron's readers? I.e., well-educated people with money to invest? There is growth in companies that provide services to below-poverty consumers.

"One area that's growing: those servicing cellphone subscribers below the poverty line who receive government subsidies," writes Doherty. "Moffett recommends MetroPCS Communications (PCS), which saw its shares tumble from north of 18 to a recent 10.67."

I interpret this as advising rich people how to further exploit the poor. Well, the poor don't have a lot of leverage, but they can learn the same lessons (even if they don't read Barron's.)

Not that anybody should take advice from me, especially when it comes to choosing between satellite TV service and "a third meal." But maybe there could be a way to turn the tables on the exploiters: save for shares in Disney instead of saving for a Disney vacation, or give up Happy Meals for a year to open an education Roth IRA with McDonald's shares (reinvesting the dividends, of course). In other words, invest in what you'd normally buy. The rich guys are.

(Disclosure: I own Ford's shares; and I've been a Ford-vehicle owner since 1982. Okay, so it's only three vehicles in 30 years, and it's only 200 shares. In me, Ford's may not have a frequent buyer, but it has long-term customer loyalty.)

I've known for awhile that my capital was worth more than my labor, even in a down economy (and a down market). The jobs that are gone are not coming back; employers have outsourced or automated them.

Back in the early 1980s, one of THE FUTURIST's authors wrote that we should all own robots not so they'll do our work for us, but so we can live off the income they generate when we sell or license them to do other people's work. Applying that same principle generally, I figured the only way to beat the rising costs of gasoline and health-insurance premiums was to own stock in energy and health companies (and since I'm not smart enough to pick those companies, I let the mutual-funds managers do that work).

This might be my most blindly ignorant blog ever. I am entirely too uninformed, lazy, and risk averse to write on this subject. I have no mortgage or college tuition to worry about, as most people do. Anyway, it just rankled me to see how already-rich people are being advised how to profit from the already-exploited.

Last piece of ignorant advice for anyone who can't start saving or investing. The trick my mom gave me before I had enough to even open an IRA was to pretend to save. She subtracted $20 from her checking account (every week? every month?) and recorded the amount in the back of her checkbook. The money was still in her account, but if she didn't see it she didn't spend it. Eventually she saved enough for whatever she needed it for.

I did the same and managed to get enough for an IRA. My arbitrary goal was to match my rent in monthly savings. I did it for about two years, and it got me enough to actually begin investing for real.

Not all the water is in the same bathtub. Thanks to inheriting my Dad's credit union account, some of my water is in a different, less-leaky tub than the stock market. So hopefully I'll never run completely dry--or get completely soaked.

Love, hosaa
A little smart, a little lucky.

Good morning, Apocalypse!

There's the old joke among survivalists in the woods: You don't need to outrun the bear. You just need to outrun your buddy.

I'm a little too late to outrun the hurricane heading our way in about 12 hours or so. I know I can get as far as Kalamazoo in a day with clear roads, but people who had the same idea would already be on the roads by now.

I've read the sites telling you what you should have on hand, what should be in your emergency kit. How to survive with no modern conveniences or public services for at least five days. My biggest problem will probably be water, not because I can't fill up some bottles and jugs in advance, but because I don't have bottles or jugs.

You see, I've been de-cluttering lately, and among the first things to get cleaned out were the two very dusty "go" bags of emergency provisions that I prepared in 2001. That wasn't because of 9/11 but because of the anthrax scare here that immediately followed. I thought I was preparing myself to flee through the woods.

Anyway, the batteries and protein bars all expired in 2002. The blue jeans don't fit anymore. The toiletries, well, truth be known, I no longer require all those packs of feminine hygiene products. (Yay, me!)

The containers of water wouldn't have been fresh even if they hadn't cracked open and leaked. I'm not sure what I did with the Brita bottle. I never read the instructions anyway.

The transistor radio doesn't work. It wasn't just because the 9v batteries I tried to use were dead, but there was a wire loose.

I was trying to remember why I needed a radio anyway. Am I going to sit up all night with news announcers telling me I'm in a hurricane and I should take all necessary precautions? I live in an apartment building that is usually pretty security-conscious, so if they need to evacuate us, they'll notify us in the form of a very loud alarm bell. So I plan to sleep in my clothes, and maybe in my closet (away from my one big north-facing window). I think I'll be fine.

Since I was up early this morning and still wanted to scout around for at least a can opener (hee! The non-electric can opener disappeared several years ago when a neighbor wanted to borrow it; I said to keep it, I have an electric one). The Giant was open, of course, when I got there at 7:30 a.m. I got some fruit that wouldn't need refrigeration. I already have peanut butter.

I really don't plan to cook a Thanksgiving meal on votive candles, but I got an extra candle anyway for the light. All that they sold were those smelly ones, so I got a green one, fir-tree scented, which will no doubt send me out into the streets in search of fresh air as soon as the aroma clouds my thinking in this tiny apartment.

My neighbors are out jogging as usual, the earnest middle-aged ladies and their former-Marine drill sergeant coaches. Dogs are being walked. The hardware store was the only sign of panic, and the good men and women of Strosniders took it all in stride. Plenty of D cells, which I picked up for my old boom box. I couldn't find any new transistor radios to replace my broken one, so I snatched one of the Red Cross emergency crank-ups. Has lights and sirens, too, oh boy! I didn't know it was over a hundred bucks till I got to the cash register. Sigh.

It's sultry out, and the wind is picking up. The restaurants have not secured their outdoor tables and chairs, I suppose because they're expecting business as usual before the storm. It's Saturday. It's business.

I give the disaster-preparation award on our street to the Apple Store, boarded up but open for business.



As for the bear of the storm, well, I doubt I'd be able to outrun it, pudgy couch potato that I am. When Mom and I went to Alaska and were advised to make a lot of noise if we encountered a bear, I joked that I could go into the Gershwin songbook. Without water, I may have to sing for a sip.

There's a somebody I'm longing to see,
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me....

Love, hosaa,
anticipating apocalypse

Artificial Reality

The 10-block walk from home to office leaves my head open to many random ideas and reflections, which I sometimes think (probably erroneously) would make good blog posts. One reason that I don't bore people with too many of these trivial thoughts is that I don't remember them.

Anyway, I did think briefly about the two paintings in the lobby of my apartment building. In their last round of redecoration, our building's owners made the lobby look like a bank, with plush settees and marble (maybe)-topped little tables underneath big oil (maybe) paintings of the sort you find advertised on late night TV, with starving artists' work at wholesale prices to meet your decorating needs.

The painting on the left is a still life of flowers, and it hangs above a faux (probably)-marble table with a bouquet of artificial flowers. The painting on the right is a similar still life, with flowers but featuring two large urns or vases; it hangs over a table with two large urns or vases.

So I left my lobby observing fake art of real flowers accompanied by fake flowers, along with fake art of real vases accompanied by real vases of questionable value (though reflecting a banker's taste for high-class stuff).

I think I would have felt more comfortable with this arrangement if the real fake vases were parked under the fake real flowers painting and the real fake flowers were parked under the fake real vases painting.

But then I would have had nothing to confuse myself with for the (real) 10-block walk to work.

love, hosaa
really real

eta, I would have taken pictures, but I forgot. ;-)