Monday, April 12, 2010

Day 118

I had another meeting with my financial advisor today. He asked me if my goals had changed since the last time we had talked. "No," I told him, "I'd still much rather make money than lose money." He suggested some stocks he thought it would be good to buy this Spring. As luck would have it, these were the very same stocks that my last financial advisor convinced me to sell last Summer. After much discussion, I decided to buy most of them back again, even though the price was considerably higher than when I sold them. I hate investing these days. With interest rates near zero, bonds aren't a great investment anymore. Stocks are all over the place. It's just about impossible to go out and pick a good solid company and then just forget about it for five years. Things change too fast now. You can't even go to the bank and get a plain vanilla CD anymore. A CD will earn you nothing. I guess I'll have to continue to make money the old fashioned way: by trying to please next to impossible clients.

Do you remember when I told you how projects frequently keep changing in the ad business even after they have been approved? I think I mentioned that things sometimes continue to change even after they come back from the printer. Well, it happened again. "Can't we make the printer pay for this mistake," someone said. "Not really," I replied. "All they did was print exactly what we sent them."

I called the power company this morning to ask when I should switch the electricity over to my tenant's name at the rental property. They said it would be better to let the renter make the switch themselves after they moved in. "That way, the electricity won't have to be turned off," the customer service lady said. "But what if my renter forgets to switch the account over," I asked? "Oh, well then you're still paying for the electricity yourself," said the ever friendly customer service representative. Seems like I've been down this road before.

I really envy the dogs. All they do is eat, race around the back yard, chase squirrels, and sleep. They're both sleeping right now. I've probably still got a couple of hours of work to finish before I can even think about sleep.

Dalmatian of the Day

    Watch of the Day