Forever stamps. You can buy 2 at the current rate. In a year, they’re likely to appreciate faster than inflation as postage rates go up. Or you could use them to mail cards to your grandparents. An especially sound financial investment if you have rich grandparents.
4 Likes
That’s it. That’s why museums and zoos (usually municipally-run) can have stamp-the-penny machines: you’re not going to try to pass the penny off as legal currency once it’s squashed.
I know, I read it. But he seems to also say, “go thou and do likewise.” And that might not be easy.
The financial adviser didn’t give an idea that was appropriate for ONE dollar at all. I’m wondering if he totally misunderstood the challenge at the heart of the question. He gave a laundry list of things that are good reasons to save/invest, but not a single one that a single dollar would make any significant difference on. If you’re worried about investing for things like retirement, college, death, disability, market crashes, etc., a dollar’s not about to come anywhere near covering what you’re up against on those things. And most of those kinds of things, you can’t even realistically invest a dollar toward. You can’t open up the kinds of accounts or coverage the brokerage fees that starting to invest for those big costly events in a way that would have any potential at all to end up with you having more than the single dollar you put in to start with would require. So even if he was trying to get at “start investing now with that buck”, he still missed the question because you can’t start investing with a buck. You might could put in the extra buck if you already had accounts you had going for that kind of stuff. But if you already had investments going for that kind of stuff, it would make his list of stuff you should be investing for irrelevant.
No way would I take that guy’s financial advice. Even the idiot who answered about burning it seemed to understand the question and give it a more thought-out and realistic answer.
2 Likes
I think he showed the great disconnect between finances and people. To a person money isn’t linear. I might buy a coffee for $1 (okay, $2) but I wouldn’t buy a million (500,000) coffees for $1M.
Money can be your high score or it can be the quantity of beans and rice on your plate tonight. I don’t think that guy understood that second part.
1 Like
I don’t expect you’ll turn into a millionaire this way, but the return on investment of buying Forever stamps has been pretty good lately. You can get two of them now and still have a few cents left from your dollar.
Okay, I tried to answer this before I had my coffee, and it came out gibberish, so I deleted it. @redstarr in post #25 and @anon50609448 at #26 pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as what I was trying to get across in my half-addled blubberings.
1 Like
There isn’t anything you can invest a single dollar in that matters. I mean, some of the respondents came up with nice musings on how lots of little things add up, or the power of community action, but in 2014, one single lonely dollar without any friends is pretty close to worthless. The financial adviser chose to take the question literally (not unreasonable, since that’s literally his job) and gamely listed some useful places you could put your one dollar, and then also put a bunch of other dollars.
I’m not saying the question was pointless, or that the other answers were stupid. To the contrary, I liked most of them. But I don’t think the author had a specific single point in mind. I think she chose her respondents in hopes of getting a mix of interesting philosophy, practical thinking, and straight-up fiscal advice, and that’s what she got.
Something like that was suggested in the article, I thought it was the best suggestion.
I was disappointed at how few suggestions would be useful to anyone who has only a dollar (or local equivalent) left at the end of the month on a regular basis. 9% of people in the UK have less than £10 left at the end of the month, at one point I was lucky if I had 10p spare and a meal every day.
My advice for that dollar? Keep yourself alive, then focus on your community. Everything else is frivolous.
Even the one Cory quotes, the fashion designer looking for inspiration at Goodwill, is wildly inaccurate - especially in NYC, where the designer lives. You can’t even get a ratty t-shirt for $1 at NYC thrift stores, much less something with some sort of design detail that’s worth anything in terms of inspiration.
1 Like
I see a lot of out of touch people have no idea what things cost anymore. At least giving it to a street performer, or as a tip, or even to a homeless person makes a difference.
Best use of one dollar? Give it away, and be awesome. Seriously, being awesome is cheap, and an incredible investment. And while there are worthy causes everywhere, try giving the pizza guy an extra dollar - he or she will think you’re awesome, you’ll see the effect immediately, and it cost you a buck. As someone else said, your barrista, your waitress, the people around you every day. Giving a dollar because you can, not because it’s expected or deserved - that’s awesome. And it costs $1.
What kind of investment is that? It’s an investment in your community. It’s an investment in lifestyle - isn’t it an amazing world when people do something nice simply because they can? When people behave differently because you do? And while you can spend limitless money to seem awesome in some way (Armani suit? Fancy car? Impressive address?), the gratitude someone can express for a single dollar that means more to them than you is an investment that pays more that dollars will ever measure. And really, what’s the point of having dollars, if not to make your life and world a little bit better place.
2 Likes
I would give it to my friend Rob, who is the luckiest fucker in the world. I have, several times, seen him find a pound in the street, walk into the nearest bookies and come out with between twenty and fifty pounds. It annoys the piss out of me.
1 Like
I actually thought the fund manager was pretty fair “don’t waste even a single dollar being silly, either you know what to do with money or you find some one who does.”
I say hold onto it until you get a few of them together where they do something, oh and only burn money if you have money to burn (in which case you should probably just give it to someone who doesn’t unless the currency is literally worthless).
I didn’t get the impression that Emily was talking about buying clothes. Things that are useful in job interviews (or in church on Sunday) are, relative to the average thing that isn’t, more expensive at Goodwill. You can buy candle sticks, picture frames (sometimes with quite crappy kitschy art in them already), and any number of other things that aren’t clothes or electronics at the four Goodwills I’ve gone to for a dollar.
I bought a pile of Kurt Vonnegut books at one in VA for less than $13 (some of the individual books were less than a dollar). That was a master stroke that I suspect must have happened because someone died and their relatives didn’t know what the books were. Don’t go to Goodwill expecting to pad your Kurt Vonnegut collection.
Kind of a ramble but what I’m getting at is that a clothing designer doesn’t have to get design inspiration from clothes only.
##Rena Singer, Communications Director at Landesa, Seattle##
A dollar can help a girl in West Bengal, India participate in The Girls Project. Through a partnership between the Government of West Bengal and Landesa, more than 40,000 girls participating in the project attend bi-monthly meeting where they learn about their rights to attend school, to not be married as a child, and to one day inherit land. The girls also learn intensive gardening skills and grow a kitchen garden on any spare land in their compound. Many of the girls grow gourds on the roof of their house, mushrooms under their beds, and leafy greens along the perimeter of their homestead. The food boosts nutrition, helps redefine what the girls are capable of, and often helps the girls pay school fees. It costs about one dollar per participant per year.
That sounds pretty keen.
Have one dollar? Go buy a pencil. Use it to design, sketch and plan. You won’t need anything else.
I actually kind of expect that burning a dollar to make a statement is probably legal for the same reason flag burning is legal. The first amendment should protect you if you are doing it as a protest. Hrm… It would be interesting to get an ACLU lawyer on speed dial and try.
Maybe invest in some paper, too?
I think the problem you run into is that bills are technically the property of the treasury? I’m not 100% sure on this, but I think that basically the bill represents a dollar you have, but the physical object isn’t your property. In that case, burning it to make a point wouldn’t be any more protected by the First Amendment than burning down your neighbor’s house to make a point is (that is, it is protected but you aren’t going be charged for expressing yourself but for destroying things).
