The perfect investment is probably this apartment complex in NorthWest Portland, Oregon:
It’s at least 60 years old. It cost nothing to build. Rents probably paid off the entire construction and land in the first ten years. Since then it’s flowed buckets of free cash. And, if they sold it today, they would get zillions for the huge piece of land it so ungracefully occupies.
Here are another couple just down the road.
This next one has a one-bedroom apartment, which someone is actually paying $2,000 a month for — plus electricity and Internet.
These days they’re building bigger ones:
These days money is so plentiful and cheap and there are oodles of investors who’ll put money into one of these new multi-family rental buildings.
Walking around Portland, it a joy to see the explosion in residential and office constructions.
Everyone and their uncle outside the city has written Portland off. But it’s a thriving and gorgeous city. If you can take your eyes off the construction, feast your eyes on the flora on every street, on every corner:
Meantime, the most important mission is not the flowers nor the apartments, but our nightly pilgrimage with the grandkids to visit every ice cream shop within walking distance. There are many. My diet is shot. The kids have a worm. That’s what my mother used to say about my ravenous young appetite.
There is the second perfect investment
My friend, the day trader, sent me this chart:
He added the comment “There probably are smart people who are making 10% to 20% per month by buying AMZN on dips and selling it on rallies.”
In contrast, there are dumb people (like me) who’ve sat with Amazon, done nothing and have no profits to show for my studied inaction.
My friend, who makes a handsome living trading a handful of stocks, recommends this as weekend reading:
Buy it here.
Grandkids and what they say
+ She was in the bathroom, putting on her makeup under the watchful eyes of her young granddaughter, as she’d done many times before. After she applied her lipstick and started to leave, the little one said, “But Gramma, you forgot to kiss the toilet paper good-bye!” I’ll probably never put lipstick on again without thinking about kissing the toilet paper goodbye.
+ My young grandson called the other day to wish me happy birthday. He asked me how old I was, and I told him, 80. My grandson was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, “Did you start at 1?”
+ My grandson was visiting one day when he asked, “Grandma, do you know how you and God are alike?” I mentally polished my halo and I said, “No, how are we alike?” “You’re both real old,” he replied.
+ A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather’s word processor. She told him she was writing a story.
“What’s it about?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I can’t read.”
This is paradise, or as close as you can get
It’s the Oregon coast looking into a small town called Manzanita. The beach is over five miles long.
Here are two grandkids — Eleanor and Peter on the beach.
The beach is pristine. The Pacific rolls in sparkling clean.
And on a clear day I imagine I can see Australia.
Both kids can read. It’s a joy, for me, to be read to.
See you Monday, I hope. Grandkids are wonderfully time consuming. — Harry Newton
