I thought I should try to be more active with my 401(K), but it turns out those things offer you very little in the way of options. Why can't we just have a tax-deferred account that we can distribute into whatever investments we want and has no restrictions as to who can use it? 401(K), IRA, Roth IRA -- they all SUCK!!!

Baby Steps

I bought my first stock today! Oh, I feel like an adult now. :)

Anyway, the broker recommended the Central Fund of Canada, and I should be able to buy about 50 shares. He suggests buying about 100 shares in CEF before moving on to other things. That will be another month's worth. Then we can start diversifying.

In other news, the G8 is meeting and talking about moving away from the dollar. They're trying to soften the blow, though, by saying it applies to all fiat currency and by saying it will take many years to do this. We'll see. If the US economy continues to decline, the situation could escalate.

In the meantime, I have sent the paperwork to my parents for opening their own account. My dad still needs some convincing, though.

My money got deposited in my account on Wednesday, but by the time I found out it was was too late to contact my broker before he left for the long holiday weekend. I'll call him Monday.

I'm taking the opportunity to brush up on my accounting knowledge and get better at reading and (more importantly) interpreting financial statements. I bought Reading Financial Reports for Dummies which takes a surprisingly real-world (read: cynical) approach. I like it! :)

Meanwhile I keep hoping my mom will get through to my dad on the importance of this. She asked me to send her the paperwork, and I'll do that this weekend.

I'm still in something of a state of limbo. My paperwork finally arrived at the brokerage, but now I have to fund my account.I have the money (a little, anyway), but my credit union doesn't seem to let me wire money to them, so I'll have to mail them a check. That will take days to get there and possibly a couple of weeks to clear. I'll see if I can find a quicker way because that is very disappointing.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to convince my parents of the importance of considering the dire state of our economy and what they may need to do about it. But my dad is very stubborn and extremely reluctant to do anything even remotely different -- let alone something as radical as investing in a foreign market. I'll visit them next weekend, so maybe talking about it face-to-face will help.

Hemorrhage

The news looks more and more grim. I'm really starting to wonder if I'll have a chance to get any money invested before this whole thing hits -- let alone have enough to actually be financially sound. The only good thing (for me, at least, not for the economy) is that the other countries seem to be intent on slowly reducing their dollar assets...which will hopefully buy me some time. But it will likely become more and more difficult to invest in the coming months (even if the economy doesn't collapse), as the weakening dollar will mean foreign stocks will be increasingly more expensive.

Our economy is bleeding out, and I'm a long way from the hospital.

Is it already too late?

I read this article today, and it really has me worried. It isn't so much the smugglers who got caught; it's the other things -- the increasing derision foreign nations have for our economy. Things really do look very bad right now, and I'm afraid it all may tank before I have a chance to do anything about it. I'm working as fast as I can, but will it be enough? Could the whole thing fall apart in the next few days, before I have a chance to even make an initial investment?

Hopefully not. Most people seem to think not. I hope they're right. But that's the problem with awakening to a new reality. Suddenly there's so much you don't know, so much you aren't prepared for. There's a period of fear and uncertainty as you try to reorganize yourself to be ready for what may come. And it's so hard to know how much fear is justified.

Nothing's ever simple

I talked to the broker today. He pointed me to some paperwork I have to submit via snail mail.

I only have a few hundred dollars to invest at the moment, but I'll have more soon enough. He told me that wouldn't be enough to properly diversify and they generally advise waiting until you have a few thousand dollars to invest before beginning. But I want to get started. There will always be an excuse to wait. More importantly, what if it takes me 4 months to save up that much money...and what if the economy collapses in 3 months. What good did waiting do me.

$400-ish dollars may not buy much, and I may lose it all by not being diversified. But I'll (essentially) lose it all anyway if the economy collapses. At that point, my $400 won't make much difference. My thinking is, if it comes to the point that my $400 matters, then $400 won't matter.

Anyway, I'll mail the paperwork tomorrow. They should get it early Monday or Tuesday. Hopefully I might even own some stock by week's end.

We'll see.