Post Your Wins

[QuarterMillionMan]

Yikes, I would have quit & found a place to stay the night, or at least wait for a few hours while traffic died down. I'd lose my mind in 9hrs of stop-and-go traffic .... Though of course, you're from the LA area & probably used to that kind of madness....

Going to Las I first saw the traffic in the LA bound cars in the Cahon pass in the San Bernadino mountains. Next in Victorville the LA bound cars were practically stopped in a parking lot. In Barstow (1/2 way) the LA bound cars were crawling. In Baker which is quarter of the way for those LA bound cars maybe they were lucky to be hitting 20 mph. And at the Cal-Neva stateline the LA bound cars were crawling through the USDA agricultural inspection facility. This is the home stretch for the LA to Las Vegas cars where a lot of drivers hit 100 mph speeding to get to Las Vegas. NHP had speed traps and were catching a lot of those speeders. Must be like taking candy away from a baby for NHP.

[QuarterMillionMan]

My overall loss in Las Vegas was $200 so I consider that a win in that I had budgeted to be able to lose up to $500. Swam in the pool, worked out in the gym, and ate good food. Now back to reality. Las Vegas IMHO is a fantasy land with all the win $10,000 or $1 million neon signs with bells and beautiful cocktail waitresses serving free drinks in air-conditioned artificial environments in the middle of the desert. Made use of my 2 free nights for May, next month June will use my next 2 free nights.

[kork13]

Another win for me was the traffic from LA to Las Vegas was smooth sailing. The traffic from Las Vegas to LA was a lose on Memorial day which was stop and go the entire way which I estimate took 9 hours when a normal day would take 4 or 5 hours.

Yikes, I would have quit & found a place to stay the night, or at least wait for a few hours while traffic died down. I'd lose my mind in 9hrs of stop-and-go traffic .... Though of course, you're from the LA area & probably used to that kind of madness....

[QuarterMillionMan]

Another win for me was the traffic from LA to Las Vegas was smooth sailing. The traffic from Las Vegas to LA was a lose on Memorial day which was stop and go the entire way which I estimate took 9 hours when a normal day would take 4 or 5 hours.

[james.hendrickson]

Guys,

No specific win here - but a while back I set the goal of having $100,000 in investable assets in my stock accounts. And I'm well on the way to meeting the goal - last time I checked I was 63% of the way there.

What's working is:

1) Hustling side money. - taking surveys, selling my personal data, signing up for class action lawsuits and regularly making contributions from my salary.

2) Putting any family money I get into the markets. I'm fortunate to get some family support and I bank as much of it as I can.

3) Consistently investing. For the past three or four years, I've been steadily putting money into the markets - some months more, some months less. Sometimes as little as $5.

4) Investing in quality. By and large I've stopped messing around with high risk plays and am focusing mostly on blue chip stocks, index funds and mutual funds. No pennies.

In any case, the progress is good to see.

[Fishindude77]

Three buddies and myself just returned from a couple days of crappie fishing.
Had a fish fry one night while there and returned with 27 bags of fillets to split up.

[QuarterMillionMan]

2 free nights in Las Vegas tonight Monday & Tuesday, to check out Wednesday. My estimated value is about $150 a night including taxes and resort fees.

[Fishindude77]

First garden harvest of the season, picked a big mess of several type radishes and harvested lettuce this morning.
A lot more good stuff to follow over next few months.

[jenn_jenn]

Congratulations! WOW aww i am so excited for you

What wonderful news! (And, congrats on the surprise savings, too!)

Congratulations! How exciting.

Thanks all! We are definitely excited!

Apologies for late reply - we’ve been busy with our big remodel just finishing up and getting the house back together before baby’s arrival!

No new win to post except that our remodel is finally done and we can stop going over budget! It felt like we were just bleeding money for a bit. Phew!

[QuarterMillionMan]

I was wondering about poisonous mushrooms too. Seems risky but I got to Mexico every week so who am I to talk about risky business.

[disneysteve]

I love class action law suits. California gas companies were sued for manipulating gasoline prices according to AG of California Rob Bonta. My all time best was a $10,000 check from Genworth Financial. Another one from work was $2000. Lots of other small checks as well.

My best was from an insurance company for misrepresenting insurance policies as investments. We got back everything we had paid in premiums.

[QuarterMillionMan]

I love class action law suits. California gas companies were sued for manipulating gasoline prices according to AG of California Rob Bonta. My all time best was a $10,000 check from Genworth Financial. Another one from work was $2000. Lots of other small checks as well.

Attorney General Bonta Announces $50 Million Settlement with Vitol and SK as Part of Ongoing Enforcement Against Big Oil | State of California - Department of Justice - Office of the Attorney General

[Fishindude77]

Just finished up getting last of the garden in and planted.
Can't beat fresh garden veggies all summer long.

[EasyMoney00]

Took a little hike in the woods yesterday afternoon and found 2-1/2 LBS of fresh morel mushrooms.
FYI - Local market has them for sale at $80 per pound.

We have property and always thought about searching for morels but never did. My luck I would find a false morel and suicide myself. My one coworkers father died from eating the wrong mushroom. It wasn't s false morel. He was an avid mushroom hunter for decades and still screwed up.

[disneysteve]

This isn't exactly a monetary win but kind of is. This one is my daughter's.

There's one estate sale company I deal with a lot. They run both in-person sales and on-line auctions. Last week, one of the on-line auctions had a bunch of Star Trek items so I showed it to my daughter who is a big fan. She found one lot she liked and bid on and ended up winning. It was a bunch of old magazines, books, a game, a watch, and some other stuff. She paid a little under $16 for the lot and we picked it up this morning. This afternoon she started looking through it all.

One item was the program from the 1975 Star Trek convention in Philadelphia. That itself was cool. It included a bunch of original production cast photos. She turns the page and there is a photo of Scotty autographed by James Doohan (actual live signature, not printed). A few pages later is a photo of Chekov autographed by Walter Koenig. Clearly nobody from the estate sale company had paged through this program or else they certainly would have sold it separately. Instead, my daughter scored two vintage autographed pictures from very well known actors for $16.

Even better, she doesn't want the watch that was part of the lot so I'm going to sell it on ebay for her. Comps show it selling in the $25-35 range so she'll probably end up actually getting everything she wanted for free and even making a little profit.