Just one more week...

It was with a great deal of joy that I finished up my Risk Management and Insurance class on Thursday evening. I know way, WAY more about insurance of all types than I ever wanted to. It was not a particularly interesting class, but probably a good one to give me some basic knowledge about insurances.

I’ve still got one more week left of my Applied Investments class. I’ll just have to say that this class is probably one of the most interesting classes I’ve ever taken. The only other class that tops it was my study abroad in Germany and that’s really not even a fair comparison.

Applied Investments is a class about investing in mutual funds. In a former period of my life when I had a nice steady income, I invested in mutual funds. I had a basic knowledge of how they worked, but didn’t have a clue as to which fund was good nor how to determine what makes a fund good. And so I invested blindly. I got some returns on my investments, so I was happy.

When I enrolled in Applied Investments, I didn’t realize that it would be about mutual funds. I figured any finance professor worth his salt would recommend investing in individual stocks and playing the market. Playing the market has always seemed so risky to me, so I was quite relieved when my professor informed us of his investment philosophies, which made far more sense than I ever could have hoped.

One of the things that has been so enjoyable about the class is that what Dr. W is saying makes sense. I love things that make sense!! It makes the world of investing seem a little less cryptic. I never would have imagined that I could read a book about investing and not being bored out of my mind. But here I am, reading a book about investing and actually finding it very interesting.

I was reading about some studies of people and how they invest, and I couldn’t help but enjoy the following quote when I came across it the other day:

“The conclusion we can draw is that there is an inverse correlation between confidence and performance—the more confident one is in his/her ability to either identify mispriced securities or time the market, the worse the results. In studying men versus women, they found that although the stock selections of women do not outperform those of men, women produce higher net returns due to lower turnover (lower trading costs). Also, married men outperform single men. The obvious explanation is that single men do not have the benefit of their spouse’s sage counsel to temper their own overconfidence. It appears that a common characteristic of human behavior is that, on average, men have confidence in skills they don’t have while women simply know better.” (The Only Guide to a Winning Investment Strategy You’ll Ever Need by Larry E Swedroe)

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. :-)

In checking out the mutual funds I hold, I have discovered that some of them have characteristics that are less than desirable, so now I need to do some research utilizing my new knowledge and fix my meager portfolio.

It would seem that there is a lot of dishonesty and shady stuff that goes on the CFP (Certified Financial Planner) occupation. A lot of people are being taken and used by their financial planners. They take advantage of their clients’ ignorance in financial matters. It’s evidently an occupation that is hard to keep the people honest because of the ignorance of their clients and the ease with which they can make money.

I find it all very fascinating. I suppose it’s a little late to change one’s major? Actually, I don’t need to change anything—with the Certificate in Financial Planning that I’ll be getting, I could get certified in financial planning if I so desired. Of course, Dr. W says that the certification exam is a highly difficult exam to pass. :-/ I guess he should know, he’s somehow affiliated with the testing organization.

Just one more week until my summer begins...

I'm ready!!

The Squirrels

During the summer, campus is nearly deserted. Shortly after 7:00 in the morning, it is so deserted that one could virtually go streaking across campus (if they were so inclined) without getting caught. It was because of this desertedness that I was startled on Thursday morning by a noise near the construction dumpster as I was on my way to class for a final round of studying before my first test.

I had just exited the parking structure and crossed the street to cut through a small parking lot near my building. A nearby building is being worked on and the construction dumpster takes up a portion of the parking lot. The street was deserted, and I had seen not a soul anywhere. As I was passing by the dumpster, I heard a noise that seemed awfully loud in the still morning. I took a few more steps toward the end of the dumpster and caught sight of an empty plastic peanut butter jar bouncing its way to the curb.

I looked up and there, peering mournfully over the edge of the dumpster, was a squirrel. He had lost his peanut butter jar. I stood there watching him to see what he would do. His alternating glances between the peanut butter jar and me kept him frozen in place as if he dared not move. Since there wasn’t any action going on, I moved on to class, a bit charmed by the squirrel with the peanut butter jar.

After I had taken my test, I retraced my steps to my car. As I approached the dumpster, I was amused to find that the squirrel had descended from the dumpster and was nibbling on the jar. He had literally eaten a hole in the bottom of the jar. As I stood there watching, he made an attempt or two at sticking his head in the jar, but the opening was just a bit snug, which had led to his determined nibbling on the bottom part of the jar.

I stood there for several minutes watching him. During that time, I watched a buddy come and try to share the jar, which was totally unacceptable to the owner of the jar. He made a buzzing growl of sorts, and his buddy backed off. Several more attempts were unsuccessful, so his buddy went in search of other things. I glanced to my right and saw another squirrel walking away with a peanut butter cracker in its mouth. A glance to my left revealed a sight that I’d never seen before coming to Western—a white squirrel.

I think the squirrels add such a charm to the place. Someday I’d like to get a picture of one of the white ones.

Appreciating Art. Or Not.

The thing about art is that anyone can do anything and call it art. Take, for instance, Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. I’m sorry, but I just have a hard time appreciating that as art. I can really appreciate it when it’s used as it’s intended to be used, but art?? Nah.

My teacher said something on Monday about some people being able to look at a piece of art and get a certain meaning out of it. Other people look at it and get nothing out of it. He asked a question about a work having that actual meaning or is it a case of “the emperor has no clothes?” I, being a non-artistic person, think that there’s a lot of time, energy, and money spent on a lot of emperors running around in their underwear.

I’ve had three days of class and already have a test scheduled for tomorrow. Seems kinda harsh, but there’s no help for it. Here’s how my three-week course should shake out: one holiday, four exam days, ten and a half lecture days (two and a half hour classes with none lasting that long so far) with a possibility of one of those days being spent drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. Incredibly expensive for what I’m getting out of it, but considering I really don’t want much out of it (I really don’t like the humanities category of general education) that’s not too bad, huh?

A Week to Forget

In the history of my life, this week is one week that I would like to Forget. Erase. Delete. Poof. Shaza’am! Gone. If stress would indeed cause gray hair, my hair should be white as snow by now. My outlook this week has been similar to that of Eeyore and Chicken Little. I’ve been expecting the sky to fall at any moment.

Back-to-back exams and accounting projects have been the culprits causing the increased stress levels. The results—less than pretty, for sure. And I even took a day off work to study. Yes indeedy…it’s been a bad week.

I was quite relieved to see the end of my school week by Thursday afternoon. I went to Wal-mart and didn’t even have the heart browse. I just bought the three items I needed and went home.

The lawn needed to be mowed, and I thought maybe a stint of riding the lawnmower and listening to music would brighten my mood. I got on the mower…and the battery was so dead it couldn’t even produce an ignition light. Figured…fit right in with the week.

Martin got me going and off I went. It proved to be a good chance to brood for the first while. I finally began to let loose of my horrible week—that is, until a short time before I was finished when I ran into a cable hidden in the grass that wrapped itself around the blades and stalled the mower. It was getting dark and supper was ready, so I just left it. I just didn’t have the heart to deal with it.

Friday morning, I was glad to be going to work instead of school. At least I know what’s going on there. Not a lot there that I can’t handle…or so I thought.

After fielding the normal razzing for taking a day off, I gladly sat down at my desk and hit the power button on the computer. I was ready…payroll, deposit, orders, phone calls—Bring. It. On!

The computer booted up and prompted me for the password, except WAIT A MINUTE!! I don’t have a password for the computer. It has NEVER required a password. Let me repeat that. This computer has never required a password. It always goes straight to the desktop, and I’m ready to go. A cold chill flooded my body and wrapped itself around my heart. My week had followed me to work.

I interrupted the office conversation to inquire if anyone had set a password recently. Blank looks—not a good sign. I called my assistant at home to see if anything unusual had happened the day before. Nope, not a thing. Rebooting did nothing for the password request. Putting in the two variations of the usual office passwords got me exactly nowhere. I felt ill.

I remembered that this exact thing had happened to my boss’s new laptop and tech support had run him through a reformat of the hard drive without him even realizing what they were doing and him losing everything (which luckily wasn’t much). Reformatting this hard drive would NOT be an option. Seven and a half years of hard work down the drain? I don’t think so!

I’m not sure how visible my panic was, but at one point, Wayne said, “You’re probably trying to remember when the last time was that you backed up the computer, aren’t you?” I hated to admit it, but I was. It was one of the first things that flashed through my mind.

I pulled out the paperwork I received with the computer and started the horrendous process of calling tech support. Wayne spent some time on the phone calling local computer shops while I was on hold with someone on the other side of the ocean. He received responses that varied from “Never heard of it” to “I could fix it in 15 minutes but can’t come until Monday.”

Well, the long and the short of it is that I spent the next two and a half hours on the phone with tech support (probably at least two of those hours were spent on hold) and spent somewhere between $85 to $130 (I got three different quotes from three different people) for a fifteen minute procedure that saved me from one of the biggest potential disasters of my career.

One nice thing is that if you’re willing to pay for the tech support, they’ll give you someone on your own continent to talk to. Understanding Joe was not a problem, and he knew what to do without reading from his list of procedures in a halting monotone. He was even somewhat apologetic about the price I’d had to pay for such a short conversation and a relatively easy fix. He took the time to review the entire procedure verbally again after the problem had finally been fixed.

No one knows how a password got set in the first place. Once I was up and running, the first thing that I did was back up my accounting file. A review of the files on my backup revealed backup dates of which I’m thoroughly ashamed. I had backed it up since then, but to the hard drive where it would have done me no good in this case. Needless to say, an external hard drive and backup software are on the top of my shopping list.

If I hadn’t been in such a snit, I may have been able to think further than the tip of my nose and come up with personal acquaintances that could have helped me for free, but I wanted help and I wanted it immediately! I know that the hard drive could have been removed and data retrieved that way, but I had stuff to do then—not later. For sure, I know how to take care of it now if it happens again.

Yup, it’s been a rotten week. And if I were you, I’d stay away from me. You might get hit by a piece of falling sky.