RETIREMENT SAVINGS Here's a little retirement info for you: If you had purchased $1,000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock one year ago you would have $49.00 left. With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1, 000.00. With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left. But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have had $214.00. Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. It's called the 401-Keg.
I live in an old inner city neighborhood. Some years ago, the whole garbage pickup system was sold off to private contractors. What they did is put big steel bins in our alleys, instead of running over garbage cans. For the folks with no alleys, they gave each home a rolling plastic 1 yard bin. What happens, at the end of each month, is that folks leave their old couches, baby carriages, bed frames, lazyboys. Before I built my fence, someone had dropped off a couch and chair at the big bin. The house next door was vacant, so I dragged out my Sawzall and crowbars, and started cutting it up. After the first cut, I realized that it was solid 2"X4" Mahogany, Maple, Oak and Ash framing. Worth about $10.00 per board foot. You can't buy thick Mahogany anymore. I got about $200 worth of furniture grade lumber, for an hour's work. Then I got some angle iron from the bed frames, and a bunch of buggy wheels. So I emailed the Police Chief's PR people, and suggested they kick off a soapbox derby between neighborhoods, using the junk from the alleys. It seems they like the idea. The parents would get off the couch, help their kids learn a bit of construction, scavenge the alleys for wood and wheels, and compete in healthier activities. There's more wealth in the basics. And we get cleaner alleys. They'll sell the exotic hardwoods to hobbyists and buy the prizes and promo buscard Ads.
