structureurself

[structureurself]

Balance

Was not going to write today but in the spirit of all those motivational youtube videos I surfed through in my powerlifting days, heres another one of my rants.

A lot of people bring up balance when they speak to me or have known me for a while. Im off the walls, and I’m balls to the walls you feel me. I dive into work, I dive into crime, I dive into hobbies. I want it all baby, and I want it now.

I don't have everything figured out but honestly unless you become some kind of introvert that does not speak and 10 hours a day, reads books without being able to communicate... I doubt you cannot invest all your focus and energy into investing! Or just learning. 

We don't always have tons of money to begin and in most cases it is not necessary. From what I have been reading and just in my personal experience, without proper investigation, investing is just as stupid cooking bacon without underwear. I say this but yet I still do it, so like Ive stated multiple time, Im not really smart. I just am really good at reading. 

I can read like a mother fucker. Some guys are like pfft fuck is this guy bragging about, everyone can read. But can they? Can you sit and research topics endlessly? Can you focus your energy into something consistently day in and day out with no real physical tangible reward? Than prove it. 

Oh and don’t prove it to me, I don't give a shit. In fact I think I will try to write on this page for years and no one will ever really get as far as the first paragraph... if they click on the link at all. 

Some people get to a page, look at the length of the text and roll they're eyes, start to skim. I fucking read, pause and look up definitions, sometimes take notes, I stay up late eyes red, in bed with my family or on the couch alone. I don't care. To me intensity is a blessing. 

A lot of my ex friends or even family members cannot handle the kind of person I’am and honestly sometimes I cannot either. Being unpredictable and relentless is not always amazing. And I have gotten myself into deep shit. I will probably loose money in the future due to my personality type. But I will win as well.

Enough about me, this is about reading. If you don't read or never read, try to read once a day for the next lets say week. Lets just start with right now. Just go, find something to read. Hopefully by this time you have already picked at Investopedia or some kind of cheesy finance book. Great. If you haven't but read this far on some random narcissistic, self loathing, contradicting tumblr page, you might as well read some not so highly rated books. (Intelligent Investor is like the best of the best as recommended by super rich white people but if you don't know the terminology its about as entertaining as parts of the bible.)

To me, its not about reading the BEST INVESTING/FINANCE BOOKS OF 2019 AS RECOMMENDED BY SOMEONE WHO WRITES FOR YAHOO. No its about reading everything that is tied into my investments and generally what I WANT to read. Which basically is anything.

If you go the whole week and its not entertaining yet, go the whole month. If after that you still don't feel like you are satisfied with learning and reading maybe working the same old job and being a consumer instead of an earner is meant to be. I mean shit... somebody has to do it, right?

[structureurself]

Robin Hood

I’m tired of people saying they do not have money to invest. You have money to invest, you just refuse to accept it. Obviously if you have no job, live on the street, you do not.

But, if you work, go to taco bell, buy an eighth a week, stay up all night with your best buds playing video games, and have a bank account balance of 36.33$... 24.10$** (Netflix auto pay) You got enough to invest. Invest 15-30$ a week. It will grow. 

“Alan, what if a company stock looses value, than I’m fucked!” Not necessarily. 

Yes it is true, if you put a ton of money into a company and they disappear, you are up shits creek. But you do not have to do something so illogical and stupid like that. I want you to bookmark 2 pages ... Investopedia and Streetinsider.

The first page is an encyclopedia of anything finance/investing related. Im going to use a lot of words that you might not know, it is not my job to tell you what they mean all the time. Learn to be resourceful. Kids used to have to go to the library, shit, humans used to have to DIE to learn. We live in a cushioned world now. I’m in my Pjs, on my couch with my phone, laptop and a few books on the table. Im comfortably reading articles on the Wall Street Journal website, graphs on different stocks and dividend payment histories, trying to make an educated decision on what stocks I will buy monday morning.

By the way, street insider is a good website to check dividend history.

Whats a dividend? Ill break my “aint my job” rule already, it is a sort of “reward” the company pays the stock holder for holding said stock. How often do they pay? Usually monthly, quarterly or I believe annually. I don't know everything, in fact I don't know much at all. 

So how much do they pay you ask? Depends on the type of company, price of the stock and other factors. Like I said, type in Dividend on investopedia it will give you an entire breakdown and you can go down a rabbit hole of terms you don't know. Trust me.

I will give you an example of a personal stock I own and show you their earnings. 

Ticker symbol MCD: McDonalds

January 2018: stock of McDonalds would have costly you roughly 166.00

In that year, the Face Value (market price of the stock) went to 176ish (Now its like 203). That year they payed each stock holder for each stock 1$ for three quarters and 1.16$ the last quarter of 2018. 

So theoretically, for putting a 166.00 in the beginning of 2018, you made 10 bucks on the face value (but that doesn't matter at the moment because you did not sell it) and they payed you 4.16$ that year for holding it. 

Big deal fuck head, right? Wrong. 

You got 4.16$ for nothing. For “holding” a stock? Risking 166$ for a company that has been paying dividends for a consecutive 45 years straight. If you had McDonalds stocks in the 90s, you would have been set now. Now that 4.16$... should you buy some gum? maybe 2 gallons of gas for your car? 

Naw, let it “Compound”. It is a term basically meaning you let your money work for you, by buying more stocks. Now, imagine if you had 100 stocks of McDonalds... 416.00 annually/104 quarterly reinvested to buy 3 more McDonalds or other stocks. Thats money you did not have before. By the way, McDonalds is a super power, they will continue to make money as you get older, and the stock will appreciate. We can only hope that is.

McDonalds is not the only stock that pays dividends, in fact theoretically, if you bought lets say 166$ of STAG a REIT (Real estate investment trust) it would have given you about 5 shares, making you .50-.55 cents monthly amounting to about 6$ annually. Go read about REITs, they are very fruitful because they pay their shareholders 90% of their earnings. 

You might be saying, well dude I don't have 20,000$ and stuff like well bruh 20,000 investment and Im only getting 6-700$ a year? Sure. You could lets say open a food cart with that money and make more money, but will you? Will you do anything but work the same job, hang out with friends, play video games and smoke weed? I hope you will do something else, but how I see a lot of people ages 18-25 maybe even 30, no they don't do anything else. They spend hundreds of thousands on bullshit they're whole lives and who knows what will happen when no one is there to wipe their ass at 80.

This long rant is not about what stock to buy, it is not stating that you need 20,000$, 166$, and dividends are not the only way to make money in the stock market. This is purely to get you thinking. This rant is about how you should start investing small amounts, and the most friendly brokerage system for broke kids starting out or sitting in college dorms is Robinhood. 

Im going to post my link for my RobinHood referral, giving us both a free stock if you join. I like how Im speaking to a hypothetical audience and I believe no one is even reading this, but in the case that you are:

share.robinhood.com/alana520

One of the most successful investors in the world is Warren Buffet. You might have heard of him, maybe not. Old white dude, is worth gazillions. The man prides his education on books and reading. I think it is said he doesn't have a computer or some shit. Listening to him on youtube is all fine and dandy, but I suggest you take his advice and READ. It is so simple! Read, google will give you all the definitions. Just read! Work and READ. I guarantee if you are not happy because you cannot find a job that pays well, and you are just constantly wasting your time doing other things. Just read. Google what books to read for beginning investors, go on investopedia and check out there investing 101 stuff. Just read guys it is honestly that easy. It makes you smart, resourceful and if you are ugly maybe it will help you get laid.

And open the account, I want the free stock.

Dont buy anything dumb yet, maybe read on in my tumbr to get ideas but honestly the amount of free information out there is incredible. Wallstreet journal is great. they cost 1$ for the first 15 weeks if you are a student and there is another deal for non students. But honestly, unless you NEED to know like me, just go download free book PDFs like the Intelligent Investor and other good reads suggested by the internet. Reading is free. It is powerful and you should be grateful you have the ability to do so. Not everyone is so fortunate.

[structureurself]

Fear

Some people are scared of the clown from “IT”, some are scared of arduous tasks such as studying for tests, or building a home. My two biggest fears are rejection and the “unkown”. 

I hate not fitting in. For me a constant reminder that I don't belong, is my last name. Since I was a kid I heard people slaughter it, the classic “Anak-Ah-kayev” or “Where are you from?” 

“I was born here.. in New York... I’m an American.” I reply 

“Yeah but where are your parents from?” They rebuttal.

“Russia. Belarus to be exact, if you know where that is... it is not really Russia.”

Now here is where it gets tricky. If this is someone with a higher education or maybe they are from a different country, they treat me like a human. We talk, exchange ideas or just pure small talk... but there is a whole other type of people that instantly give me this look of... well almost disgust. 

Why? You don’t even know me. And even if you did know me, still why?

I pondered this for a long part of my child hood. Going through history classes learning of the two countries... odd relationship. Not terrible, but far from perfect. I mean, shit, we fought together... lost millions of lives fighting the same evil. Never really fighting directly. Behind the scenes relationships were not all too good, but back to rejection. 

In no way am I saying my life was impossible to live being who I was, I have seen black and asian children being treated even worse, and women. But I can only really understand my struggles. Especially at a young age. 

My other fear was the “unknown”. I think to a certain degree this is everyone’s fear, just the subject of what the certain individual would like to know varies. For me, Im a nut, I need to know everything. I have what I believe to be a large amount of anxiety. My thoughts are flying at a thousand miles an hour constantly asking questions, contemplating my health, my success, my failures, why someone rejects me, why someone accepts me, what will happen in court, what will happen at work, if my wife will leave me, will we all die in a nuclear war, if there ever will be a “Friends” reboot... The world puzzles me. 

At a young age, disciplines like Karate and reading helped me avoid, or confront these issues. I use the term avoid because at that time, I did not realize that disciplines are not just distractions. As I got older something made me find new distractions. Either negative influences, Television, environment, puberty, moving to different states, family, dumb childhood thoughts or a combination of some of these factors drove me to drugs and alcohol.

MOST drugs made me feel numb, confident, indestructible or unfortunately a weird form of OK. Some psychedelics I feel opened my mind to new ideas and sometimes even helped me not do hard drugs... for a duration of time. Alcohol is a drug, for the reader who does not understand this due to age or lack of consumption, inform yourself of what constitutes a drug and how powerful something really is... even if it is legal. It still kills, ruins lives, dictates nations (Russia) and can change your life dramatically. Obviously there is some positive culture in alcohol, marijuana, psychedelics and dare I say cocaine? No please, don't go do cocaine kids. Bottom line, my line of thinking was “It changes the way you feel? You can see what? How does it do that, what does it feel like?”

13 to 25 was a dangerous, fun and in my case necessary path. I learn one way, from trying and failing. Yes obviously you can learn from reading and others, unfortunately I chose the wrong path. I used all my brain power, my fear of rejection and not knowing, to use, distribute and learn about drugs. 

Accepting that my decisions ultimately drove everyone that I had ever loved,  had known or had mutual feelings for me away by using drugs was one of the hardest things I contemplated and still to this day think about. I could say I ruined my life, I could say people did way worse, I could give excuses or be dramatic. The best thing to do is to move on. The world moved on, most people who were affected by my antics moved on. Or they overdosed and died, or they are my parents and family members who to this day cannot understand why I did this to myself, but they moved on. Im sitting here butt ass naked typing away. No one cares. My wife is asleep, my son too.

Acceptance of your fears my friends, is what you need to do or try to do before you meet the reaper. 

Rejection made me stronger, pfft you don't like Russians? Good, people who cannot accept you for what you cannot control should not be around you. And not everyone HAS to like you. People will not like you for any fucking reason. Logical, illogical, last name, first name, penis size, what fucking shirt you got on... Guys/Gals it doesn't matter. If you fucked up, and she left you, good because YOU fucked up, and YOU should own up to it or change your behaviors. Or not. Accept what you can or cannot do, this blog/tumblr page is not for motivation. I’m not going to be diving too much further into my past or my mistakes except for educational purposes. This blog will not be about glorifying the use of drugs or alcohol or telling you they are bad. I don't give a shit, it ruined tons of lives and helped tons of lives. In the end, knowledge and self control is what gets you through life. All Im saying is if you have not done any, for now, focus on something else. And if you have, great, move on.

This blog will be used to provide financial education for young adults. My goal is to try to shy children away from dealing drugs illegally, participating in illegal activities that are not cost/risk effective, avoiding their problems, and just general laziness, through the power of knowledge and “Financial freedom” (OOoooOo fancy)

Listen man, or woman, girl, or boy, or whatever the gender neutral want to be called. Im not an english teacher and Im not super sensitive. Im a 25 year old American kid who has been through a bunch a trauma, caused a shit ton of trauma, met my amazing wife and had a perfect baby. I no longer deal or use drugs, I read and invest. You should too.