Travel Folder ... Gone

I _had_ a really thick (like, the better part of a foot thick) folder in my filing cabinet full of page protectors from trips; I use the page protectors to protect reservation and related information on a trip, and then I collect receipts and ephemera in the protectors during the trip. I then dump them into the file when I return.

This year, I've been instead taking pictures of the papers and trashing them, and uploading the pictures (my eyes only) to the trip's album on Flickr. I _was_ going to go through the old trips in the file folder and do the same thing, but ... there was a lot in there. I bought a phone camera stand thing to make the pictures less shaky, but as I was doing it, I kept thinking, this just does not make sense.

So I changed process, and opened up a large (was 20+ is now 30 pages) google doc in which I have links and brief summaries of vacations we have taken as a family (the links go to flickr albums and LJ trip reports, now DW). A lot of receipts (how many times have I bought popcorn on vacation, anyway?) I just trashed. But restaurant meals where there were a lot of people (8+ generally, at WDW), I logged the place, the date and the rounded total. I noted other items I thought might be interesting to me (did we rent a car, for how many days, which park did we do which day, did I get a stroller, etc.). When I ran across something that I deemed worth taking a photo of, I set it aside, and took breaks occasionally to take the photos and then trash those items as well.

The file is basically empty now. It took a while, but not nearly as long as I thought it would take. The process brought back a lot of detailed memories, which was fun. The result is narrative, not structured data, but is at least somewhat more ordered than pictures of receipts. I have a shelf of binders from trips I took by myself with this same system of page protectors; I'm thinking I could reclaim that space, too.

Precious Moments in Financial Advice

As I was shredding financial paperwork, I came across this gem from Citigroup / SmithBarney, Fourth Quarter 2007. The author: Mark Rickabaugh, then of Anchor Capital Advisors LLC. "The above information was provided by the Fiduciary Services Manager indicated above. Smith Barney makes no judgment." So, you know, attribution and all.

"The stock market has been more difficult and volatile since mid-year 2007...Our view is that corporate profits will be weaker than expected and may actually decline in 2008."

Yay! Got that one right!

"Consumer spending will continue to be pressured by higher living costs including food and energy, the end of easy credit and the probability that employment trends worsen."

Understatement, sure, but basically, again, got that right!

"the investment sector of the economy ... is unlikely to cause the same level of job and profit growth in 2008 as in 2007."

Three. In. A. Row.! Wow!

So that's all good. They take a swipe at leveraged hedge funds. Mention sovereign wealth funds. And then they say:

"We will ... avoiding investment in companies where earnings declines could be negative enough to harm valuations or the business franchise. Our efforts will be focused on holding equities of businesses that are continuing to grow and remain at fair valuations."

I'm sure it seemed reasonable at the time, and I certainly did not think it was wise then, nor does hindsight indicate that selling everything and going to cash at that point would have been smart. But they clearly missed several of the popular plays of the time (US treasuries and gold being the obvious ones.)