Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

Today, October 13, the stock market went on its largest one-day rebound since The Great Depression. My total holdings went up over 10%. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but I’m glad I’m not smart/stupid enough to try to time the market.

After all that we’ve been through, it sure feels nice to see only one red item on the screen today.

But as I’ve learned from Ms. Suzy Orman, the actual dollar amounts are misleading. You’ll always have to gain back more than you’ve lost. For example, if a portfolio valued at $10,000 drops 10%, that portfolio loses $1,000. Now that portfolio is worth $9,000.

To gain back that original $1,000, the portfolio must rise by at least 11%. It’s always harder getting back to zero.

Now that I have this one-day surge in my back pocket, I thought I’d take a look and see how I’ve faired in this topsy-turvy economic whirlwind. (so far)

I’ll set my portfolio value in May as the starting point. Let’s see now … [pulls out statements] … if May is … then [calculate, calculate] … ok, numbers …

Alright, here we go. By July, it dropped 6.5%. Acceptable. By September, it fell 12.9% from that May total.

But October is where it really hurt. As of today, even with the market bounce, I’m 29.1% down. To gain it all back, my portfolio is going to have to increase by 41%.

Wow. This is the first time I’ve actually crunched my numbers. This news is very depressing.

I’m so glad I’m still relatively young and have been practicing good money techniques for a while now. If I didn’t try to diversify, have a healthy emergency fund, live debt free, and get a mortgage I could afford, I’m sure I would be panicking way more than I am now.

Do you have any blood-curdling pre-Halloween financial tales to tell?

Tags: Life, Money by Ms.
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Today, I visited my two banks. The experience was almost Disneyesque. Every single bank worker from the door to the counter smiled at me and welcomed me to their bank. Each teller and account rep was unbelievably friendly and helpful. As I left, I received yet more smiles and wishes for a nice day.

I don’t know if Chase and Fifth Third Bank have had this customer service policy in place for a while or if this is in reaction to our country’s banking financial meltdown. (WaMu just went under yesterday.) Whatever the reason, the experience was very nice and kind of scary.

It was scary because service like that is so rare. I felt as if I was in a time warp. It was scary because service like that feels really great. “Yes,” I thought, “life could be like this if we went back to trying.” Also, it was scary because it probably is driven by desperation.

In case you were wondering, I went to put money in. I’m not cutting the strings (yet?), but it sure is tense out there isn’t it?

Tags: Life by Ms.
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Two days ago, I wrote about my awesome new vacuum cleaner. I reported that one of the drawbacks of this Hoover model is that the bonus allergy filter gets really dirty and is hard to clean.

I’m usually a pretty handy gal. I can figure out how machines work. On this occasion though, I completely misread the airflow on the vacuum.

I took this extra filter out, put the bagless canister back in the machine, and then used the hose attachment to suction off the dirt.

Yeah, that did not work.

I thought the main filter would be enough, but duh! This is the stuff that got past the main filter in the first place. That’s why the secondary filter is all dirty.

I know. It makes sense now.

But also, I somehow convinced myself that the airflow went the opposite way than it really does.

Wonderfully, all this mess did not go directly into the engine and break my new machine. I pulled out and cleaned the third level filter. It now works as before.

The boyfriend pointed out the logic loop I was trying to make work. He also referenced Being John Malkovich, which is a movie I don’t really remember well.

In any case, I know there’s a greater lesson here that I hope I will remember for the future. I’m just not sure what that lesson is exactly.

Tags: Life by Ms.
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