Cash Flow . . .

 Cash flow is often a measure of how successful a business is doing.  But to me it is something else.

When I started investing in stocks and bonds I selected those investments based on yield.  Yield is the rate of the dividend for year paid usually quarterly, interest rates that can be pain anywhere from daily to annually and/or capital gains which is the appreciation of the asset that has been sold.  I deliberately selected investments that pay something.  In the case of dividends it was usually at least 3% per year.

And that is my definition of my cash flow, cash flowing into my accounts.  I soon found a host of investments that paid dividends or yields of some sort.  I found life insurance would pay about 4% a year usually on an annual basis.  I have one policy, a Universal Life insurance policy that currently pays me on a monthly basis 4.5%.  My cash value of my regular insurance policies pay me 4% per year.  I usually have that stipend converted to paid up additional insurance thus compounding my return.

In the case of my three New York Life insurance policies I have not paid a dime in premiums in years but let the existing policies take the "dividends" which are essentially a return of capital, to buy more insurance.  Today the cash values exceed the amounts of the original face value of the policies.  I just let them sit there and do their thing and it makes more and more money of time.  I am sure my children will enjoy the largess when I die.

All of my investments pay me something.  I do not have a pure growth stock in my portfolio.  I do have such instruments such as Master Limited Partnerships (aka MLPs). Real Estate Investment Trusts (aka REITs) and some Closed End Funds.   All of them pay something.  In the case of MLPs and REITS must pay out  a large percentage of their annual income, you get to pay the taxes on that but the returns are usually around 6% or greater annually.  Given that a Certificate of Deposit only pays something like less than a half of a percent annually, well that is a great return for your money.

In recent years I have not bought or sold bonds.  The Federal Open Market Committee controls the interest rates and artificially suppressed the yield to less than half of a percent.   So stocks are a much better investment given that their returns are not controlled by the FOMC.  I do have some municipal bond funds and have not done anything with then for years.  I just collect whatever they pay and usually reinvest in stocks that pay much better.

So what does all this mean.  I means that between my IRA and regular brokerage accounts we accrue about $20,000 a year.  About half of that is in the IRA and thus is tax sheltered.  My annual objective is to make my IRA regenerate at least what I have to take out annually.  On average I have done that, some years I don't make back and other years I make back and more, so on balance my IRA has generally stayed the same in value and yet the Government required distribution grows per law.

This year has been spectacular and I believe is being driven by the Dem Congress shenanigans.  We are gonna pay for that later with higher taxes.

Cash flow has been very good to us.

Lessons Learned . . .

 Years ago when my father was still alive, he sold a rent house that he and his children owned together, he owned half and us kids owned the other half but he had control of the deal.  He got tired of dealing with it and so he sold it.

He took the money from the sale and bought three annuities of equal amounts ostensibly for the three of his children or in the case of my deceased brother, his children.  The annuities were earing about 8% or so and we were the assigned inheritors of the annuities.  He reached an age where he had to sell the annuities or annuitize them.  He chose to sell annuities and put the proceeds in our names with a brokerage account.

He asked me what I wanted to do with the money and I said, "Get a tax exempt bond fund."  He asked my sister and she did not have a clue as to what to do so he did for her what he did for me, bought into a Franklin Tax Exempt Mutual fund.  In the case of my brothers children, he simply distributed the money amongst the the four of them equally.

My sister kept the bond fund for awhile but could not tolerate the changes up and down of the fund.  It was not very volatile but it was enough to bother her.  So she sold it and took the cash,  I have no idea what she did with it but I suspect she put it into her house.  She was divorced, a single mother but her children were grown and had been well taken care of by their father.  She had become a school teacher and did not make a lot of money, so she used it to probably pay off her house, or at least pay the mortgage down.  She lived very frugally as she had little or no excess money.  I know that my father helped pay for her mortgage here and there over the years.

I took the monthly yield, usually about $100 or more in tax free interest from the Franklin Fund and put it into my T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund.  It was a monthly pay out and I did that for several years until I moved to New Mexico and had to sell the Franklin Fund to buy a house in Ruidoso, NM.  I never thought much about the money that went into the New Horizons fund, I just let it ride and reinvested whatever the fund generated in income over the years.

About three years ago, that fund paid me just under $10,000 in capital gains.  I was astounded.  I had quit reinvesting in the fund when I moved from New Mexico to Texas in early 2002.  I had generally swept the proceeds into a money market fund for selective reinvesting.  Last year the fund paid me just over $10,000 in long term capital gains and almost $5,000 in short term capital gains.

The lesson learned is to let an investment grow.  The T. Rowe Price New Horizons fund has continued to grow and grow in value.  And it has continued to pay an outstanding capital gains annually.  Have patience and avoid rapid and early cashing out of a wind fall such as the one I got from my father.

I never got to really thank my father for the windfall, I regret that immensely.

Its Been A While . . .

 It has been a while since I signed into the old blog.  The old password was kaput, so had to go through the trials and tribulations of setting up a new password.  There is no reason for the change except that Google does not like to use old passwords.  Finally got through that rig-a-marole and here we go again.

On December 31, 2020 Judie became a paraplegic, she can no longer walk.  She developed a blood clot in her lower spine (known as a Hematoma) that essentially crushed the nerves so she does not feel anything from her waist down to her toes.  The Neurosurgeon successfully removed the blood clot and all the pain went away but we had to learn a new life style and make a lot of changes.

We had to sell her car and get a Dodge van modified with a ramp so an electric wheel chair can be loaded and unloaded with her in it of course.  And we had to remove a bath tub and shower arrangement and modify the space into a hand shower set up so she can take a shower in a wheeled chair.  And we had to get a Hoyer lift to get her into and out of her new hospital like bed.  And mattress had to be changed to an air mattress that constantly cycles to prevent bed sores.

And she did develop pressure sores, had an operation to get all the bad tissue out and has gone through a long and arduous stay in hospitals get the sores healed.  They are not finished healing yet but are close to being healed up.  She spent up wards of five months, closer to six months in hospitals and rehab facilities but is home now.  

She has gone through a heart procedure to treat her A-Fib to prevent strokes.  Her mother suffered almost 10 years with strokes.  That was the installation of Atriclip, a clip that goes on the appendage of the heart that leads to strokes.  It is an external thing to the heart but does involve poking holes in her left side and various tools used to install the clip.  It is considered day surgery but she had reactions to it after it was over.  It triggered a lot of A-Fib reactions and the Cardiologist opined it was the heart protesting the clip.  Later we found one of the drugs she was taking interfered with the anti-A-Fib drug and triggering A-Fib.  We stopped that drug, Airecept, which is a memory enhancement drug.  She now takes Pacerone which treats A-Fib.  Since she has sworn off the Airecept the A-Fib attacks have stopped. 

I am the chief nurse and bottle washer plus cook and dishwasher.  Well the dishes get washed in the dishwasher and the clothes get washed in the washing machine.  But I am the one that puts in the dishes and clothes and unloads them after washing or hangs up the clothes and puts away the silver ware.  But I do cook breakfast, instant grits and turkey sausage plus some fruit daily.  The something lite for her lunch and then supper.  We have ventured out to eat once so far and probably will do more later.  Sometimes I go get sandwiches or to go food.

She has a spiffy electric wheel chair now, trimmed in purple.  It could have been blue or green or red but she selected purple ala LSU.  It is an amazing machine and should be.  We had to pay for one feature, a vertical lift of about 10 inches.  All the rest was paid for by Medicare.  Here is the startling fact that blew my mine, it cost $31,000.  We had to pay $2,600 for the vertical lift mechanization.  It has headlights, a horn and a clock in it.  Turns on a dime and gives you change and weighs about 300 pounds.  So do not get run over buy it.  We already have a dent in the refrigerator from a clash with the chair, minor thing but a reminder of how powerful it is.

We are settling in after all the various hospital stays and recoveries.  We have long term care insurance and will get her some care people after we finish with the pressure sores.  That treatment is paid for by Medicare so we do not have to pay for medical care yet.  But once that is over, we will have to pay for her daily care if I can not provide it.  Fortunately, we have the long term care insurance and it has been approved.

Life goes on no matter what happens.

What a Struggle . . .

 It was a struggle to get back into my Blog, False-River, again.  Google does everything not to help you.  You have literally fight your way back into the Blog.  

Well here I am.  I have much to tell but that will occur later.  I have to go fix supper for me and my bed ridden wife.

Express Scripts/TRICARE . . .

Just hung up on Express Scripts/TRICARE because the answering computer would not let me speak to a real person.  I went through five or six reiterations with the computer.  I am asking for a "live person" and the computer wants an invoice number.

The computer then decided I should finally talk to a service representative.  About that time I finally figured out how to make changes to my account payment procedures via the Internet.  There were no explanations, and their syntaxes did not make sense to me.  I finally figured out their syntaxes and made the changes via the Internet.

But why do they so valiantly oppose connecting you to a live person?  Yes, I know, they do not want to pay for alive person and shuttle you off to a computer.  But the computer can not figure out what you want and since it does fit what they want it to, then they recycle you back through the same routine.  On me they cycled through six times, even one time where I pressed the O button on the phone.  Finally the computer decided I needed to talk to a service representative.  They make it hard to converse with a live human.

Fortunately about that time I broke the code on the Internet window and got the changes made to my satisfaction.  So that being completed, I hung up.

It is very demeaning and irritating to deal with a non-human entity.

The Old Inspiron Dell Computer . . .

The old computer, circa 2005, had a dual core Pentium chip.   The chip is used in the Computer Process Unit, aka CPU.  While dual core was quite fast when new it is slow as molasses compared t todays CPUs.  My current computer has two Tera Byte hard drive, 11 Gigs of random memory and a first generation I5 quad core CPU that runs at 3.2 Gigabytes.   So in general terms it is a four times faster than the old Pentium.

But the Pentium is still a computer.  I have had sitting on the side, it had Windows 10 Pro operating system, 4 Gigabytes of RAM, CD-ROM, one Gigabyte Hard Drive, and even an old 2.5 inch floppy drive in it.  So it is a functional computer with still quite a bit of capability but really slow compared to my current system.

I got a used color monitor for $29 and a USB plug in unit that connects with the modem for $9.98.  So I fired up the old computer and it would not let me in.  I had forgotten the password to get into Windows 10 Pro. 

After fighting it for two or three hours using all the common old passwords I used to use.  I was going no where.

I did a search on my new I5 system and found a bunch of You Tube folks that said they could unlock the computer.  All of them took time and a host of new names and logic etc., step by step process to do the job.  I figure if they could do it there must be some kind of soft ware that would do it.  I found I could go to Microsoft and get it done but you had to go through all kinds of shenanigan's identifying yourself and your operating system.  In other words it was equally a big pain in the butt to do.

I kept looking and reading and a name kept coming up, Lazesoft.  So I did a search on the Internet and found that is was a British company and offered free software to unlock the computer.  I downloaded the software, followed the instructions, made a CD-ROM with software on it.  I had to go into the old computers IOS system, set it up to boot on the CD-ROM.

I placed the CD-ROM in the optic player, it booted and the software quickly removed the old password.  I did not set up a new password, just left it blank.  But with about 20 minutes of research, another 20 minutes of make a CD-ROM and them setting up the old computer to boot off the CD-ROM and it solved the problem for me.  Frustration is gone!

So then the old computer was working.  I then went back into IOS to change the boot sequence back to the hard drive and now it would fire up immediately.  Then I went about getting the USB Internet connector into operation.  I had get to the Internet Connector location, set it up to operate and then go to the router (or in this case the ATT Modem) and trigger the WPS button, the device immediately got the message from the modem and locked in to the modem.

So now we have the old computer fully operational, connectable to the Internet and I down loaded Libre open source software word processor.  So it a going machine now, just slow.

We are going to give it to the family that does our house cleaning.  They have three youngsters, bi-ligual in Spanish and English.  Two of three kids are in school and oldest now needs a computer.  We gave him a cheapo lap top a whilc back.  But the lap top is not near as powerful a machine the old clunker.  So the second and third kids (and the parents) could use the old machine.

I have ask the housekeeper if she wants it, if not I will find someone else that needs a computer and give it to them.  I got to get rid of this old dust collector.

AOL Strikes . . .

Well not AOL itself but my Email account has been "spoofed."  Spoofing is not the same as hacked.  When hacked one can change his or her password and that takes care of the problem.  Spoof is when they steal your address and send out some kind of a message using you good name.  In my case the spoof, and the embedded address, signed me up for thousands of accounts worldwide.  Mostly somebodys blog, news letters, etc.  I mean they had to work to build that big address list and to irritate a innocent user.

I had messages pouring in from China, India, Russia, all of Europe, Middle East, South Africa and so on and on and on.

Now AOL provides a way to keep the messages from getting into your Email account and sends the message directly to the spam account.  It is called a spam filter.  The key is to getting rid of the message by sending it originally to your spam account.  There is a little Icon up on top that you can check.  The work is checking all the messages and sending to the spam account the first time puts all the sending addresses into the spam filter and the filter sends the messages to the spam account. 

At the peak, we had upwards of 8,000 messages in the spam account.  I would open AOL, go to the spam account and delete all the messages.  It quickly gets rid of the messages.  The good news is all those address that were originally contacted are easily deleted out of the spam account with just one click.  The senders quickly realize that they are sending the message to a fictitious account and quit doing it.

So we have been spamming message after message, leaving of course those we want to read and react to.  All the others are literally trashed.

It would seem AOL would take some action but since it is a free account there is no profit in doing anything to fix anything.  So they let it ride.  It creates a lot of traffic through their system but that is not a problem to them.  So they do not care

We have had this account address since 1994 and I want to keep it.  So we deal with it, sending all the unusual messages direct to spam.  And later clean out the spam account.  So the messages are really all going into nether land.

It is frustrating to deal with but can be dealt with.