March 16, 2006
-
Topic: March Madness, the stock market, and the working world
The madness is underway. My pics are in, and the games are on. I didn’t do much research, as I have enough experience to know that picking winners in this tournament has as much to do w/ good luck as anything. People will look back after and come up with an analysis of the picks, “Oh…I should’ve realized that team had no chance of advancing,” but someone who knows 0 about college basketball can do as well as an expert analyst.
Yesturday I also bought some stock for my retirement account. The process is similar in many ways to filling out college basketball brackets. All investment sites will tell you this, “Past statistics cannot predict future results.” What’s hot today could trip-up tomorrow, and vice-versa.
The stock market is largely emotion based, and as an individual investor it is even more. My goal in investing is to sock away a few grand a year, hope for 8% returns annually, and hopefully that will provide me when I’m in my 60′s and beyond. What happens when a fund starts dropping? I’ll probably expeience that eventually. As we speak, Oklahoma, who I picked to get to the elite-8, is getting beat by UW-Milwaukee, but my picks are done. You hope for the best, but need to adjust yourself mentally for the worst.
I think the parralel I’m drawing is you can’t expect to get rich, and you have to know how to enjoy life without that. My friends in law school are looking at making $125,000 when they graduate, and I’m not so sure I will crack half that amount in the next few years. There’s an instinctual emotion to feel poor, especially when comparing to others. Wouldn’t life be “easier” if you were making twice what you are now? Or, do you just think it would?
The stock market could collapse when I’m 60, and we could be in a depression like in the ’20′s. Much of the world has been through economic ruin. I want to know more about how these people live, and how they view their lives. Clearly there are always people who have less money than you, and have “harder lives.” But maybe the idea of the hard vs. easy life isn’t comparative. I think that’s the case because life is hard for everyone. I can sympathize with the rich athlethe who can’t sleep at night because of a sick family member, or because of the stress of not winning a championship ring that that person probably dedicated their entire life to, as much as I can sympathize with the financial struggles of the poor.
For the next 4 days, I will struggle and rejoice, for the holy grail, March Madness, has arrived.
Comments (3)
No new thoughts on education, really. Same old thoughts, lived quietly, and kept mostly to myself. I am looking with interest at Jonathon Kozol’s new book, however, called The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling In America. He is such a wonderful writer. I really enjoyed his 1975 book The Night Is Dark and I Am Far From Home, also about education. (I may have mentioned it before.)
I also enjoyed the essay that you emailed. I thought this sentence was a little amusing: “For many of you it’s probably been years since you’ve been in school and have been asked to ‘think critically’ about the world around you.” For me, it wasn’t until I was long out of school that I began to truly discover critical thinking!
And then there’s your “simple challenge” of people to “write.” I struggle with that one a lot. Speak up, or keep quiet? Rock the boat, or let others sail where they will? Obviously, the quiet side has been winning for many months now. It comes down to asking myself questions such as: What business do I have telling people how horrible the world, and especially their beloved education system, is? And who am I to set anyone else’s world view “straight”? If they believe that the education that we have is wonderful, or good enough, who am I to tell them otherwise? As long as people leave me free to live an alternative choice, I will leave them alone to live their choice. Is it an ideal way to deal with things? In some ways, perhaps not. But it beats arguing.
So, would the sticks of gum be like the old school ones that cut up your gums?
(note: the previous sentence sounds less like psychotic ranting once one realizes that it is a response to a comment Dan posted elsewhere.)
oh yeah…the hard ones. speaking of which, whatever happened to good ol’ bazooka joes. never thought i’d say this, but i’m sure showing my age, and i’m only 24.