1. Holding on to a sinking stock.
2. Not  holding on to a sinking stock.

That’s right. As an investor you hold on to a sinking stock and as in investor you do not hold onto a sinking stock. WTF? You can click on the two reasons to take you to respective articles supporting both. I am not a trained stock trader or broker and I am not advocating any particular stocks. Nor am I telling you to hold, buy or sell what you currently have. I just find it fascinating that the most common mistakes made are contradictory.

There is a saying, you can’t gain anything if you don’t risk anything. Similarly, don’t let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then, Money in a mattress only collects dust mites and fleas, and well you get the point. Everyone has a saying that can be related to investing. Who is right? The experts that tell you to hold onto your money? The ones that tell you to sell your stocks when they drop? The ones that tell you not to worry and to hold on to them and possibly reinvest more money as the drop?

The award for most in need of a frontal lobotomy this week goes to stock brokers and money managers.

I repeat, I did not vote for Obama. Political alignment aside, I was open to giving Mr. Obama, sorry, President Obama, the benefit of doubt as he took office. Waiting to pass judgment until he was just about done with his term. Recent events have caused me to reconsider this position, or at least start him off with a C.

FOR THE LOVE OF PETE! You do not get elected by pinning all the current economic woes on the then president and associating your opponent so closely with the then president to the point people believe it, only to try and post key staff that have issues with there own money management. You already got lucky with the secretary treasury who failed to pay more in taxes then most of the people that voted for you make in a year pre-taxes. Now you have two more potential appointees back out because of the very same reason.

Nancy Killefer: and Tom Daschel:

Although it is a great ploy to draw attention from the guy that did get approved. Most people will probably now overlook the previous tax problems like they were nothing compared to these two. But it still leaves me with a very queasy feeling about his administration, and it is only a month into it. One piece of advice: avoid anyone that has had tax issues, or who could face possible jail time if they were audited.

As I was reading the news I had my own brilliant idea on how to make money. OK, so the credit really rests with the democrats and the republicans running the federal government of the U.S.A. See it starts by putting a treasury seceratary in place that sees helping banks to make incredibly risky loans to people that would not normally qualify for a loan as a great strategy. Then with the other hand you relax some of the immigration borders until you hit a critical mass of illegal immigrants and slowly start some infighting between the parties while even slower providing legal status to those illegal masses (which are the main source of the very risky loans, not that they all are or that I have a problem with immigration so I don’t want to hear about how insensitive I am, if I have to follow the rules, why don’t you?). Once you have the treasury rolling along you take that hand and begin to ease regulations on an already emotional market system that has little regulation to begin with. Then you wait several years for all the trains to collide. Why? Because you can continue accumulating massive debts worth billions of dollars because no one will ever call in your tab because you are just too big. Finally you offer to clean everything up by taking money that is not yours (and that does not really exist anyways which further increases your debts now in the trillions) and loaning it to those in trouble. And for what? A paltry percentage of the company that is asking for the money (and usually enough to be a large controlling percentage). Then you have control over a large number of companies (mostly banks) so you control pretty much all the wealth and flow of money. And you did it all with money you never had and that never really existed in the first place. To top it all off you make it look like it was the other parties fault while you all vote to give yourselves raises. I know where I work I don’t get to vote on whether or not to give myself a raise.

I forgot to mention, you finish it off by finally appointing a new treasury seceratary that “forgot” to pay over $30,000 in taxes, which is more then double what you would make working 40 hrs a week for all 52 weeks at the new $7.25 federal minimum wage.

The robot is done.

The reports are submitted.

The degree project completed.

Now just waiting for the grades to be posted.

Assuming I did well on all the reports, I expect another semester of all A’s. Making my final gpa for my master’s a nice even 4.0. I must admit though, I am very disappointed in the program. My undergrad degree at GA Tech was much more challenging. Not just because it was initial exposure to content, but because the professors were much stricter.

Should students in a master’s level program really be allowed to turn all the assignments up until the last day of class? With no penalties?

I also expected a little more structure and specialization to the program, along with more guidance and advice from a faculty advisor. Particularly as it related to the “degree program project”. I suppose it is my own fault for doing a project not sponsored by a faculty member, but rather a project actually related to my current job and occupation. Stupid me for trying to make it relevant.

 Anyways it is done. I am more then certain I passed everything and very certain I got that 4.0 for the semester and thus the program. But you never know.

In any case it means that I can now resume the regularly scheduled bloggin activities. So stay tuned.

So I have been giving some thought to trying to reduce my overall energy consumption. I have come to a conclusion, the best way to use less energy is to die. Excluding death alternatives include eating dyhdrated and salted foods, getting rid of the car/truck, computer and other electronics, switch back to candle light and wood burning stoves, no more hot water showers or hot water at all for that matter, hand wash and dry everything. Even doing all that I would still consumer a certain ammount of energy, especially indirectly in the form of clothing and food I buy. So there is no real way to completely eliminate energy consumption. Using that as a starting point I began looking at practical ways to reduce my energy consumption. The biggest and most obvious being to sell the truck and get a more fuel efficient car.

I like my truck but I would be willing to part with it. The better half and I have already discussed it and will probably be looking for a new car within the next year or so. Mark that one off the list.

This past year we had to replace the AC unit because the old one had a leak. The new unit had a slightly bigger capacity and was more efficient. We have started to use the “air dry” setting on the
dishwasher more and tend to use only cold water in the washing machine. Currently it makes no financial sense to replace the water heater with one of those new on demand tankless water heaters. The cost versus savings is not vesible for the time frame we plan on staying in the house.

On top of that I have been looking at alternate sources of energy. Most specifically at solar since wind power does not make practical sense for the area I am in. To that end I have spent the past few days reading up on and trying to understand solar power, solar cells/panels, and the like. As of right now they make less sense then the tankless water heater. Sure I could save on my electricity bill, but the upfront cost is arround $40,000.00 Let me walk you through arriving at that number. First, I assumed an average monthly usage of 1,000 kWh. Our actual usage is below that, but this is a nice number to work with. Doing some basic math that works out to about 33.3 kWh a day or about 33,300 Wh a day. Assuming about 4.5 hours of peak sunlight/power production a day that comes down to 7400 watts. (where did get that 4.5 hrs and all the other numbers? take a look at: Grid Minimum Size Calculator) If you figure on using a solar panal rated between 160 to 180 watts you need between 40 and 47 panels. Lets just say 45. Now the panels range in price between $750 and $1000 usually arround $800. So for 45 panels providing 100% of my electric needs it would cost about $36,000. Now looking at current rates charged by a local power company depend on the season, so lets look at both seasons. (winter/summer). The first 650 kWh is always 4.675 cents, which equals $30.3875. Now the next 350 kWh are 3.99 cents kWh in the winter and 7.738 cents kWh in the summer. All this comes to $13.965 in the winter and $25.83 in the summer. So the estimated permonth cost in winter is $44.35 and the summer is $56.22. Assuming the panels provide the entire energy need, then the monthly bill for the power company would be $0 so the estimated cost is the estimated savings which comes to a total savings per year of $579.67. Looking back, the initial setup cost of just the solar panels (this does not even include any converters, batteries, or mounting required) we see the number $36,000. More of that annoying math shows that it would take about 62 years for the solar panels to be paid off.

Well sure 62 years doesn’t look that bad, but what about maintenance costs? Or what happens if you have a string of cloudy days so the panels are not that efficient? Note: the panels usually only have a 25 yr warranty so you could expect to replace all the panels twice in that time period, but we will assume that you never do for this example. To keep things nice and even lets just say you could potentially expect the solar panels to be worthwhile after 70 years. Great if you plan on staying in your house that long. On top of that you have to consider the size of the panels. Average size seems to be about 5ft by 3 ft for a total area of 15 ft^2 per panel, or arround 675 ft^2 for the assumed 45 panels. Add in some extra footage for the mounting and other accessories needed and say arrounf 700 ft^2 ( not to mention needing to make sure the roof or wherever they are to be mounted can support the weight as well).

Now the little missus and I do not plan on staying in the house for even 10 yrs, in reality we will probably be moving in about 5 yrs. So all the above just means unless the price of the solar panels drops bellow $400, then no incentive to do it now.

But wait Mr. Retarded Sushi man, aren’t you forgetting about the power company buying back any excess power? Yes and on purpose. The power companies will buy back excess power, but do not actually gurantee that they will buy it back. The company I was looking at only promises to buy back a total (that means everyone selling power back to them) 0.2% of the average peak load from the previous year. And you have to pay them a metering few to track the power. So I basically just ignore the sell back. All this means is that unless you will be staying where you are for more then 60 years, I would not consider adding solar power to your house. I won’t until the price drops, and drops alot. And for those that are wondering about just adding a panel or two, assuming a panel rated for 160 watts, that would be about 2.2% of the total need, so a savings of about $12.75 per year.

So much for switching to solar.

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