My parents was telling me about this old $2 bill that was given to my brother a long time ago and how it is suppose to be worth about $500 or so now. That brought up a discussion about saving old money currency as a form of investment.

I’ve never really been into this type of investing/collecting as I guess during the time where the currency in question is in abundance you tend to not think too much of it. Just the thought of say a very old penny being worth say $10 seems kind of strange. Something like that one million dollar coin I heard about before seems more like an investment to me.

Then again, I guess like any type of collecting the dollar value of the items are subjective and some people would be willing to pay big amounts for it.

I’ve been reading a lot of articles recently on how the price of gold has reached to about $1,000 an ounce which is a new record. The funny thing about this is that I often hear people suggest that investing in gold is a good idea yet people like myself don’t really put much thought into it for some reason.

I know as I grew older it seemed like whenever someone mentioned the word “investing” it would always revolve around stocks or real estate. When it comes to gold, the only time where I really identified it as a good way to maintain a sort of wealth portfolio is from watching all those children cartoon shows as a kid. You know, like how all the characters always fight over gold or how it seems like it is the only item used to measure wealth. So, maybe that convinced me to sway away from that thought.

When you read about it in situations like this though, it sure does sound like a wise form of investment.

I saw a clip from the Larry King show that had a panel of money gurus on it and were addressing the fears of a recession in the US. Now apparently there is some kind of plan down there to give families say an extra $600 a year that is going to take place in hopes that people will spend it to reinvigorate the economy.

For the most part, they were cynical on how it is only $600 which won’t do much and that in terms of a recession they viewed this time as a great event if you’re an investor as it should be time to buy with prices being low. They then dived into how people have to change their way of thinking when it comes to money as generally if you are stuck with that workers mentality when it comes to money then not surprisingly times like these will be bad for you.

The general message is very true I thought as it does have a lot to do about mindset when it comes to money. The only thing I was a little bit iffy about was the notion that $600 can’t do much. Maybe I am just one of those Internet age people, but you can definitely do a lot with $600 if you really want to. Heck, with the Internet there are so many things you can do even with no money to try and generate an income.

Even thinking of it from a more traditional view, I even see things such as people say holding their own simple speed dating events which costs them very little to do while being able to generate a profit fairly quickly. Good old fashion entrepreneurial spirit mixed with passion and ambition I guess you can say.

I guess like with the $600, even with that it comes down to mindset as you shouldn’t limit yourself to only one type of thing that you can do. Example, if I was only thinking more traditional investments such as stocks and real estate then of course that figure sounds like nothing. Expand your way of thinking. This might sound strange, but another example would be to take that $600 and invest it in yourself to become more knowledgeable as a person. Your newly acquired knowledge can end up generating great returns for you.

I had an interesting conversation recently where the topic revolved around a person expressing how the age range of 20 to 30 is your time to try as many things as you can to earn an income and that by 30 you are kind of too old to not just settle down by then on one thing only.

I was having a debate with him about this as I don’t see what age had to do with it as I believe it had more to do with your circumstances and what you really want. Does anyone ever truly quit exploring ways to generate money? Even if you are doing very well you should still find ways to do more in my opinion.

The number one reason that I was told on why by 30 you should just settle down is due to marriage/family reasons as you need the financial stability to sustain one and that people’s “biological clocks” are ticking which means you shouldn’t be in that risk taking mentality anymore. I would think just by looking at all those family owned businesses would say otherwise.

If age does limit anything when it comes to financial exploration, in my opinion it’s that it restricts you in terms of the type of approaches you can use to achieve a goal. That doesn’t stop you from exploring still and being able to reach the same finish line though.

This really has been a very casual section so far which I guess suits the original intent. Didn’t really get to do what I wanted though due to some circumstances that has been eating up a lot of my spare time, but that didn’t stop the blog from generating some more income. Today I received another payment from Google for $116.65.

I was thinking that‘s not too bad considering I don’t really focus too much on monetizing the blog as I simply write like normal. This made me curious as to how well that widget bucks program was doing. To my surprise, I am due for a payment as apparently last month I passed the minimum payment point. Ironically, I thought it wouldn’t do well at all since it seems like it is more fitting for a tech site.

The breakdown looks like this so far:

Stock Investment: $800
Web Publishing: $222.19
Million Dollar Term: $100

Total: $1122.19

I guess Google adsense won’t really be an income source once that Forbes network kicks in as all the ads will be converted to advertisements supplied by them. Not bad for a casual start so far I’d say. Almost feels like passive income in many ways.