Things getting mixed up again

Well, with the exception of my short term plans, everything is up in the air again. A sort of a family thing. I have no idea what's coming up and no idea what's been planned already. There's a chance that I could be tied down for a while, which I suppose is slightly different from from simply being stuck for a while.
Still heading to Ohio soon, there's some serious sorting out to do there. Other than that, just going to have to see how things unfold.

Week in Review

I suppose I should do some sort of review. Having not really set any goals this week, I don't really know what to say. There was a bit of emotional bloodletting as my brother went to France. Finally booked my airline tickets, also eyeing a few hotels. Next time, gotta avoid doing things last minute, but hey things kept coming up and getting in the way. Next week, I have packing to do. Also want to catch up on a few things I want to blog about. Ask for a raise, or maybe wait till I get back to do that. In for some more emotional bloodletting once I travel. I'm hoping for some pretty deep cuts and some rebuilding afterwards. Rebuilding is very important. Right now, I'd probably rate my ability to function as impaired.

I saw something on TV today, a show called wife swap or something. Some of the people on there seemed rather sheltered, underdeveloped, or simply not taking responsibility for themselves. I can't help wondering where I fit in everything. Something I've often been told, the worst place to observe something is right in the middle of it. You never know which way to focus on and it takes some mapping to get the big picture. Unless you're a big fan of Gonzo style, where the best way to learn about something is to experience it directly. Though I think this is a case of needing an outside perspective on things.
I at least work, and I've lived alone for a while, but I'm not doing that now. At the moment, I have no life. I simply look forward to sleeping my days away when I have time off. I know I can take care of myself or at least feel confident about it. Am I still ok?
I can't help feeling so far lost right now. No idea of where I'm going, how I'll get there. No idea whether or not I can really think of myself as a good person. That is a really important thing for me. It eats away at me quite a bit. A while ago, I opened a fortune cookie that said, "You have a strong ethical sense." Those are often a shot in the dark, but a stopped clock is right twice a day, provided its analog. I also can't shake the feeling that I'm just hiding from my troubles rather than addressing what's wrong in my life.
Oh well, part of pulling off a gravitational slingshot maneuver is plummeting. I suppose getting my life in free fall is a necessary step. Hopefully I can redirect my life before getting to the red line. This feels like way too much forced optimism for now. I want to stay honest about how I feel. Going traveling for a bit to see someone who can hopefully help find some semblance of who I am. It's painfully clear that I can't do this by myself.

Heading for Nature?

I saw Off the Grid earlier today. It's nice to have some sort of goal to try to move towards. I've kind of lost sight of what I want in the long run. In the shorter term though, sailing the world seems to be my thing. Les said that the basic ingredients were power, heat, and water. In addition to that, I'll need navigation, propullsion, and I need to have all my food stocked up. Heh, in all likelihood, I'll be living in a sub 100sqft space and I probably can't count on timely response in an emergency.
Of course, this still leaves the question of what do I want to do later... I don't know. Maybe I need something with some nature. Well, I'll see what the future holds another day.

Busy day over, life continues as normal

My brother is moving to france for a year. Now there's even more furniture around here. It was a little mind opening for me. He packed the essentials into about a cubic meter and there's probably 10 cubic meters more stuff around here. I wonder how much space a minimalist amount of my stuff will take up.
In other news, the Bank of Canada has cut their target interest rate by a half percent. I haven't sat down to calculate what that means to me yet. Though it means I can accept a slightly lower return on my investments before paying off my loans becomes more profitable.
There's two other items in the news that I find worth yaking about right now. Hockey riot in Montreal. What is it about sports events and riots? What makes this more confusing is that Montreal won? Torching police cars might make sense in some kind of political outrage, but how many things can you celebrate with torching police cars? I hope someone they arrested is going to get billed for the damage.
The other thing that I want to talk about is Douglas Idugboe, author of Credit Miricle for Canadians. Last year, he was apparently making headlines for being wildly successful having millions after only seven years. He was known for saying things like, "Where you are today depends on the decisions you made yesterday." While correct, they reveal little to nothing about how to do anything. Well, according to the Calgary Herald, the decisions he made yesterday has resulted in him facing fraud charges today. Way to go, way to go...

One more week down

The day didn't go too badly. Had a few things go wrong, but still saw about 71,000ft of production, or about 13.5 miles, or 43 li. I'm starting to develop a thing for imperial chinese units after reviewing The Art of War. A great day is about 67 li, I suppose 50 li is about average, so I guess I didn't do too badly. Anyway, sleep now, tomorrow and day after, mess of helping my brother move. To do list is a little crowded and goals list will probably be a little small. Still behind on the things I wanted to do last week.

I am in Charge

I barely feel in control of my own life and I find myself at the controls of a very finicky piece of equipment with four people at my command. I'm told that we loose about $10/minute when we're down. Something tells me that I should ask for a raise. That's going to be on my to do list for next month. Tomorrow is one day because we're understaffed. next month, I have two weeks where I'm in charge because someone is going on vacation.
In other news, I'm curious as to how many times I wake up at night. I'd seek a sleep study, but I know it's completely different when I'm looking at a day off.

Depressed, but still relaxed

I don't know where to start. I simply feel so lost right now. Life feels so hollow and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. As much as it is enjoyable to sleep a whole week, it hardly makes life feel worth while. While I live in a society that rejects suicide so strongly, I feel entitled to some answers regarding the basic nature of my existence. When I finally finish filling in my core and seeding each of the other segments of my portfolio, I'll feel no guilt about living off the hard work of others for a while. Part of me wants to go to China when that's done so that I can explore my heritage for a while. Another part of me has its heart set on sailing the world for a while. There's so many things I want to see, the polar ice caps, the Canadian seal hunt, the great barrier reef, the amazon river. Then there's a part of me that simply wants to set a count down timer... My friends tell me not to talk about that so...
While I wonder what's next for me, I browse the job market and businesses for sale. A while ago, I found something that seemed to call out to me, a houseboat rental business. It's seasonal, so I have a lot of time off to travel, and I can be close to nature. Though I don't have the money to buy the business, I also don't have the money to grow the business and I don't have anything to cushion myself should the company fail. There were two other businesses for sale that made me click for more details. One was a financing company going for about 100K, 60K of that is the value of the outstanding loans. It kind of makes your head spin when you think about that. If I had enough to appear like a serious bidder, I'd definitely ask to see the financial statements. If that's all they have floating around and their business is thriving like the ad claims, there's something wrong with our society. Though if that's a net value and the company borrowed much of what's been loaned out, that's kind of more believable. The other one that made me click for details was actually a moulding factory of all things. There was no definite asking price, it was just listed as less than a half million dollars. Of course, the capacity is greatly reduced from the plant that I work at and the prime line (where they put paint on) is probably the wrong side of the factory to get relevant experience for running that particular company. They said that they had 20 profiles and worked with 7 different species of wood. I assume that means they do the shaping, which happens on the other side of the plant. I wouldn't be surprised if they gave it a nice wood finish. Or at least I don't see the point of being picky about what type of wood, or going MDF if you're simply going to paint over it.

Early week in review, declaring an early failure

I haven't gone out this whole week so far. This of course means that I haven't picked up new tax forms. Papers for the account I want to open still haven't arrived in the mail, so that's probably not going to be open next week. My attempts to do something creative also failed. Though I have been browsing other blogs, leaving a few comments here and there.
I spent much of my time sleeping. Normally, I'd see this as a sign that my depression is getting worse. It wasn't because I didn't want to go out, and I wasn't sick. It's just that everything is so far away and I have no pressing need for anything. I can simply pick up my tax forms when I go get my groceries. That's not exactly a pressing matter yet. It's just that I take pleasure in some of the simpler things in life. One of them is simply surrounding myself in nice soft warmth. I am just very incredibly relaxed right now. This is why I work those long hours, so that I can have a few care free days where I don't have to work, prepare for work, or think about working. Though I still question the value of that trade off. Probably better to have a job I like with people I can talk to and management that I can take seriously.

Grounding Myself in The Art Of War

In troubled times or when making tough choices, people often turn to old books and documents for guidance. For many, the books they happen to turn to are religious in nature. The book I happen to turn to is The Art of War by Sun Tzu. It's been said that many different people have sought guidance from this book and how true it is since the principals of waging war bear striking resemblance to so many things in life.
A good portion of the book happens to be on the topic of deception and what steps to employ when there is an opponent. For now, I don't have an adversary, but there's still sound advice in the book regarding preparations that need to be made to achieve my goals.
One of the things that I learnt from the Art of War is to focus on achieving victory, and little else. It is not about winning battles or protracted campaigns, but to try to achieve victory quickly and with minimal use of resources.
Another important thing I learnt from the Art of War is that you've got to secure victory before engaging in combat. All is lost if you fight first and then look for victory. While my main focus is simply to buy enough time to lick my wounds, I'm lost. It'll be like the USA going into Iraq with the objective of taking out Saddam Hussein and then trying to define victory. I need to have an afterwards defined before I have victory.
Additionally, the book promotes the use of the advantages of heaven and earth. It's about working with what's around you rather than relying on sheer strength. This is nothing profound here. It means I should pay attention to what seems to be a good investment for the current times.
Another point that seems to be general common sense is not to march a hundred li to gain a tactical advantage. Forced marches put a severe hardship on an army. There's no advantage in being worn out. While this sort of thing is not an absolute no, it should be limited to short distances, hasty retreats and surprise attacks. Where I work, we have people who seem to never leave. I think the record is 88 hours, which doesn't include unpaid lunch breaks, commuting or other preparation. There only are 168 hours in a week. To keep going relying on pain killers and energy drinks to keep moving often proves to take more of a toll than the prize is worth. A lot of people there also have second jobs. While some can make it work, for others, the result is that neither are taken seriously and performance is poor at both.
"There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested and commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed." Although my family is a cause of much trouble in my life, I suppose a confrontation doesn't really advance my goals. Therefore, even though it is my desire to fight, it must not be done.
Not sure what else warrants mentioning here. The important thing is that I have a sense of where my efforts should be focused.

Picking a Discount Brokerage

I started my quest for a discount brokerage by finding a list of them to go through. To do that, I started with CIPF, the Canadian Investor Protection Fund. It basically ensures a basic level of security. Basically, if the brokerage firm goes under, I still have my investments. So, onward to the list of members and their websites. It was quite a long arduous process involving to a lot of websites. There were a lot of private wealth management firms and few people offering self-directed brokerage. After having narrowed down the choices, I made a decision on what was important to me. I already have one account, which has some analyst coverage, so that wasn't too high on my list of priorities. The main reason, I was looking for a new place to try was the cost, I felt that I could get a better deal. Previously, I had decided that I was going to be a buy and hold investor rather than an active day trader. So, speed isn't critical, it can take an hour to execute a trade for all I care. It also means that monthly fees were going to be a deal breaker. I also didn't see myself getting a large sum of money any time soon, or trading more than once or twice a month. Using that, I kind of priced out my options and then searched for what kind of reputation the places had.
One option wound up being cheaper than the rest and the reputation seemed decent enough. Most of the complaints seemed to be from people who didn't know what they were doing whining about the same thing over and over again everywhere. The deal breaker for me was the lack of an unregistered cash account. Why this is a deal breaker is another discussion.
So, do I want a margin account? For many of the discount brokerages that I've been eyeing, the interest rate is prime+1%, which is 1.5% better than my student loans, which are prime+2.5%. Both are tax deductible as long as I use the money to invest in something that generates income other than capital gains. So this means no forex, no futures, no precious metals and no options. I seem to be ok with carrying my student loans. This brings forth a number of possible courses of action. Paying off my debts of course remains a possibility.
1) Pay off debts and staying debt free - I ruled this out earlier because I felt that I could get a better return than the interest rate on my loans
2) Pay off debts and buy on margin - Well, this would cause a bit of a delay in my plans, but overall it's not going to be all that long of a delay. I'd probably wind up borrowing very small amounts for quite a while.
3) Carry the loans and buy on margin - Part of the reason I'm ok with my student loans is because I know there's an end to it. I'm not too sure I want to borrow all that much
4) Carry the loans and don't buy on margin - More or less what I had originally intended to do
5) Carry the loans and use a margin account but keep borrowing limited - This is also something I'm fairly comfortable with. Though margin is kind of new to me.
6) Carry the loans, keep most of my investments in cash accounts and use a margin account sparingly or revisiting whether or not I want to use a margin account at a later date - This feels like the best course of action for now. See if I happen to have any trouble with a company before taking on more risk with them. I seem to have bad luck with CIBC related firms, such as the people who handle student loans, and their grocery store shell. Hopefully I won't have any trouble, but lets prevent the headaches.
So yeah, I went to the next one on the list, trade freedom. They're owned by the Bank of Nova Scotia, which I tend to have good luck with. At present, I'm not really expecting much trouble.

Data Loss

I lost my pda data again. This used to be a very regular event. It's been ages since I restored this thing. Anyway, has me wondering if it's time to upgrade to something with non-volatile memory and physical buttons. The proliferation of touch screens is something that really annoys me. Does nobody try to use portable devices in moving vehicles anymore? The loss of tactile response also makes things like touch typing impossible, not that the buttons are big enough. This brings me to another annoyance about portable electronics, the qwerty keyboard. It's a familiar horizontal layout, but the device feels most comfortable held vertically. A vertical keyboard layout seems to make the most sense for quick and accurate data entry. I don't expect to find something with a vertical keyboard outside of graphing calculators and those tend to be a tad on the large side.
Ramblings aside this seems to be a good time to reconsider my accounting practises since I now have a gap in my records. Other than that, I can't think of anything too important that's been lost. Pretty much everything else hasn't changed since last backup, but I'm sure I've bought a few things and got paid at least once between then. I'm going to try not tracking every penny for a while. I'm sure life will go on without being able to view my account balances in three taps of the stylus.
Do I want to associate sales tax with the item purchased and group it in with the price?
I'm not sure if it's really useful to keep a running tally of how much I spent on sales tax. Though it is a pain to split taxes so that they fit in the appropriate categories.
It seems to make sense starting with gross pay and recording my payroll deductions rather than starting with net pay. That's not going to change.
One change I think I'll make is start classifying expenses as either being essential, could be cheaper and non-essential.
While I'm pretty happy with the software on the PDA, I also want to start recording things on my computer as well. So time to try some different software, figure out exactly how I want to do things, then go back to tracking my income and expenses.

Goal Setting Time

I guess it's time I set some objectives for this week.
First, something that's dragged on for a while. I want to finally mail off my tax return so that I can get some money back.
Secondly, I want to do something somewhat creative.
Third, I get paid on Friday, so I want that new trading account ready. This also means that I should probably select something specific in my shopping list to buy.
Fourth, I suppose I should try to make a few blogging friends. Get a few links setup and get a hit counter of some sort so that I can get a feel for how much traffic I'm getting, if any.
That feels like more than enough for a week. Now on to more pressing things, like lunch and catching up on the news.

Apparently, I'm going to be running the line for two weeks. It's kind of scares me. Though right now, while work is a good four days away, I feel like I'm in a whole different world. I'd like to have a job that actually seems like a part of me again.
Oh, and feeling somewhat better now. Ran a bunch of J49 today, which is usually a pain in the neck. Got it to go well, then something would screw up and take serious measures to fix. Then it would run fine for a while and yeah. Well it feels nice to be able to get it running fine even if it's only for a little while. Gotta reduce the amount of fall down though.
Well, next week.

Umm... Surprise, still depressed

Umm, yeah, I'm hurting and want the world to know it. See two posts ago. Well, was kind of running the machine on my own for a while. It went well with the exception of fighting amoungst my assigned minions. Then things fell apart at the end during the last two or three hours. We weren't the only group fighting. Quite a number of people punched out early. Though still, it's the memories that bug me. I just don't need all that on top of what's already happened in my life.
Also, I haven't talked much about what I want to call myself yet. It's an important part of my to do list of finding a new place, doing something new and redefining myself.

Speaking of...

Speaking of things throwing the routine off, I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night due to umm, see last post. That made me late this morning and I hope it doesn't ruin the other two days. We did our cleanup this morning too since there was a mess last night. Usually I prefer to do that Sunday when everyone is stiff. It's a change from the usual motions and gives everyone a chance to stretch and relieve some tension. Though I seem to be the exception to the rule there working all my scheduled shifts. Most people seem to be in quite a bit more. I don't know how they hold up. Already trying to formulate goals, and find new things to write about. Already, I decided I'm going to try to do something creative next week... Kind of sad that I don't get out regularly, or do creative things regularly, but that's the nature of depression.

The Little Things Growing Up

Something reminded me of some of the stupid crap I went through growing up. I always missed the exciting parts of movies because my sister would ask for water and I was the one that wound up getting in trouble if she didn't get any. My mom always pestered me to pile the cans in the basement higher because she was stubbing her toes not watching where they were going. I was always keeping them low because they just weren't stable and a can falling from three feet is definitely going to hurt a lot more. My brother would tell my sister that I'd get her something and she'd complain till I got in trouble for breaking promises that I never made. I actually wound up doing a lot of things for her to keep her from hurting herself, or damaging the house or the furniture and it wound up getting me in trouble. My brother was always getting my sister to abuse me. Stuff like going through my room and slipping papers they find under the bathroom door while I was in there really annoyed me. My parents told my brother to teach me some responsibility and he wound up trying to extort large amounts of money from me through fines.
I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but it happened back when I was going to elementary school with my brother. I think I would have been like eight at the oldest. My brother was just pounding me while we were in the living room when we were home for lunch one day. My mom was cheering him on. I didn't want to fight. Several years later, I asked her about that incident, she told me that she wished she had done more to discipline me.
They've been treating me like crap and I've been returning the favor, that's not surprising. What is surprising though is how much I care about their respect.

Early Week in Review

So let's see my goals for this week were to:
1) File taxes-This is largely complete though I botched too many forms, so I just need to go get another package and transcribe all my figures
2) Clean my room a bit more-Umm, no progress on this front. In fact it has a week's more rubbish laying around
3) Setup a new brokerage account-Well, I clawed through a listing of who's registered with CIPF and picked a cheaper brokerage to try. They're mailing me forms and that's as far as I got on that
4) Try to get out-My dad borrowed me to take care of some building maintenance, so that got me out. Had some nice Indian curry for lunch when I was out, decided that I need to learn to do that stuff.
Geez, it doesn't feel like I really got all that much done. Well, adding a new goal, in a year, I want to finish off all the flour in the house. Nobody else bakes anything, and well, I've got to find a new place. It'll be fun.
I'm a little behind on my day's routine due to weather. Two freak snow storms today. This brings me to something I absolutely hate about my job right now. Compressed time is kind of like doing the hurdles, something throws your pace off and you're going to be miserable all week, however long your work week happens to be. Since mine is only three days, I think it's still a fairly acceptable trade off.

I'm Having a Moment

I'm trying to figure out what happened to me. I used to be a confident, self-assured person with a kind heart and a sense of where I wanted to go. I just feel so lost and hollow right now. I'm scared and I don't know where I'm going or how I'll get there. Every time I try to put everything together, I keep wondering what's the point. Is there anything left of who I was, or who I wanted to be? How am I supposed to find myself when I'm so far gone?

Preparing for the Inevitable

Well, plans have been made clear now. Apparently, I have a year to make preparations. Then I'm on my own again. One year to build my resources. As much as I'm eager to see this phase of my life end, I can't help but to feel that it's been too soon. The longer this continues, the more resources I have, the quicker the dullness of the next phase will pass and the sooner I can move on with my life. In a lot of ways, knowing what's going to happen is a relief, but in other ways, I'm now forced to face what's coming to me. I'm not sure what this does to my timelines and to a certain extent, I'm not entirely sure I want to know at this point. Well, I guess I should get busy making preparations as best I can.

Living wages and week's goals

While idly resting and listening to the radio, I heard something about a living wage campaign. Due to high growth, inflation and what not driving the cost of living up here. Searching for more information, I came across this fact sheet on living wages. Apparently, we're looking at needing to make $12/hr with benefits or $13.25/hr without, based off working 35 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. That works out to $24115/year. It sets a new and much higher benchmark for what I want to accomplish.
One step at a time though. For now, I'll stick to thinking about my starter goals. Then I suppose, minimum wage, living wage and I don't know, median wage? For now, I'm just focusing on starting. It's been a long time since I reviewed the communist manifesto. It's the latest thing on mind lately. One of the key concepts in the manifesto is that your quality of life is dictated by your relation to the means of production. A while ago, the land was the must have thing. There was class struggle between those who owned the land and those who worked the land for food. Then mechanization started and the thing became factory. Now what is the thing that defines the gap between the ruling class and the working class? The price of ownership over the means of production, is now parceled out in some reasonable and affordable increments. Granted, it does take a lot of those to make a difference. At the same time, we have more families with two working parents struggling to make ends meet.
I feel that it might be interesting to review what was said in that book, but last time, it only succeeded in putting me to sleep.
Anyway, to do list for this week, file taxes, clean my room a bit more and get everything setup so that I can shuffle more money around, try to get out.

I just feel the need to quickly remind myself of something, I will not make any more personal loans. I will not make any more personal loans. Reason I feel the need to say this, Someone I know is on the verge of being homeless, again. I don't think throwing money at it is helping the situation anymore. The first time, maybe it's ok. The third time, there's definite management issues. I'm not sure how to fix this, but more money is not going to be the answer.

Weekend review

I do my weekend review a little early because I work the weekend shift. We're at it Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so this a natural transition in my week. Anyway, I got a portion of my room cleaned. Lack the drive to do it all at once. Did not open a new brokerage account like I had wanted. Still need to do that. Didn't file my tax return yet. Though I have assembled a shopping list of what I'd like to be in my long term holdings. It's a roughly $30K shopping list right now and it'll be nice. It should take me roughly 17% closer to the red line, for a total of 19% or so. Umm, where is the green line again? I think that need stamp that on my desktop wall paper, or perhaps round it to something. Anyway, that'll be 10.4%. It makes things look so quick when I look at it like that, though I'd still need to get the $30K to buy all of it.
I've also tentatively scheduled a location scouting trip into the USA. I've got a friend there who I think will give me all the help he can relocating. However there is still a border there and it'll be pesky. I'm guessing E-2 might be the easiest visa for me to get, though I'm going to be very reluctant to empty my investment portfolio to focus on one thing. That'll make things take a little longer. I'll also need to bump my lines a bit to cover health insurance. Maybe I can take that trip to China while I wait for funds to build up.
Also for location scouting, it seems the bank has given me a little gift. I'll be surprised if this doesn't brutally murder the formatting...

                              Real            Housing            Retail
                              GDP             starts             sales

                                             Thousands

                         07    08    09    07    08    09    07    08    09
                         --    --    --    --    --    --    --    --    --
   NFLD.                9.0   0.5   1.0   2.6   2.5   2.0   9.5   5.5   2.0
   P.E.I                1.9   1.2   1.4   0.8   0.7   0.6   8.2   4.4   3.7
   N.S.                 2.4   2.5   2.8   4.8   4.6   4.0   4.0   4.7   6.5
   N.B.                 2.5   2.4   2.5   4.2   4.0   3.4   6.2   4.4   4.0
   QUE.                 2.1   1.1   2.2  48.6  47.1  40.0   4.4   4.1   4.4
   ONT.                 1.8   0.8   1.9  68.1  66.8  59.4   3.9   3.8   4.5
   MAN.                 3.5   2.8   2.9   5.7   5.6   4.5   9.5   8.1   7.6
   SASK.                4.6   3.6   3.2   6.0   6.1   4.5  12.7   9.0   8.0
   ALTA.                4.3   3.3   3.0  48.3  41.6  35.3   9.0   7.4   7.0
   B.C.                 3.1   2.3   2.8  39.2  37.2  30.5   7.1   6.2   7.5
   CANADA               2.7   1.6   2.3   228   216   184   5.8   5.1   5.5

                          Employment            CPI

                         07    08    09    07    08    09
                         --    --    --    --    --    --
   NFLD.                0.6   0.2   0.3   1.5   1.0   1.3
   P.E.I                1.0   0.5   0.2   1.8   1.3   1.6
   N.S.                 1.3   2.0   2.0   1.9   1.1   2.0
   N.B.                 2.1   1.9   0.9   1.9   1.2   1.7
   QUE.                 2.3   1.1   1.1   1.6   1.2   1.8
   ONT.                 1.6   0.9   1.0   1.8   1.4   1.8
   MAN.                 1.6   2.1   1.7   2.0   1.8   2.1
   SASK.                2.1   2.4   1.9   2.8   3.3   2.9
   ALTA.                4.7   2.2   1.8   5.0   2.9   2.8
   B.C.                 3.2   2.0   2.2   1.8   1.1   1.6
   CANADA               2.3   1.4   1.4   2.1   1.4   1.9

I've highlighted the two provinces in this country I've been seriously considering in purple. Green is one that I've had someone ask me to consider, possibly jokingly. Those last figures also highly the dangers of not building up enough money. If I've got a return of 6% on my fixed income investments, and inflation reaches say, 5%, which it was for Alberta in 2007, 5/6ths of my income needs to be reinvested to keep up with inflation and I only have a 1% return to cover my expenses. Dividends from common shares, however, are typically linked to corporate profits, which typically increase with inflation. Anyway, enough rambling, I need food, then food shopping. Adjusting for inflation though are for goals I set after I've cleared the yellow line and need to start setting new goals.

Little Goals

I wonder if I should set some little goals to keep my spirits up and keep me motivated. I have no idea what they might be. I shouldn't let short sighted objectives interfere with long term investing objectives, so my short term goal should be independent of that. I don't know. I suppose I should strive to do something fun that I can get excited about each week. Probably a bad sign that I'm having trouble thinking of anything.

P2P Lending Coming to Canada

It's a bit of an old story, but peer to peer lending is coming to Canada. I probably wouldn't have commented about this if I didn't see a rather distressing graph (note: that site is not affiliated with prosper) of delinquency rates on Prosper, a popular peer lending site in the USA. The figures seem to indicate that maybe 20% of loans will be delinquent in a year. Granted that's all loans lumped together and doesn't compare higher risk borrower's default rates compared to lower risk ones that should be lower. Despite things like that, I think peer lending will really tack off in Canada. I base it off the following observations:
1) Word of mouth marketing - Each user will probably become an advertiser in some way and peer reviews are by far the most effective form of advertising known
2) Financial ignorance - Most people really don't know all that much about financial options that aren't specifically recommended to them, advertised on a bill board, or had some close personal friend tell a story about a personal experience. Even if they qualify for something like a personal line of credit, people will turn to a pay day loan or a credit card cash advance for a quick bit of cash between pay days because they don't know better. On the other side of things, there's a significant number of people who're not familiar with investment products beyond those recommended by their local bank. Further more, in that group a fairly substantial portion of them are completely lost when it comes to mutual funds, and find the growing plethora of GIC options difficult to keep up with. I know this is a rather substantial number of people, as I was the one who originally told my parents about RESPs.
3) Familiarity - People generally understand what could cause personal loans to default. However they're unfamiliar with things such as what drives the production costs and market value of steel.
4) Feel vibes - It feels good to be helping someone out, whereas faceless corporations who float a debenture are still faceless and people have trouble relating to them.
5) Small increments - Lets face it, the extension of financing options to lower and lower priced items is a sign that people are struggling to cough up amounts like $300, let alone the $5000+ it might cost to get a board lot of a major company. Being able to "invest" $50 is going to be an appealing feature to people
6) Lack of a TVM calculator - People are always amazed at how kids can possibly forget languages when they grow up. I am always amazed at how so many adults are so far lost when it comes to math that I'm not sure I can bring them back up to speed. The lack of a TVM calculator confuses the return people will get

For all these reasons, people will take to peer lending and promote it as a great thing. There will be people who'll see a decent return and make things sound easy. Those will be few compared to the masses, which I'm expecting will see an average return somewhere between 2% to -2%, and the distribution will probably be skewed towards the lower end.
Take a big step back and look things over objectively. A $50 loan over one year at 15% will see monthly payments of $4.51 (I have a tvm calculator and know how to use it). Over the course of the loan, if it doesn't default, you'll see $54.12, or a net gain of $4.12. How much time do you want to put into researching this loan?
This of course is a fairly optimistic view. 15% is getting into higher risk categories. 10% gets $52.80, 8% gets $52.20, those rates suggest safer bets. As the payments start rolling in, you need to continuously review new creditors. Suppose we go for 10% and against all odds we have no defaults. Let's go on to assume that we want to a modest $15/month, or $180 over the course of the whole year. You're going to initiate a rather large sum of loans, then keep approving new loans to keep your money in the market. Trying to figure out just how many loans need approving is a rather tricky math problem.
This calls for spread sheet time, another tool that I wager most people out there don't know how to use. After much number crunching, I'm estimating that it'll take reviewing an average of about 5.5 loans a month and keeping a portfolio of about 65 loans. If you want to use minimum wage ($8.4/hr) as a bench mark, you have about 20 minutes to find each loan assuming that none of the loans in your portfolio require attention. Even in this hopelessly optimistic scenario, it's almost like working a job, and involves more risk.
There are definitely better, more passive investments out there for people who have the ability to pull together a few thousand dollars every now and then. For the matter, when you factor in the time and adjust returns for defaults, a regular high interest savings account might be a better option. You can move in one cent increments, and the money is liquid too.
Though hey, it's almost like a game you can play for bragging rights, popularity and real money.

Easy Money

I probably should have posted this yesterday, but it's not every day I finish a bottle of antidepressants. Anyway, I love the start of new months. Got an hour's worth of pay in account interest. That's easy money. I didn't have to work for it or make any important decisions.

One bottle of anti-depressants down

It's a milestone for me. Today it's been 90 days since I started taking St. John's Wort to treat depression. I'm done my first bottle. It was a bit of a rough transition at first. For a while, I simply felt medicated. Now I feel somewhat normal again. Though I'm not sure if that's because more time has passed since everything collapsed, having put together some sort of plan, or because of the medication. I still have times when I get extremely depressed, but that doesn't seem as bad or as frequent anymore.
Well, I do have another bottle now and part of me is scarred to stop. Well, hopefully this will be the last time.
It feels like it should be time to do some reflecting. This feels kind of lack luster. I have nothing profound to say.