[Author's note 2016-02-16: this post seems to be from several sources strung together. The photos are missing, yet I remember posting these photos. Probably, they'll appear on some other day, if I find them, I'll put copies in here. Still, this post seems to have been written in disjointed segments. Since I don't recall the day otherwise, I won't change what's in the post. My suspicion is that I tried to write out this post from a pile of notes I'd jotted during an overly busy day. If so, usually I do a better job.]
[Author's note 2016-02-22: one of those sources (mentioned above) seems to be this date in 2004. A virtually identical post. Thus, both posts remain until I find the source of the problem. This 2007 post is from a hand-written source, so there is no way it was hand-written twice. And after each key-entry, the original is marked in three ways. A rubber stamp, a set of initials or a date, and a unique colored marker across the contents of the page. You can't copy and paste that, much less the photo links. I hope the original 2007 did not get over-written.]
This picture was in the mountains just north of the Idaho border. Horst kept trying to find that $200 car he’d get 100,000 miles out of. Consequently his back yard was full of wrecks. You can’t see it, but this car had no hood. We were driving out to visit a gal I’d gone to school with. He bombed out with her. She lived in a trailer with about twenty pet dogs. Her front yard was like minefield.
Tackling the taxes again. At least I have little to fear from the Alternative Minimum Tax. It would be so easy to cheat, like everybody else, but I can’t see me doing it for such small stakes. My biggest reward this year is another round of what I call tax coincidences. They are certain numbers and conditions that pop up as a result of good planning. Alas, I am not that much further ahead than two years ago, and I am lacking the base of sure thing investments, such as bonds, to assure success. Does anyone remember Horst Minkofski? He used to make the quote that when you have enough money, one percent is a good investment.
For the newcomers here, I am referring specifically to P81, the investments made since I arrived in Florida in April, 2000. This has come entirely out of my earned income at an hourly rate, supplemented by any “free money” that comes along, such as tax returns. There is a little over $12,000.00 in there, and the total return in three years is $624.26. That’s illusory, because much of it was set up costs and commissions that took a year to breakeven. So my average is still a lousy $300 a month. Mind you, it is better than I was ever able to do elsewhere in higher tax jurisdictions.
Sure thing investments are what I call bonds. Yes, I’ve heard how the return of inflation will wipe out the middle class and so on, but it does not make immediate sense to me. The investment will always bring in some kind of return, and I don’t see how the logic stands that you would be better off living in debt and having no return at all. Besides, very few are likely to leave their money in bonds if inflation did surpass the bond rate. So don’t be surprised if this year I do what I can to improve the Denny’s fund, the goal of earning $2.00 per day off interest to pay for my coffee every day. For that, I need $12,000 in municipal tax-free bonds, and have only $3,290 in there so far. About enough for the tip.
My long-term average with tax-free bonds in 5.41% annually, which I figure is pretty damn good. For those who think otherwise, remember, it was me that first called the Beardstown Ladie’s Club a bunch of liars at least six years before they got caught with their phony “we do our homework” crap.
(Refers to an investment club of housewives in Illinois who claimed to have averaged 23% annual returns over a decade. It turns out it may have been an innocent bookkeeping error, but the point is I rejected the whole thing from the onset. Turned out it was fake, but not before they were on national television.)
[Author’s note: the Beardstown Ladie’s Club was an investment group that purported to regularly outdo the NYSE for returns. I know they were fudging. In the end it turned out to be an error in the way they were keeping their books. I smelled a rat off the bat where nobody else suspected anything for years. Goes to show you.]
ADDENDUM
We stand informed that Anna N. Smith’s corpse is beginning to decompose (rot) before the media is finished scraping the bones clean. Tell me, exactly what’s a half-Cuban pseudo-blonde news or weather reporter with silicon tits since last July supposed to do in such a situation? Like, anyway.
Enough happened today to write out a dozen articles like this (I won’t say blogs). I mean, has anyone but me noticed that when you empty a can of chicken noodle, you always have to scrape more chicken than noodle out of the shell? It is probably pure coincidence, at least between those who don’t believe in specific gravity. Like, anyway.
I had a minor squawk with the doggie place, to the effect that I do not normally do work where my performance may be questioned moment to moment. I'm not into micro-management. I’m serious about this, for I price my work to take the place of four or five clerical workers. After that, you need to hire someone to keep tabs on them. The fact that I can do all of the work myself comes with the codicil that I like to have a free hand to do it.
Thanks to Limewire I have a collection of the music I didn’t really care for when it first arrived. For example, “Drift Away” by Dobie Gray. That’s a tune I always thought was called “Gimme The Beat Boys”. Listening to it now I hear a great bass line, very expressive. Its nice, but it ain’t rock and roll.
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