The Ring

11 Monday Jan 2010

Tags

anime, Emerson Elementary, gilligan's island, Marion Iowa, Mary Ann Summers, me and you and a dog named boo, ring, Tina Fleming

I’m blogging from Old Chicago’s via my WordPress iPhone app. Eating out with Ellie since Karen is out with her girl friends in Louisville. Ellie is playing in the arcade but just came back for more money. She showed me the ring she won. Wow. It took me back like Lennon singing a psychedelic song.

I was in the record shop in downtown Marion, Iowa. 45s cost 99¢, not unlike iTunes today, except they had a B-side. I bought, well actually won from the weekly drawing, my first 45. I picked, “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo.” For whatever reason this little record shop also sold friendship rings. I picked up a ring that looked amazingly similar to the little faux metal ring Ellie just showed me. Same multiple rings of hammered steel design, except mine really was metal. I recall it costing like $1.39 or something.

The next day at school – Emerson Elementary – I gave it to this girl who was a friend of my older sister Diane. I was in 4th grade, Diane was in 5th grade, and her friend’s name was Tina Fleming. She was this incredibly pretty, petite (for a 5th grader) brunette with anime brown eyes. She was my Mary Ann Summers. Her dad was my little league baseball coach. I gave her the ring before the lunch recess and she agreed to go steady with me. She gave it back after recess. The first girl to ever break up with me, although not the last. This anime pic isn’t too far off from how Tina looked in grade school. No idea where she’s at now, but I imagine she’s still beautiful.

Mile High Finance

09 Saturday Jan 2010

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Storytelling

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Tags

401k, finance

“Hey Bob, thanks for returning my call. I was getting worried when you didn’t reply to my emails. I know it was the holidays, but I also know you’re married to that BlackBerry.” I was certain Bob was blowing off my request to cancel his services as my financial advisor.

“Well I didn’t hear the end of your voice mail very well. Which email account did you use?”

“Your MSN account.”

“Oh yeah, I don’t really use that anymore, but I haven’t turned it off either. I forward all of it to a spam filter. I get 1000 emails a day from it so it’ll be hard to find yours’. What are you looking to do? Bob has a loud, high-pitched Brooklyn accent and I always found it difficult to picture him working out of his mountain home west of Boulder.

“Well I want to cancel your management services for Karen’s IRA, our joint account and the 2 kid’s custodian accounts. I setup new empty accounts at Fidelity to move the funds into.”

“I see, well it’s your money and you can do what you want. But I can’t transfer the funds. I can trade them but I can’t transfer them. You can do that yourself at anytime. But wait until end of day Monday for any trades I’ve made recently to settle, otherwise it’ll be a mess. Or you can wait until the end of the quarter. I’ve got you in some really strong high income funds. I think that’s the way to go.”

“No, I’m ready to do it now. Nothing personal, but I feel like I’m ready to manage the funds myself. I actively managed my 401K this past year and did really well. Point being not my return so much as the fact I’ve been giving it attention every day. And I’d like to start trading stocks which is something I can’t really do with my 401K.” I could feel the conversation start to become awkward.

“Really? What was your return?”

“A little over 30%. Not quite as good as the NASDAQ for 2009 but I beat most major indexes.” I beat the hell out your 1% return. I said that to myself.

“Well you know I believe you should stick with mutual funds because you don’t have enough money to have a truly diversified portfolio trading stocks. I can recommend some funds but you’ll have to pay a steep load that I get waived. How do you plan to pick stocks?

“I put a dart board up in my office.” Did I really just say that? Hope Bob has thick skin. I know he’s just waiting for me to admit I watch Jim Cramer and he’s going to tear me apart. I have to end this call.

But Bob talked on for another 10 minutes before I finally said we were stepping out the door to dinner. We did plan on eating that night so I wasn’t exactly lying. I felt like getting a financial adviser to manage our funds was the right call a few years ago. I didn’t have the bandwidth to keep on top of our investments. I didn’t imagine then that I would ever want to cancel his services, but I will tell you this. The conversation was hard. I wish I could have simply sent him a text. In fact, I did try doing it over email initially. 1000 emails a day my ass. Bob is good at what he does, and he’s the professional while I’m a neophyte. But I want to handle it myself going forward. End of story.

Happy New Year 2010

01 Friday Jan 2010

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Storytelling

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Tags

holiday

Happy new year everyone. 2009 was interesting and I have some big things planned for 2010. First I’ll review 2009.

I feel like I’ve settled into the dramatic org changes at IBM. I had 2 new bosses and 3 new jobs, but the project I am on currently is solid, engaging, and promising. So IBM is good. I started off reading a great deal at the beginning of the year. And I finally squeezed more fiction into my selections. But I stopped reading around summertime. Not sure why. Also stopped blogging in the fall. Previously, I’d been blogging 2 or 3 times a week – inside the IBM firewall – for a couple of years. No doubt several factors came into play but one of my 2010 resolutions is to start blogging again. Of course, I’ll innovate and writing on WordPress is my effort to mix it up. I kept up my guitar lessons all year and might actually be learning to play. I can’t believe I went 46 years without ever playing an instrument. It’s a kick.

I hooked up with 2 longtime high school friends. Rob Graham moved to Grand Junction this summer. We ran together on Track and Cross Country at Round Rock HS. Rob is a professional trainer and master hiker. We hiked several peaks in Colorado including my 1st 14er – Pike’s Peak. This led to me getting in better shape. I dropped a few pounds, decreased my caffeine and alcohol, and have dramatically increased my running regime. Then, on a business trip to Atlanta, I met up with Mike O’Neill. Another HS buddy – we hadn’t seen one another in over 10 years. Both Rob and Mike are doing well and it was incredibly cool seeing them again.

My proudest moment of the year was watching my teenage daughter perform as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I hosted a little soiree at my neighborhood sushi joint after her 1st night to celebrate. Another biggie for the year was building an office in my basement. I’ve been working from home for over a year now and really needed some real estate to myself. Now for 2010.

I am starting the new year working on my vacation – which sort of sucks but it’s a decent project so I don’t mind. My resolutions for the year include fitness and financial control. I finally am in the mood to run road races again. I love racing and am running consistently enough to aim for some 5Ks and 10Ks this spring. Financially, I am taking my savings back from my financial adviser. Nothing personal but I demonstrated to myself I can put the requisite time into it. The 1st site I visit every morning is my Fidelity 401K to monitor its progress. I actively managed it – reallocating at least once per quarter – and finished the year up 30.5%. I was 401K day-trading the 1st quarter until I received a nasty cease-and-desist letter from Fidelity. I feel I’ve developed the discipline to stay on top of my retirement and the kid’s custodian accounts. I’m currently googling financial SW for the Mac OSX. Most of it runs only on Windows. I want to learn how to use those Chinese candlestick charts for buy and sell signals. I plan to trade stocks rather than mutual funds. Wish me luck.