previous column next column back to archives
I have a thousand dollars and I don’t know what to do with it. Granted, a thousand dollars doesn’t sound like much, but the last time I had this much disposable income was in sixth grade when I blew it all on a black drum set.
What am I supposed to do with a thousand dollars? I asked this question to my two finance-oriented friends, Sunger and Huge, and they said that I could either put it in a CD or invest in a spider.
I immediately knew that these guys were idiots. If by CD, they meant CD case, then that’s probably the stupidest, most dangerous, least-likely-to-be-big-enough-to-hold-that-much-cash place I can think of. Unless CDs are also savings accounts. I seem to remember that from somewhere. So I guess putting my money in a CD would be better than investing in a spider, which is a large, hairy insect. What was I going to do with a spider? Race it against other spiders? Make my other friends get spiders, build a little spider-fighting ring, affix razors to the spiders’ talons, and charge people to watch them fight each other? It’s a great idea, but probably inhumane.
Obviously I know nothing about finance. Apparently “spider” is actually spelled “SPDR” and it’s an investment that crawls from stock to stock, depending on market trends. Or something. Sunger just tried to explain it again in an email, but he used “fractions,” and words like “bond,” so I still don’t know what he’s talking about.
The point is that I could do something (responsible) like put the one thousand dollars in a CD or invest in a SPDR, or I could do something (irresponsible) like hire ten strippers to pour Cristal on my head while all the original members of R.E.O Speedwagon play “Time For Me to Fly” live in my living room.
Here’s the complicating factor: I plan on having a decent income five to ten years from now. I don’t know how this will happen. It just seems like older people have more money than I do. So if I put away a thousand dollars now, and it earns 5% interest over the next ten years, I still won’t have enough to make Future Me give a crap. Having an extra two thousand dollars ten years from now would be like adding six grams of protein to my diet.
What?
Yesterday I got a smoothie and they asked me if I wanted to add a “booster,” so I was like, “Sure,” and selected a whey protein booster. But it was only six grams. I was like, “Are you serious? I just drank a protein shake that had fifty grams. Get real.”
Fifty grams? Really?
More like thirty.
I just don’t understand the point of Present Me (who sees one thousand dollars as a really big deal) wrapping up a cash gift and giving it to Future Me (who will see one thousand dollars as a few pounds of decent marijuana to be displayed in a salad bowl on the coffee table when friends come over). I might as well cryogenically freeze my ’95 Jetta so Future Me can thaw it out and drive it ten years from now (maybe by then they’ll have developed the technology to fix my clutch relatively inexpensively). Future Me would be like, “Um, thanks for the twenty-year-old Jetta. It looks…okay. Why doesn’t it have a rearview mirror though? And why are three of the hubcaps missing and why is the one remaining hubcap made out of fake plastic chrome? And do you really expect me to drive a car that has NMBA 22 on the license plate? I’m not a NASCAR driver. You know I own a Lexus hovercraft, right?”
I probably should have explained this before, but in the future everyone will travel in hovercrafts.
Investments are like time capsules. I’m in a position to make a time capsule for Future Me. It could contain:
A) One thousand dollars plus interest
B) A Jetta plus rust
C) Memories, or
D) One of those accordion-necked clowns that pops out of boxes, as a joke.
My theory is that A, B, or D would piss Future Me off. But C would make Future Me happy because it would give him pictures to share, stories to tell, and probably a very large tattoo to regret (this is just speculation, but one of the things I could see myself doing while drunk and in Tijuana shopping for street-side burritos is getting a tattoo of a tiger ripping through my skin. Remember those T-shirts that had an animal (usually a mascot like the University of Miami’s duck) that looked like it had torn through the shirt? So the back of the shirt would feature the duck’s tail and feet, and the front of the shirt would show its bill and hat? Maybe I’m not explaining this correctly. Anyway, the tiger would look like it was diving into my back, tearing a hole in my skin, and emerging through my chest. And this would be a tattoo that Future Me could proudly display whenever dinner guests asked if he had any “ink.”)
My freshman year of high school, I loaded up a time capsule for myself to be opened when I was a senior. I didn’t put much effort into it. Basically it was a series of likes and dislikes, plus several predictions. Disturbingly, Freshman Me listed Smash Mouth as one of his favorite bands, along with Pearl Jam and Oasis. I don’t remember ever liking Smash Mouth – in fact, I always thought I hated them – which makes me think I was playing a joke on myself. But I also don’t remember having a sense of humor when I was fifteen. So I’ve been haunted by whether or not I liked “Walkin’ on the Sun” for the past six years. I did, however, predict my height and weight to within one inch and two pounds, which was awesome.
You know what would not have been awesome though? If Freshman Me had put a peso in the time capsule, in hopes that the Mexican currency would skyrocket over the next three years. What would Senior Me do with a peso? Go to Tijuana and buy 1/100 of a street-side burrito? That’s like one refried bean.
Putting my meager savings in a CD or a SPDR would be like giving Future Me a peso. And Future Me hates pesos.
I brought up this issue of what to do with my money to Dods, in part to see if he had any solid advice, and in part to give him practice for when he has a child, and his child asks him these questions. Dods’ response: “It’s fun to do fun things.”* There was an although that followed this statement, but it was too late. Because it is fun to do fun things, and that’s exactly what I wanted to hear.
Here are some fun things I could do with my money:
Every time I look at my television, which is probably 27”, it gets smaller, and lower def. Pretty soon it’s going to be one pixel, a fat block of color, that intermittently changes from blue to red to white to yellowish.
I only have one pair of shoes that I can wear “out.” And they’re suede. Which means they’re not very good for the snow. It snows in Boston. Not having a pair of boots, or at least shoes made from the kind of cow that can get wet,* in Beantown would be like living in Amsterdam without ice skates, or like going to first grade in 1988 without Velcro Roos.
Dods and I have been talking about this since the moment we moved into the apartment. The only problem with buying a karaoke machine is that it would be like having a permanent party in our living room, which might piss off our downstairs neighbors, who are supposedly an Indian family. I don’t think they’ve moved it yet. We haven’t seen or smelled them.
I guess without the karaoke machine, there’s no reason to get a camcorder. Actually, check that. Last Friday night, Dods, our friend Jay, and I ended up at an after-party that featured
A) 80 dollars worth of Chinese food, all of which contained broccoli (what the hell, Steve. Nice job ordering.) and
B) Dods stripping down to his boxers and belly-dancing into any fully-clothed girl that accidentally wandered into his corner of the kitchen.
So that was a time when we definitely should have had a camcorder.
Right now, the Jetta has a rearview mirror that falls off anytime I go over a speed bump, it has trouble accelerating (it goes from zero to sixty in approximately one hour), and the left front speaker only works when I roll the window up or down. But I can live with those flaws. The big problem right now is that the Jetta stalls every time I slow down. Obviously, this includes stop signs and lights. But it also includes turns. Frequently, as the Jetta is turning, the engine shuts off, which means the power steering shuts off, which means the car starts drifting into oncoming traffic, which means I have to simultaneously crank on the steering wheel and restart the car. I do this a lot, and I’m willing to bet that nobody in the history of driving has been better at the maneuver.
I actually promised myself that any extra money I earned would go toward my writing. But I don’t know what I would spend it on. I guess I could finally make good on my idea of outfitting Boston’s homeless people in TheAdamWhite.com sweatshirts. That would be good. Or I could purchase dozens of life-size cut-outs of Earl the Dogicorn. I’m not sure what Earl’s life size is though. Probably he would be eye level. Probably he would have coffee breath.
With so many options, I have decided not to decide. Not right now, anyway. Here’s my plan: I will save money until my checking account has more than 5,000 dollars in it. Once I have 5,000 dollars, Citizens Banks stops charging me the fifteen-dollar monthly fee. Fifteen dollars times twelve months equals 180 dollars a year. And that’s more than I’d make in interest if I invested in a CD or trained a spider into championship fighting form.
But to keep Future Me happy, I’m also buying a nice little Olympus digital camera. It will have the ability to capture video, so the next time Dods belly dances in his boxers, I can create a digital memory that Future Me will cherish forever. Just like he’ll cherish the tattooed tiger leaping out of his chest.
*I mentioned this quote in my column about The Office
*I stole this joke from Seinfeld
previous column next column back to archives
adam@theadamwhite.com |
