Author: Simon

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Victory Garden Indeed

It’s of some amusement to me that I’ve been calling my vegetable garden a Victory Garden in times of relative peace, only to see the term re-enter our collective lexicon now that our food system is eroding under the COVID-19 crisis.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/home-and-garden/fight-the-pandemic-grow-a-victory-garden/ar-BB11XHKG

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/621868/coronavirus-revives-victory-gardens

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-update-more-people-growing-e2-80-98victory-gardens-e2-80-99-for-food-and-stress-relief/ar-BB11VZZo

Maybe “amusement” isn’t the proper term, but “irony” doesn’t seem right either.  No matter.

It is, however, encouraging to see so many taking it up.  And as chance would have it, I’ve expanded my own Victory Garden.

VG2

Squashes are the plan, since last year’s garden got a little crowded.

Also, as a suggestion to any would-be gardeners out there.  I’d strongly recommend sweet potatoes.  They’re easy to grow, ignored by most pests, prolific, and highly nutritious.  If you’re goal is to create a produce buffer, they’re an easy choice that requires very little effort.

Happy gardening!

–Simon

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Luck X2

I found one of these a year ago, and I’m hoping it’s a promise of things to come once again (I won some award at work around that time, as I recall):

rose clover
A rose clover

I found it somewhat difficult to find much information on these, aside from a few disjointed websites, but again, the consensus points to a five leaf clover granting both luck and wealth.  I can always use an extra helping of both.

–Simon

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Compost

A few years back I “fondly” recalled my parents’ compost pile.  That was during the Texas years.  It wasn’t fun.  I vowed to never force the experience upon my own kid.

And I have indeed stuck to that principle, though I’ve admittedly since started composting anyway.  But in fairness, there’s a lot of organic waste that needs to be disposed of, and why fill up the trash bins with it?  And we have gardens.  So fine–there are advantages.  But I won’t go crazy with it.

No, I’ll create a quaint and reasonable compost pile.

Right side: last year’s yard waste

Plus, I have a tiller to mix it up, so no manually turning with a pitchfork.

And so far, I’m impressed with how well it’s breaking down.  As new kitchen waste gets added to the pile (something I do make the kid take care of), I simply pile leaves on top from the edges to keep the stink down.

Apparently it’s possible to do these things non-obsessively.  Who knew?

–Simon

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Index Funds

Oh goody!  Please let this be another article from a self-proclaimed “expert”, blathering on about long-term plans and investing wisely.

It is not, to be clear.  You are safe here.

So what the hell am I going to talk about?  Why, it is indeed about investing, and probably wisely, and definitely with the long-term in mind.  But I am not an expert.  There’s the difference, I suppose.

FidelityMy employer migrated our 401ks to Fidelity.  I poked around in there for a while, using their retirement score projection algorithm to make some adjustments both to my investment strategy and my contributions.  It was really riveting stuff, but necessary if I ever want to leave cubicle life.  Then they gifted me some restricted stock units (stock I don’t get until I add another 2 years to my tenure), which got me interested in exploring Fidelity’s full site, and not just the dumbed-down version the company maintains for retirement snapshots.  And I admit, it looked cool, in the way a well-designed spreadsheet of data does.

I had never consciously invested for a variety of reasons:

  1. I never had the liquid assets to buy stock shares
  2. I knew very little about how the stock market works
  3. I was afraid
  4. It looked like a lot of work

But then I heard of Index Funds.  Well, I had heard of them before but never gave them much thought.  Their mention tended to pop up on podcasts and news segments, so the seed had been planted well before I seriously considered buying them outright (I don’t consider my 401k to be that granular–though it technically is investing in index funds under special tax benefits, albeit about as hands-off as you can get).

And after some rather very basic research, discovered that:

  1. Many of them required no minimum investment and have very small fees
  2. I didn’t need to know much to benefit from them
  3. Risk could be mitigated with preference–how safe an index I was willing to buy
  4. The investment strategy for them is passively managed and I could auto-invest, requiring almost no effort on my part

Okay, sounded kind of fun.  I searched for Fidelity-owned index funds that matched these qualifiers.  I decided to “diversify” with 3 of them, ultimately choosing 4 so I could have a dividend-paying index to add to the mix:

index funds

I linked my savings account for EFTs and bought $10 of each, then configured their auto-invest feature to automatically perform an EFT and buy $10 for each one on a rotating weekly basis.  I was an official investor!

Then COVID-19 struck and I subsequently lost 17% of my investments.  Ah well, I suppose they’ll go up again eventually (I won’t even mention what it’s done to my 401k!).

losses
My investment of $50 is now worth $41.26. Awesome.

But stocks are up today!  I might make a buck or two back!  Time will tell how well this works over the long term.  And I now have one more old man hobby to occupy my hours of solitude in the basement.

Liz has threatened to tell her father I’m investing so we have something to talk about.

Oh god.

–Simon

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Bad Times

My Grandmother died, and Coronavirus COVID-19 is officially now a pandemic.  These events are, fortunately, unrelated.  She died of late-stage dementia.

COVID-19 itself has a low mortality rate, but 3% of the world’s population is a lot of people.  Schools have disbanded.  Liz and I have been sent home to work.  And I’ve lost 15% of my retirement with the stock crash.

Things will no doubt recover.  But for posterity, these are bad times.