Imagine going to Las Vegas, and playing a slot machine that takes your money, but doesn't give you anything back until you cash in decades later. [yeah, right]. I personally just thank God for having found the Lichello book, which helped me stay sane... and for this Web site and the incredibly hard and dedicated work by Tom Veale and a cast of dozens of posters who constantly work the numbers and pull the rest of us back to sanity when our enthusiasm and optimism become overly excessive. Apologies for going on and on.
Amen, Brother.
No need to apologize at all. Your reference to Vegas is quite apropos. As Tom T. Hall put it, "Life is a gamble, the days are just so many decks. The hours are cards, they deal and you play what you get..." In short, unless you happen to be born into a family with some practice of investing and/or at least saving money, how in the heck are you gonna learn it? How many school systems teach budgeting, managing personal finance and such? Maybe more than they used to but I'm sure it's not nearly enough. Certainly coming up I never had such exposure other than what I got from my family which was a good foundation, at least. And probably a lot more than many got.
But it still wasn't enough, not really. I mean with the Sirens of Wall Street singing "easy money," every stock in the market acting with the enthusiasm of Donkey in Shrek, "Pick Me!! Oh, Pick ME!!!" And every newsletter writer promising that his or her newsletter is one that will send you to the Moon financially, oh, and by the way, if you subscribe before midnight we'll make you an offer you can't refuse! Even Motley Fool's gone commercial. Look at some of their older articles and you got pretty straight opinionated dope. Read anything more recent and almost every article I read over there ends up as a lengthy advert to subscribe to one of their newsletters. Needless to say I don't go over there as much as I once did, though occasionally a headline reference off of a Yahoo stock listing will nudge my browser in that direction. Truth be told, one of the things I like about this board - other than trying to get more people to use Lichello's ideas via his books we're not in the business of selling anything. In a world gone crazy as this, what's the average Joe Sixpack to do?
Pay the dues and take the chances, and we've seen how a lot of them have been left holding the bag since the end-of-the-last-century meltdown. Lichello's book should be mandatory reading in high school along with a course in personal finance. It may need some condensing and rewriting as I doubt many of today's kids would appreciate the historical aspects from where Mr. Lichello was coming from. I lived through those days in the '70's as a teenager so I've some awareness - kids these days would consider that 'ancient history!'
Certainly AIM deserves more widespread use and acceptance - might make the future a lot brighter for more people who would otherwise miss out. And the biggest reason they miss out is ignorance.
I suppose I should stand down from my soapbox - thanks for the inspiration. Sometimes we just have to get these things off our chests and state the basics - the miracle of Mr. Lichello's work - and all those who've added to it!
Best,
AIMster
AI
