Bye Buy Baby Bye Buy…

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Some have Christmas in July… I have Financial Review in July… welcome to Buy or Bye July!

I hesitate to think what this might say about my inner Judeo-Christian vs consumer/capitalistic views.

Anyway, here we are already at the halfway point of another year, WTH!!

Given this fact, it’s a great time for us to review and reflect on financial successes and failures in our personal money affairs. How is your personal “business” performing? Is your future looking bright or cloudy? Does money management leave you feeling calm and in control, or full of inner turmoil?

Practically speaking, our day-to-day life and lifestyle is hugely impacted by the moolah… cheddar… brass… bread… the clams we have in our pockets and under our mattresses. What we can spend depends immensely on what we save, and invest.

I follow the Fiddler on the Roof approach:

Perchik: Money is the world’s curse.

Tevye: May the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover!

I was out kayaking on Okanagan Lake this beautiful summer morning and shed some inferiority tears as we paddled past some fortunate souls’ lakefront mansions… people who don’t appear to have any difficulties or concerns in the money realm. Sadly, I’m just a poor boy from a poor family, you know, Freddie Mercury-style.

I tend to concentrate my investment efforts in stock markets, so of course, this is where I’ll direct my focus today.

With its unpredictable nature, the stock market is both exciting and challenging, and 2023 has been no different. Let’s take a look under the hood of 2023 so far and perhaps explore some valuable lessons learned along the way.

• Embracing Volatility: A Rollercoaster Ride

The first half of 2023 has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride for investors. The stock market experienced significant volatility due to various factors, such as economic recovery, inflation concerns, and geopolitical tensions… thanks Comrade Putin!

It’s easy to become unhinged and irrational but this turbulence teaches us the importance of staying calm amidst market fluctuations and not making impulsive decisions driven by short-term emotions.

All of the major North American and British stock indices are up, but by an astonishing variation in amounts:

DOW 30 up 3.8% (U.S)

S&P 500 up 17.0% (U.S.)

NASDAQ up 39.0% (U.S.)

TSX 60 up 3.9% (Canada)

FTSE 100 up 1.1% (U.K.)

• Sector Performance: Shaping Investment Strategies

The first half of 2023 presented varying performances across different sectors.

Tech giants like Apple and Amazon in the U.S., and Shopify and Lightspeed in Canada played a significant role in driving the market. Apple’s stock price experienced a gain of approximately 49% during the first half of the year, while Amazon’s stock price increased by approximately 52%. The strong performance of these companies powered the NASDAQ Composite to new highs, with a gain of an eye-popping 39% for the first half of the year.

• The Canadian Housing Market: A Consideration

While not directly related to the stock market, the Canadian housing market has been a significant factor influencing the overall financial landscape. Despite some cooling measures implemented by the government, housing prices (and interest rates) continued to rise, posing challenges for potential homebuyers. Investors with exposure to real estate investment trusts (REITs) or companies tied to the housing market may have experienced mixed results, depending on their specific holdings.

• Lessons Learned: Patience and Long-Term Perspective

With each of these regular “money blogs” I write, I typically share my personal returns with you so you can experience my alternating bouts of glory and shame… last year’s numbers were mostly shame. Any number I see with a minus sign in front does not make me smile.

Like a timid February groundhog, I slipped above ground, chirped out my negative results, and then disappeared red-faced back into my dark warren, hoping for a better day.

And the better day I wished for has arrived…

In the first six months of 2023, I’ve got a bit of some lovely glory to parade, so this groundhog will lounge about in the sun and bask for just a few minutes. Here goes:

My RRSP gain for the last six months was 33.4% and my TFSA trailed well behind at 3.0%. (For non-Canucks, these acronyms represent the main retirement accounts available in Canada).

Remember me mentioning the strength of Apple and Amazon (above)? This explains my hearty RRSP performance, which is largely in American stocks, while my TFSA is concentrated in Canadian shares which have barely budged so far this year.

I hope if you’ve checked your investment or retirement funds, you matched or bettered mine… please send me some of your magic fairy dust!

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned from the market’s ups and downs over many years is the importance of patience and adopting a long-term perspective. Timing the market consistently is virtually impossible, and attempting to do so can lead to missed opportunities and unnecessary stress.

Instead, focusing on fundamental analysis, identifying quality companies, and staying invested for the long haul really is a more reliable strategy. Let’s save the Vegas approach for when we’re actually in Vegas, OK?

Staying focused on long-term goals and being patient can help us weather the fluctuations and achieve financial success, and a lower stress period of retirement.

Tech giants like Apple and Amazon, along with the strong performance of the NASDAQ Composite, have demonstrated the potential for significant gains in the technology sector. However, it’s important to maintain a diversified portfolio and consider the performance of other sectors as well. Do your homework or hire someone you strongly trust to do it for you.

Remember, investing is a journey, and half a year is just a snapshot. By remaining vigilant, adaptable, and committed to learning from our experiences, we can continue to grow and thrive as investors in the stock market world.

To be a “Wealthy Barber”, we really just need to avoid nasty haircuts… being financially bald is NOT a good look for any of us!

HO HO HO… Merry Christmas to you in July… Bye Buy Baby Bye Buy!

In the realm of stocks, Apple takes flight,

AI's innovation, a futuristic light,

Canadian banks, pillars of financial might,

In 2023, stock market's sweetest flight,

Investment joys, a rewarding sight.

Looking Towards A New Me… When I’m 64!

Jim Ferguson is an old and very good friend of mine (and the MAN ON THE FRINGE).

For a second time this year, I’ve asked Jim if he would consider contributing a guest post and he has generously taken me up on this.

I always enjoy Jim’s insights as he possesses an extraordinary vision into the combination of science, religion, and human compassion. These can be challenging subjects to mix and marry, but Jim has a talent for bridging the gaps.

Today, Jim is striking into a lighter and perhaps… more fun arena – his upcoming “retirement”. I’ll let him tell you his story:

The Man Behind the Curtain aka Man On The Fringe – Sir Lawrence Green – has once again asked me to contribute a guest blog focusing on the theme of my impending retirement from a medical career spanning the better part of 44-years.

It all started in Canada’s Arctic region, Yellowknife, NWT, in 1977 when I trained as a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) and then worked with Larry at Stanton Yellowknife Hospital until spring, 1979.

I then married an American girl and was off to medical school in the States a decade later, graduating as a Physician Associate and getting a Master’s degree in Public Health and completing a fellowship in Integrative Medicine along the way. The rest, as they say, is history.

As I approach my retirement, it really is all about history-where it all started and the journey to where this phase of my life will conclude.

It seems that this journey has passed in the twinkling of an eye to the point where I feel a bit numb and dizzy as I view the course of the past 44-years…sort of like a retirement version of benign positional vertigo.

As I have been reflecting on this major life-change I have found myself defining my retirement by some of the major retirement songs of our era. I’ve been thinking of some of these songs and whether any of these might be apropos as I board the retirement ship to “sail off into my golden years”. 

Here are a few examples and some musings. Maybe those of you reading this who are retired will find some common threads.

Glue your dentures in and make sure the Depends are nice and snug…here we go:

– Johnny Paycheck is known for the song Take This Job And Shove It. The opening refrain is recognizable to many- “Take this job and shove it, I aint workin’ here no more”.

While I love the feistiness of the song, I would have to say that this song doesn’t reflect my attitude towards my work or my employer as I wrap up my career as a family medicine provider.

I entered medicine seeing it as a vocation or even a calling. I love being of service to others and what better career path to follow than medicine where you work with people at their most vulnerable i.e., when they are ill.

I have loved my work for that reason and have had great employers over the years whether in Yellowknife in the early days, in remote Alaskan villages during the middle of my career, as a public health officer, and finally for Providence Medical Group here in Oregon.

While I am retiring from my job with the medical group, I am not retiring from medicine completely. I will seek ways to recreate myself in service to others using my medical knowledge and talents and I look forward to those opportunities.

– The Beatles had a hit with Sir Paul McCartney’s light and fluffy When I’m 64.

While I tend to favour Lennon’s more gritty rock and roll sound, this particular “bubble gum” attempt at a rock tune strikes a retirement chord.

As it turns out I will turn 64 in December a month or so after I pack it in at my current place of employ. This song has some definite influence on my retirement.

I’ve long lost much of my hair, I’ve been handy (thanks to Red Green who has told millions of men: “If women don’t find you handsome, at least let them find you handy“), I’ve spent more hours than I can count in the garden on my 5.4-acre farm in Oregon.

Bottom Line regarding this song: been there…done most of that!! I guess I could throw this CD in the player as I walk out the door at work for the final time and it would seem appropriate.

– If anyone is expecting me to live up to the message in Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild, well you have another thing coming.

My version of wild these days is to down a bottle of Geritol, chase it with a Fleets Enema, and hit the hay by 8 PM.

OK… maybe I’m not that far gone BUT the wild days are behind me. Larry can attest to the fact that our Yellowknife days were about as wild as they come- who else here can chug a Molson Canadian standing on their head in under a minute…😊

Those days are long gone and while retirement will be nothing like the days of yore, they will be filled with opportunities to be of service to my community and I do welcome the change from having a set schedule day in/day out and being more flexible in determining what I invest my time in.

I do have hobbies that I will pursue. I still enjoy watching my beloved Habs (Montreal Canadiens hockey team) when I can. I also enjoy my mandolin and playing music. I love being outdoors and hiking and running. There will be lots to keep me busy as I move forward.

– As I have alluded in this blog post, I see a beginning in the end.

As one career ends another exciting phase of life begins. What better song to portray this than We’ve Only Just Begun by The Carpenters featuring the silky-smooth voice of Karen Carpenter.

Don’t tell Larry that I told you this BUT he and I would occasionally sprawl out on the two chesterfields in his apartment in Yellowknife and semi-doze off listening to Karen and Richard performing their magic.

That song is a great segue towards retirement. As one door closes another opens, as one window closes, another window opens, etc. You get the point…Insert your own cliché here:___________________.

Karen sings “so many roads to choose, we’ll start out walkin’ and learn to run…sharing horizons that are new to us…” A great inspiration as I head into the unknown.

I am also aware that maybe I’ve peeved off a few folks in my work life along the way, so I am a firm believer in the adage that if you are being run out of town, get in front of the crowd, and make it look like a parade…😊 That’s my plan on my last day. It’s a win-win for me.

– I will leave you with one last song that I have always loved…. Five for Fighting’s 100 Years.

It is a touching tune of the passage of the years from the age of 15 to 99. Go listen to it…you’ll recognize the song when you hear it.

I can especially appreciate the verse where he sings: “Half time goes by… Suddenly you’re wise…Another blink of an eye…Sixty-seven is gone…The sun is getting high…We’re moving on.” Man ‘o man…how true it is.

Where have the years gone? I feel as though I am there now. Two-thirds of my life has flashed by and yet I am thrilled at the thought of what is to come and look forward to the great adventures that await.

Well…if you are near retirement or have already moved beyond that point in life, what songs best describe your retirement journey? Let’s see them in the comment section below.

Peace,

Jim Ferguson

I SHOULD Write A Thousand Words Today…

… but I won’t this time because I’m ultra-focussed.

Totally narcissistic. Self-indulgent. Hungry.

Each day I write out a To-Do List. You too?

And then I fail…

Each day I remind myself that focussing on 2 or 3 items is the life-blood to making real headway on the things that are extra important to me, my writing and music… the creative existence.

Each day I listen to a new song on YouTube or Apple Music, seeking a theme song of inspiration for the day… then silently ponder the beauty outside my window, urging calmness like a quiet meditation into my sense of focus. OOOoooooommmmmm…

Each day I begin with this short list of the critical, the important, the passion-filled.

And here’s where I fail. Again and again. No motivational gurus like Tony Robbins or Zig Ziglar or Brian Tracy have come to my rescue.

Despite my best intentions I look down at my sheet of paper squished in the narrow space beneath my computer keyboard and the edge of my desk… and realize that my shortlist of 2 or 3 items has mystically and maniacally expanded to 8 … 10 … even 15 items.

Where is my focus?

Sigh.

I’m a refugee inside my own world… an outcast from the creativity urgings that seek updrafts of warm air.

I look around at people like Stephen King or Paul Simon or Carole King, JK Rowling or Brian Wilson or Joni Mitchell, and marvel at the focus and drive that brought them to a God-kissed magnificence. I drool and desire like a 13 year-old boy with unlimited access to porn!

I lust after their nucleus of theme and priority.

1,000

Numbers. My blog posts have talked a lot about the power of 10,000 hours in practice…. or even 1,000 hours in practice and preparation.

And each week I write down about 1,000 words in this blog that I’ve been playing with for more than 6 years now. 340 blog posts.

It’s been the chronicler of me – to me – that I share with you because I think we all contribute pieces of ourselves to a common existence and inner understanding. And when I write I magically discover pieces of me that I never knew existed.

I read others’ writing to add to my work of understanding life and history and my place in it.

I hope that sharing my words with you may occasionally give you a tiny nugget of insight into your own motivations and understanding of who you are. Maybe even an occasional smile. Maybe.

Priority

I’ve added some shiny new features to my world since I “retired” 4 years ago. Bartending, tutoring, soup kitchen, grandparenting are all part of the cutting edge in my days. Music has always been there too but – like my new grandson – is growing and expanding and filling me with enthusiasm and excitement that refuses to be contained.

So as part of my journey going forward, I’m looking to carve a small slice of additional time and focus that can be re-allocated to this continually new and hopefully improving me.

OK… I know I’m me.

I suspect the numbers of items on my daily To-Do List may still end up as long, but going forward, I’ll slide a small portion of the hours I spend each week writing these posts over and spend some more quality time on a revised list of priorities.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

Maybe I SHOULD write a thousand words today. BUT, 500 will just have to do.

Instead, I hear a super sexy tune in my head that needs to be captured before it gets lost in a whiteout featherstorm of lost time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is There A Right Way To “R”etire?

My “R” word. Retirement.

There. I said it.

For me, saying Retirement is akin to verbalizing “Voldemort”, you know, Harry Potter’s deadly nemesis… “he whose name shall not be spoken“.

Shits and giggles.

Last night, I “worked” again after 6 months time away.

Bartending.

Pouring Pinot Gris, popping Budweisers, mixing Lamb’s Navy Rum with Coke, concocting a pretty Caesar.

Paid work.

It was fun to be back in the alcoholic saddle once more.

Now technically, I’ve been retired for almost 4 years (how did that time go by?).

But really, gosh darn it, I’m not even close to being retired. I’ve rejigged and rebranded, but retired? Nope. I’ll delve into this a bit further on.

Most people I meet in my age category are either retired or thinking about pulling the plug soon’ish.

I love it when I come across a 70 or even 80 year-old who still gets up most days and journeys off to an office or whatever, where they continue plying their trade, working their knowledge and experience because they love and need that stimulation and enjoyment.

Retirement, Schretirement.

Hallelujah for them.

I suppose that each of us at some point searches within, finding what retirement could mean in our own life.

Used to be that folks worked til 65 and then collapsed on a couch or a rocking chair and died a year or two later on. Now, not so much…

• For some, the retirement ideal means a day filled with nothingness.
• Others retire to a life of leisure and play.
• For yet others, retiring is quitting the 9-5 aspect of work, but then taking on consulting work in their same field, scaling back the time input but not changing the focus of their efforts.
• Some folks parlay a fun hobby or treasured interest into a new career more enjoyable than their lifelong vocation.
• There are the ones like Linda at my gym who take a scattershot approach to each day; a hybrid blend of various pet interests, paid work, and volunteerism. Linda divides her days into about 4 or 5 segments where she exercises (gym, curling, golf), volunteers at the school, reads a library book, takes a yoga class, attends a local lecture in the evening.
• And sadly, for some, the thought of retirement is an unattainable dream, at least along the lines of what marketing dreamcatchers would have us buy into. Either a lack of savings, or employment income that rarely soared above a minimum wage, leaves a gaping hole of cashlessness where a monthly cheque of passive income (dividends, company pension, dividends) would be desirable.

You may know that I have a few pet peeves… things like the totally subjective (might I say “fake”!) meaning of words like moderation, or middle class, or retirement.

When we say these words, every person has a different version of just what that means. You know, potato, potahto.

Example? I’m running in a half marathon race in two weeks. At this stage of my training, a 15k run is a moderate run distance. In your world, a 5k walk may be crazy big, or… if you’re crazy (in my mind) perhaps a 42.2 k run is your everyday. Moderate? Who knows… Same goes for retirement.

Moderation?… or…

Moderation?

Moderation?…….         or ……        Moderation??

My personal definition of retirement means deciding what each day will look like because I have the freedom to chart my course. The point of leaving work isn’t so that I’ll will never earn money again because that’s somehow bad. The point of it all is to have control over my time. TIME, more valuable than BITCOIN or Gold.

I work most days but it’s a rare day when someone pays me to do something. There’s a different feeling, a different philosophy and approach to work when there’s a $$ figure attached.

I liked my job as a medical lab tech/database miner and reporter but I didn’t love it. Or at least I didn’t love it after doing it for 30+ years.

I enjoyed the people I worked alongside, but the work itself? Well, it lost its luster and uniqueness and excitement years ago. The adrenaline rush I would get when called in at 2 am to do blood tests and crossmatches on car crash victims had long passed.

I suffer from boredom anxiety. It’s a blessing and a curse.

I need newness and creative expression. I need to be doing something different on a regular basis. That’s just me.

My “retirement” story is a lot like Linda’s, above. I exercise daily. I cook and play guitar. I garden and tutor English. I chop vegetables at the soup kitchen, I read and write blog posts. I savour warm sunny days and feed the chickens. I puff a cigar from time to time and renovate bedrooms. I bartend.

The retirement story we’ve been hearing about in our society is still relatively new.

People haven’t been retiring in droves for much more than a century now, but that’s still plenty old in terms of our personal memories.

Our memories have strong mental pictures and associations with retirement that mostly have to do with people in their later years. People with lots of gray hair. Grandparents, elderly neighbours, aging parents. Those are the stories we know, so those are the stories we attach to retirement.

But, powerful as these stories may be, they don’t dictate what retirement is, or what retirement could be. Those stories are changing, and dramatically, for those who retire younger and healthier.

When your day comes, or if it has already come, you’ll need to decide what your retirement story will be. It’s your book, your story.

There’s no “r”ight way, no wrong way…

There are so many possible visions and choices… like playing some gentle music in a care home for the elderly…

I decided it would be a great retirement “gig” to play my guitar occasionally at seniors’ homes.

So first, I went online, looked up and practiced playing some of my parents’ and grandparents’ old tunes. 

Then, I was able to get myself hired by a Penticton nursing home to sing for patients by their bedsides.

After serenading one cute, bedridden older lady for a little while,  I got up to leave and said, “I hope you get better soon.”

She smiled sweetly at me and replied, “I hope you get better too.”

How’s Your Loonie Year? 8 Investment Entrees…

BEWARE: If you don’t get off on boring “NUMBERS” stuff…

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… then click your way out of here right now.

Go jack up on some TRUMP’ed up FAKE NEWS and make your day happier. The enticing blood in the streets is found on other sites!

OK, let’s move on, my fellow Numbers’ Nerds.

It’s approaching the end of the year, days are staggeringly short, and the perturbed cats are perched at the back door, yowling at me because it’s cold outside, as if I’m God and have control over the outdoor temperatures.

All of this tells me the year 2017 is winding down and I have to look hard in the investing mirror and ask myself the tough question… who is the fairest investor of all?

I know that no song sounds the same to any two people. No investment looks as golden to any two people. We see the world through ourselves.

I’ve been an avid stock market participant since I was 10 years old in my Parkdale Steelers’ hockey pads, and so it’s a critically important question now that I’m on the “R” (shhhh, retirement) payroll.

Larry… I say to myself… Do I add value to my financial investments, or should I take a back seat and let someone else with “credentials” make the decisions about my New Worth and living income?

It’s a question I nervously skirt around, afraid of knowing the answer because I truly love reading investment reports, digging into Balance Sheets and Income Statements, deciphering and calculating to see if my choices are “value-adding” or “value-destructing”.

For sure it’s Number’s Nerd stuff.

Numerotica.

I’ve previously stated here that my annual goal of ROI (return on investment) or change in Net Worth is 15%.

ACTUAL Annual Returns? 1 year … 12.0%  –  3 year… 16.1%  –  5 year… 11.2%  –  10 year… 11.4%

There’s the nasty truth… Warren Buffett need not worry about being dethroned. I’ve modestly underperformed my 15% goal in every category except the 3-year return.

This year would be highly positive and I’d be bouncing off the clouds… except… the exchange differential between the US$ and CAN$ has narrowed sharply which has shaved nearly 10% off my returns (most of my stocks are U.S. based), leaving me… drum roll please… only ahead by about 6% at this point in the calendar year.

Bring Monsieur a bucket…

OK, I’m disappointed but not crushed.

I know that I need to eke out a return of at least 7-8% each year so that I don’t impinge on the principal value of what we’ve saved and invested for decades.

From this perspective, I’ve done OK as the upward momentum has been sustained, just not blown out of the water which I would truly prefer. Wouldn’t we all?

And now I’ve gone and added pressure to my decision-making in the last 6 months by boosting my goal returns to 20%, without sacrificing quality, safety, and security.

This means more diligence, more disciplined searching and selection.

In my earlier financier alter-ego, I scoured for quality undervalued stocks (that pay dividends) that I felt should provide a decent return with no quantitative idea of what “decent” really meant.

“Yeah, that company is kinda undervalued by most financial metrics, so I’ll buy some”.

But now… now… I’ve nailed down my idea of what my bottom line expectation is for any investment I hit the BUY order on.

Bottom line? If the company I’m sussing out doesn’t have at least a 40% discount to its historical price based on reasonable assumptions, then I move onwards, seeking out the next possibility.

This narrows my selection list dramatically, ruling out tons of amazing quality companies that have produced fantastic returns…

FACEBOOK is a perfect example. I used to own Facebook but it stubbornly – happily – went up and up and up. FB is a great company with stupendous profits and return on equity, but then I looked at its price on the market and saw that it was sky-high relative to those returns.

SELL, I cried out. Great company, but not a great price to buy or own.

Here’s how I see it: It’s like if I wanted the new iPhone X and one day it was priced at $600. Then the following week, Apple decided to boost the selling price to $1400. Sure, it’s a great purchase at a $600 price, but I’m not going to lay down $1400, even though millions of others likely would. It’s about discipline.

A few other current classic examples of “too richly valued for my blood”? GOOGLE, Microsoft, 3M & McDonalds… great companies all for years or decades but too expensive to invest in at today’s prices. I do own Apple, Disney, Microsoft, Deere and United Technologies but wouldn’t add any more at today’s prices.

Discipline … Discipline.

There is a flip side.

Even though markets are at all-time highs, there are still some pretty fair companies available for purchase at reasonable prices. Most names you’ll even recognize.

More often than not, these companies have a short-term reason for their prices sitting at low levels, but when examined closely, these reasons appear temporary and not permanently destructive. Well-known brand names are resilient and difficult to destroy (although not impossible, just ask the department stores).

OK, akin to a Black Friday sale, I have a set of bargain basement choices for you- some examples of undervalued and unloved stocks on today’s market (almost entirely U.S.-based; Canada, sadly, has meagre selections for my tasting enjoyment)… I’ve included their annual dividend payout in brackets after their name  :

1. L Brands (4.8%) –

   Every man’s candy store has been the Victoria’s Secret catalogue… Bath & Body Works is icing on the cake. Despite Weinstein and Cosby and Spacey and Franken and… OMG… this page doesn’t have space for all the names… sex and sexy still sells. Vive la difference entre Mars et Venus!

2. AMC Networks (0.0%) –

   Watched The Walking Dead lately? Yeah, me neither, too much gory blood for me, but zillions do… AMC makes TWD and a bunch of other cable shows (including previously, Mad Men and Breaking Bad)… ’nuff said…

3. CVS Pharmacies (2.8%) –

   I’ve always been impressed by the CVS drug chain stores whenever I’ve visited the U.S…. arthritis and diabetes and ED and wrinkles mean drugs and cosmetics are staples in every age group.

4. Penske Automotive (2.8%) –

   Luxury car (BMW, Audi, Jaguar, Porsche, Ferrari, Maserati) brand sales have a wonderful habit of staying strong regardless of economic up or down trends. Penske sells and services all of these as well as those big 18-wheeler trucks that crowd our highway lanes! Zoom Zoom!

5. Starbucks (2.1%) –

   I would have never believed that a $5 cup of coffee or green tea could make a sustainable franchise. Boy was I wrong… $5 is the cheap cup now, and caffeine is no FAKE NEWS. I’m a regular customer now, Tim Hortons be damned!

6. Magna International (2.0%) –

   Finally, a Canadian company in the mix that competes well internationally. If you drive ANY car today, chances are pretty good that Magna produced a sizeable chunk of the parts that surround you on your drive.

7. J. M. Smucker (2.8%) –

   PB + J your favourite sandwich too? Actually, I prefer PB and banana, but no matter. For more than a century, Jerome Monroe Smucker’s company has placed jams and peanut butters, syrups and ice cream toppings on the tabletops of North Americans and others internationally.

8. Cardinal Health (3.3%) –

   Specializing in the distribution of pharmaceuticals and medical products, it serves more than 100,000 locations. In addition, the company also manufactures medical and surgical products, including gloves, surgical apparel and fluid management products. Cardinal Health provides medical products to over 75 percent of hospitals in the United States. The sickness industry is very healthy…

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That’s 8 Delicious Temptations – if my enticing sweet talk has you drooling with these delectable selections, lick the peanut buttah off your fingers and investigate them for yourself.

But please don’t rely on my sterling judgment to be anything except Fool’s Gold until you’ve looked more closely yourself. I won’t rely on others out there to make my final investing decision, and neither should you.

If you’re just starting out in the investment world, I wish you wealth and wellness and healthy returns.

If you’re an older Number’s Nerd like me with a few notches on your profit & losses belt, I’m willing to suffer your slings and arrows if you disagree with my choices.

I’ll also gladly entertain any gold nuggets you’ve unearthed that I’ve overlooked.

I got wrinkles round my eyes, I got grey in my hair
I’m puttin’ on a little bit of weight but I don’t seem to care
Fool say, hey slick, you lookin’ good, lie, lie, lie
That fool in my mirror’s singin’ the same old song… Guy Clark

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For now, this fool has decided to stick with my own investment counsel… and if you managed to stick with me through today’s financial numbers’ maze… yawn…  I’d suggest a nap is in order…

Picture Yourself as a Toll Booth…

Bob and Millie Frazier are average young New Yorkers who attended a party in the country last night and on the way home took a detour.

Most of us on waking in the morning know exactly where we are; the rooster or the alarm clock brings us out of sleep into the familiar sights, sounds, aromas of home and the comfort of a routine day ahead.

Not so with our young friends.

This will be a day like none they’ve ever spent – and they’ll spend it in the Twilight Zone.”

 

……………..

Murdering your chosen career is traumatic. A smudged chalky outline around your desk is all that remains of decades of your life.

Leaving the “routine” work world is a bit like entering the Twilight Zone… absent Rod Serling’s monotone voiceover.

Kissing goodbye to a regular bi-weekly magical monetary gift into your bank account takes some thought and planning.

Warren Buffett the great investor – in my Walter Mitty dream life, I’m a young Warren Buffett – says this about investing your money:

Rule No. 1: Never Lose Money.

Rule No. 2: Never Forget Rule No. 1

Sing those rules Warren…

I like RULES.

Warren has been my investing mentor for a lot of years now… I’m a slow learner so I’ve mislaid Rule #1 on more than one occasion, but even without a 12-step program I’m slowly getting better.

I’m a Number’s Nerd… a Statistical Sam… and so I spend a fair bit of time passing numbers through my head, batting them back and forth like tennis balls, sifting and sorting ideas on how to make a few dollah’s from smart investing…

The investing world is a challenge when you find yourself on the cliff’s edge of retirement (there’s that R word I hate!) and beyond.

The worry is like being perched in the starting blocks of the 100 m. Olympic race just before the gun goes “BAM!“.

You’re filled with child-like hope and anticipation of the exciting wonders that lie ahead while at the same time brooding intensely over whether if, as you’re nearing life’s finish line, you’ll be smiling Usain Bolt at the front of the field or sad Joe Blowitzky from Upper Slobovia jogging in at the back of the pack.

Investing and building an economic future is a lesson about ourselves… a lesson to be heeded and learned from, and skilfully tracked across into other areas of our lives.

Most of us spend year after year carefully – occasionally recklessly – placing the puzzle pieces of investment that fit together with our lives, measuring out the hunger to enjoy today’s fresh-faced moments with the hazy horizon of our future, more wrinkled, selves.

Most of the time we make smart, disciplined decisions, but every now and then we just do something stupid.

Stupid like listening to our neighbour’s “hot tip” about that fabulous no-lose stock called BRE-X… or was it ENRON?… in my case was it YBM Magnex? Doesn’t matter, you get my point, right?

It’s often said that most marital difficulties are stirred up by financial discrepancies and arguments.

A woman I met once told me the secret answer to avoiding arguments with anyone.

“If you want to stop an argument, just say the word ‘panties’,” she told me. “Everyone stops then. Men become frozen.”

I’ve never actually tried this so I can’t tell you if it works but I know it made writing this next paragraph a more distracted challenge… so it obviously has some effect.

Maybe the same effect it had on the dumbstruck woman behind the counter at my bank yesterday when I told her that I wanted to deposit my Male Prostitution money into my “12-string guitar account”. Deer in the headlights.

But back to investing and building a future.

I have a few little mottos or themes that guide me in life… old standards like:

• I live to eat, not eat to live
• Ready. Shoot. Aim.
• It’s better to travel hopefully, than to arrive
• If it’s to be, it’s up to me
• To you, I’m an atheist.
  To God, I’m the loyal opposition.

In my investment life, one of the major themes I’ve learned to love when I look at where I’ll put my money to work relates to the idea of a TOLL BOOTH. Easy $$ Cha-Ching…

Being an inherently lazy kind of guy, I want to make as much money as I can with the least amount of work. Shiftless Shekels. Lax Loot. Undemanding Dinero. Toll booth inert.

I’m actively seeking passive ways of collecting regular money like the GO corner on the Monopoly board of life.

So, for me, TOLL BOOTH investing is easily summed up in one word:

DIVIDENDS!

Without exception, every stock holding in my personal portfolio pays ME to be a Sleepy in Summerland owner.

Companies like APPLE and MICROSOFT and LBRANDS (Victoria’s Secret) and AFLAC and DISNEY and ROYAL BANK etc all pay me to go to bed at night and purr away while they stay awake making out cheques to send my way. Toll booth.

How about real estate? Do I own real estate beyond my own home? Sure. But do I ever get irritating phone calls at 2 am about broken water heaters, or tenants making noise or setting up illicit grow-ops? Nope. NEVER.

Owning Real Estate Investment Trusts like RIOCAN and H&R REIT means that I have managers working for me collecting rent cheques, cleaning dirty bathrooms and screening tenants. These are this lazy guy’s answer. Toll booth.

I just love Toll Booths where nice folks pay me to loll naked in my backyard hammock. Just try to get THAT image out of your head.

In the end, everyone seeks and discovers a monetary solution of sorts to their employment exodus (I still can’t use that R word). 

There are joys and woes to using company pensions, government pensions, and your own personal guile in accumulating and investing a mini-armoury stockpile of wealth.

Nobody promises us that a life of ease will be easy.

Honestly, I’m still not sure if I’m in the Twilight Zone world of Usain Bolt or Joe Blowitzky in this race to the finish line.

But in the meantime, I think I’ll just lay back, close my eyes and count… shee… er… sweet dollar bills jumping over fences into my arms.

 

 

 

 

Looking for Mr. Goodbar-“tender”…

Set loose the bloodhounds and investigative detectives… WOOF WOOF… ah-oooooOOO!

The search is on.

I “retired” two years ago this week from a job… a medical laboratory career that I lived for 37 years. That’s a bunch of 18-wheelers full of pus and poop and piss I tested folks.

I didn’t hate the job, nope. It was a good profession where I worked with people I liked a lot, but… I needed a new life vista in my front window, so…

I munched my way through a sweetly delicious “Bye Bye Pie Party” with my lab friends on my 57th birthday and walked out the door. Larry has left the building…

When I began in the lab in the 1970’s it was ridiculously considered a sort of girly job, a fairly low paying position that few men entered because they couldn’t meet those societal assumptions about supporting a wife and family on such low wages… kind of a “McJob”.

Of course I’d lived a real McJob life already.

For 4 and half years through high school and then college, I flipped burgers like a McDonalds All-Star… in fact, I did win pins and trophies as a McDonalds All-Star. I was a Big Mac-makin’ Bobby Orr… a Cheeseburger-slingin’ Usain Bolt!

I knew what a McJob looked and felt like. There is nothing wrong (other than bargain basement pay levels) with McJobs if you have the right attitude.

Lab technology didn’t feel like a McJob. It felt important and necessary and when I wasn’t accidentally trying to… OMG… kill unborn babies, it provided a decent but not extravagant livelihood thanks to progress made through numbers’ negotiation, both union-based and my own.

Where was I? Oh yeah… Retirement.

Did I say I recoil from the word retirement? I do.

It lost its meaning, its life, way back in the day my Dad retired as an oil company accountant in 1972.

He had been holding on by his fingernails for the day… the year when he finally turned 65 and walked out his office door so that he could live the “good life”.

He hated going to work each morning. It was like a daily stab in the heart when he walked out the door of our house on Rainbow Drive.

I never saw him smile more than that day he woke up for his morning cup of percolated Chock-Full-O’Nuts coffee and didn’t have to strap on his suit and tie costume and drive away in our pale green 1970 Ford Galaxie.

Retirement used to be the glorious, long-awaited, anxiously-anticipated end of a lifetime of striving and hard work and sacrifice. Enjoyment of the job wasn’t a particular requirement.

All the Don Drapers out there put in their 40 hours weekly for 45 years (minus the relaxed 2 week summer camping trip with screaming, whining kids).

Then magically one day they stopped cold turkey like a lifelong chain smoker who finds salvation and brushes away the smelly ashtray that was their mouth for decades.

Freedom 65.

Rocking chairs on front porches.

Beach sunsets and gluttonous Seniors’ buffets in Florida.

Work was a nasty word they horked up and spit on the sidewalk like coughed-up phlegm. Yuck!

A month, a year, a couple of years later they silently inhaled one final breath and expired in their La-Z-Boys while watching the late news on TV. The good life.

The Story of a Life. The End.

Today, there are no doubt a scant few who still aspire to this retirement scenario of unrestricted leisure and endless sloth. Maybe you can tell me where to find them.

The retirees I’m seeing, the retirees I’m encountering on the streets and in restaurants and in running races I participate in… the retiree I’m becoming… are more like excited born-again Christians with new purpose and direction.

Sure, some find new part time jobs out of financial necessity, that bill-paying evil.

But so many of these boomers are leaving their careers, wandering out of the dark forest and exposing themselves to the wide open plains where sunshine and positive choices abound like jackrabbits emerging from their underground dens after the storm ends.

Most of the retired folks I come across are seeking out new vistas like me, new jobs and hobbies and interests that bring a profound sense of joy and verve to our lives… new sources of stimulation that set off little fireworks explosions in our heads (hopefully those aren’t strokes!)

I just want to get more competent at something. Almost anything.

I love the feeling of accomplishment. It’s another kind of orgasm. Much much tidier.

When I took a one week bartending course a year ago, I was searching a new side street, an alley that hopefully held some wonder and something unexpected. The occasional evening I spend pouring drinks for pay (and Male Prostitute tips!) now has expanded my life story.

It’s not a vocation. It’s a personal life expander.

In the past few weeks, I’ve begun spending one afternoon each week working on English language and coping skills with a small group of young Syrian refugees, helping them adapt to a dramatically new world order for them and their children.

From the outside, it looks like I’m doing them an altruistic favour.

I hope they benefit. I think they benefit.

I know I benefit. I know 2 or 3 words in Arabic. I share small jokes and smiles that cross a cultural divide in a world that doesn’t need more walls erected.

My world is expanding and improving little-by-little.

And that’s why I’m searching today.

I’m actively searching for new life expanders, new ideas, new directions.

Ideas that will transport me into new areas, dark caves I’ve not explored but where a tiny flashlight will illuminate a new creative direction in my world.

What my ‘purpose’ will be a month from now, a year from now, whenever, is a total mystery that I’m painting one brushed pixel at a time.

There is no real purpose.

It’s about making choices that invigorate and enthuse me.

And – aside from that other kind (nudge nudge wink wink) – what’s more fun than a “head” orgasm?

PS. One final but important point I want to impart? These new choices, ideas and caves where we invest our “retirement” energy should fall neatly into the realm of the notions described in Sarah Knight’s book: The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do

 

Screw Retirement…

Here… would you like a cup of fragrant coffee, a steaming green tea, or one of my… ahem… superb lattes?

You might need one because I feel a “sermon from the mount” moment coming on…

Look out, here it comes …

IF you’re retired now … get out!

Hurry!!

Or… if … IF … you’re thinking of retiring… think again.

Lose the word retirement from your vocabulary. Just chuck it out the window of life’s fast-moving train. Clickety-clack… clickety-clack… gone.

Escape like super-stud Steve McQueen on a motorcycle jumping razor-sharp barbed-wire Nazi fences in The Great Escape.

Retirement is a crappy word and a shitty concept. Truly-retired people die. Fast.

A May 2013 report published by the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs found that retirement increased the chances of suffering from depression by 40%, while it increased the probability of having at least one diagnosed physical ailment by about 60%. That impact was assessed after controlling for the usual age-related conditions.

Now, I’m not telling you to stay or to leave your current job. Nope. Not at all.

As a matter of fact, if you truly love what you’re doing in your work – if you feel a glow of enthusiasm about what you do (almost) every day when you awake that doesn’t relate to morning nooky  – then please DON’T move on because the world has told you that’s the thing to do… stuff like, “you should just relax, you’ve earned it“… “you’re 65 and should retire” … “you should make room for younger folks to have opportunities“.

Nonsense. Don’t let yourself be should upon.

But really… REALLY!! My message here is don’t quit life. Move on to a new world but don’t retire. Re-invent and renew.

Never retire.

I love the La-Z-Boy as much as the next guy, but let’s make it a restorative tonic to clear our heads on our way to the starry constellation of our passions.

Never stop learning and pushing to grow. Never stop finding new experience in your days.

The SIX FEET UNDER Club List …

A half dozen years ago my friend Jennifer gave me a cool Sudoku techie-machine to exercise my brain.

I packed it with me it to the high oxygen-thin Andes of Cusco, Peru, where my wife and I sat and mind-sweated Spanish immersion classes alongside other enthusiastic young travellers in a school for 4 hours each weekday for almost 4 months. Aye ay ay Dios Mio! Divertido, si!!

In a strange twist, this Sudoku “machine”, the exerciser that was supposed to pump heavy iron in my dumbbell mind became my go-to relaxation elixir.

The brain stimulator became the soothing pillow to relax my poor worn-out head at the end of a challenging session of verb conjugations and long vocabulary lists en espanol.

I… we… you and I? We need to exercise our brains just like we exercise our bodies. Four more, three more … A holistically healthy approach to life necessitates exercising our physical, our mental, and our spiritual bodies.

For me, one of the main reasons and benefits of writing this blog each week is the mental workout it puts me through. I’m – marginally – more coherent in my day-to-day life because I do my weekly “exercise”.

I was strongly reminded of this last week when reading a chapter in Neil Pasricha’s book The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything (what can I say… I’m a self-help junkie! HELP!!). (Aside: I try to have at least 2 books on the go at any one time… one a non-fiction one like the book above, and a fiction book to nourish and stimulate my creative side … my (pseudo-) fiction book choice currently is The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer)

Pasricha talks of the final column, written in 2005, of famed New York Times columnist William Safire. Offered as Safire’s “retirement” column, it really was something far more than that.

William Safire

I’ll let Safire explain in his own words…

The Nobel laureate James Watson, who started a revolution in science as co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, put it to me straight a couple of years ago: “Never retire. Your brain needs exercise or it will atrophy.”

Why, then, am I bidding Op-Ed readers farewell today after more than 3,000 columns? Nobody pushed me; at 75, I’m in good shape, not afflicted with political ennui; and my recent column about tsunami injustice and the Book of Job drew the biggest mail response in 32 years of pounding out punditry.

Here’s why I’m outta here: In an interview 50 years before, the aging adman Bruce Barton told me something like Watson’s advice about the need to keep trying something new, which I punched up into “When you’re through changing, you’re through.” He gladly adopted the aphorism, which I’ve been attributing to him ever since.

Combine those two bits of counsel – never retire, but plan to change your career to keep your synapses snapping – and you can see the path I’m now taking. Readers, too, may want to think about a longevity strategy.

We’re all living longer. In the past century, life expectancy for Americans has risen from 47 to 77. With cures for cancer, heart disease and stroke on the way, with genetic engineering, stem cell regeneration and organ transplants a certainty, the boomer generation will be averting illness, patching itself up and pushing well past the biblical limits of “threescore and ten.”

But to what purpose? If the body sticks around while the brain wanders off, a longer lifetime becomes a burden on self and society. Extending the life of the body gains most meaning when we preserve the life of the mind…

… So I told The Times’s publisher two years ago that the 2004 presidential campaign would be my last hurrah as political pundit, and that I would then take on the full-time chairmanship of Dana (a research foundation). He expressed appropriate dismay at losing the Op-Ed conservative but said it would be a terrible idea to abandon the Sunday language column. That’s my scholarly recreation, so I agreed to continue. (Don’t use so as a conjunction!)

Starting next week, working in an operating and grant-making foundation, I will have to retrain parts of my brain. That may not make me a big man on hippocampus, but it means less of the horizon-gazing that required me to take positions on everything going on in the world; instead, a welcome verticalism will drive me to dig more deeply into specific areas of interest. Fewer lone-wolf assertions; more collegial dealing. I hear that’s tough.

But retraining and fresh stimulation are what all of us should require in “the last of life, for which the first was made.” Athletes and dancers deal with the need to retrain in their 30’s, workers in their 40’s, managers in their 50’s, politicians in their 60’s, academics and media biggies in their 70’s. The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril…

…how many of us are planning now for our social activity accounts? Intellectual renewal is not a vast new government program, and to secure continuing social interaction deepens no deficit. By laying the basis for future activities in the midst of current careers, we reject stultifying retirement and seize the opportunity for an exhilarating second wind.

Medical and genetic science will surely stretch our life spans. Neuroscience will just as certainly make possible the mental agility of the aging. Nobody should fail to capitalize on the physical and mental gifts to come.

When you’re through changing, learning, working to stay involved – only then are you through. “Never retire.”

Yup. Never retire.

Find a new sport to delve into. Volunteer at the local college. Take an online course in winemaking. Sign onto a building crew at Habitat for Humanity. Study to get certified as an Undertaker. Join a theatre club. Join a book club. Join a bowling or golf club.

Whatever… wherever…whenever… you find that youthful lightning bolt of enthusiasm or excitement? That will be the magnet that pulls you out of “retirement” and into a sense of usefulness and aliveness in your days.

Make sure your brain sends new signals through the synapses of discovery feeding the fires burning inside you as surely as your heart pumps life-giving blood to your active muscles.

Reach toward that crimson sunset of each day with an eager anticipation of a beautiful sunrise to greet your morning eyes.

Yup. Screw retirement! Oops! Sorry about the language.

How thoughtless of me.

Your cup is empty. Can I offer you a refill?

The Retirement Race?

Reinventing Ourselves by Changing Underwear

PENIS PARAGRAPH!

Yup, that’s all. That’s what a friend said to me in response to “Vagina Monologue” in last week’s blog title.

Penis Paragraph … snicker snicker … funny … Ha Ha…

Funny – not Ha Ha – is growing older, developing wrinkles and sagging skin but not being tuned in enough to see it.

It’s funny because inside myself I’m the same kid who jumped out of bed this morning (it is 1967, right?) when I smelled Mom cooking bacon in the kitchen. Thanks Mom, you’re the best!

After I eat the crispy delicious bacon I run to the bathroom before school starts and I look in the mirror.

OMG!

YIKES!

How the hell did my Dad hijack my face while I was sleeping? Back To The Future. Balding … hair sprouting from my ears and nose. Yup, it’s pretty clear that I’ve changed.

After absorbing the shock that I look different … I begin to realize that NO, I’m really NOT the same kid inside that I was back when JFK was shot … or JR was shot … or Reagan was shot … I’ve changed and my label has changed.

I used to deliver newspapers and flip burgers as a youngster, then migrated onwards to growing smelly bacteria in a lab. All different labels.

Now I pour shots in my new job as a bartender. That’s putting on a new label.

When you retire or quit a job, or are fired or downsized, you peel off all the labels …

I’m an architect, I’m a chef, I’m a doctor, I’m a plumber.

Labels get peeled off like dirty old underwear.

You shower and all the remnants of who you once were are washed away, ready to pull on a clean new pair of whatever.

The old way of retiring meant you went commando, no fresh underwear, no changes, just sitting on the front porch waiting for the Grim Reaper to waltz up your driveway in the twilight of your day …

Nowadays, most retirees put on some sort of crisp, fresh underwear. My latest pair says BARTENDER on the front.

I’ve been alive for 21,265 days… at this point, I’m a dim spaceship travelling through the galaxy and one day my light will be extinguished.

One of the great things about modern medicine is that our light can burn dimly much longer than it could 100 years ago… we have better telescopes so we can extend our reach. Most of us want our light to burn a bit longer so we can try on a new pair of underwear.

Re-invention, whether at my age, or much younger, is about extending our reach from inside ourselves.

… Adapt and you might get a fresh pair of underwear

A hundred years ago, you were born to a farmer, or a butcher.

And if you were a boy you lived your life as a farmer or a butcher and your obituary was a short one. One pair of underwear.

If you were a girl? Well, you awoke each day as a homemaker/farm wife, looking after your husband farmer or husband butcher, making all the decisions that mattered without him every realizing it. One pair of underwear.

Today is different and exciting and scary because we’re not only choosing to change our underwear but in many cases, we have no choice.

Job security is spinning wildly out of our galaxy and we can’t bring it back. Reinvention is happening, like it or not.

I began my lab technology career sticking needles in peoples’ arms, sucking out tubes of blood and then testing it in an Auto-Analyzer machine that took up half a large room. I finished my career 37 years later sitting in front of a powerful computer, sucking data out of a machine that was smaller than my desk.

CH-CH-Changes! We all adapt in one form or another, like it or not.

And if we want the most from our lives… the most contentment, the most satisfaction, the most happiness … we need to be adaptable enough to accept and embrace (most) change … none of us is so strong as to hold back the surging tsunami of technology.

Wrinkled crows-feet eyes or smooth as a baby’s bottom forehead, change in each of our lives is perennial as the sun rising.

Attitude is the distinction.

A fresh change of underwear always feels good… like crisp, clean sheets. Mmmmmmmmm.

Everything and anything seems possible.

And that my friend is this week’s PENIS PARAGRAPH!

Plan Your Escape Route …

I’m Canadian but maybe, just maybe, I should be an American…

It’s because I love freedom.

Isn’t freedom what America’s all about?

All of the magnificent swelling anthems, all of the heartfelt oaths you have to take to be an official U.S. citizen offer up the compelling and appealing idea that you live in the best country in the world and that’s because you have freedom, both personal and collective.

By the way, and this is important … if you really want to hear about the U.S. as the world’s best country, I suggest you listen to Jeff Daniels’ character Will McAvoy skewer the whole idea on the TV series The Newsroom … I’m not sure there’s a more powerful political moment in TV history as this soliloquy …

Freedom is so important – we tell ourselves we possess it, but really?

Just saying it doesn’t make it so.

Personal freedom is something that each of us yearns for, but really… really … those of us who are more Downton Abbey downstairs staff Carson and Daisy than upstairs aristocrats Lady Mary and Lord Grantham –  have to earn our freedom little-bit by little-bit.

I feel a little burn inside when someone tells me what I should be doing – little infringements on my personal freedom. There have been countless times in life where I needed to suck it up and just do it. It’s called survival. I accept that and have played along nicely.

But … Is that freedom?

Truly, I prefer to just tune out and pretend they never said anything. I long to be my own boss. I’m not talking solely about workplace stuff here. Friends, relatives, store clerks, stoplights … they all – at times – want to be my boss.

Today, finally, for most intents and purposes – not all – I’m my own boss.

Of course, there are degrees of freedom. Compared to a slave worker in any era of history (including today), I have enormous freedom.

But I’m greedy. I want more.

 

My freedom, my free choice, my power has been earned over many years. And in looking closely at why this is, it comes down to dollars and cents. Yup, the almighty DOLLAR.

I began my working life as a cute little 5 year-old paperboy. A few years later after being accused by one of my elderly newspaper customers of car theft (I was a modern version of elfin’esque Oliver to nasty Fagin) I graduated to becoming a McDonalds’ burger flipper in a hippie-refuse-to-cut-my-hair-short-wig.

Then began my extended 30+ year lab tech career that has brought the “retired” me to today where I enjoy more freedom than ever before.

But… the freedom I carry with me now like a smug smart-ass is part of a slow-moving plan I hatched way back in my early working years in William’s Lake.

In 1980, I left a lab job in frigid Yellowknife to follow my love south to British Columbia’s interior region called the Cariboo.

The town of William’s Lake is cowboy country. I loved the chill snowy winters, cross-country skiing in the deep snows outside my back door in January, the crystalline blue lakes and camping close by in the wide-open Chilcotin area in the summer.

I won’t mention fishing at Anahim Lake here, because how many folks can claim to fish on a lake where EVERYONE and his 3 year-old sister catches their daily limit of trout in an hour, and get out of the boat empty-handed (or hooked!), like I did?

It was in William’s Lake that I had an epiphany of sorts.

NO, it wasn’t while I visited with my wiry long-haired neighbour Dean who grew and smoked pot while his wife Rita tended their 2 little kids.

An no, it wasn’t while attending the William’s Lake Stampede and watching famed Canadian folk-country singer Ian Tyson competing on his quarter horse in the rodeo ring.

And it wasn’t even while enjoying the azure blue skies and cheek-pinkening air while swish-swooshing between the trees of Boitano Park on my skis.

Nope.

It happened in the lab at Cariboo Memorial Hospital where I worked.

A normal day in the lab began early in the morning when a group of us techs and lab aides circulated through the overnight faeces-and-fetid-pus-scented wards to collect blood samples from in-patients for testing. Routine stuff.

I sucked a few tubes of blood from a young woman labouring with her 3rd child when she first arrived at the hospital. Routine stuff.

My co-workers and I returned to the lab and began processing and testing the blood and urine samples we had collected on our morning rounds. Routine stuff.

About 9 am, all hell broke loose and the rest of the day was a total whirlwind. Not routine stuff.

The young woman in labour whom I had needled earlier, delivered a healthy baby through her vagina. And then …

… the blood began flowing … and flowing … and gushing.

It was determined quickly that this was an undiagnosed case of placenta praevia – a normal placenta attaches to the uterine wall above or to the side of the opening of the cervix so that it does’t interfere with the baby as it passes out of the uterus during birth. In placenta praevia, the opening to the cervix, and hence the exit door, is covered over by the placenta. The placenta can shear off either during or before birth – this is when the bleeding begins.

One of my colleagues received a phone call from upstairs saying they needed blood … NOW!!

Our blood bank fridge had a normal supply of blood on hand so that a typical patient needing transfusion would have timely access to about 4-6 units of blood, maybe 8 if they were lucky.

Without going into a huge amount of lab detail, our blood bag supply of suitable Red Cross-collected blood was exhausted for this woman before the hour was out.

She continued to gush from her vagina as fast as they could squeeze the blood through the needles in both arms.

This is when the lab took on the look of an army MASH unit as we called in local donors to give fresh blood to stem the tide of this woman’s losses.

She clung to life as we set up cots in the middle of the lab and jammed thick-bored needles into our local folk, filling blood bag after blood bag, doing the most remedial cross-type testing and then sending the bags upstairs to the operating room where surgeons and OR nurses worked feverishly to halt the tsunami of blood.

At one point I rushed to the OR to deliver another couple of bags of blood and entering the OR suite, I saw large pools of dark-red brown, sticky blood covering the floor. Surfaces of the bed on which the pale, unconscious woman laid were drenched in crimson, the staff passing wads of blood-soaked dressings back and forth like a fire brigade shuttling buckets of water to put out a fire.

The day was a total panicky blur until finally after about 8 hours the wound was closed – the blood flow slowed to a trickle and the woman was – amazingly – still breathing and pumping blood, none of it her own.

Everyone I worked with throughout the ordeal was exhausted but relieved, most of all the family of the poor lady who had received somewhere in the vicinity of 35 units of blood over the course of the day, or about 3 full human bodies equivalent of blood.

…………

FREEDOM.

Yes, I wanted to talk about freedom.

That day … that event… was traumatic not just for the lady involved but it affected me deeply as I realized that I might not be able to handle the stress and trauma of these life-and-death scenarios for 40+ years (I was about 23 years old at the time). I began thinking and reflecting.

I realized that I had to take some control over my life so that I could walk away if circumstances turned ugly or undesirable. We all have days in our working lives where we can barely stomach the idea of continuing on because of workload, or co-workers, or bosses or any number of stressors.

I decided then that I would refuse to be held captive because I had no other choices. And I figured the larger the sum of dollars backstopping my life, the greater amount of freedom of choice and decision-making would be in my hands. I wanted the power.

And so that day, I became a saver and an investor. 

And that day I began telling people I’d retire by the time I was 35 … which turned into 40 … then 45 and well … here I am at 57 and I’ve just “retired”.

It has become a long running joke with many of my colleagues over time that I should have retired years earlier, given my bold predictions.

Well, my optimistic financial scenarios took a while to mesh with reality, but that’s OK. In my final years and days in lab work, I enjoyed going to work, I embraced the camaraderie of my colleagues.

But now, I can make the choice of whether to arise at 5 am (as I usually do to visit the gym) or 7 or 8 or 9. I can go to a movie or concert on a weeknight without worrying about getting home early to sleep for tomorrow’s workday. I can eat my lunch at 10:30 am or 3:30 pm if the feeling strikes.

Choices. My choices.

FREEDOM.

Let’s be real. I can’t do anything or everything I want, when I want… I’m not a BDSM billionaire like Christian Grey. I’m not powerful in the same way that Oprah Winfrey is powerful. But I have power over the little things, the little things that are important in my little life.

And because I began saving and investing early on, I struck a healthy balance of enjoying the moment while at the same time saving and looking outwards to the day when I could make the important decisions about how I want to live.

I planned an escape route because freedom is knowing that you can make your own choices.