And a Pocketful of Gold

I finally received my financial aid money from school. The check was for about $3500, but I was in debt to the bank by $500 and had to buy new tires and get my car inspected. Plus, most of my bills were two months behind, so when the dust settled I only had about $1400 left. Fortunately, I'm also going to receive another $2500 soon since I had to update my FAFSA information after losing my job.

This brings me to an experiment that I have been waiting to conduct for about six months, I needed at least $1000 to properly begin the experiment, which may ultimately prove to be either the smartest thing I've ever done or, more likely, the dumbest. I took the $1000 and bought 3600 shares of stock in Citadel Broadcasting (CDL) at a cost of $.26 a share. Using the formula for exponential growth, y=Initial Value x Rate of Change^Time or Number of Calculations, and expeditious use of limit orders, the goal is to steadily buy and sell low cost stocks until the initial $1000 investment grows to at least $100,000, hopefully by the end of six months.

Citadel is either the third or the fifth largest broadcasting company in America, depending on who you ask and what they base their answer on, but its stock took a dive over the last three to five years along with the rest of the economy. I don't plan to wait for it to go back up to $5 a share, but I'll be happy for it to hit $.35 with a week or two. Naturally, though, the stock dropped over the two days immediately after my purchase to $.20/share. That's just par for the course for me!

I recently told someone that I needed this experiment to work or else I was going to have to find a job! You see, I've always been pretty work averse. I've long said I could never work two jobs because I'm barely willing to work one. That's why I worked at the radio station for ten years; It was BARELY one job! That's sort of how I perceive being a psychotherapist. I can get paid to stick my nose in other people's business. And since I've been doing that for 20 years for FREE it seems like a good calling, if I can just manage to make it through school, that is.

I've always dreamt of achieving the Communist Ideal in this Capitalist world, namely by having so much money that I can't spend it all, so that all my needs and wants are taken care of, and I can spend the rest of my life engaged in personal growth and spiritual fulfillment (learning, travelling, helping the poor and homeless).

Since I was a kid I've thought that my life was being wasted and that somehow I was capable of making the world a better place, if only I could get turned in the right direction or somehow gather enough money. I used to wonder, long before I'd ever heard of Communism, how much better humanity would be if none of us ever needed money again and we could all just work toward making the world a better place. For now, though, I look to the words of Robert Plant: "I live for my dreams... And a pocketful of gold."

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.