My Journey

Not sure what it is. I stay somewhere a little while and then I start wondering if I can do better, or make more, or look for a more modern workplace. I have changed jobs many times in the last 10 years. Luckily having a background that I have has enabled me to find work throughout the country.  However all of it at a cost to me of not vesting in any one place.

I do  try to save as much as I can though. Currently contributing 15% of may take home pay. The company has a weird pension system, that I’m required to contribute just over 9% to. The pension basically pays out 2% for each year you work, of course only if you vest. Given my age, I would have to work till I’m 70 just to get 20 years. I am allowed to buy 5 years, but its not cheap.

Yet none of that matters if I can’t stay long enough to vest and since i’m currently considering if I’m in the wright job. We’ll you get the picture. The endless cycle of self annihilation.

Having worked at a few places that were very modern or forward thinking on how they treat employees, I’ve come to realize that is worth its weight in gold. I’f I could go back to the last one that I left, I would never leave again. I was tempted by more money only to find myself in a total hateful work environment. If you find yourself in a job that doesn’t hold you to a clock and is open and collaborative and treats everyone as equals, Stay there!

So far it has been a glorious couple of months for the retirement accounts. Massive amounts of growth. I cautiously have a small amount in cash thats missing the wild ride up, but for 98% of my portfolio it has been going no where but up. Wouldn’t it be nice if it could stay this way for like 15 years or longer? To retire with Multi Millions and not just a couple of million would be nice.

I’ve been contemplating some of the low fee index funds versus some of the kinda low fee funds that have better returns. I have to admit that in the time that it has taken me to get here, I initially had to go with what was offered by employer accounts and they never had the low fee funds. This is from what I’ve learned is that the wrong people sit on these retirement boards and they limit the choices available to fellow employees. I know that they feel they are doing the right thing, however having more options is what I consider to be the right path. I think I could have gotten to my current level of cash faster had I had many more options available to me. It really bugs me that employers may have an option for a brokerage type account, but you have to have some high amount of money in a retirement account to use that feature.

Having left many companies I have rolled one 401k after another into my IRAs where at last I can manage it my way.

So with the name of the domain being about saving and retirement, I probably should write about investing. Even though we are a 1 income family, I do save as much as I can.

I try to invest a minimum of 10% to my retirement accounts. At one point I was putting in 25% into my 401k. I know that there are sites where families have retired after only working 10 or so years, by saving 60 – 70 percent of their income. That would be a nice goal, but that’s not my current thing. So occasionally I plan to write about the various investments I have. Eventually I will create a page that shows my investments and what my ballpark total balance is.

I definitely should probably minimize the funds that I’m in. Currently I have investments in probably 20 different funds and maybe 5 stocks. I prefer to be extremely aggressively invested. The way I see it is that I will eventually have a small pension. This pension is what I consider my base, therefore I can go aggressive on other accounts.

About a month ago I purchased shares of Nestle, so far its done ok. Considering the whole BREXIT thing occurring, it hasn’t even phased Nestle shares. I’m not the type of person that can tell you why certain investments make more or less sense than another. I buy based on things I’ve read or how I feel. A few years back I bought into a fund called FBIOX, I was stunned at how much that fund earned in interest. This year however hasn’t been that great. But I’m in for the long haul, so we will see where it goes.

Lately I’ve been trying to come up with ways that I can put about 10k into some type of investment for my daughter. If you put 10k in an account that earns interest about 8% for 60 years (her retirement age), it would be worth $1,012,000.00 give or take. That’s without contributing another dime to it.

Eventually I did get a degree, B.S. in Management Information Systems. I’ve also earned several certifications, CCENT, CCNA, CCNA-Security, CISSP, & CEH along the way. All three of my CISCO certs have expired. In the Networking world, everyone talks about how they used to have a CISCO cert. CISCO requires that every 3 years you either retake the same cert or one that is equal or higher, in order to maintain your certification. With my two other certs, I just have to earn continuing education credits. Earning credits is way easier than having to study for and pass another cert.

I’m always asked if its more important to have certs or degree. I think that both help to create a well rounded candidate. But the certs and experience will definitely get your foot in the door.

That being said, one of my regrets though, is that I should have completed an MBA. At my school if you immediately started after finishing a bachelors degree, you wouldn’t have to take the GMAT as long as you were a business school major, which I was.

Another regret is not also getting an engineering degree. I must have changed my major 6 times. Two of the times I had engineering majors, to this day I wished that I would have completed under those programs. I also wished that I would have taken more English classes. If you’ve made it this far in this new blog, you probably agree that I need work in that topic.

In college I had friends that were English majors, and it was easy to have them proof my work before handing it in. In hindsight that didn’t help the future me that much. But it does teach you to be resourceful, which is a good trait in the business world.

I served 6 years in the U.S. Navy. While in the navy I got to participate in Operation Desert Shield and then Operation Desert Storm. I was in the navy nuclear power program. The nuke program is two years of intense training. Its funny, because I dropped out of college and joined the navy. And in the navy I got to spend two years in training, which included all these very stressful classes, and if I would have just stayed in college I could have graduated with a degree. I remember there was a clipping of a magazine article that talked about the most stressful schools in America, and the nuke program was listed along with Harvard and MIT as being the most stressful schools.

I’m a disabled veteran, and I’ve been battling the VA on issues for awhile now. But I have learned a few things along the way and met people that are willing to help. It can be daunting when there is no one to turn to or ask questions to for help with the process. It does take a very very long time, so if you have a claim, get started sooner than later.

This is my experiment in creating a WordPress site. I’ve owned this domain for a very long time. I periodically change my various domains to try something new.

By the way, for those of you that are interested in purchasing this domain name, listen up. For the price of 1/2 of one Class A share of Berkshire Hathaway stock (NYSE: BRK.A), you can purchase this domain name. That would definitely help me in my goal of saving to retire. The price today is currently at $439,016.00/share.