I wonder if people embrace all those "end times" prophecies because it's easier to think about all the chaos being wiped clean, than trying to figure out a way past their every day problems. After all, if the world ends you won't have to worry about paying off those credit cards... You don't have to worry about losing your job or keeping a roof over your heads. Don't worry about putting your kids through college... they'll complete their education with the angels when the rapture comes. It kinda makes armageddon sound attractive. Of course, the "end times" have been coming since sometime very shortly after the dawn of Christianity. Banking on judgement day seems like a sucker's bet at this point.
Today my head is going in several different directions at once. Wrestling with some weird little Adobe Acrobat display issues, some weird little cgi issues, and then all the non-work related issues. Money, the near future, the less near future, the distant future. Some of it excites me and some of it makes me want to crawl under my bed and hide. But that never really works does it.
Last night Liz and I had dinner with my old friend Matt Brown. I think I've known Matt since the sixth grade... so a I guess that's about 23 years. We haven't really lived in the same city for about 20 of those years. It's funny how time and distance sometimes don't matter that much. Always nice to see Matt.
Posted by kromedome at December 12, 2003 12:57 PM | TrackBackThe nice people at NAIC (www.better-investing.org) actually teach financial literacy, with the view that people can learn to double their investments over a 5 year period.
I never felt even remotely financially literate before I met some people in a NAIC investment club and decided that it was worth $25/month invested and repaid if I leave the club, for me to learn how to think about this stuff.
It took almost the last full year to succeed in rolling over all of my old IRAs and 403(b)s -- I think it got complete about a month ago. This weekend, I did lots of homework with my stock-study buddy Paula. And this morning, for the first time, I bought stocks.
The women who founded my stock club put it this way: "If we can learn this, anybody can! We're a couple of old hippie artists."
Incidently, a poke around the web site revealed that the org is holding a class in Jan/Feb in Kingston, MA (wherever that is). http://www.better-investing.org/chapter/mass/events/1367
Posted by: Liza at December 15, 2003 10:37 AM