Canadian Finance Blog

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Introducing Nelson Smith Posted: 23 Jun 2011 02:00 AM PDT The year was 1983. There was all sorts of great stuff going on in the world. Tokyo Disneyland finally opened, letting Japanese people blow too much money on rides and bad food. The first Nintendo gaming console went on sale in Japan, giving losers something to do until being a nerd became cool. Tomas Sankara became the president of Upper Volta, leading everyone in the world to simultaneously ask “where in the heck is Upper Volta?” (It’s in Central Africa, now known as Burkina Faso) And most importantly, around the middle of the year, Nelson Smith was born to extremely lucky parents. 1983 was a slow news year. My childhood was boring, so let’s not talk about it. Fast forward to when I was 14, when I got my very first part time job at the local Dairy Queen. Besides letting me eat my weight in blizzards, my first job taught me my very first important money lesson. I remember working hard for 6 months, then one day taking out some cash and checking my balance at the ATM. I had only a couple hundred bucks in my account. I had blown thousands on new video games, food, and other fun stuff. And while I had a great time doing it, I realized that I would never have anything if I kept doing it. So I started saving money. I was never one of those kids who knew what he wanted to do throughout high school. Fueled by my Dad’s encouragement, I began my fascination with the world of business. I came home during my lunch break and watched BNN. I took out investing books from the library. And soon, I was starting to invest my savings. I tried to impress my friends with my new found investing acumen. Neither they or the ladies were impressed. Once I got high school out of the way, I got a full time job, overnights at a supermarket. I got this job partly because the pay was decent and partly because I knew working nights would effectively squash what little social life I had. Without distractions like friends, I focused on becoming a money saving machine. I didn’t get a car, because I didn’t want to pay exorbitant insurance rates. I lived in my parents’ basement, paying them rent much cheaper than I would have gotten anywhere else.  For a few years, my singular focus was saving money. Shortly thereafter, I started investing in the stock market. I took the Canadian Securities Course to educate myself further, and then jumped right in. Emboldened by early success, I continued to pour money into the market, enjoying some successes, as well as some failures. As I weathered the financial crisis of 2008-09, I made some particularly bad bets on certain U.S. financial stocks. While I haven’t given up on active investing completely, I’ve split my portfolio into passive and active portions. My RRSP and TFSA are invested passively in just a few ETFs, while my non-registered portfolio holds individual stocks, most of which are contrarian in nature. Oh, and I also have a blog. But you probably figured that out by the links I put in earlier. Yes, I am the (formerly) anonymous blogger behind the sexiest finance site on the whole interweb, Financial Uproar. I’ve blogged anonymously for over a year now, and this is my coming out party. I’m coming out of the closet, so to speak. The liberation feels so good. I’m no longer living a double life! And for some reason, Tom has invited me to write here at CFB, every single week. Yeah, I have no idea why either. Maybe he’s drunk. So come back every single Thursday, where you’ll find the crap not good enough to go on my blog a post on good stuff, combined with jokes that only I think are funny. I intend to focus on investing, talking about ETFs, certain sectors, as well as some dividend investing thrown in there. I’ll also weigh in with my thoughts on other finance related stuff too. I try to look at a contrary version of finance, and I’ll continue to do the same here. In all seriousness, I’m pretty excited to write for CFB. I look forward to my new opportunity, and I especially look forward to interacting with the readers. Please comment if you like what you read. Please challenge me if you think I have no idea what I’m talking about. And if you’re a single lady who likes my sexy mug, definitely feel free to send me pictures of you in your underthings. Or, you can just read my posts. Either way, I’m happy.   Related Posts: The Basics Of The Smith Manoeuvre Preparing for a One-Income Household How Much Money Do I Need To Retire? Introducing Nelson Smith originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on June 23, 2011.

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