Thursday 28 March 2024
Petticoat 5, computer for women.
Wednesday 27 March 2024
Spring.
1
Tuesday 26 March 2024
Time was...
I come from an era of Elvis, of Yuri Gagarin, of cups and saucers, of when we still polished our shoes, of the Morris Minor, Vesta curries, of Teddy boys, and 'bouffant' hair.
We stood still and removed our hats as a hearse went by, we had a shilling pocket money each week for sweets (if we were lucky), and we had a dressing-up box.
We had gloves on strings that were threaded through our sleeves, we had fathers who went to work with a folded newspaper an umbrella and a neatly folded mackintosh over his left arm, we went for long tedious walks on Sundays.
Aeroplanes still had propellers, some cars still had starting handles, and there were no yellow lines on the roads.
We had teachers who would thrash us for not being able to translate 'Cotta's army advanced from the South' into Latin, we would be thrown into the deep end of a pool to teach us how to swim, and we were made to write 'I must not ask to be excused' 500 times if we needed to have a pee during lessons.
We ate spotted dick, rice pudding with jam, and frogspawn.
We all knew the difference between a man and a woman, we didn't use the F word every few seconds, and we didn't eat 'take-away' meals every night.
We didn't have allergies, we didn't spend all day on the phone, and we didn't grunt when spoken to.
We also had to visit a shop to buy things, buy stamps to send letters, and use a road map to find directions. We had no TV's, no CD players, no GPS, and no Laptops.
Life was hard.
Monday 25 March 2024
Be careful who advises you!
Groucho Marx famously said that "A Stockbroker is someone who invests your money until it's all gone". I tend to think something similar about 'Financial Advisers'.
If financial advisers knew so much they would be investing in their own recommendations. Instead of which they charge a client good money, and also take commission on securities purchased. Their remit is to make money from the punters rather than investing themselves in the recommended punts.
I have never had dealings with a financial adviser, but I do know someone who did. Admittedly she was a tad naïve and knew nothing of investing, whilst having a large amount of money to invest. When she mentioned to me that she had arranged a meeting with her financial adviser I nearly fell over backwards.
I knew the sum she had to invest, so I immediately got to finding her something that would have offered good rewards. I found a small period freehold terraced house in S London. It was very attractive, had recently been restored, and was well within her budget. She rejected the idea at once, then some while later visited her advisor.
I'm sure you know what's coming next, and you'd be right. The house would now be worth about £2.5 Million, the monthly rental income would be around £2,500, yet her own choice of investments performed miserably.
By chance I noticed the above article in this week's Sunday Times. In this case the adviser recommended Goldmines and other Offshore Investments all of which failed.
Presumably the person who lost all his money (an ex-footballer) failed to ask his adviser how much money he himself had in the shares he was recommending; something I would advise everyone to do in the future.