Seriously, The Stamps Thing Could Work

With the Dow down almost 1000 points over the past few days, who’s laughing at my stamp investment idea now?

 

Stamps – The Investment of the Future

I recently rummaged through my kitchen junk drawer in search of a stamp so I could send off the editing fee for my book (just trying to tie this post into the purpose of the blog).  I found rubber bands, birthday cake candles, and a host of random-sized batteries.  None of the batteries were in their packaging, so I can only assume that these were the ones that did not have enough juice left for whatever device they were formerly in, but still had enough potential left that I just couldn’t bring myself to give up on them.  Instead of trashing them, I must have put them in the junk drawer thinking they would make a comeback. 

 

Eventually, I found some of those “forever” stamps with the Liberty Bell on them.  Being the tightwad that I am, my first thought was, “cool, these stamps are now worth 1 cent more than they were when I bought them.”  If you’re not familiar with these, the forever stamps can be purchased at whatever the going postage rate is and be used at any time, no matter how much the postage rate increases.  This eliminates the need to buy those annoying 1 cent and 2 cent stamps to supplement your postage when the price goes up.

 

Later that day, I got my quarterly 401(k) statement.  If you get one of these, do yourself a favor and don’t even look at it – this has been a brutal year for investments.  The YTD return on my portfolio was NEGATIVE 12%.  That’s when the stroke of genius hit me.  Hey, I can start investing in stamps.  They may not have huge returns, but at least they won’t lose value.  Take a look at the price history since May 2002 of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 below.

Contrast that with the price of stamps.

 

Not only does the price of stamps consistently climb, but there are no capital gains taxes when you use your high-value stamps that you purchased at rock-bottom prices.  Sinced I am pioneering this investment option, I think I’ll give myself a title like “Stamp Acquisition Advisor” and charge people a fee for advising them about the best time to buy and use their stamps.

 

I Broke the Spellchecker

Have you ever misspelled a word so badly that Spell Check had no idea what you were trying to say?  I did that on the last post with “silhouettes”.  What is that, French?  No word should have three vowels in row!  I’ve had this happen to me before, but I can usually change a few letters and manage to get close enough to where the computer figures out what I’m trying to say.  Not this time… I tried about 7 or 8 alternative spellings and ended up with something that looked nothing like “silhouettes”.  This must be what happened to Brett Favre’s great grandfather when he immigrated to the US. 

 

I finally gave up and had to dig out Webster.  No, I do not have Emmanuel Lewis buried in my yard.  I had to get a real dictionary with pages made out of paper.  After blowing off a layer of dust, the binding creaked and popped as I opened it.  Upon opening the dictionary, I was relieved to find that it was not written entirely in Greek and Aramaic.  Needless to say, I found the correct spelling and while searching, I learned that silex is finely ground tripoli used as an inert paint filler.  Note:  my spell check has no idea what the words silex and tripoli are either.  Moral of the story:  don’t get lazy and become over reliant on technology or you will miss opportunities to learn about “siliceous substances, as rottenstone and infusorial earth, used chiefly in polishing” that have the same name as the capital seaport of Libya.