Gabby

After the previous article on my chances to build dreams late in life, it occurred to me that my daughter doesn’t need to repeat my financial mistakes. She has dreams, although her parents and other adults may not be privy to many of those goals. Whether or not I approve her ambitions doesn’t matter. What matters is her ability to make those dreams become reality, because empowerment isn’t grounded in magic. What it takes to succeed financially is the recognition of those myths regarding women and money and the willingness and strength to dispel them.

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The Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP) turns fifty this year, and I’m about four years older than this organization. I’m happier than ever with this group, as I learned from them today I might live to see age 85, since I made it to age 50. Can you imagine? I may live to see the year 2035, much to my daughter’s chagrin.

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If you read my first articles at BUYandHOLD, you know I come from a fishing family. Some of you may cringe at this fact, but when we catch fish, we eat them. If they aren’t large enough, we throw them back. And, we catch our limits and no more. In other words, my family is a throwback to hunter/gatherers, but we abide by modern laws. Hence, I’m filled with analogies that originate from the fishing culture.

So, when I talk about “lures,” I mean those artificial objects attached to the end of fishing lines meant to attract and catch fish. If the fish likes the lure and if that fish is hungry, you might have a meal on your hands. This is why the $600 “stimulus” package seems like a lure to me. It may seem like something fishy to the Senate as well. As I write this article, the Senate remains undecided on how to word their bill in response to President Bush’s plan.

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If you followed the previous two articles, you know that I recently attempted to diversify my portfolio with a real estate investment. I’m in the fortunate position to have a decent down payment, one that will reduce house payments to the size of my apartment rent, so it’s time to move on. However, it appears that I picked the wrong door at the game show. I’ve been told that my story is one “for the books,” because everything that could go wrong went wrong.

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In the previous article I wondered if anyone could trust advertising agencies, let alone a realtor, a broker, a moneylender, or anyone else involved with the real estate business. So, I decided to try out the real estate scene, since I had accrued some money for a down payment. Amazingly, I found a town home within the past seven days that seems to be a good investment. But, I’ve also discovered that buying a home isn’t a joyous or rational experience when an egoistic broker is involved.

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It seems a few folks at Advertising Age were burned by the ongoing subprime market fiasco. Or, perhaps the articles produced by Bob Garfield and by Alice Z. Cuneo were a ruse to bring attention to an ad campaign recently produced by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). This campaign consists of two separate ads, where prospective homebuyers were encouraged to “invest” in a home. Garfield and Cuneo didn’t like the ads. In fact, Garfield doesn’t like the idea of adding real estate to a diverse portfolio. Why?

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It took me all of one evening to read Timothy Ferriss’s book, “The 4-Hour Workweek.” Yes, the concept of working smarter excited me. Who doesn’t want to double their pay and work half the hours with such simple plans? But, like investing in something you don’t understand, I would be very careful about attempting to live the Ferriss lifestyle. Not everyone can “escape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the New Rich [NR].”

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This month I put one of my blogs on the auction block, and it sold for more than my parents paid for their first home in 1962. Granted, that’s not a fair comparison, because that same house is probably worth much more today. Let’s just say that I can pay for one year of Cora’s college education with the proceeds from the sale after I pay Uncle Sam. Was this type of business floating around during the dot.com boom? I don’t know, but I’m enjoying the new possibilities even if they might be transient.

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I’ll bet my alien lamp that you didn’t make a million dollars when you were a teenager, starting with the sales of your sister’s beanie babies over the Internet. And, I can almost guarantee that someone didn’t write a book about you, or that you were a Keynote Speaker with Michael Dell at the Youth International Technology Summit in Austin, Texas. The only person I know who accomplished all this and more is Cameron Johnson, the son of a car dealer in Roanoke, Virginia.

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As a genealogy geek, I enjoy aligning events – such as changing tax code laws – to my family tree to imagine how my ancestors might have reacted to these changes. Even when I can’t imagine their reactions, I’m glad they paid their taxes. I never would have found my third great-grandfather, Jesse, if he hadn’t paid his “head of household” tax in 1819. Most 19th-century taxes, such as the head of household tax, were gathered at the local level, as federal revenue consisted of excise taxes and tariffs to pay for government expenses. There were only three instances from the time of the Revolutionary War to 1913 when taxes were imposed directly on the American public.

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