Ep. 109 Investments, Flings, Home Improvement is boring, Movie Candy and Standup Comedy

Welcome to another episode of TMM…

In this episode we finish my chat with my friend and comedian Christine Lederman, but as usual I want to cover a couple of things first.

One is from an article in the Wall Street Journal from Sunday June 12th.  I have to recommend the Wall Street Journal.  You should at least get the online version plus the Sunday/weekend edition and here’s why: 1) it’s a very credible conservative news source, so if you’re a conservative I don’t need to convince you.  If you’re a liberal and your bias against this paper then you’re being exactly what you complain about.  People need to be more open minded and accepting of others lifestyles and opinions.  I agree.  Start by reading something that may take you outside your comfort zone.  2)  Senior Moron discount!  I’m currently getting the digital version of the Journal app plus I get the paper on Sunday morning which is very nice to nostalgically read an actual newspaper and since it’s the Wall Street Journal it leads me to 3)  I feel like a grown up reading the paper on Sunday morning.

Back to the article - this is moron curmudgeon stuff too… the title is: “The Age of Emotional Overstatement - From social media to job applications, the pressure to declare our feelings in public is turning us into gushing adolescents.”  If you remember the beginning of last episode, Christine mentioned how hard it is to get kids to hire and actually show up for work because they are in constant need of mental health days.  In a sense we parents are responsible for that mentality.  When they were kids playing soccer or whatever sport, everyone had to get a trophy… and every kid had to have a speech made about what a gift they were to the team and with 95% of the kids, they forgot the goddamn plastic trophy when we left the pizza place.  Seriously.  It’s ridiculous and with all the value that team sports provides, we ruin it by giving everyone a trophy.  Please knock that shit off with our grandchildren.  That’s not how life works.

Back to the article, she recounts a birthday wish from one of her fellow 21st century parents that posted on social media… “Happy 17th Birthday, Miles!” reads the typical parent-to-offspring entry. A previous generation might have stopped there, deeming the well-wishing sufficient acknowledgment of the day. But today’s parent has only just begun her tribute to the sunshine golden star-child who grew into the brilliant, gorgeous, side-splittingly funny, preternaturally gifted athlete (‘Go, Big Blue!’), not to mention the kindest person upon this earth as well as the head of the yearbook committee, who is loved “to the moon and infinity and back and to infinity again and to whatever lies beyond infinity…”  We can’t just say happy birthday anymore, it’s got to be this ridiculously syrupy emotional outpouring and it  has GOT to be made public so everyone can see how grateful I am. 

This Sunday’s Journal… as in June 19th 2022, has a couple of articles that caught my eye… one from the “intelligent investor”, Jason Zweig, titled “To Stand Up  to a Bear Market, Act Cool- and Act Your Age” meaning, if you’re young don’t sweat this depression- recession- stagflation or whatever the hell you want to call it.  Still invest slowly and regularly.  In fact ‘Ol Warren Buffet says this is the best time to buy, when prices are going down.  Quote, “if you like hamburgers, you want the price of hamburgers to go down not up.” So have your kids and grandkids look at this as a great time to start investing when prices are low or going to be lower.  It’s us old farts that need to worry because we are about to make those investments part of our annual income.  

I’m sure If  you’re thinking of retiring in the next couple of years, you have been giving it second thoughts.  Another interesting tip from this article is: If you’re going to retire anyway, think about retiring without drawing your social security.  Can you do that?  I think so.  They advise delaying Social Security until 70… if you can pull that off.  The reason is that the fed will increase your benefits based on inflation and your eventual SS check once you start.  The more you can put it off the better your payout will be once you need it, “need” being the operative word.  

Another tip to note is that with the prime interest rate going up, the yields on income-producing assets are going up as well.  What the hell is an income-producing asset?  Hell if I know… some to learn more about might be rental properties, which could be a pain in  the ass unless you employ a property management company or you could invest in Property management companies themselves…OnlineMarketplaces.com suggests “Rightmove” and “onthemarket” which are both on the London exchange, there’s another in Germany called Scout24.  Obviously I’m talking outta my ass and if you have any kind of a stock portfolio you would never take advice from a Moron, but you could check with your professional investor and see what they think.  This would be a perfect topic for the Senator, and I’ll get him on eventually.

Also, safer and therefore lower yield investments might be something like Certificates of Deposit which should have higher yields than the last five years as interest rates have gone up and will probably continue to go up.  The problem with CD’s for a moron like me is that CD’s are usually sold in blocks of $10,000 which I would never have but if you’re the Senator you’d have that much just to buy a puppy.

Okay… I can’t believe I talked that much about finance.  And i wonder if you thought for a half second, “wow, sounds like he might know what he’s talking about.”  I do not.  Can you imagine the level of bullsh*t you get from so called experts in the field whose main goal is to make you think that?  That they’re an expert and you should hang on their every word.  Remember Jim Cramer?  That investor guy who used to be on CNBC… he had a show called “The Street” and he would hit buzzers and bells over stock buys and he always had his sleeves rolled up to make you think he was a hard working joe like the rest of us.  Remember him?  There was the housing bubble of 2007 and then the Fanny Mae Freddy Mac business and then in 2008 Cramer said that Bear Stearns, one of the biggest investment banks in the world, was doing fine…

… and then the following week they collapsed. 

Hell I can do that.  The Modern Moron Investment Firm.  We make money the old fashioned way, we burn it.  

Man I can talk can’t I?  There’s no one to shut me up, which is why I need guests.  Like my guest Christine Lederman.  

We pick up where I ask her about a nice little romance she had during quarantine in her condo complex which leads us to a conversation about the house she recently purchased, home improvement projects and how they are never finished and she painted the interior and then… she catches us in the midst of a boring conversation and she puts the brakes on home improvement talk.  Thank God… Where was she when we needed her in the middle of this intro.  So… Pandemic fling, home improvement, movies we’ve seen recently and a discussion about movie candies… what’s your favorite and do you buy them at the movie theater or do you stop at the drug store and get candy like this Moron?

Investments, flings, movie candies and other things on The Modern Moron… and thank you for listening.

CLOSE - I forgot to tell you we talked about Johnny Depp and Top Gun for about a minute, sorry about that.  

We are going to keep tabs on Christine’s standup schedule this fall and if you’re in the Denver/ Boulder area you can probably catch her workshopping parts of her upcoming show.  

Wouldn’t it be great if she just exploded on the comedy scene and we can all say I remember when she did that podcast.  It could happen you gus.  As always thank you for listening, please forward this to someone you think would enjoy it or to someone who would hate it but tell them you think they’d love it.  It’ll be fun, try it… see you next time.