Bonus Post: Striding The World Like A Magnificent Bastard

One thing that I strive for in life is to become a magnificent bastard.  Given that I was born in wedlock and that I am far from magnificent, this is a very audacious goal.  But today gave me two opportunities to practice.

First, you probably noticed that the market took a nose dive.  The Dow fell 353 points.  And with my luck, I just made a bunch of investments over the last couple of weeks (a post highlighting my recent purchases is coming soon).  You can guess which way those are all headed…. downwards.   But as I’ve said before, I’m a long term investor.  And it’s not like it isn’t entirely apparent that the market is overvalued.  The only things I dodn’t know is when and how exactly the correction will come.  Today, the correction (or at least part of it) arrived.  No big deal.  My stocks are still fundamentally sound and paying their dividends.  If the market continues its slide into next month then I’ll be able to buy more stocks at cheaper prices and with higher starting yields when fresh capital hits my account.  No need to worry.

But what about my options?  If the market correction pushes prices below the strike price I’ll run the risk of assignment.  Again, I’m not particularly worried.  Why?  Because I have a pile of cash set aside just in case of assignment.  My worst case scenario consists of adding great stocks to my portfolio at a discount of what I would have been willing to pay for them in the first place.

Second, today I got a flat tire.  I discovered that my car had some kind of ginormous nail embedded in one of the rear tires.  Not cool.  I pulled into the mall parking lot and called AAA.  If there is any service that is entirely worth the money, if not more, it is AAA.  They sent someone out who fixed the problem for me in less than an hour.  At no cost to me.  I did miss my evening yoga class, but that’s a mere bagatelle in the grand scheme of things.  How magnificent is that?

You might say, why didn’t I change the tire myself?  That would be the hardcore frugalist thing to do.  Fuck that!  The last time I changed a tire (last year actually) I spent an over hour trying to get the damn thing off and had to flag down a random stranger to help.  When I finally got the spare on, I discovered much to my dismay, that it was flat too.  I then had to get the car towed (which cost me money) and have a new tire put on.  My whole day was shot and I lost money.  Basically, the antithesis of magnificent.

While I have yet to obtain magnificent bastard status, today was a small step in the right direction.  Achieving financial independence is a key milestone in my quest to become a full fledged magnificent bastard.  Stay tuned for more updates.