Finances, Stock Market, Money Market, Mutual Funds, Investments, Savings, etc.

[flowerbug]

it continues to be "interesting" in the markets. i don't really have much more to say than what i've already said in this thread.

i did add to one of my accounts today some shares of a company i've followed and invested in since the early 1990s so i understand what i got myself further into (i've already taken out many multiples of what i've got in there now even with what i added today). no sure thing but i think in 5 years it will be a good investment. watching a few others too for similar reasons. have kept the cash on the side for such events like the past few months. we'll see how it goes...

 

[flowerbug]

once again checking different things in various accounts to make sure my allocations are in-line with how i want them to be.

this morning i finally adjusted one account i should have done some years ago. so that is now off my list at last.

the markets go up and down and it's not always easy to know when to do something so i think some lessons learned from my past are worth talking about.

one thing i used to do was try to buy something for a certain price just to get it for a lower cost. yes, that's ok to do, but if the investment is good for the longer term a short-term gain of a few pennies may be worth something to ignore.

 

[Medicine Woman]

I have two stocks in particular I have been looking at. Amazon and PayPal. For personal reasons I regret buying them but money is money sometimes. But I am currently in a slight red with both of them. As soon as the scale starts to tip me in the other direction I will sell and add onto my lands a bit because I really want to go back home. And I might as well square off my property. I don’t know that I’m going to be able to make big investments in the future. I probably will just act like my grandparents who went through the depression if I am not satisfied with my wealth.

 

[flowerbug]

I have two stocks in particular I have been looking at. Amazon and PayPal. For personal reasons I regret buying them but money is money sometimes. But I am currently in a slight red with both of them. As soon as the scale starts to tip me in the other direction I will sell and add onto my lands a bit because I really want to go back home. And I might as well square off my property. I don’t know that I’m going to be able to make big investments in the future. I probably will just act like my grandparents who went through the depression if I am not satisfied with my wealth.

none of us know the exact future or paths we'll need to travel. if i had less than five years time horizon i'd not have bought the stock i recently put some money into but it wasn't that much so i figured it also is going to be a bit of an entertainment expense too since i will have fun watching it. other people aren't so easily amused.

i hope it works out well for you.

 

[flowerbug]

continued progress is all i can ask for. markets continue to go up and down.

the drama with the "messy open" recently was interesting for sure. i always learn a lot from the glitches that happen. i also try to keep some powder dry for such events like big drops or events outside normal control. if i can pick up a buy because everyone else is panicking then i've usually done well with those, but only for ones i've watched a long time and generally know the company/business/etc. i'm also happy to hold quite a while too.

 

[flowerbug]

my note to the SEC about record keeping did get a response.

the currrent rule is that financial institutions must keep records for at least six years. that's all.

 

[flowerbug]

well, it's been quiet in this thread but that's ok.

now that it is winter again and i'm getting back to longer term projects the accounts get going through and making some changes.

one recent change was to combine a few so i have less accounts overall. the main reason for doing one combination in particular was because the institution was doing so poorly that i was pretty much fed up. so moving that money to an account where it will be better taken care of will help and of course one less account is a bonus.

in other things i'm still working on understanding in general (about this double entry accounting stuff ) and getting some hysterical (aka historical ) records gone through and typed in. it is mainly just because work i'm doing because i would like as much of my financial history where i can see how far i've come and how it has gone. no matter if i don't have each action down and documented completely at least i know the gist of things.

there was a time when i was at college that my Dad had my passbook for an account. those first few years of college i don't have complete records by far. i may have even gotten rid of statements for a bank and credit union or they are well hidden and i've not come across them yet. anyways, still making progress of the kind that is important to me and even if i drop it again at any time for a few days/weeks/months/years it is still educational and somewhat therapeutic...

also mixed in this all last summer the brokerage account moved and then a few weeks ago i decided to try out something new so i've been learning that. a long ways to go...

 

[flowerbug]

making good progress, i thought this current task was going to take me another week but i may be able to finish it up tonight or tomorrow. will be great to have this one done and then i can get on to the next one...

which has 25yrs less of history to transcribe and even better i have most of it already typed in and have been working on a program to translate it all so i'm really a long way further on that one.

the first task mentioned above is an acct i've had since i was 4yrs old. so far there have been only two errors (i knew about them already) and missing a few lines of transactions (because back then they wrote things in the passbook by hand - and someone just wrote a balance and didn't put in the intervening transactions - so maybe three or four transactions i don't have). when i get done i'll have good ammo to go talk to the manager and see what they think...

 

[flowerbug]

for several days i was stuck on a transaction that was getting an error message and i could not figure out what had changed because i'd not touched those files in several weeks so all of a sudden getting an error made me think that somehow underneath some other piece of the puzzle had changed. what it actually turned out to be was that i was including a file twice and while it was discarding most of the duplicate transactions (and not saying anything about there being duplicate transactions) in the case of this one in particular it was just cutting the amount in half. which, yes, would cause the error i was getting.

duh!

so with that now solved i can get back to work but not too much this week as i really need to get everything ready for the seed swap (a different kind of bean counting )...

 

[flowerbug]

the continued ups and downs of the markets keep me on my toes. i don't have automatic buying and selling set up because i really don't like the idea of selling something that might have gone up further had i just had it on alert and then checked it to see what was up. also i don't like to automatically buy because the price may be going down for a good reason and i may not want to add more without thinking about it some more and watching what is up.

i've gotten a lot of my records into the new format by now, but i have some more to finish up. as i get further along i'm able to do some totals for income from some jobs i had which i'd never done before so that was interesting. i'm still kicking myself for getting rid of some records i had which would have filled in some areas for me a lot easier than me having to do it by inferences. mainly the things i really wanted to know was how much money i'd taken out of certain accounts (dividends and profits that were cashed) plus the totals for taxes paid on some things and then the refunds i later got for some of those taxes came back to me. all things i knew about but had never done the full analysis.

this was mostly done last winter and this spring when i was sick and not really able to do much else. now that gardening season and harvest is in full swing i've not been able to do much the past month with this, but the market sell-off and recovery did let me buy a few more things i'd had on my list if i could get them at a decent price.

at least with higher interest rates i've been able to roll some older CDs into better rates which gives me a bit more income.