January 2020, A Month That Will Go Down in History

I am already tired of January 2020!

It all started so well. Was it really just one month ago that I was planning a great start to the year, new class, posting more regularly, working harder?

A Colorful Pattern

Well class at school began well. The professor is accommodating. She even wanted to see where my problems lay with the online interface for my personal finance class. Ah! The online text book is full of ALT Text bugs so I cannot read the textbook online.

Then suddenly on January 21, I hit a full stop.

STOP!

A pain in my chest.

A trip to the Emergency Room.

Chest X-Rays.

A blood clot blocking a coronary artery.

Blotches on my lungs. Cancer says the Doctor, no old, 14 year old Valley Fever Scars, say I.

Four days in the hospital arguing with the doctors, I have been through this all before many times. Its not cancer. No we need to do biopsies and tests, we cannot be sure.

No deal with the blood clot, not the old Valley fever scars.

It's cancer.

No it's not!

No it's not cancer the doctor finally says after four days. It would have helped if you had told us that you have had Valley Fever in the past.

What had I been doing for the past four days?

It took me one week to get home. I am exhausted. My old problem of antiphospholipid antibody syndrome has flared again. This time causing a clot in my heart.

Now my life is all up in the air again.

Nothing is set for the next month. More doctor visits, possible heart surgery. Probably that will not happen though the doctors were talking about it yesterday.

But right now, it is good to be home.

Tonight I won't be woken for yet another blood draw. Tonight I can eat a meal that tastes of something, rather than dine on nutrition.

Tonight I can drink a cup of tea when I want to, not just when my visitors smuggle one past the nurses station.

Tonight I can pat my dog and hug my wife.

Goodnight.

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Back to School

Well today I received my first weeks schedule for my next college class.

Going back to school 

Fresno City College

Going back to school at the beginning of a semester is always exciting and scary, even when you are 58 years old. How did I survive from the age of four until I was sixteen?

This semester, I am taking a step away from my Social Work Certificate. There was just so much depressing concepts in those classes, so I need a break. This semester, I am going into business classes. I am taking Personal Finance.


Wait a minute! I hear you say, didn't you say you had over forty years of investing and running a family business?

Well yes you did, and I have done those things, still do, but I believe I still have a lot to learn.

•   You can always learn something new.

 Most of what I have learned over the years has come from books and putting into practice what I thought I understood. It has worked, but it is not a perfect system. When I was young and sighted I read a book about driving a car, I knew all of the theory but non of the practical things with driving. For that I had to take driving lessons.

There is lots of stuff that you only learn by practice, some of them we can't go through here without adding an adult content rating to the site.

Believe it or not I even had to learn how to live as a blind person. So. Why not go back to school for a semester and learn about personal finance.

I am looking forward to class. There seems to be lots of read. I haven't got the book as yet. At $150 from the college bookstore and only $55 from amazon. I decided to take an option of saving some of that personal cash and go for the cheaper option.

Leif, My Guide Dog

Plus it seems that I need to buy a graphing calculator. Need to buy? Do I need to buy anything that I cannot use? Well I will have a chat to my professor tomorrow.

Then there the nerves about who will be in class. First days are always nerve wracking, but at least I get to take a cute dog along with me. Last week, last Friday, we went to get my student I.D. and took a walk to find the classroom. It is in a building which we haven't used before, so Leif, my guide dog, enjoyed lots of treats as we explored.

Wish me well. I will keep you appraised of the first week news later.

If you are going back to school this week. Good luck, I am with you all the way.

All the best.

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Financial Independence For the Visually Impaired - Part 3

Two months ago I set in motion the basic foundations of a plan to generate an income stream from dividend investing, the aim to reach an income of $10,000 as soon as possible. For the initial plan read more here.

Cash Income

My latest steps to Financial Independence

I initially funded the brokerage account with $50 then added another $110 in November, 2019. In December I received $2.16 in dividends which were re-invested in their stocks which added a few fractional shares and some units of Mutual Funds..

This income stream led to my investment increasing to $162.16

In addition the stock market added another $5 to my investment so as of yesterday my total investment is  just over $166.00 (Rounded Down). Growth of 2.17%

 The account has a projected dividend income of $6.09 for the year, but this will increase monthly as more dividends are put back into the account.

 Also I have introduced a new stream of income from online advertising. This income will be used in addition to my amazon affiliate income to generate funds for further investment throughout 2020 and beyond.

I am also using the Spring Semester for studying Personal Finance at my local Community College. I have a long history of investing behind me, forty years of history. But there is always something new to learn in the subject and I think it is time to go to school and learn if I am doing as well as I could or if I am missing some really important information in my investing knowledge.

As Mark Twain once said "It's not what you know that what gets you into trouble. It's what you think you know for certain, that gets you."

So with a nice two percent rise in my initial portfolio, I will say thank you for reading and if you have found this post useful please like and share it with your friends and family.


If you would like to know why I love investing for dividend income read my blog at "The Investor".
Possibly leave a comment or question below.   Happy New Year.