Had my weekly breakfast with Dad this morning, at IHOP. Pretty good food, though not much better than many other places in my area.
Afterwards Dad and I went shopping at a new local shopping mall. We both picked up several good gifts. We also ran into Mike Minter, the pastor of Reston Bible Church. He was a good friend of ours, until the church started getting…very weird. We had to leave as a result of the really terrible stuff we’d found out about the running of the church. But that’s a long story for another time.
I also ran out later in the day and got the bulletins for the church printed. This week: pink paper, in celebration of Christmas.
While at Office Depot waiting for the bulletins to be printed, I picked up a copy of The Motley Fool Investment Guide ($10.40 at Amazon.com), which is an excellent collection of investment suggestions from the guys at The Motley Fool. No “get rich quick” schemes, either; their plans only come to fruition after decades of planning. But boy, do they come to fruition. They run the numbers and show how to turn $10,000 into about $7 million in 30 years, with about an hour’s worth of work every three months. It is possible.
I also grabbed a copy of If I Knew Then What I Know Now ($10.40 at Amazon.com). CEO’s and other sucessful people were asked “What do you wish you’d been told 25 years ago?”, and their answers are collected in this book. A lot of excellent, and occasionally surprising, wisdom. My favorite thus far is “Open your mail at 4:30 p.m. every day.” As the author explains, this way, you come in to work each day and have the day you planned to have. Then at the end of the day, open your mail and use it to plan the next day.