Monday, May 27, 2019

This weekend on Friday I decided it would be a good day to take some time off work to regroup and take a “mental health break”. Normally people don’t realize they need some time to stop and recharge. When they get tired or cranky or angry at others for no reason at all then they need to take some time off. This is a chronic health issue for most people. A little bit of stress is okay but most Americans as well as stated in the evening news are in a perpetual state of stress and overwork thinking about news and politics. The modern news from the time you turn it on is full of tornado storms, floods, war, famine, homicide, suicides, political bantering, and all kinds of “if it bleeds, it leads” type stories including FUD etc. No wonder, like Jim Rohn, used to say he was stressed by the middle of the day. What we take into our heads and minds influences our thoughts, behavioral patterns and attitudes toward others. As we give, so we get. Mr. Rohn was an amazing motivational speaker and salesman and there is no duplicate of him. One of his favorite sayings was that we must “stand guard at the door to our mind.” And that means that garbage in, creates garbage out.

Now, it seems that everytime I go into a quick oil change place I end up having a slew of additional car problems. Car me superstitious or just cautious and suspicious, but I think they preempt other problems. One time I had a tire go flat not a few weeks after. And this time they also said my battery was starting to have problems and I did actually notice some problems rolling my windows around then as well as the windshield wipers having problems. When the wipers started having problems I knew I needed to get it taken in since it was close to the weekend. So I had my oil changed and then a week later need car battery changed. I found that the Duralast Gold lasted quite long and over the rating. I had bought mine around April of 2012 and it lasted about 7 years per a side sticker the representative said but to get a replacement would cost about $160. My friend recommended trying Walmart which had a comparable Everlast brand that was only about $93 that with tax came to just around $100 or so. But the sales reps were obviously overloaded and said could take up to two hours to change. That wasn’t a major problem as I waited for a bit and then decided to just walk a few blocks to get some other work done. Luckily I was not far from where I needed to go later that day and got my exercise I’ve been meaning to get in that weekend through walking. It was a sunny day and I needed a good walk and had planned ahead. The whole thing took not much longer than about an hour and a half actually it seemed.

I was able to get a ride back, pay, stop at the post office to drop off packages, and then go back and have lunch.

I’ve been meaning to rent a P.O. Box for business purposes and checked that out and got two keys and was told it was simpler to do it online. A few things I had learned from research:

1. Not all P.O. Boxes are the same costs and even the cheapest ones might be found cheaper at another location in your city. Do research.
2. The bigger the box the more expensive of course.
3. If you purchase for a whole year you usually get a year free.
4. You can fill out your paperwork online and print out the activation papers to go to the post office and sign. You need at least two forms of ID because they need a physical real address from you. You will sign and initial and then they also allow usually at least two keys.
5. When you are there most post offices only have one employee but sometimes there’s a backup that will come up if there’s a long line.
6. If you lose a key a replacement is about nine bucks I heard the employee say.
7. You can get street addressing that makes the P.O. Box look like an actual street location with the P.O. Box behind it but they only allow this for getting packages and delivery not for establishing the actual location of business and not for registered agent (checked this with the Secretary of State and they said a physical real address is needed). If you are doing a registered agent you need a real place so that if legal process is served someone is there to get this and sent to the business.
8. You can also have post office boxes automatically authorize signatures and also another person to pick up for you and have access.
9. It only took about 30 minutes I would say to do the whole process.

Afterwards went shopping for some juice as it was a hot weekend pre-Memorial Day weekend. There were festivals around town. Tried some sardines, kimchi, and seitan for dinner. Checked stocks, commodities and currency as well. Market had closed by the time I got to it.

Was able to do some currency swaps also. The market has been choppy so having some positions in cash or safe assets and some in play is a good idea so you can take advantage of when the bull market returns. There is a good season or bull season and there will also be a bear season. As Tony Robbins said in one of his investor videos, he got a lot of his mentoring and advice under the wing of Jim Rohn and people don’t realize that the seasons are regular and that when winter comes so does spring, summer and fall in a cycle. And so too are there good and bad financial times.

Later on that week, a relative tried to set up a blind date which had to be nipped in the bud because it was a bit embarrassing, but sometimes I humor them. I just wanted to get stuff done and relaxed and not have to be mentally confused. Apparently life doesn’t get much easier.

Later on the site was able to update the stereogram article, Inkscape projects, work on finalizing a project contract and pricing and details of layout. Last thing was updating a 401k contribution allocation. Asset allocation is important in any portfolio. You can’t always control direct of the market and prices etc, but you can control how much and what fees you pay and with the market lately pulling back a slight increase in bonds can help stabilize some losses. Tony Robbins said he did a study and book interview with Ray Dalio on an all weather portfolio. But not everyone will want the same standard all weather portfolio and some can bear more risk etc. So I looked into the principles and it basically showed that you should be a bit more diversified when the market is pulling back. Mark Cuban has said that diversification is for idiots (because those that know what they are doing should be maximizing the potential and 10X’ing their money or going to cash as needed). But Kevin O’Leary another Shark Tank celebrity has said that diversification is the only free lunch you will ever get in investing. And many other people like Buffet and others do also advocate some diversification while some are in the school of thought or camp that you should not have to overdiversify (Patrick Bet-David) because that will siphon away potentially good returns. You can’t predict or beat the market all the time.

With my portfolio, I slightly increased percentages of future income by about a percent or two into safer assets for the time being. Part of investing is to make sure you still have monies that can withstand the long haul and stay in play and not get wiped out.