Saturday, January 29, 2022.

Happy New Year folks. It’s been a few months since our last post and it’s because we’ve been busy for the holidays. With Covid surging again and this new Omnicron variant on top of Delta and even a subvariant of Omnicron making the news, we’ve been trying to make the most of our holidays to decompress.

You know, the viral pandemic has changed life as we know it in the past 2 years. Whereas we thought things would be done and over after 2 weeks back in March of 2019, it was merely a ruse or mantra we kept repeating to ourselves in order to keep hope alive and get us through this endless ordeal long enough that we would have vaccines and medicines and pills to try to beat back this plague of epic proportions. We now have multiple shot vaccines, boosters, oral drugs to slow down and suppress most of the virus and variants but it’s a matter of applying these techniques consistently, regularly and in as far reaching quantities as possible to have an effect.

We knew at more than halfway through 2021 it wasn’t over and wasn’t going to be over for a good long period of time with so many states, cities, countries applying inconsistent practices and regulations and people resistant to mandates. In fact many protests started again in Europe when lockdown restrictions were reimplemented even despite surging numbers. It was inevitable that numbers would go back up with certain relaxed restrictions, but at the same time, overzealous fear also contributed to panic and desire to be able to have some semblance of control when things seemed out of control. Thus there was resistance to mandates as well as spread of misinformation. People were losing minds, bodies, health and jobs, but at least they could somewhat have freedoms.

A lot of news have come out since then. Examples include Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) which uses impact to change asteroid flight. There was the passing of multiple notable celebs at the end of 2021 including “The First Lady of Television” to other notable actors and comedians and musicians.

Since then stocks have plummeted and gone on a veritable rollercoaster road with inflation soaring and crypto pulling back. NFT’s are white hot. Although stock and such are pulling back it’s still a good idea to consider maxing out your Roth IRA’s ($6000 if single in 2021)and HSA contributions for investments if you can. You can look up maximums online to take advantage of this tax benefit. Also consider precious metals which have also been pretty stable for your portfolio. Many email scams are going around so beware of Covid and paycheck protection scams and phishing and other links that try to get your information. Also beware of apps, spyware and things secretly monitoring your activity. Lot of websites can be drive-by malware downloaders. So make sure you have good protection for your phones which are basically computers now. People are trying to make the most of life right now with leaving their mediocre jobs, finding better work, cooking from home, cutting their own hair. Stacking sats and other financial decisions now to make life work for them. People are not content to getting crumbs any more.

While staying at home, beware of dating scams. Of people that try to redirect you off the apps especially if the are evasive, not making sense in their responses or trying to get you to use certain apps, text them real quick or use email. It may be that a scammer lurks online. Use your inner judgment and if something sounds off it probably is.

Also beware of proxies and certain VPN’s. They may be secretly monitoring your information if you’re not careful.

There’s also a movie called Life is Beautiful made in 1997 that tries to have a rosy optimistic look on life and use humor and wits to outwit the bad things in life. The saying goes is that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade and where intention and focus goes, energy flows. Make sure you have a good positive outlook. Hang out with the right people and fill your mind with the right tools to succeed.