BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

Chrome Stuff

So, at work, we've got this issue where Chrome decided to just update their browser and not allow SHA-1 certs unless you click advanced and proceed anyways.

It's annoying.  I mean, yes, they are trying to make the world a more secure place and all that, but what they didn't account for is, a lot of places have this thing called a budget and sometimes they put things, such a 5 year mail cert into their budget every 5 years.

So, now we still have a valid SSL cert, but we aren't budgeted to replace it until it runs out in 10 ish months.

Chrome decided though to update their browser and cause lots of headaches with users of our stuff all not sure how to access their webmail now.

We made a little how to doc though.  I mean, yes, ideally we could just go buy a new cert and let that be that, but since we're a non-profit, we're not exactly swimming in cash.

In all reality, we're probably going to just bite the bullet and purchase a new cert with SHA-2.  Which is what Google wants.

It's funny, I was just thinking today about the... I guess the dichotomy would be the word?

Here I am, a nobody IT guy at a non-profit.  I work with people who have mortgages... None of us really make all that much money... People who, an extra grand in their pocket probably would make or break their family budget.

Husbands and wives and kids... I work with students who even a 50 bucks is like a small fortune to them.

And here I am... Just minding my own beeswax getting ever so much closer to making my first 6 figures trade.

I mean... If any of these people knew I was tossing 6 figures into and out of stocks... Well, okay so I haven't done it yet... My portfolio manager for my trust has... He's made some hefty trades so far.  That's a whole other ball of wax.  Well, they aren't really "trades".  He just shifted some money into ETFs to rebalance the trust.  It's normal money management stuff.  I do individual stocks, he's doing mostly ETFs to shield against risk.  Which is cool.  That's how most money people at banks do things.  It's more responsible and keeps the risk of loss down.  Which is a good thing.  So he's doing things how they are supposed to be done when you manage money on behalf of clients.  What I'm doing is a little more... It carries some more risk.

But, it's just weird I guess.  It's interesting.  I hang out with people who like, if they only knew how much money I was about to start shuffling around... Some of them would probably have a heart attack.  Again, stocks are risky.

I guess we all have secrets right?  I kind of like it.  I like that I'm virtually a nobody nine to five guy who just sits there doing my normal IT work and no one is the wiser... They fret over how to come up with an extra couple thousand bucks to buy a new cert... and I'm over here like... Let's see, maybe I can purchase 1000 shares of this stock valued at 100 dollars a share.

I mean, life is like that though.  You have people who think 10 bucks is a small fortune, and then you have others who even 10 grand is just like play money.  And yet still others who consider even 10 million to be a drop in the bucket.

It's all relative.

I just sit there and do my work...  And then in the in-between time, sometimes I make a trade.  I don't trade often though.  I mean, I've literally make like 3 trades this whole year.  One of them was a swing trade and the other two were just buying dividend stocks to add to my portfolio.

I guess I feel like I still don't really feel comfy with the whole investing thing.  Like, here's the thing...

A lake will run dry, but a river... Keeps flowing.

Right now I have trade capital... But not a lot of income.  That's the problem.  This is why some people who win the lottery go broke.  They don't account for future expenses.

There's always going to be future expenses.  Just like there's always going to be a need to purchase new certificates for websites and email servers.

What I'm setting up with my divided portfolio is income.  Sustainable, continued income.  Trading is fine... But there are times in the market when you can't trade, AT ALL.

Crashes happen.  If you can't trade, you can't pull in money.  And I'm barely trading as is.  Mostly that's because I have actual work to do at my job.  And, I mean, they ARE paying me to work, not trade stocks.

Which is why I'm mostly just getting into stocks that pay long term dividends.  That's why I like dividend aristocrats.  They are known, even during market downturns, to sustain the dividend.

It's a river.  Keep things flowing.

Anyways, so right now I have this lake.  I'm trying to turn it into a river.

That way, no matter what happens I have this cashflow to be able to cover expenses such as what we have at work.

If you budget for your annual costs, and then you have an unexpected cost a year earlier, you can't pay that unexpected cost without having to make some funky wheeling and dealings.

Or, you can just budget for like, double what your normal costs are, but spend only half, and then you always have money for the unexpected.

Anyways... So, while I'm going to start this 6 figure swing trade thing, I'm also going to take any profits that I make from it and put those into building up my river of income.

That's the plan anyways.  Because life is more than just your own little bubble, and even people all the way across the country can do things that suddenly have a profound impact on your day to day life.

Google's decision to discontinue support for SHA-1 on SSL certs completely blew up our ticket queue with all kinds of questions about how to get into webmail, and it also forced our 5 year budget plan to become a 4 year...

So... This is why I trade invest and trade.  I'm not trying to make an obnoxious amount of money because I want to go on some spending spree.  I'm trying to make money so that I can sleep like a baby at night and not have to worry if I get an unexpected cost how will I pay for it.

I mean, yes, it would be cool to have so much money flowing that I have more than I know what to do with... But that's not really my main objective.

In all honesty, it's not like a catastrophic expense.  It's just not something we were planning on spending money on this year.  It's more of an annoyance than anything.

But, it just reminded me personally of my own finances and how I might think that I have a good amount of money in the bank, but I don't know what's around the bend.  And money just sitting, just like a bucket of water, once you scoop from it, that water level in the bucket goes down... And if you can't reset it, or replenish it... It will eventually run out.

Lucky for us at work our budgets reset each year... SO, even if we do spend this money, we can just wait until the budget reset and then we'll be okay again to purchase more things we need.

But yeah, so my own goal is to just make sure that I'm covered for things I might need to pay all of a sudden.