Random Thoughts on Gettin’ Old

Livin’ Longer and Weather Bombs!

This past week, I crossed the half century line in my life, and as usual, I took time to reflect on the amazing thing that has been my life. Lots of other exciting stuff happened this week as well, but as usual, I ended up mostly thinking about my life instead. That is to be expected once you cross the half-century mark.   The New Year continued, financially, with the markets not too sure which way to go, so they mostly just hovered for now.

Given the awful weather most of the world is living through, let’s hope this does not translate into Financial Storms as well. The snow falling elsewhere almost makes me jealous it is not falling in Ottawa, however, that feeling passes after a while.

Most of this week was a bit reflective, however, some posts were not completely about me:

• On Turning 50 points out that 50 years may have passed, but not a whole lot of much has really happened during that time.
• The Financial Time Machine List is another look to the past to learn from my mistakes post, where I lament the mistakes of my youth, but if I hadn’t made those mistakes, would I be who I am now?
• A casual comment by a co-worker was what got me to write Read Financial Documents Before Signing Them, and you shouldn’t sign anything until you have read it, it’s just good sense. I borrowed that Bible reference as well.
• There was some good news this week with Employment Up a Little in December, and those jobs were mostly full time ones.
• Random Thoughts: A MAX New Year is a recap of the previous week’s best.

The weather bombs of the week were not the only thing folks were writing about luckily, but this kind of storms usually have an economic impact somewhere along the way:

• Echo of Boomer & Echo, warns us about Gifts That Keep on Taking, I note there was no mention of an 8-track tape player, which cost me a lot of money in its time as well.
• Michael James said that Smart is the New Rich, but that begs the question is Stupid the new Debt? This author seems to imply that this may well be the case.
• Mike Holman at Money.Smarts begs the Government of Canada: Please Release all Locked-in Retirement Money. Interesting idea, but I’d like if they did, I have a lot of this money locked in myself.
• Canadian Capitalist asks the question Are You Trading Too Much? Even if you are a passive investor, rebalancing may cause a little too much trading for your portfolio’s good.
• Sustainable Personal Finance give us a Sustainability Tip (#13) Brew Your Own Coffee, which I am kind of following, because I am brewing my own Tea at work, to save myself money.
• Yes I am Cheap gives a unique (if not PG rated) post Waxing, Screaming and the Bucket List. Having daughters and a wife, it seemed like a good post, but for the men in the audience, you might have some issues understanding it.
• Preet explains Why he Paid $5400/hour to drive a Ferrari and a Lamborghini , he’d only have to pay me $10 to drive my Carolla for an hour.
• Frugal Trader at Million Dollar Journey looks back at 2010 Financial Goals Evaluation, which we all should do if we set any goals up (if you don’t see how well you did, how can you tell if they were any good?).
• Miranda wrote at Financial Highway about Saving Money at the Store: Spend Less on Produce, good idea.

Remember

“If you don’t like the weather in Halifax, wait five minutes, it will get worse…”

Author: Anonymous