Wealth

I've never been very good with money. At age 10 I started my own candy store, but ate all my profits util I became hypoglycemic, and then the business evolved into a bulk candy machine business. I hoped to strike it rich 25 cents at a time, but the economy tanked in '08 and the market for stale candy dried up. I sold off a few machines and ended up giving the rest away when I moved to the big city. I think over the 10 years I had that business I netted 50 cents. I learned a very important lesson though, in that 10 years. I learned you can return half eaten bags of candy to Sam's Club for a full refund! (with a receipt)

My other big life investment was college, 150 plus credit hours worth. That was also a 10 year investment. I changed my major 3 or 4 times, but I took the classes that seemed interesting at the time. I never really approached school as a means to a degree. Instead, I treated college as a buffet of knowledge, and since I was getting grant money to pay for tuition, I never felt cheated when a professor ended class early. Ten years was a big chunk of my life though, especially considering I don't have a degree to show for it. If my school had a general studies degree, I'd actually be pretty close to being a real life doctor, or at least a master. I think a masters degree takes 180 credit hours? Maybe I should be thorough and research that. I do plan to get a degree eventually, I'm just holding out for an honorary degree from an ivy league university.

One big issue in the political races this year is the economy. I never took a class on economics, but I did find this clip on redistribution of wealth, and I watched most of it! Let me sum it up. Basically if all you have is a kiddie pool, no matter how much you slosh around in that pool, it will not increase the volume of liquid in the pool, but if you drank a lot of Kool-Aid you bought from a Kool-Aid stand that day... you see where I'm going with this? You can contribute more liquid assets to the pool by supporting small businesses.

I think we live in a world with enough resources to go around. Unfortunately, we haven't perfected a system to manufacture and distribute them all yet. The Star Trek universe has, but I'm holding onto that clip for another time. Until our world is more like Star Trek's, add what you can to the pool, be charitable with your wealth, be it a wealth of time, knowledge, or money.