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Feist

I love Fiest and her music.  She’s a fantastic song-writer, singer, and performer.  She’s got so much spunk and talent, that it’s hard not to love her music.

Seeing as how she was going to be in town, I got a chance to pick up two tickets for the concert last weekend at the NAC.  It was kind of strange that she wasn’t playing at a smaller venue like the Bronson Center, but I guess she’s a lot more popular now that she’s won all those Juno awards.

So anyways, Renata and I went to see her on Saturday night at the NAC, and we were both surprisingly dissapointed.  She put on a great performance, and her music is even better live.  She’s got more energy and emotion when it’s live.

However, for whatever reason, she decided to add shadow puppets to her show.  I shit you not, boy-scout campfire style shadow puppets.

Each song would have its own shadow puppet theme, complete with props for the overhead projector.  And each shadow puppet show, was just as frustrating and distracting as the rest.  It was so in-your-face pretentious that it distracted from the music and Feist herself.

We came to listen to a concert, and were instead bludgeoned with an overly artsy light show.  Too bad.  If she simply didn’t have that part incorporated into her show it would’ve been an amazing concert.

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Laptop

So I’ve caved and bought a laptop just like everyone else.  I’ve never really liked laptops.  I’ve always found them to be really underpowered, pricey, and not as comfortable as a desktop PC.  I enjoy the awesome luxury of my dual 24 inch screens too much to be cramped up by a small 17 incher.  That is so 2001!

I guess it’s out of pure utility that I am finally getting one.  The long bus rides to get to work are starting to wear me down.  It’s good reading time, but on some days I want to do something “productive” while commuting.

Back when I worked at Waypoint, the commute was only 8 minutes each way.  That left me with enough energy and time to squeeze in an hour or so of extra-curricular programming once I got home.  However, now that I spend almost 90 minutes everyday on the bus that’s no longer there.

So, my requirements for this laptop are pretty low.  I just need it to be small and light.  I’d like the battery to be decent enough.  And other than the standard stuff like ethernet/USB/sound ports, there’s not a whole lot more I need.  I don’t even need a DVD drive for this thing.  I just need to be able to pull it out while on the bus for a quick job (that sentence sounds so dirty!!).

Luckily for me, this year has been the year of the ultra-portable sub-compact notebooks.  The Asus EEE-PC, MSI Wind, and Acer Aspire One are just a few models that have come out.  They’re all small, light, and cheap! Especially since I’ll be loading them up with Xubuntu, the hardware should be more than powerful enough for my needs.  Cause really, all I need it to do is to load up my favorite text editor and I’ll be emacs’ing away.

So anyways, I ended up picking the Acer Aspire One in the end.  From a cost/feature perspective it seemed to be right in the sweet spot.  The Asus EEE-PC has too small of a keyboard to be usable, whereas the MSI Wind and Aspire One both have larger screen sizes and keyboards.

The Aspire One model I ordered has a 160 Gig hard drive, 1 Gig ram, 1.6 Ghz processor, and a 6 cell battery.  I got it for about $400 from my favorite online PC store NCIX.  The MSI model has a larger screen by an inch, but with identical specs would’ve cost me $600 instead.  A 50% premium seems a tad too high.  They both come with a copy of Windows XP, but as I mentioned before I’ll be loading up Linux to keep the performance overhead down.  And really, unless you’re playing games (which sucks on a laptop anyways) there’s no real good reason to be running Windows!

So now I eagerly am await my new laptop!  I’ll probably post a little review of this little gem as soon as I get it.

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Schadenfreude

As the world watches the stock markets drop like a stone, I got a pretty interesting e-mail from a friend of mine last week.  He quite literally wrote me “So how’s your stock portfolio dude? are you watching those numbers on the ticker closer than ever lol”.  I could just feel the schadenfreude being flung at me.  I tell him things are taking a beating, but I am able to capitalize on some of the volatility and that I’m exiting some investments where it’s close to break-even.  Cash is king right now.

He writes back that he’s happy I’m “not contemplating suicide LOL”.  Haha, yes, the joke is on me… and everyone else who has ever thought enough to invest their money for retirement.  I guess this is his way of saying “I told you so” without actually saying that, even though he never warned me of anything.  I’m only slightly bitter that a friend would write something so asshole-ish to me as I watch my hard earned savings evaporate in a matter of days.

But this post isn’t about why you shouldn’t kick your friend when he’s already down.  That e-mail made me question if investing in the stock market is the correct thing to do at all, and how badly will this economic crisis hurt me.

To answer this question, I first questioned my motives for investing and they’re quite simple:

1. I would like to eventually retire one day, and be comfortable financially in my retirement.
2. I can only do that if I save up money for this, but saving money is pointless if you’re not investing it to fight off inflation.
3. Therefore, I should use my retirement savings to invest in something which will hopefully snowball into something large enough for retirement.

So shoving my money under my mattress is a bad idea (or into a savings account etc…).  My options:

1. Invest in Real-Estate: The downside here is that it’s a risky business. Land value does not necessarily grow.  Home values are continuing to drop from the sub-prime mortgage crisis.  Also, you need a lot of money to buy real-estate.  You get taxed when you sell a second home. Getting a second mortgage to buy a home is silly too, as you’re just forking over money to the banks for interest.  Paying your second mortgage by renting isn’t feasible either because you get taxed on those earnings… and you now have a second job.
2. GICs, bonds, and High Interest Savings Accounts: They all just don’t provide enough returns to fight off inflation.  And if they do fight it off, it’s barely enough to have my money work for me to grow.  Again, my motivation is to retire comfortably.  I only save a fraction of my paycheck so that won’t be enough to live off of when I’m dependent on it.
3. Win the Lotto.
4. Start a Business and Become Wealthy: I actually really like this idea.  As Paul Graham points out, busting your ass off for a year and living like a poor student to create a start-up is a great thing to do.  However, this is hard to do if you don’t have some kind of capital.  It is also hard if you have dependents and can’t tolerate too much risk.  This option was tempting to me, but now that I’ll be a dad in a few months the opportunity is gone.
5. Invest in the Market: This is where the sweet spot is.  I can invest in something which can potentially provide me great enough returns that I can beat inflation and grow wealth over a long period of time.  There are risks, but historically the markets generally appreciate in value over long periods of time.  And since I’m investing to retire, I’ve got a pretty long time frame in mind.  With diversification, I can minimize the probability that all the companies I invest in will go bankrupt in time. I also don’t need a lot of capital/savings to profit from this.
6. Mutual Funds: Same as investing in the market, except you’re paying someone else to do it for you (and most mutual funds underperform). You’d save yourself a lot of money by doing it yourself.

I’ve concluded that yes, investing in the stock market is definitely the correct thing to do.  I say this even as my portfolio is currently worth significantly less than it was when I invested a few months ago.

I haven’t actually “realized” any losses.  I still own the same amount of stock as when I bought them.  It’s just that as of this moment, they are worth less than when I purchased them.  Will this state stay like this forever?  Of course not… one hopes the US economy will rebound. If for some reason the entire stock market collapses and stays that way, then I’d be more worried about stocking up on rations and shotgun shells.  If Armageddon happens money would be a little useless.

Should I do the foolish thing of panicking and selling off all my stock at a loss, and then immediately withdrawing all that money from my RRSP to spend it on hookers and blow?  Probably not.  Investing through your RRSP has the added benefit that you probably shouldn’t pull out that money until you retire… and between now and the time I retire I expect a moment where I make positive returns on my investments.

Actually, right now is a great time to buy stocks.  Think of it is a mega-blowout sale that is only offered every few years.  Buy now or else miss on the great deals.  Warren Buffett would agree, as he’s going on a spending spree right now.  The strategy of buying undervalued stock is exactly how Warren Buffett became the wealthiest man in the world.

So, my friend, I am not contemplating suicide.  In fact, I still sleep as soundly as I did before the market crisis ever happened.  I even managed to capitalize on the volatility and made some profit here and there.

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