Retirement

Assumptions:
4% inflation
7% roi

I require 38,000$/year to live a comfortable lifestyle.
To make this for 40 years while I'm in retirement, I'll need to pay out 182,400$ each year (38000$ after 4% inflation).
To reach 182,400$ or more / year in retirement I need to invest $12,000 @7% or higher each year for 40 years.

This is what I call a conservative estimate. In good years I hope to get higher than 7% return and my faith in the capitalist market and the continuing progress of science and technology lead me to be positive. I, like most investors, believe myself to be a good investor.

I also plan to invest more early on, alleviating the need to invest as much in the later years. 18000$ / year means I'd only have to work 35 years to pay for 40 years of living past retirement.

As my income increases with inflation and promotions, putting in the same amount of money (14000$+/year) will be a smaller and smaller piece of the total pie.

Hence, I'll be taken care of if I make 14,000 + 38,000$/year. $52,000/year or more moving forward.

WMI

Waste Management is a company that seems to have a systematic approach to waste removal. They are probably making money on reusing the objects that they pick up too.

CVS & RiteAid

CVS should buy RiteAid.

RiteAid is just a sliver of a company and CVS is a monster. Either RiteAid needs to innovate some technology to get ahead of CVS and grow very very fast or CVS should just buy RiteAid.

Finance

Disclaimer -- taking investment advice from me makes you an idiot and me not responsible for your actions.

There are a number of respected sources that are detecting a contraction in the market and an economic recession following it. Unemployment numbers could be as high as 12% and inflation based on non-substitution CPI could be as high as 8%. Some warning signs are starting to show up but I imagine that the market will be strong until January 2008. Then investors will get spooked and shift their money to 'safer investments'. Maybe they'll pay off their credit card debt.

After moving my own money around, I'm back to building up 6 months of living expenses. I have it, more or less. The trick is moving the "more or less" to just "I have it".

There are a bunch of companies that I like, despite the warnings above. I always look long term which tends to ignore initial price. My list:
X, BP, XOM, MCD, KO, LMT, LTD, FDM, INTC, AMD, VZ, WMT, MSFT, ORCL, SUNW, GE, ACN, BAES, AHO, SWY, BRK, C, BAC, F, TM, LLL, BUD, PFE, MRK, DIS, CMCSK, HD, TGT, CAT, AEP, FDX, UPS, CSX, R, UNP, MO, NVDA, HP, DELL, UARM, IBM.

This is an extensive list, and some of them have been researched and others are based on intuition or common sense. Some of them are overpriced for the short term (3-5 years).

In my understanding, and according to Nobel Prize winning strategies, an investor should diversify their holdings. However, Institutional Investors such as Warren Buffett have always been focused on acquiring a small number of companies that their research shows will outperform the market. For example, Coca Cola, Hershey's Chocolate, and Budweiser Beer will sell products in a good economy or a bad one.

Hence, research into company investment should be limited to approximately 7 companies that are run well, have multiple products, have existed for longer than 10 years, and
are going to increase in value at a greater rate than any other investment. Investments should be long term and only when the fundamentals that led to the purchasing decision have changed should you decide to divest yourself of ownership of that company.

more thoughts to come.

Movies

Seabiscuit was a good movie. Toby Mcguire is an excellent actor. I also learned a little bit about Buick's early start which was interesting.

Google News

Google News is much better with this filter: -Iraq -bomb -israel -palestinian -abortion -murder -bribe -sex -marijuana

I guess I just don't want to know about it.

Shopping

So, I bought a costco card last weekend for $45 and today visited a costo to purchase supplies. $340 worth of supplies should last about a year and a half. I'll still have to buy some perishables but major items have been accounted for in bulk.

Efficiency, planning, and profit win the day. The 45$ was paid for with savings and there is an estimated savings of 50$ above and beyond that.

In other news....the bookstore didn't carry any books on Spring.

Java J2EE Spring

Now I'm learning Aspect Oriented Programming, J2EE beans, and the Spring environment. As long as I can keep up with it, my powers will grow.

In other news, Republicans in Virginia are trying to ban gay civil unions in their state by writing it into their constitution. Legislating morality is a terrible thing. Between that and various anti-pro-choice changes that are proposed I feel that a huge leap backwards is happening for our country. What happened to freedom? I hope that this will be resolved sooner than later.

Computing Power

So, its about time for me to buy a new computer....or build one. The following trends come to mind: Moore's and Kryder's.

Of course, I haven't been sticking to my budget like I should so I don't have the money saved up to buy a computer. I'm looking at a December timeline. In the meantime, I can do research and decide on laptop versus desktop versus server.

For my birthday 2 years ago, I was going to buy myself a new desktop (1/4 years) but the aforementioned Moore's law had failed and I was peeved about not getting my 4.0 ghz processor. Actually the measurement that I need to keep track of is FLOPS. How many floating point operations can my new processor do with the available RAM and system BUS? I have time to do the research.

Focus

Wax on. Wax off.