All Hands On Deck

Whoever said home-ownership was fun must have been joking. Only that it's not funny if you are a home owner in the Diaspora. Growing up in Kenya, it didn't occur to me that it takes a lot of effort to have good flower garden or yard, for that matter. I thought flowers just grow like weeds only that they are prettier.

The people who lived in our house prior to us seemed to have all the time in the world to tend after the house and the yard. For one, they didn't have children, and the wife was a home maker. Unfortunately for me, my wife re-entered the work-force and we have demanding kids and therefore don't have as much time on our hands. But the house is no respecter of person.

First was the mulching. Having done this 2 years ago, I decided it was not worth my effort to do it again this year. Instead I contracted a landscaper to deliver and mulch my yard for $200 inclusive of $75 for his labor. A week before the job his father passed away and I was back to square one. To cut the long story short I ended up doing the job on my own. 3 yards of mulch. Doesn't sound like much but it was no less than 30 wheelbarrows.

Then came the staining of the deck. If there is one thing I could change in my house, it would have to be my wooden deck. It took me 3 weeks to de-stain, wash, condition, stain and seal the deck. Together with a colleague from work we helped each other. Only that we are yet to finish his deck.

Even before I had finished with the deck, my trees were calling to be pruned. Since we have never pruned them before, this called for some massive work. Only after I had started did I realise that the gutters need to be cleared of leaves too.

Add this to all the work that we've had done to the house in the last few weeks and it feels like we are living in a new home. A fresh coat of paint, updated kitchen, new flooring and even new lighting has made our house look very different. And even after all this we still have a crew coming in to redo the master bathroom and the living room.

What makes me glad about this is that we are not doing this so that we can sell the house. Majority of people work on their house when they are about to move but we have no intention of moving. Unlike the first 3 homes that we lived in for less than 2 years each, we've stayed in this one for 4 years which makes it special, especially for our kids.

Even though we'll make our home more enjoyable to stay in, we'll have to live here for a few more years before we can recoup the investment. Which is okay with me although when we bought the house we hadn't planned on living here for more than 5 years.

Update; Deck stain picture changed

To Sell Or Not To Sell?

This year I have been very inactive as far as the stock markets are concerned. January and February passed before I executed my first trade in March followed by another trade in April. All that changed when I realized that we are no where near the end of the sub-prime mess.

Come May and I decided to purge my account. Sold some dead wood stocks only for them to start appreciating. Damn it. For some reason I always sell too early. I had checked the technicals and I saw weakness resulting in my decision to sell the stocks.

Since then I have been busy adding new positions to my portfolio. My plan is was to buy at least one stock per week going forward.

And then came $130 per barrel oil.

While all indications showed that the market was over-bought, $135 oil seemed to have spooked the market big time. The last 2 out of 3 days had investors scrambling to get out of the market.

Even with the reversal of fortunes this week, my stocks have held onto their gains. Which leads me to wonder, should I exit my new positions?

I'll just have to wait till Friday to find out if I've got a thick skin. Depending on how the market plays out, I might dump all my new positions. I can live with a 6% gain in the span of less than 1 month.

PS. The above chart is from Covestor, a social investor network that allows one to track their stock market performance against other investors.

While I have 2 stock brokerage accounts, I could only register one account. I joined the network towards the end of April and I would highly recommend them (that is if you can trust them with the password to your brokerage account!)

How Not To Beat Your Wife

Usipige mke wako, ye ata kutoroka. Or so goes a line in the song Tukatike by the famed Them Mushroom's band.

For some men, the situation is much grimmer. Especially for those who live in the west.

If you are in Kenya, chances are that you know of someone who beats his wife (or wives). Heck, I even know someone I went to school with who used to beat up his then girlfriend and still does so now that they are married with children. Only that the wife now fights back unlike before when she used never fought back.

Unlike in Kenya where a lot of women suffer silently under the heavy handedness of their men, here in in the U.S. the situation is different. Touch your wife and you find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

Unfortunately, even the law is not a strong deterrent for not beating your wife.

I know of this Kenyan fellow who moved here straight from rural Kenyan. And as they say, you can take a man away from the village but you cannot take the village out of a man. Unfortunately for his wife who is from the neighboring village, she endured through abuse until when she found out that domestic violence is not tolerated here.

No sooner than the bloke could say mwendwa wakwa mariru, he found himself in the hands of law enforcement officers. And before he knew what hit him, a court order was issued baring him from his home. And with a stroke of a pen he was made a refuge in the very same country that he sought refuge from the hardships of Kenya.

Unfortunately, the guy is not only unrepentant but there are other Kenyan men who will follow in his footsteps. Most of them will do so after they have taken one bottle too many of their favorite brew. Uninhibited, they turn their onto their wives.

While the men in Kenya can get away with such behaviours, the same can't be said in America. If you know that you are capable of beating your wife, don't do it. Even in a state of drunkenness, do not lose your cool.

The Richest Kenyans, Part III

Sunday Times Rich List Position 2002 - 2008

Year	Net Worth	Position
2002	£298 billion	11
2003	£350 billion	89
2004	£425 billion	93
2005	£444 billion	119
2006	£455 billion	149
2007	£444 billion	186
2008	£520 billion	152

This is my 3rd post on the wealthiest Kenyans in what is now becoming an annual tradition. My fascination with the wealthiest Kenyan dates back to a conversation that I once held with a friend. His ambition to be the wealthiest Kenyan led me into the quest to find who the richest Kenyan is.

While there are politically connected Kenyans who are rumoured to be worth several billion dollars, their source of wealth makes them ineligible to appear on rich lists published in reputable newspapers or magazines.

Like Forbes and The Sunday Times who publish such lists, I have also left out these Kenyans as it is known to all that their ill gotten wealth was stolen from public coffers.

Once again Vijay and Bhikhu Patel remain unchallenged at the number one position as the richest Kenyans. Thanks to their pharmaceutical business worth approximately £450 billion, they appeared once again in the 2008 Sunday Times rich list. The remainder of their wealth is said to be worth £50 billion.

At $1 billion which equates to no less than 60 billion shillings, Vijay and Bhikhu Patel are assured of the number one spot for a few more years.

- The Richest Kenyans, part I and part II.

Midlife Crisis

You know you're getting old when....

• Your kids have more friends in church than you do.
• Your kids have more friends in the subdivision/neighborhood than you do.
• Your kids get invited to more parties than you do.
• Your kids bump into more friends at the mall than you do.
• Your kids meet more friends at the company party than you do.

My boss tells me it gets worse as the kids grow older. 99% of the calls to his house are for his kids. He's stopped picking up calls on his land-line.

The 30's are turning out to be the new 40's . The big 3-0 may turn out to be the top of the hill for me.

Tax Rebate Fails To Stimulate Me

As promised, I received my tax rebate last week. I got an even $1,500 though I was not exactly sure how much I will get.

With the money in the bank, the only place for me to go would have been to the shopping mall. Right?

Wrong.

The closest I got to the mall was a trip to my local Walmart. And that was to buy a $9 battery powered James - the red engine of the famed Thomas & Friends toy set which I had promised one of my young one's last week. On impulse, I ended up buying the Thomas Sodor Celebration DVD to bring my total expenditure to less than $20.

So how do I intend to spend my tax stimilus?

Let's just say that I have already 'spent' it. As soon as the money hit my account, I transferred $600 into my money market account and the remainder went into paying my credit card balance.

While I may not have directly spent the money as intended by the government, I believe the psychology of receiving the rebate will play into relieveing the fears of an economic downturn. I had budgetted to spend the money in my start-up but the arrival of the money did not coincide with any due payments.

It now remains to be seen if the tax rebate will achieve its purpose. Stimulating the economy against an expected downturn.

Are The Clinton's Racist?

Race, or Reverend Jeremiah Wright, turned out to be the decider in the Democratic party presidential nominations. With the end of the race in sight, it certainly looks like the Clinton's have a lot of apologizing to do.

Hillary Clinton's "working, hardworking Americans, white Americans" comments seemed to have touched a raw nerve. Coming hot of the heels of Reverend Wright's remarks at the National Press Club, I have every reason to believe that the Clinton's had something to do with the pastor's re-emergence.

Unfortunately, the race card has back fired on the Clinton's. Never mind that they had miserably failed to portray Obama's candidacy as a African American affair shortly after their loss in South Carolina.

To hear the Clinton's being called racists is ironical. Who would have thought that America's first black president would be touted as a champion of white supremacy.

This coming week may signal the end of the Clinton's era. With Obama having surpassed Hillary Clinton's lead among pledged super-delegates, I expect more to come out of the wood works now that the media has taken to bashing the Clinton's.

Not even New York's Saturday Night Live has spared Hillary Clinton.

Politics is a dirty game. Can it get any murkier than this?

Hillary Clinton's Downfall

This video depicts the events on the night of May 6th at Hillary Clinton's campaign headquarters in Indiana.

Rated M for Mature. Contains strong language.

Misery At The Gas Pump

It seems like yesterday when I bought my current car although I've had it for exactly 4 years. Back then I wanted a car that was cheap and didn't cost much to run. I settled for a model that offered high mileage, low maintenance costs and cheap insurance rather than a bloated ego. In addition, I did not want a car note hanging over my neck.

At that time gas was hovering around a dollar fifty per gallon and so it used to cost me around $20 max to fill up my car. And since I used to fill it up every weekend before the gas ran out, it used to cost me around $12 for a week's worth of commuting.

Not anymore. A gallon of gas now goes for $3.70 and I've just paid $44 to fill up my tank . As if that was not enough, crude oil broke through $120 per gallon this week.

And if we are to go with Goldman Sach's estimates, oil prices will zoom past the $150 mark on their way to $200 per barrel. To add insult to injury, we are a few weeks to the peak driving season that is bound to drive up demand for gasoline. With the high airfare prices, you can be sure Americans will take to the road rather than pay high airfare prices further pushing up the demand for oil.

I can only imagine the pain of people who would drive nothing less than a SUV. With few cities offering the option of mass transit and the long commute times due to the vastness of this country, a lot of people have no option other than driving.

If the housing bubble fails to send the U.S. economy into a deep recession then you can be sure high oil prices will do so.

Playing It Safe With Cash

Looking at the major stock market indexes, it's hard to believe that the U.S. economy is going through a recession. With every bad news, the bulls have held their ground against the bears.

And you can be sure this has baffled many a investor. With the Federal Reserve bank firmly behind the i-banks, traders seem to have thrown caution to the wind.

Unfortunately, not every one is drinking from the Fed liquidity kool-aid fountain.

This past week, it was reported that investors have stashed a record $3.51 trillion in money market accounts. In a bid to protect their money from market doldrums, investors have settled for negative yields rather than risk their hard earned money to equity market losses.

Like most investors, I am also waiting for the coast to clear before lunging both feet into the market. While I have not completely closed my positions, I have only traded twice this year. Excluding my precious metal holdings, less than half of my portfolio consists of stocks.

Of interest to me is the fact that the funds held in money market accounts are equivalent to 20% of the U.S equity market capitalization. Assuming that most investors will plough the money back into the equities, you can be sure that the next bull market will be explosive.

For now, I'm taking it one day at a time although I am convinced that the markets will trade lower rather than higher because consumers are in a debt bubble that will only get worse as inflation continues to bite.

Until the trade volumes pick up, I will continue to tread cautiously.

Barack Obama Soars

It's over for Hilary Clinton. Barack Obama swept North Carolina and still stands a chance of taking Indiana. But the Clintons are determined to go all the way to Obama's inauguration. They simply don't get it.

It's over. Take it to the bank if you will. Let the sad mama sing. Take it away Hilary.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh!