Time for a New Battery Again

I spent this last week on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, California attending meetings. Naturally all sorts of problems arose at home in my absence. My wife and I care for our neighbor's house across the street and we had a few sprinkler problems. Fortunately I could talk my wife through them and we resolved them all without having to dig up any pipes or sprinkler heads. The only problem that had to wait for my return is that of my wife's laptop battery needing to be replaced.

My wife loves to use her laptop around the house unplugged from any power source. Then at the end of the day, she'll plug it in so it is ready to use for the next day. I generally keep mine plugged in at my desk and work there unless I am traveling. A little over 2 years ago I had to replace my wife's laptop battery. Thanks to iFixit.com it is easy to order a new one and have instant access to instructions on how to replace it.

While in California my wife informed me that she can only get about 30-minutes of use from her laptop before the battery is dead. She tried the usual remedies that include charging it overnight and then using the computer until the battery dies completely. Unfortunately nothing worked and so I ordered one last night. Fortunately I have an account with iFixit and they had a record of what I ordered the last time. I didn't have to try and figure out what battery she needed. Three clicks after I visited their site, I had the new one ordered.

Usually I prefer to visit online shopping sites as a guest and try not to create accounts unless I know I will be back. I have an Amazon account as I find myself needing something there on a monthly basis. With iFixit, I'm only there every couple of years or so. This time I am glad I have an account as it kept me from doing time-consuming research. If you have at least 3 electronic devices, such as a smartphone, laptop, or other battery-powered device, I highly recommend getting an account and ordering from them. It will save you a bit of a hassle in the future.

The new laptop battery will be here in a couple of days. My hope is that it lasts a few years. When it comes time to replace it, I think my wife will want a new computer. Right now, $50 is a much better price to pay than $1000. Besides, who wants to transfer all the data and files from one computer to another?

Who's Lying? The Democrats or the Republicans?

It is election season and I really hate election season. It means you are guaranteed to have your evening news hijacked by political reports and meaningless stories about politicians criticizing each other. Last night I went to watch the evening news and caught the tail end of President Biden's speech at the Democratic National Convention. I'm glad I could catch it as I wanted to see if he did better than during his debate with Trump over a month ago. It's nice to see he can still read a teleprompter.

Unfortunately one of his comments is in direct opposition to to what former President Trump said during his Butler, Pennsylvania rally right as someone attempted to assassinate him. According to comments after the event, the former president said he turned his head to highlight a slide on illegal immigration causing the bullet to miss his head except for a small part of his ear, saving his life. Trump was attempting to show how illegal immigration has skyrocketed under the Biden administration. However last night, President Biden claimed that illegal immigration is at its lowest level since even before he took office.

So who is right? Is one lying? Or are they both telling the truth. The cynic in me says that any politician is incapable of telling the truth. So are they both lying? This prompted me to look at the numbers. Unfortunately you have to go to two different websites to get the statistics. The first place I found gave illegal immigration statistics all the way back to 1990. Unfortunately it only has numbers on a yearly basis but we can use them to compare how the Biden administration has done. The second site is the US Border Patrol website and they have numbers on a monthly basis for part of the current year and the full 3 years before that. I probably could have poked around on their site and gotten numbers back to 1990 but this keeps it simple. As the years are fiscal years, that means they run October through September and don't represent a calendar year. Fortunately if you adjust the component filter to only show just U.S. Border Patrol, the numbers match those on the first website. We can do an apples-to-apples comparison and not be misdirected, as some statisticians are prone to do.

The last year of President Trump's administration was 2020 and we had a fiscal year (FY) total of 405,306 illegal immigrants caught and/or expelled, known as "encounters." That seems to be a pretty low number. However if you look at FY 2017, you see that our country had the lowest number of illegal immigrants at only 310,531. I don't think that is a great number but it does represent years of decline for illegal immigration.

Now let's go back to Biden's statement from last night that illegal immigration is lower than when former President Trump was in office. It is important to remember that in June of this year, the President realized what an important issue this is and his administration started cracking down on it as seen by the dramatic fall in numbers. While it is true that numbers for July 2024 show a sharp decline for a single month, we still have over 1.4 Million encounters for FY 2024 with two more months to go. It doesn't take a math expert to realize no matter how few encounters happen in August and September, the total will never be below 405,306.

So former President Trump is using yearly numbers to make his case and President Biden is relying on a really good single month to make his. Technically they both can be telling the truth. I'll let you decide who is more correct. My guess is that if you are a liberal, you will side with the current president. If you are a conservative you will side with the former.

A Review of Investments

I know I've extolled the virtues of investments and if you do not have any consumer (think credit card) debt, you should seriously consider investing any of your excess money. I jumped back into the stock market in 2021 and have a number of years to look back upon to see how well I did. I also know that past performance is no guarantee of future returns. However it can serve as a rough estimate.

This past week I have reviewed my investments and have come up with a pretty good metric to determine how well it is doing. I encourage you to periodically do this as well. Investing can be logic based but there is also a lot of emotion and so it is good to have a consistent metric to help leverage logic over emotion.

Rather than talk about specific stocks, I want to focus on investment genres. I will provide some examples but leave it up to you to try this with your own investments. My ultimate metric is how long it takes me to double my money. Using a well-balanced portfolio, financial experts will tell you that you should be able to double your money in 10 years with no additional investment. Let's see how well my investments stack up.

Dividend Stocks

I've mentioned before that I like the passive income offered by dividend stocks. My investment portfolio consists of two different dividend stock genres: high dividend stocks and strong company dividend stocks. In the first I have a Real-Estate Investment Trust (REIT) stock. It is required to pay 90% of profits in monthly dividends. Every month I am paid a few dollars that I can reinvest. I am currently seeing about 13% annually that gets compounded monthly. It is not bad but the value of the stock always seems to remain around the same price. Looking at my own portfolio, this stock takes between 6 to 7 years to double my money. That is a good starting point.

My second dividend stock group is with two companies that pay quarterly dividends but are large corporations with solid financials. They don't pay as much as my REIT but the value of the stock has gone up over time. I have seen one company go from $35/share to $40/share over the course of 2 years. Factoring in the quarterly dividend payouts, it only takes this category about 6 years to double my money. As I am investing for the long term, this seems to be a slightly better investment strategy than REITs.

Whole Life Insurance

At the age of 23 I recognized I needed to provide for my family in the event I died. I picked up a whole-life-insurance policy that had a cash value I could borrow against. On occasion I did and then repaid the loan to myself to build back up the cash value. The premiums for the life insurance part of the investment started small and so it turned into a great value should I prematurely pass away. Now that I am older, very little that I pay into the policy is reinvested. Most of it is now going to really expensive life insurance that I no longer need, thanks to my other investments. Reviewing this is what helped me come up with the double-your-money-time metric.

I've had my life insurance for over 30 years and when I calculate how much I have put into it and the cash value now, I have barely doubled my money. Yes I know it is not fair as I am constantly putting more money into the investment and yesterday's payment should not be expected to be as far along as the one I made 30 years ago. However, 30 years is a really long time and so I am looking at options as to what to do with the policy.

Buy and Hold Stocks

This is what most people think of when they think of buying individual issue stocks. You buy a stock and hold onto it until you need the money. If you pick a solid company with sound financial practices, you should see the stock price climb over the years. Back in 2021 I wanted to invest in Berkshire Hathaway and so I bought a few shares of BRK-B, the less expensive of the company's stock. I wouldn't say the company has done exceptionally well compared to other investments I could have made but it hasn't lost money either. It has taken only 4 years for me to double my money. This seems like the clear winner and where I should put all my money, right?

Unfortunately you have to go back to my original statement that, "Past performance is no indication of future returns." It is also best to have a diversified portfolio and there are a number of investment options I have not even covered. While some of them are guaranteed to stretch my double-your-money-time metric to the 10-year average, they do help preserve my net worth even when the stock market falls like it did on Monday.

What's My Plan Now?

So how will this latest exercise change my investments? Well first I think I need to dump a number of my emotional stocks. You know, those favorite companies that you want to do well but aren't. I'm definitely going to invest that money in BRK-B. I'll probably keep my dividend stocks as they are not doing too badly and it is fun to reinvest those dividends when they show up. The big question is where to park all the money from my whole-life insurance. I'm still trying to decide.

Setting Up Magicband+ For Disney World

Two years ago my wife and I started a tradition with our oldest grandson by taking just him to Disneyland after he turned 5. We found a great deal on the Grand Californian hotel and booked the trip. We had a wonderful time and decided we would continue with the rest of our grand kids. This year we have two of our granddaughters turning 5 and so instead of a trip for each of them, we are bringing the both of them to Disney World. Why Disney World? One lives in Ohio and it is easier to pick her up on the way with the second granddaughter in tow.

Wanting to make sure we maximize our experience in the parks, my wife and I went online and purchased Magicband+ bracelets for ourselves and our granddaughters. Today I went about connecting them to my iPhone where I have the Disney World app installed. For some reason I could not get them to connect. Then I watched a video and saw my mistake.

My Sony smartphones have had Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities for a decade. I didn't think it caught on for other brands but today I discovered it is available in my iPhone. The important thing is to know where the touch point is on the device. For my iPhone it is on the upper-back-right corner. Once I turned the Magicband+ on, all I needed to do was touch it to the right place on my phone. Then I just followed the prompts to connect everything. Before the enlightening video I tried touching every part of my phone with the bracelet except the upper-right corner.

Unfortunately the software engineers that create Disney's theme park apps do an insanely poor job on their user interface. Even though I selected the correct person in the app before linking the Magicband+, the app linked all of them to me. There is no way you can unlink them. I had to call Disney technical support at (407) 939-4357.

Disney is known for having the best customer service and their technical support lives up to that standard. I have to say it is second to none. I quickly navigated the menu to get to the right department and a real human answered the call. Furthermore she spoke English like an American. I don't care if she is in Mexico or India, I just care that I can easily communicate. I explained my problem and she solved it immediately. Furthermore she linked my wife's park ticket with her account. Her help definitely made up for a poor application.

Now we are set and ready to go. The only problem is that the trip is not for a long time. I can hardly wait.