I have an old Sony Ericsson phone that an unlucky mugger would throw back at me. It does the job, but it’s no boy’s toy.
I didn’t even pay for it! A friend gave it to me after a month because he only bought it to use while in Europe.
Its charger has a two-prong European plug. The adapter I use to power it in Britain costs £1.99. It’s my two-quid mobile phone.
I have written about several specific company’s shares here on Monevator over the past few months, and I thought it would be interesting to see what’s happened to them.
To do this properly, one would compare not only the price when I looked at them with the price today, but also the market move over that time.
It would also be good to look at the company newsflow and any financial results in the interim.
I don’t intend to do that. This is my personal blog, that doesn’t pay, and I’ve M&S sticky toffee pudding to tuck into.
These then are just my quick impressions of how accurate or otherwise my initial thoughts turned out, and an indication of how I traded them where applicable.
I am almost fully invested, so you might think I’d be glad to see the Dow over 9,000 and the FTSE tickling the 4,600 mark again.
Certainly it’s a relief after 18 months of seeing my net worth evaporate week by week.
I’ve written many times on Monevator that bear markets don’t last forever, but even I have to pinch myself when I find myself materially richer at the end of the day.
I am not a standard personal finance blogger. Many of my peers only fixed their finances after first running up huge debts or losing their jobs. But I’ve never been in debt and I’ve never claimed a penny in welfare or benefits.
The closest I’ve got to the D-word was in my second year at university, when I borrowed money from a friend between grant cheques to buy a stereo.
In mitigation, I was still using that system a decade later – I bought well – and when I left college I had money in the bank, despite only ever receiving the standard student grant.
(Specifically, I took out a student loan, but only to put the money into a high interest savings account, then arbitraged the difference between the rates!)
Anyway, for me that stereo purchase was my wild moment – the equivalent of a week-long cocaine binge with dwarf waiters, fire-eaters and loose women on stilts. (I presume that’s what debt-fueled decadence looks like?)
Am I perfect then? I wish. I have financial blindspots just like anyone else – but maybe not the same ones.
I believe Facebook will one day be seen as important a leveling force for humanity as the Magna Carta, the Suffragettes and the International Bill of Human Rights.
Why? Because what strikes you when you click through other people’s profiles is how similar we all are.
We no longer collectively aspire to marriage, 2.4 kids in the suburbs and cutting our lawn on Sundays in formation.
Yet we mostly have similar gangs of friends who crowd in front of the camera or who take photos of us on bridges during breaks in far-flung cities.
We all say we like books, films and music that thousands of others like.
We’re different, but we’re recognisable by our similarities. We rally around them.
But there’s another thing that strikes you when first encountering Facebook, if you’re over a certain age.
It is harder to write about, but even more true.
