Back At It and Why I Do This

Hello everyone.
I apologize for the extremely long hiatus. However, because lots of kind strangers have asked me to start writing again, I've decided to acquiesce and do so.

I figure that I should begin this series of new posts by reiterating why I started this blog in the first place. If you ask my mom, she'll tell you that ever since I could speak, I've always talked about becoming rich. Any of my previous girlfriends can also attest to the fact that I talk about my dreams of being wealthy a lot. Call it an obsession. Don't get me wrong - I understand that money doesn't necessarily buy happiness. There are certainly lots of people with more money than they know what to do with who are unhappy. However, there are also a lot of people who are poor and absolutely miserable. Money CAN buy peace of mind, among other things.

My desire to be rich comes from multiple places. I didn't grow up poor, but I was working class and went to an extremely prestigious boarding school for high school. When I got there, I saw how the 'other side' lived. Before arriving at my high school, I didn't know that there were people who owned three homes and could afford to pay $30,000+ a year to send their kids to high school. And while in high school, my roommate and best friend to this day always read books about investing while I was out at parties on Saturday nights. I've always had a certain facility with numbers and the thought of making money with my intellect as opposed to the sweat of my brow appealed to me.

As a result, I began learning about how to handle money - how to invest it and how to make it grow. I began reading books and watching the financial news. In college, I would take every dollar I received from my job as a cashier in the Student Union and throw it at the stock market. I didn't really know anything about how to pick stocks, so I decided to subscribe to a stock picking newsletter. I made a few hundred dollars as a result and knew that I wanted to be a member of the investor class. After college, I lived at home and saved up a little over $15,000 and invested it. Over the next two years or so, I had to dip into that stash and eventually it was depleted. I subsequently built it back up two times through diligent saving and investing, but because of the expenses of life, I eventually had to use it all again.

Let me just say before I go any further that I can think of only a few experiences in life which are more exhilarating than waking up in the morning and seeing $1600 more in your bank account than the previous day, all because you decided to buy a particular investment. I want everyone to have that experience. I don't necessarily believe there's a plutocratic conspiracy to keep the majority of people in the dark about how to handle money, but a lot of people indeed are in the dark about it. This needn't be the case.

The conventional wisdom is that if you go to school, get an education, and work hard, then maybe you can retire a millionaire with a fat 401(k) plan or Individual Retirement Account (IRA). That doesn't sound appealing to me at all and I hope that it doesn't sound appealing to you either. I want to get rich and I want you to get rich also and not just rich, but rich while you're young enough to enjoy it! On a side note, here's a link to an article about how getting too much education can be a bad financial move:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703389004575033063806327030.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth

Back to what I was saying before. In this blog, I'll be dropping some common and uncommon
financial knowledge about how to achieve not just your financial goals, but your life goals, because let's face it, money affords you options. If there's anything you would like me to explore, don't hesitate to contact me at jcp182000@yahoo.com. I'm always open to suggestions because I'm still learning about money and will continue to do so until I die. Here's to getting rich together someday!

-JCP aka JP $ (JP Dollar)