For me, my greatest strength leads to my greatness weaknesses. It sucks a lot. I wonder sometimes that striving to escape mediocrity is worth the price I'm paying ... having to deal with my weaknesses day in and day out is tiring.

. . .

I've become a dividend addict. After receiving a whopping $5 (I know! I can buy a meal from Wendy's!!!!!) from my Roth IRA, I've decided to look more into steady stocks which pay a nice dividend to offset some of my "riskier" plays. Just as a theoretical, if you find a stock that yields roughly 5% in dividends a year and has a growth of 10% (which may be possible with Merck/Pfizer given the beatings they've taken) you have an aggregate growth rate of 15% a year. In real-money terms, if you can sustain that type of growth to your portfolio over 5 years, you've doubled your money. Sick.

In the meantime, your CD which pays a whopping 4% has earned you 20%.

Question: Can I buy a basket that simply represents the DJI? I mean, I guess in theory I could buy every stock, but is there just a way for me to buy a mutual fund that's pegged to the DJI or Nasdaq? Would make the decision-making process a lot less stressful.

* Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, I suck at stock picking, I can only learn to read graphs and reports, don't take what I say with any advice because I probably won't even follow through, etc. etc. etc.

. . .

Dealing with all this investment type stuff with Fidelity really makes me wonder why we need the retirement portion of Social Security. At the least, I should be able to opt-out of Social Security and do it myself. Here's why:

Edit: Ok, so I had a long post with numbers, but then accounting for inflation and trying to calculate the long-term growth of the DJI over 40 years became too much work for me. All I know is that I'm going to pay $80,000 over 40 years to SS (if you make the assumption my income stays the same), and it'll take SS 17 years to pay that back. Meaning, the benefits of Social Security will be derived, for me, at the tender young age of 79. Seventy-freakin-nine?!?!?!?!? Am I even going to be able to appreciate anything at that age??? This whole thing smells like a Ponzi scheme with the government making payouts with my money right now so they can have a nice big piggy bank to finance their retarded war on drugs, war on political correctness, war on civil rights, war on blah blah blah (keep going down the list, you get the point). I would feel differently if my money, going in, was being handled by the government in a savings account directly (like if they were my employer and were handling my 401K), but it's even like that! They're just taking my money and giving it to other people!

This is not to say that I don't understand the importance in helping the disadvantaged ... or the people who really work their ass off to make ends meet. Historically, SS was very important in recovering from the Great Depression, and I still think it served a great purpose when the financial community had no transparency and access to the markets was limited. But look at things today: I can log onto Fidelity and make a trade for $20 for nearly any stock. And there's a wealth of information with research for every stock in the world at my fingertips! I simply think that investing your money into Fidelity and buying one of their mutual funds is a smarter investment in the long run (one of these days, I'll have the numbers to back it up).

What I'd like to see happen: (Most of this may already be happening)

• Make a cut-off point; say people who are 25 and younger and in a high enough tax bracket will be forced to pay SS over their lifetime, but will derive no retirement benefits from it. Basically, we kill SS in about 35 years. It's a long-term view, sure, but does anybody who is 25 actually care about social security? It would probably avoid the political firestorms for people who are about to retire, and we could eventually get rid of it. Sorry - our generation really does have it the best and if you can't save enough to retire in 35 years, I'm sorry, but you're retarded.
• Quit paying SS to people who were in certain tax brackets their whole life (if you're in the top 20% of the tax bracket and you can't save ... what are you spending money on?!) immediately (or in phases, whatever. Like if you're in the top 10% and you're in your 40s, no benefits for you!).
• Anytime the government tries to tap SS to finance some more bonds, tell them NO. THAT MONEY IS NOT FOR YOU. STAY AWAY FROM THE MONEY. GOVERNMENT MONEY IS NOT FOR PORK PROJECTS TO KICKBACK TO YOUR BUDDIES.

I'm so hungry. I think I'm gonna go to Taco Bell again.