Breathing my Mind into Your Face

Friday morning and I’m sitting in my office. Sun is on the way up and a 40% moon is still popping out my window. It’s going to be 80 degrees with no rain. Can I get an amen to that?! I slept 7.5 hours, hallelujah! I did most of my taxes yesterday and realized we forgot to withhold extra for my wife so we’ll be owing around 16K. That hurts. I was thinking about money yesterday as I read an article about the sale of the Washington NFL team. How money begets money. Former owner Dan Snyder bought the team in 1999 for 800 million and sold the team 24 years later for 6 billion. Nice 5.2 billion profit. There’s a bunch of minority stakeholders so it’s not all going to his pocket. Making money doesn’t have to be about being good at something. This dude will go down as the worst owner in NFL history but it didn’t stop him from increasing his wealth. Just like my former boss was a terrible CEO that caused the company to lose lots of money and have to sell or go bankrupt. That didn’t stop him from walking away with a couple million dollar parachute for his poor performance. My lifelong dream of a meritocratic existence has long been lost. I guess I should play the money game a little to ensure me and the family are good forever. On one hand I could go the bean counter route and really cut back on wasting money. Off the top of my head I know we could spend half what we do on clothes. I invest in the stock market and that hasn’t worked out well over the last year and a half. I don’t spend enough time researching the market to have a clue what I’m doing. Better to throw it in and S&P 500 index fund. I was thinking about looking into land investment. There’s some areas between here and Ann Arbor that could be good holdings. My goal is to not be beholden to a day job. I’d like to be able to organize each day how I want to without the pressure of helping a company I don’t care about succeed. Or have enough to retire at 60 if I can’t figure out a way to get outside the dayjob. Any advice is always welcome.