A New Leese on Life

but people are stupid.

the guy who buys lottery tickets every morning at the grocery store across the street, the scratch-offs. its false-hope. stupid.

the lady who smokes cigarettes standing between to propane tank storage units that have NO SMOKING plastered all over them. stupid.

the driver that yells at me for coming into an intersection when i got there first and they didn’t even stop. stupid.

customers, clients and potential sales people who don’t reply to my emails. stupid.

i dont usually get into personal finance, at least, i can’t remember any instances of discussion of it on any of my blogs in the last 6 years…other than boasting when we finally became debt-free and lifted that burden off our shoulders.

but here’s something i am really excited about. i opened my first Roth-IRA this year, and we have been contributing for a few months. Of course, I haven’t seen any growth, but I don’t check it every day because I am going to leave it in there for 35 years. BUT, the part that does excite me is that alot of mutual funds have a $500 minimum starting balance, and if I put $25 in every week, that means I’ll be putting money in a new mutual fund every 4 or 5 months. That might sound like no “Big Deal”. But it is a big deal because I never got good at investing before. I never really had a savings account that I proactively added to. This is fun.

And just in case you have never done the math …

$500 initial deposit + ($100 /mo * 30 years) @ 12% (avg) ~= 320,000

And that doesn’t include my 401K which gets deposits in excess of $500 /mo (which will end up with $2.2 Million in 30 years)

Fun stuff.

this weekend jess and i went to a cabaret at the school she is student teaching at. it was a really great series of performances. but the thing that weirded me out for the whole night was hearing these kids say, “Ms Leese!”. my whole life, ms. leese was my mom. Now, its my wife. It brought a smile to my face every time I heard it – I wonder when I’ll get used to it.