Well, with Trump's announcement of the Strait of Hormuz being open and the war effectively over (true or not), the markets surged and my total financial assets hit over a million for the first time. My total assets first hit 1MM in May 2024, my net worth (assets minus liabilities) hit that checkpoint in September 2024, and this is the first time that just the financial assets (disregarding the house and other property) minus liabilities totals that much.
As for going back to school--not currently in the sense of taking classes, although I am very excited to be able to have a college library card again. I just joined the "Board of Advisors" for one of the colleges in my area, one where I taught from 2001-2009 and one which I am an alumni of, since my post-BA certificate of accounting came from there.
The BOA is mostly a networking and promotion group meant to spur ties of the college to the community. You actually pay a small annual fee ($60). That fee is used to fund community projects designed by student groups, for example, designing a "sensory friendly loop" for a field at an early childhood development center, providing materials for the local America Reads program. There are three meetings a year--a Spring dinner, a Fall breakfast, and a Winter lunch. The fall and winter programs feature a faculty speaker while the spring dinner honors the student volunteers. Some of the community members of the BOA have a prior affiliation with the college like I do while others are heads of local nonprofits, local politicians, attorneys, CEOs of local businesses, or financial advisors.
Now that I'm on the BOA, I'm getting invited to a lot more events at the college. After the BOA Spring dinner on Thursday, I went back again on Friday for a reception honoring the 25th anniversary of the opinion research polling center on campus. I caught up with some former colleagues from the political science and psychology departments and viewed a posterboard display of some of their survey findings. I was surprised how many dealt with environmental beliefs, which are a research interest of the survey director. Usually we hear about the institute in the context of political opinion surveys--the director noted that he did over 700 interviews with media outlets in 2024. Based on this group's research, the nadir of climate change denialism was in 2010, and since then, more and more people believe in global warming and that global warming is caused by humans.
I've been invited to yet a third event at the college (the end of the semester is drawing near, so many events in a short time frame). I have a very busy work week, so I don't think I'll be up for it. But I'm glad to be able to get a college library card again.
April 18th, 2026 at 05:18 pm 1776532713
Also congrats on your library card haha.
The objective evidence for humans causing global warming is very, very hard to deny. I think, by this point, most informed “deniers” are complaining more about the lack of studies on the overall impact towards humans more than anything. Anyone else who actually doesn’t believe in global warming at all is just betraying their complete ignorance on the subject matter, and coincidentally enough, are the same number of people I know in real life who also voted for Trump in the second go around. Perhaps it was coincidence more than correlation, but it definitely made my eye roll.
April 18th, 2026 at 06:00 pm 1776535219
https://youtu.be/Bn8v59ZERhU?si=Jw7Cqz9ZuyUcqs2o
I HOPE people will realize what should be so blatantly obvious by now: Trump lies. He is a pathological liar. Literally nothing that comes out of his mouth can be trusted. It is That Simple.
But yes, for all the insanity and stupidity around this, I am certainly not going to complain about my portfolio rebound, though, before any Trump supporters get excited with the prospect of saying “I told you so”, I’m going to pre-emp it by noting that the DJIA has yet to go back to Pam Bondi’s original high of “$50,000”. And even if does, all the political and actual harm this incident alone has caused is just literally not worth it, when none of this had to have happened in the first place.