Investment

My future is assured because I have invested in it this week.  I'm going to be one happy old dude in about 40 years.

I am an astonishingly astute and skillful investor.  My strategy is to be contrarian - never follow the crowd.  For example, during the great housing boom of the late 90's, I was renting.  And during the great resources boom of the early 00's, I was buying shares in banks.  I worked for quite a while, carefully accumulating funds in the stock-market before deciding to live off my savings for 4 years while I studied medicine, just in time for the global financial crisis to break my portfolio's back in a manner akin to a camel being run over by a truck carrying straw.  Sadly the net effect of all this is that every day I need to carefully consider whether to invest in a cup of coffee or a pie.  On the plus side, it's made me acutely sensitive to the "value", or "basement", segment of the investment opportunity world.

As such, this week I decided to invest in one of my Esteemed Colleagues.  We played golf on Monday, and my shrewd eye told me he was a promising beginner.  So I bought a second-hand 5-iron and gave it to him as an early birthday present, telling him to practise, practise, practise.  It's already paying off - apparently with his first shot the ball went through his back door and into the kitchen.  You can't buy that kind of talent.  It has to be nurtured.

Anyway, why is this an investment?  Because he has agreed to give me 10% of his future earnings should he become a professional golfer.  That could be millions.  And if he doesn't, he has to give me a kidney if I need it.  How's that for a deal?  I haven't actually discussed it with him, but I'm sure he'll see sense when the time comes.