Hey, yo, chitlins! No, not pig intestines, chilluns. Kids. You know what I mean. LOL

Today I’m just going to write a little bit about the difference between the cost and the price of something.

Quickly, the PRICE of something is how much money you have to pay to get the thing now. If you want a rifle now from the local store, the price could be $150.00, for example. So you would have to pay $150 plus tax to get the rifle.

The COST of something is how much money you put into the thing to get the thing, plus everything you have to pay to maintain the thing over time, plus opportunity costs as taught in economics. So the rifle would cost $150.00, plus tax, plus all the time and money you’d put into it to keep it working over your lifetime of having rifles, plus opportunity costs.

Continuing to use rifles as an example, let’s compare the price v.s. cost of a cheap ass .22 versus a well-designed and made .22 rifle.

The price of the cheap ass rifle is $100. The price of the well-designed and well-made .22 is $400.00. Clearly the price of the cheap ass rifle is lower – it’s .
a quarter the price.

What about the cost comparison?

This is where it gets interesting.

Take the cheap ass rifle: The rifling inside the barrel (the twist) is responsible for a large degree of the path of each shot. The cheap ass rifle has cheap ass rifling, so the shot group is not tight, so it’s also tough to zero. Even at 25 meters, you’re looking at a 2″ shot group, which sucks. Take that out to 100 meters, which is about as far as you’d want to use a .22, and you’re looking at an 8″+ shot group. So any shot at that distance or even closer, is going to be off a good bit.

If you’re hunting rabbit, for instance, that 2″ per 25 meters could easily be the difference between a kill and a miss. If you depend on eating the food you kill, then you’re out quite a few meals, unless you can get closer to your target and hope it’s not’ off too badly. (And we’re not taking trapping into account here, either, so there’s always that option outside of this comparison… but that’s a legal thing, too…)

Using the well-made rifle, you’d have a shot group of about ½”, and that’s really only because of the differences from round to round, not so much the rifiling. Do you think it might be worth the extra $300 one time to miss less and get more food? Or targets? Or would you rather forever spend more time and ammo getting less food?

Time versus Money

There is another issue that needs to be gone over here, brer wonderful children of mine. That is the trade off between time and money. It’s not that time equals money, because it doesn’t (but you don’t need to correct every idiot who says it, either). It’s that time you can never get back. You can get money back, and make more than you otherwise would have. If you want, that is.

Time is really “the consideration that space and particles will persist”. So time is persistence. When you persist on a given course, you gain more time. Also, when you move toward a goal faster (not hurriedly), you gain more time. Seriously consider that.

The same place I read that definition of time, I also read something to the effect that “the apparency of time is the change of position of particles in space.” So change is the result of the existence of time, and is required, if only on an atomic or molecular level. ANYWAY…

According to the Federal Reserve, money is an idea backed by confidence. The intrinsic value (built-in value by the material of the thing itself) of paper dollars is very low. The intrinsic value of the coins minted in .999 pure silver is whatever the market value of the silver is. Since markets fluctuate, so does the intrinsic value of the minted silver coin. (I won’t bother going historical on money here…)

So, really, nearly any idea can make one money as long as it is backed by confidence. That’s a study in itself! Whew! And it’s an article in itself. Know that when you’re buying a stock. What is it about a company that makes you want to buy stock in it? Seriously. That’s not a bullshit question.

If there is nothing in a company that you want to buy, then don’t buy the stock of the company. Is the management very good, like it currently is with CLF? Is the product line spreading virally, like the iPhone (or any other Apple product)? Is the company a market leader in a coming revolution in an industry, like Air OS by Ubiquiti? (Keep in mind the date here, kids. Things change and you’d better do your own research for the time this will apply to you.)

What is the reason? Ultimately, you want to put in some beer money to buy your stocks. Yes, that’s still true. But what is it about the company (not the charts, or opinions, or rumors…) that you’re willing to give up some beer now for? If there isn’t a reason to give up your beer now, then buy yourself some beer and drink it. If there IS as good reason to give up some beer now, WHAT IS THAT REASON? What gives you the confidence?

There’s a whole mess of things to look for and know about. Luckily for us, the best book on the topic is out of print (again). Basically, stupid people who can’t read and can’t follow directions shouldn’t ever be allowed to leave comments on Amazon… but it happens. Ted Warren wrote the best book “investolating” that exists, or ever will exist. It’s in our library. Read it. Every bit of it. Read it 6 times like I have done because it becomes second nature and it’s quick and easy to spot charts of companies to look into further for other confidence building parts, also given in the book.

The price of a stock is only the outlay of funds to buy shares in the stock, plus fees and taxes and charges. The cost of a stock can be devastating if you don’t look at the company. Recall or look into the collapses of MCI WorldCom or Enron. What do you think the cost of owning the stock of a crappy, unethical company was? Yep. (Tens of) Thousands of families paid the price.

You’re damn right. Investing is all about buying more beer with the same damn money you’ve already spent. OR investing is all about buying more beer over and over because you did the right thing one time.

Some “Kowasaki” dude wrote in a purple book something to the effect that an asset is something that puts more money in your pocket than it takes out. The same dude also wrote that a liability takes more money out of your pocket than it puts in your pocket.

That’s all fine, but I didn’t read anything about beer in those books. So an asset is something that gives you more money so you can buy more beer, and it doesn’t take out a lot of beer money. All bills ruin your monthly beer fund, they take away from it. You want to make it so your bills don’t take away too much beer.

Another very important thing is time. You will need a lot of time to be drinking all that beer. Investing is not just about getting more money, but also getting more time. The two together, time and money, are called “lifestyle” by some.

So investing is about using something now to get more of that something in the future, or more of something else. It’s like a trade, but cooler.

You can trade dollars today for more dollars tomorrow. You can trade dollars today for time tomorrow. You can trade time today for money tomorrow. You can trade time today for more time tomorrow. If you want to throw in “things”, then you can have more choices for investing.

Trade things for dollars, time or more things. Trade dollars for things, more dollars or time. Trade time for things, dollars or more time.

Things are physical universe things, stuff made out of matter and space.

Tomorrow is some approximate or definite time in the future.

You want to trade so you get more of what you want. If beer is something you want more of, trade for beer. Beer in that case is what the edjimukated call the goal. Without the goal, the reason why, it ain’t worth it. Just trade your time for money, then the money for stuff and things like everybody else does.

The basic categories of the site will be

• Investing – for info about investing in general.
• Stocks – for info about trading stocks.
• Futures – for info on commodity and other futures.


Yes, there will probably be other stuff, too, like currency pairs, collectibles, funds, bonds… You know, whatever makes for lucrative investing. :-$

There will be absolutely no regularity to the posting of new information. I’m not in a hurry, and I don’t have a schedule (yet) for typing new information here.


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