Raw Deal

'Steady, As She Goes', is a nautical term. It's also the name of a song by The Raconteurs. You may be familiar with it: "Find yourself a girl and settle down. Live a simple life in a quiet town.". And so on and so forth. Written in 2006, the title may be too sexist to fly in today's hypersensitive environment. I can understand why you'd call a postman a letter carrier, but things have gone too far. I'm Greek. I've heard all the Greek jokes from "How do they separate the men from the boys in the Greek Army?" to "Why did the little Greek boy run away from home?". If you haven't heard them, you've lived a sheltered life. If you have, you get the drift. It's no big deal. These days, they're calling a snowman a snowperson. And you wonder why they voted for Trump.

When I moved back to Ithaca close to 25 years ago, two things jumped out at me. Number one is you needed a car. Car sharing services are available now, but in those days, no dice. I'd spent over ten years riding the subways, trolleys and buses in Philadelphia. Shoe leather express, too. Number two is that the wages were depressed, and from what I understand, they still are. The local workers' center has a "Living Wage Coalition", where they try to get blue collar laborers a decent minimum wage, but from all the economic activity in the area, there's not enough participants from employers. Ithaca's not alone, either. It's a nation of have and have-nots.

"I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?"

Except for three years in media sales in Manhattan and the Tri-State area surrounding New York City, I've been a have-not. Graduating from college, I thought my métier would be in the business world, but my priorities changed. Got the writing bug. You can do that in your 20's. Manhattan was too expensive, so on to Philly, The City of Brotherly Love. Back in those days, you didn't have as many creature comforts. With a bed and a boombox, you could live just about anywhere. Cable, smartphones, and computers were only on the horizon. I could practically panhandle my rent. Underemployment paid in the big city, too. One day's work as a banquet waiter could take care of expenses for a week. It's not that way in Ithaca. Very expensive to live here.

My M.O. when I get up in the morning is to immediately check my iPhone. Email, sports scores, stock futures, The Weather Channel app, and especially Twitter. I'm not on Facebook. Don't want to be bothered. No way. No how. If you have children or grandchildren, that's a different story. You need to send and receive those family photos PDQ. I'm a lurker on Twitter. Don't tweet, just use it as a news feed. Primarily follow financial services, technology info, and the beat writers for the Boston Red Sox and New York Giants. Locally, it's #twithaca. Indispensable for what's going on in town. The Ithaca Journal, Ithaca Times, Ithaca Voice, 14850.com all post pertinent breaking news. Even the obituaries.

My limited exposure to Facebook has been as an investment. I watch a lot of business news and tracked the Road Show. Big IPO at the time. Wouldn't you know it (and this happens frequently), the stock cratered after it began trading on the NASDAQ. People put their life savings into it and got burned. When it got to its all time low, I backed up the truck. Lucky guess, but made a killing. That said, I also lost my shirt on another trumped up security. Came out a little ahead, but would've been better off in an S&P 500 index fund. Like John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard said, “Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack.”.

Money is important...to everybody. Many of the Beatnicks, Hippies, Punks, or whatever grassroots movement is popular these days come from wealth. Trust Fund Babies. Arts and Entertainment 101: get a good day job. Something I failed to do and paid the price. I'm fortunate that my father financially mentored me. Starting in my 30's, I salted away as much cash as I could. Even as a have-not, the market's been good to me. It's been good to a lot of people. Not just the one percent. Nevertheless, it's a rigged system. You do a five to seven year stretch for smoking a joint in some states. Collapse the financial system, you get a slap on the wrist and a golden parachute. You've got to play their angles.

The stock market can be a dangerous place. But if you'd bought a total domestic market index ETF or mutual fund in 2007, right before the Great Recession and subsequent market crash, you'd have doubled your money in ten years. Much better than a savings account which generates zero interest. Time is strange when you're older. Years fly by. That decade since the financial meltdown is a blip on the radar screen. At eleven years old, "Summer in the City" by The Lovin' Spoonful began playing on the radio of our Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon. I hadn't heard it in five years. At that age, it seemed like a lifetime ago. Now twenty years ago is like yesterday.