Starting to feel a little better after my evening walk. 🚶🏻
Starting to feel a little better after my evening walk. 🚶🏻 That round 2 of the Pfizer COVID really knocked me out midday, I ended up canceling going to John Wolcott house and then I ended up skipping going down to the library.
Lois Rossman – A word on addiction, waiting for rock bottom & losing friends
Bernie Madoff
Despite claiming to generate large, steady returns through an investing strategy called split-strike conversion, which is an actual trading strategy, Madoff simply deposited client funds into a single bank account that he used to pay existing clients who wanted to cash out. He funded redemptions by attracting new investors and their capital, but was unable to maintain the fraud when the market turned sharply lower in late 2008. He confessed to his sons—who worked at his firm but, he claims, were not aware of the scheme—on Dec. 10, 2008. They turned him in to the authorities the next day. The fund's last statements indicated it had $64.8 billion in client assets.
NPR
Bernie Madoff, the financier who orchestrated what is thought to be the largest Ponzi scheme in history, has died. He was 82.
He died Wednesday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, N.C., the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed, and had been serving out a 150-year sentence.
As a money manager, Madoff defrauded thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars over the course of nearly two decades. His scheme wiped out the savings of individuals, charities, municipal governments and college endowment funds, and he was so hated at the time of his 2009 trial that he wore a bulletproof vest to and from the courthouse
I often see advertisements promoting buying a home
I often see advertisements promoting buying a home. 🏡
A lot of friends and colleagues are buying one, and indeed I think it’s a good investment if you have a family and need a larger dwelling that you plan to stay in for a long time. Paying a mortgage is a good way to be forced to build wealth, but it’s certainly not the only way – low-cost index funds, retirement funds and certificates of deposits with automatic deposits are other ways to build wealth.
While rent is an expense that is forever gone, you have to live somewhere. But lower-rent apartments can be quite affordable, allowing you to save and invest elsewhere. Plus a small rented space is going to be cheaper to heat and light, and the benefits to having access to public transit to get to work and walk-able neighborhood rather than having a car. Costs like utilities, transportation, repairs, mortgage fees and interest are non-recoverable even if you own your own house. Indeed, running my own numbers, I can’t find a way I would gain wealth faster owning a home with all the related expenses before renting.
While I concede I’ll probably stick around in New York State for a while longer, maybe a decade or so, I just can’t see setting down roots locally. Albany doesn’t feel like my home, and I’m not interested in community or local politics. I want an opportunity to reboot my life at some point, try a new community on for a change. I’m also not that interested in owning a fancy house, I’d rather have more land and not a fancy house. And I don’t want land for purposes of profit to sell it, but to use it for homesteading, hunting, and wildlife observation — any building should be just ancillary to provide housing but need not be permanent or appreciating in value.