Now... there's a good idea

[susandennis]

I finally threatened my brother into a report on the Grand Opening of his store which was last Friday. Every time I talk to Mom she asks 'have you heard from your brother?' So I told him that if he didn't send a report I was going to tell her to call him. It worked. And apparently the opening went well.

He said that the Georgetown (TX) Chamber of Commerce has a cool deal where they send their Ambassadors to member's grand openings. The Ambassadors are a large group of local business men who volunteer to just go be warm bodies. Bill got 50+ of them which really filled up the store and made the event look like ... well, an event! He said they had about 20 of their own customers but those Ambassadors really made the day.

This may be something that every Chamber of Commerce does but I'd never heard of it. I think it's about the coolest thing ever.

I got an email from Mom today and checking on her computer saw she did some other clicking around as well. A good sign. It can't be easy with only one arm to work with but at least it's her left one that's in the sling and she's right handed.

Way back in the dark ages when I was with IBM, they had this program for employees to get financial advisers. It was all part of the introduction of 401K stuff. They paid the initial introductory fee and pre-screened. I knew I was getting ready to jump ship so I figured I'd better take advantage. Being the thorough researcher I am, I picked the first one on the list. American Express and went to see Mike.

Since then Mike's practice has morphed from American Express IDS to American Express to Ameriprise and then a couple of years he changed his business model and gave away a bunch of clients and kept a few who pay him an annual retainer. I got kept and he earns me way more every year than his annual retainer. In our now 12 years together he has taught me so much. He took my original piddling sum and turned it into some serious money and showed me how cool that was. I had credit card debt and car loan debt and I was a spending fool. Now I own my car, have a low interest mortgage, pay my credit card balance back to zero every Friday and am still able to indulge myself more than is probably healthy and I owe it all to Mike.

But, he is a character. A real Republican. And he's easing himself into retirement. He's never had an ATM card and never wants one. He's been forced - kicking and screaming - into using email but half the time his emails have no message - just the 400 line signature that someone made for him which I think probably includes his DNA and the Ameriprise disclaimer which says they are not responsible for one fucking thing ever in the whole world thankyouverymuch.

And he's kind of gotten into a habit of not listening to what I say. In his case this is really more amusing than annoying. I can tell when he hasn't heard me. And, honestly, I don't listen to him much either. He's explained dollar cost averaging to me so many times that I can about recite it back to him and I still don't get it and don't want to.

But I love him and I love what he's done for me and I wouldn't trade him for anything. vasilatos's entry yesterday reminded me that I need to look into disability insurance. You can't buy it when you are a 1099 employee (self-employed) like I was for the past 18 months. But, once you get an employer, you can. So I called yesterday and left him a message - let's look into it...

This morning I got an email asking if my employer offered it as a benefit and if so what were the details... Dude, if my employer offered it, I wouldn't be asking you for it... Mike, Mike, Mike. Can't live with him, Can't live without him.

And now I'm just rambling. Work time. Later...

Comments

[vasilatos]

Good luck with working that out! A quirk of the tax code is that if you did get disability insurance paid by your employer, you'd want to reimburse them, because if you later did get disability income, that decides whether it's taxed. You pay premiums == not taxed. They pay premiums == taxed. Easier to just buy it yourself, but maybe more expensive. Mike sounds interesting. :-)

[susandennis]

Yeah I hit that tax wrinkle one time. I think it was one of the options for the insurance that Microsoft offered. Kind of a pay now or pay later thing.

Anyway I did talk to Mike and turns out that at my age, with my investments he no longer thinks it's a good idea for me. He thinks it would cost too much and pay too little. Interesting. So we're not going to do it which suits me fine.

Oh just remembered I forgot to call the guy that does the retirement savings stuff at work. Better do that.