Happy Birthday to Me!

So today is my birthday, which I spent working all day. Birthdays are a justified reason for splurging a bit and setting frugality on the shelf for a day. My wife and I are treating ourselves to massages at the local day spa tomorrow evening. Camping at Mt. Lassen was also a real birthday treat this year, and I spent far too much money on the camping trip. But the time around the campfire with family and friends, the hiking, and the fishing were worth every penny. It is a reminder that there are more important things than money and that money does not buy happiness.

In other news I made a $100 birthday contribution to my Roth IRA for myself today, just in time for the market downturn that wiped out a fair amount of my gains for the year. While that last statement probably sounded a little negative, I have trained myself actually to look forward to market downturns due to the opportunity to purchase my investment securities at a relatively lower price. Then when the market recovers (and it will recover!) I will have have purchased more shares than if I had bought the shares at a higher price. While I am opposed to the gambling nature of trying to time the market's ebbs and flows, I certainly do not object when my dollar cost averaging strategy allows me to buy stocks at a discounted rate! When I retire in thirty years or so, today's market downturn will be so much minutiae and barely noticeable on the long-term chart. So in the meantime I will relax and enjoy my yellow/chocolate birthday cake (courtesy of my wonderful wife!) and leave the market worrying to those foolish day-traders. In thirty years I will be laughing all the way to the proverbial bank.