Saw on Euan Semple’s blog:

You need only two tools: WD-40 and duct tape.

If it moves and shouldn’t, use the duct tape.

- Via Ming

After getting burned in tech stocks in 2000, I became an ultra-conservative investor. Gina and I have our savings in the very boring iShares Bond Index Fund, which plods along at a steady 5% return.

5% seemed really pathetic until I read this: if you invested a single penny at 5% back when Jesus was born, today you’d have a golden sphere a few hundred times the size of earth.

Sounds like an exaggeration, right? So this morning I tried it on my calculator. I typed 0.01 * 1.05, and I hit the equals sign 100 times. And then another 100, and another 100… watch this:

1 penny invested at 5% per annum

After 100 years….. $1.31
After 200 years….. $173
After 300 years….. $23,000
After 400 years….. $3 million
After 500 years….. $390 million
After 600 years….. $47 billion
After 700 years….. $6.2 trillion
After 800 years….. $811 trillion

You get the idea. Every hundred years, we’re adding roughly 2 zeros. So after 2000 years, your penny invested at 5% is worth around $100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

What do I learn from this?

1. 5% is an unbelievable return.
2. No family has ever had a reliable 5% return for any extended period of time
3. The current economic system is unsustainable. They say the stock market always returns 10% over the long haul? Baloney.

Turns out a 250 gram bag of Clodhoppers has 1080 calories.

DG pointed out to me that every single picture on my blog has someone with their mouth open. This one won’t disappoint. Guess we’re a family of Big Mouths.

Understanding sarcasm is this huge mental feat. From “The Guardian Weekly”: “First, the language centre in the brain’s left hemisphere interprets the literal meaning of words. Next, the frontal lobes and right hemisphere process the speaker’s intention and check for contradictions between the literal meaning and the social and emotional context. Finally, the right ventromedial prefontal cortex–our sarcasm meter–makes a decision based on our social and emotional knowledge of the situation.” Wow. Just the thought of hearing a sarcastic comment exhausts me.

It’s really felt like summer for the past 10 days. It’s hot and sunny and I want to be on a beach somewhere. Instead, I’m sitting in my office procrastinating on finishing up a few jobs. I should bite the bullet, work 24 straight hours, and then take off.

I just had my first can of Red Bull energy drink. My sleeps have been lousy because of sick kids, but I need to stay up tonight to jam on a strategy I’m presenting tomorrow. Well guess what, Red Bull works. I’m so wired I don’t know if I’ll sleep til Friday. What is this 1000mg of tourine, anyway? Every heard of glucuronolactone? Ah, caffeine, I know what that is. How ’bout pantothenic acid? Why is there a warning that pregnant women shouldn’t drink this? Should I have a guilty conscience?

Can you believe that a tech guy like me still doesn’t own a digital camera? (Unless you count the one Blast Radius sent me as a ‘valued customer’ when I was with Playground. Made in China. Worth $20. Could never make the thing work.) Especially considering that I’ve had this web site to maintain for 6 years. So anyway, I might be ready to break down and get one. Gina and I are seriously considering getting ourselves a Nikon D70s. I’ll use my existing Nikkor lenses (a 20/2.8, 50/1.8 and 80-200/3.5-4.2). Anybody think this is a bad idea?

I just read “Stop Working: Here’s How You Can using the strategy of Canada’s Youngest Retiree“. Here’s what I liked:

• It’s specific to Canadian taxes and investments.
• He actually stopped working at 34, and he never earned more than $30,000/year.
• He’s retired on just $350,000 and a paid-off house. With all the government subsidies, his family can get by on the $19,000/year that his investments generate.
• He got me thinking about dividends and income trusts, things I hadn’t thought of before.
• It’s short: 180 pages.
• He’s made me think maybe I really can retire in 10 years.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

• Where was the proofreader? There are hundreds of typos.
• Where was the editor? The book is poorly organized and often illogical.
• He makes this big argument against RRSPs, but it doesn’t hold water for anyone but low-income families, who probably don’t make up the book’s audience.

I get the feeling that selling me this book is part of his retirement strategy. He’s smarter than he writes. But I did get my money’s worth, I think. He gave me a fresh perspective on retirement. What more can I ask than that?

April to June are allergy months for me. I’m prone to do irrational things during this time of year–I can’t think clearly because I itch too much. Last May at this time, I decided to quit my job. This year, I have no job to quit, but if I did, I would surely quit it. And I hate allergy medication.