#1506, Wednesday, September 9: Investing for retirement

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Post 1506, Day 252 of 2015
- 1,713 days since I started this blog -

Daily Comment

I have invested in stocks, using various strategies, since the late 1980s. When I started investing in stocks, I was completely ignorant. It was also a time before discount brokerages and a decade before the internet came along.

In the thirty-plus years of my investing career, I have been completely out of the market about half the time.

I have been successful and I have gone bust over the years. I have gotten caught in every major stock market down-turn. One of those downturns contributed to the end of my second marriage, which turns out to have had a financial component I was blind to.

That last downturn pretty much wiped me out. I had been doing some speculative stock market gambling, and when things went South, they went bad really, really fast.

I was unable to overcome the setback of my wife leaving and having to sell our overly-leveraged house, and that led me to Syracuse and what I'm doing now.

At my first Syracuse job, I was able to pay off most of my debts while saving via my 401K. When that job ended, I converted my 401K savings to a self-directed IRA at a brokerage. My goal was to be extremely conservative, and get at least a 2% return, a huge multiple over what a safe savings or money-market account would pay.

At that, I have been crazy successful. Until about four months ago, my account had appreciated at an annual rate of 10%. Then came the latest downturn. I have lost a lot, but my investment has still been compounding by better than three percent.

Better than that, I have accumulated dividend-paying stocks that are paying me better than seven percent a year off my investment. My plan is to stay invested, let the dividends get reinvested for as long as I can, and then, as needed (or when the IRS rules mandate that I have to, whichever comes first), have enough income to pay for groceries for the rest of my life.

Hey, it's a plan, I know what plans are worth, but this does sound hopeful, right?.

I don't know how all this managed to work out for me. Positive thinking? Maybe. Cosmic cyclical behavior, swinging-pendulum style? Also, maybe. Impossible to tell, and I can't think of anything I would rather do less than wonder about it.

I think it is enough to be grateful for it, and I am.

Food and Diet Section

Today's Weight:                   206.0 lbs

Previous Weight (9/8):            206.4 lbs

Day Net Loss/Gain:                - 0.4 lbs

Diet Comment

Small steps in the right direction are all that is necessary.

Food Log

Breakfast
A Quest bar.

Lunch
At Core:

Chicken Cobb salad (shredded kale and romaine, grilled chicken, avocado, bacon, hard-cooked egg, broccoli, mushrooms and bleu cheese dressing).

Snack 
A Quest bar.

Dinner 
At Eskapes: 

A "BST Salad" with blackened salmon (BST is blackened bacon, spinach and tomato). Not shown: A big chocolate chip cookies

Snack 
A Quest bar.

Liquid Intake
   Espressos: 2;  Coffee: 32 oz.;  Water: 78+ oz.

Please leave a comment if you visit my blog. Thank you!