[Author's note 2016-02-21: this post appear again in 2007. Both copies are left here while I try to find why this nearly impossible situation happened. Meanwhile the following remains as a "probably truer" version of the original.]
Since I mention the guy in this post, here’s a picture of him. Horst Burkhardt Minkofski. “That’s Burkhardt as in Work Hard and I work hard every day”. Now, if by chance you find this, Mr. Minkofski, that does not mean I want you to respond or get in touch. Refer to Carlin, the comedian who hates those high-school lookups on the Internet. Like him, I maintain there is a reason you haven’t spoken to people since you last saw them. That includes you. Don’t call, don’t write, stay out of my life. Mind you, there is a bozo as equally crazy as you around here called the Hippie. Both of you only get educated enough to interpret plain facts the exact opposite of the rest of the world and then wonder why you aren’t in charge.
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.]
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