After reading Erin’s great post a few days ago and talking about it with one of my good friends, and after a conversation I had with my fiancee, the question came up, “When is enough, enough?”
Erin and Ken both quoted Trump and Rich Dad, Full of Shit Dad as saying you need to invest to win, how much do you really need? Do you need billions? Not really. Do you need Buffett or Gates money? No. If you got rich through frugality, like most people do I think, you aren’t really interested in those shiny new cars or mansions because you realize they are just a huge waste of money for show and aren’t really necessary.
My recent “discussions” with fellow InvestorGeek, Steve, about “baseball cards” as a metaphor for stocks have prompted more thinking on my part. Isn’t that what you wanted, Steve? Actually, I’ve already known that trading stocks is very much like trading baseball cards. I’ve already blogged about the same metaphor many times.
Though Steve and I disagree on whether dividend paying stocks are more than just baseball cards, another point of mutual agreement is that fact that most investors cannot affect any changes with their meager number of voting shares. Whether you own 1,000 or 10,000, or 100,000 shares of a company (even penny stocks), your ownership is no more than a drop in the ocean. But there are investors who do affect positive change through shareholder activism. Notable names include Warren Buffett (Coca-Cola), Carl Icahn (Time Warner), Kirk Kerkorian (General Motors), Ed Lampert (Sears/K-Mart). What if you followed them instead?
