I haven't posted an article in some time. It isn't that I haven't thought about it, or even made a couple of attempts. It's that nothing happened. Article ideas went nowhere and good intentions didn't result in a post. Let me start with a nice sunset from Queretaro, Mexico.

Let's catch up....

A Gig-Filled Life

Part of this blog-posting drought might be attributable to other tasks consuming much of my mental and physical energies this year. Rentals have been taxing this year with another court room visit to evict, draining 4 months rent plus legal fees. Another long-term renter I did not renew, which permitted me the opportunity for some serious rehab of the property before re-renting. Then a new course preparation for an online class I agreed to teach this fall took a lot of work over the summer.

I'm teaching three classes this fall. It appears I'll be doing the same in the spring semester. I only teach online these days. I want to keep the flexibility of going wherever whenever.

I like the "gig" aspect of teaching now. I essentially teach a similar load to what I had as a full-time faculty member while making 10 times the money, but..... it was a job. I discussed this in an earlier post. Some think I'm nuts, but I see it as another stream of income, but on my terms.

I like the variety of a gig-filled life - a little teaching, some rentals, landscaping, a little writing, some online work with Silvrback, investing.

In sum, I've had plenty going on this year to at least serve as an excuse for not posting a blog article since last year. But, there's probably more to it than that..... 

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We're in Mexico right now.

We're over halfway through a 5 week stay. We hung out in Mexico City for two weeks. Had never been there, so it was a nice change of scenery. I posted quite a bit on my personal website about this part of the trip, which you can find here. 

We're in Queretaro now, which is familiar territory for us by now as this is our third or fourth stay here.

We're here because we can be - no job but quite a few gigs that make it all possible.

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Not Voting Again

The U.S. election is this coming week and I'm again not voting. I've concluded that the governance principles I believe in no longer exist in either political party. I tend to agree with former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman's characterization of the parties today as the Uniparty. They both essentially are corrupting America and driving the country toward a serious social and economic breaking point.

To me, choosing either Harris or Trump will only further the decline. And I can't stop it.

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Lost $85,000 Last Year.... About Those TPS Reports

There is a humorous saying related to employee motivation that goes something like this, "The beatings will continue until morale improves." This saying perhaps could apply to life in general, but certainly to my investments. In this case, it might read like this, "The losses will continue until decision making improves."

Recall I wrote an article some time ago about my investment aims, linked here. Anyhow, the foreign agricultural investments were around $125,000, comprised of three investments - two in Thailand and one in Spain. Sweet.... foreign diversification (diversify currency and political risk).

Well, I got an email from the management company of the Thai projects on December 31, 2023 notifying me that they had discontinued operations effective immediately.

I first invested $35-40 grand and after a year or so it seemed like it was going well, so I bought another for $45 grand or thereabouts. Therein lies the error in judgement, influenced by greed or impatience or both. Putting so many chips on a square is a bad idea.

I should have waited for the first project to begin to bear fruit (organic vegetables, actually) which was to be within two years, but I got antsy and put more money into a related project.

Then the giant sucking sound. Now I'm in a class-action lawsuit to try to get some of the money back. Good luck with that. There is an interesting side to this process, which I may share in another post.

In this case, I clearly failed to abide by Warren Buffet's Rule #1 of investing, "Never lose money."

To be fair, Buffet has lost a LOT more money than I have. I have to ask myself, why follow the advice of a loser like that?

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Aside from all that, life is good. I'll close with a picture of me with some friends in Mexico City. They're my kind of folks, they don't talk much.

Kermit