2014 Review

This photo of my dad is from 2011. He looks pretty good here, but on October 11th, 2014, only 3 years later, he passed away. He was 80 years old. He was from a generation that worked hard and enjoyed socializing with friends. He never touched a computer and had no need for books, music, or movies made after 1960. His only hobby was his beloved cabin in Northern Wisconsin, where he spent many of his weekends.

My obsession with investing continued this past year. I still struggle with being overly conservative, which can be good and bad. On one side you can miss out on opportunities, but on the other, you lose less money when the market drops. Bonds have lost value, but I have made up for that with several well timed stock trades. I still worry about putting my hard earned money into the stock market, because I know that unpredictable things can happen, and often do.

In September, I took a trip to Las Vegas. My first vacation in a while. It was interesting to see how things have changed in Vegas. We visited as many casinos as we could in 3 days. But, the slot gods did not smile on us. I figured that my chances would be better in Vegas, than the Indian casinos around here, but that wasn't the case. Discount coupons from MyVegas rewards, on Facebook, made our trip more fun.

Hackers have turned the Internet into their playground in 2014. I have had to cleanup several websites that had been compromised by hackers. The nonsense seems to be getting worse. I've had my credit card replaced twice this year, and I don't really use a credit card that much. I spent my Christmas holiday break updating the Budgethomepage website for 2015. I was thinking of dropping the consulting and making it a list of budget related links. But, I ended up just removing old content and adding banner ads to the site instead. It is too easy for small business owners to create their own websites for free these days. That has pretty much put part-time web designers like me out of business.