Funny Money Friday: Bad Investments

Money doesn't have to be boring! Each week, CreditBloggers.com takes a look at the lighter side of the personal finance world in a series called Funny Money Friday.

None of us like to think about our investments losing money. We tend to view our mutual funds, 401(k) and home as being sure-fire money makers. But in our current tumultuous stock market, losses are becoming the realities.

Here's a little tongue-in-cheek investment lesson forwarded to me by a co-worker:

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have
$49.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have had $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

It's called the 401-Keg Plan.

Now that sounds like a strategy I could really research this weekend. Happy Friday!

Emily Davidson – Credit.com's Communication Director and former TransUnion credit expert. Emily writes about credit reports, credit scores, loans and personal finance as the CreditBloggers.com moderator.

Comments

[Jim]

I'm glad I don't think of my investments in one year terms. For me, an investment is something that has to have a long term goal in mind like retirement. I also think it is beyond stupid to invest money in a single stock when a mutual fund always performs consistent if not better than that stock. The values go up and down, but over a long term period it will be worth more than what you put into it. Single stocks cannot make this claim because the company could be gone tomorrow.

Applying some math to the 1k beer can approach, if you got $214 refund, at 5 cents a can, that's 4280 cans. A typical 30 pack of beer would be 142 cases that are supposed to run only about $7 a case? Plus to keep up you would have to go through 11 or 12 cases a month! Maybe this is what the people who bought Nortel, Enron, WorldCom and Delta are doing.

[EmilyPeters]

I agree! Unrealized losses are the best kinds of losses.

Apparently the joke's author was a fan of PBR!