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personal investment

Forget Wall Street: Invest in Potatoes

Aug 3rd, 2009
by htwollin.
3 comments

(Caution: Image Heavy) We all know what’s happened to the stock market over the past year. No news there. A whole lot of people lost a whole lot of their retirement and goodness knows what else over the past year. A whole lot of people are going to have to work long past their ‘sell by’ dates just to get through.

What Aunt Toby is here to tell you is that there are other ‘investments’ that sometimes do a whole lot better than fancy financial instruments, ‘regular’ and ‘preferred’ and Class A, B or C.

I’m talking about…potatoes (more…)

Aunt Toby explains investments

Apr 4th, 2009
by htwollin.
2 comments

Fasten your seatbelts kids because Aunt Toby is going to tell you one of the most important ‘home truths’ you will ever hear. Commit this to memory. Write it down and embroider it for a wee bit of framed art over your desk. Never forget it and don’t allow anyone to ever tell you otherwise.

Here it is: Investments are things that you spend money on that bring in income.

Income. Real cash flow. Revenue streams (sort of like the Mississippi only with greenbacks). Dividends. Interest. Rents. Payments to YOU.

Why am I saying this? (more…)

What do you know?

Jan 18th, 2009
by htwollin.
4 comments

This weekend, the DH, our son and I went to see the newly released film, ‘Defiance’ with Daniel Craig, Leiv Schreiber and Jamie Bell, which is about the fantastic and almost unbelievable story of a family of brothers who escaped to the woods in Belarussia in 1941 and managed to save over 1000 Jews from the Nazis by hiding underground, creating a series of communities in the woods, and frankly stealing and attacking the German army and collaborators wherever they found them. One of the most interesting scenes in the film is one where a great number of Jews from a town are rescued and are asked, while they stand in line in front of a make-shift registration area in the woods, what they know how to do. A watchmaker demonstrates that his skills can be turned to repairing a rifle. Others announce themselves as nurses, dressmakers, boot makers and so on, worthy additions to the Bielski Brothers’ ever expanding world. (more…)

The Light at the End of the Tunnel — and how you and your family can get there faster

Dec 5th, 2008
by htwollin.
Comments are off for this post

moneyOK – everyone comfy? Want more coffee?

We’re back in the kitchen (because that is where the food, the heat and the good seats are). We’ve talked about (to review, in case anyone is taking notes here and no – there are no essay questions on the final) saving money, starting a garden, “doing one thing” to improve your situation, and finding out who your network is.

Today, we’re going to grasp the wriggly monster with both hands: The country is in the toilet. Really. The news gets worse every day. It looks as if we are “staring down the barrel of a gun” and “hitting the wall” – simultaneously. (Being able to do both at the same times is going to take the skills and physique of a contortionist, but I digress.)

And now Elliot Spitzer gets out there and basically says that all the money that has been used to bail out the banks and AIG was wasted – like we didn’t know that already.

But he did talk about something that we WILL talk about which is:
“government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation, not in a failed business model…”

What I want you to do, right now (and you know I am all about the “right now”) is to take that phrase “government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation” and replace a couple of words so that it reads like this:

“personal investment in the long-range competitiveness of ME” or “family investment in the long-range competitiveness of family members.” (more…)

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