My Point Exactly

That's the whole point of my pay-for-school idea, to teach kids the value of money and the relationship of money to work. Okay, money isn't what it used to be and neither is work, but it's still true that you can get money by doing something that somebody else wants you to do. We have talked before about how some poor people stay poor by making poor choices, and even rich people have been known to squander their money by making poor choices of their own. My program might help some kids to grow up knowing better than that. Of course not every kid will get the point, but not every kid turns out okay with the way the schools are run now. What you said about Talman was true, and we might get a similar effect by each school having its own student credit union.

I have not seen any of those bronze dollars and neither has my hypothetical wife, but we both remember the Susan B. Anthony dollars, which were worse because they weren't even a different color than the quarters. I once read on Wiki that the government puts out real silver and gold coins on occasion. They are legal tender, but they never get into circulation because collectors and dealers immediately buy them up for more than their face value.

There are several different ways to "play" the stock market. People who try to buy low and sell high are called "traders" or "speculators", while the more conservative "buy and hold" people are called "investors". Mutual funds are a better choice than buying individual stocks for relatively small investors like me who want to minimize their effort and risk exposure. There are lots of different kinds of mutual funds with varying degrees of risk associated with them. Generally, the more risk you take, the greater the potential profit or loss. Less risk means you won't make as much money as some people, but you won't lose as much either. My IRA is in a conservative stock index fund, and I also have another identical fund that is not part of my IRA. My money market fund is also a mutual fund, but they don't invest in stocks, they make short term high quality loans to big corporations and the U.S. government. The primary goal of a money market fund is to never lose principal, so their profits are generally much smaller than stock funds, although they have been known to do well in times of high interest rates like we haven't seen in decades.

I can write checks on my money market fund, but not for less than $250, so we use that to pay our larger bills. We also have a checking account at our local credit union, which we use for anything less than $250. Both of our Social Security checks are direct deposited into our credit union checking account. It doesn't pay interest, so we keep enough in there to cover anticipated expenses and periodically transfer the excess into our savings account at the same credit union. We have about 30% or our money in the money market and the credit union and about 70% in our stock mutual funds. These percentages vary with the ups and downs of the stock market, but not as much as one might think, maybe 5% either way. Conventional wisdom says that you are supposed to rebalance your portfolio every year to keep the percentages the way you want them, but we have never felt the need to do that. I follow the ups and down of the stock market because I am interested in it like you are interested in politics, but I don't make decisions based on what I see on TV every day. Actually, I haven't made any decisions about my portfolio in a long time, figuring "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Speaking of politics, I'm sure you're aware that today was Super Tuesday, and plan to sit up all night watching the results come in. I am interested in it too, but am content to wait till tomorrow and read about it on Wiki. Michigan votes next Tuesday, and I don't plan on sitting up all night for that one either. I will be so sick of this crap by November that I won't even care if Hillary wins, just so they get it over with.