Adulting Is

Cameron Daxon
Aug 31, 2018 · 2 min read

This morning I called the man in charge of the investment fund that my grandparents set up for me before my grandpa passed away. Apparently it’s full of sound investments that I’m not allowed to know about because I’m only the beneficiary; that’s fine by me. I wouldn’t understand it anyway.

I asked the banker a few questions about investing. Mainly, how? Just how. I’m 29 years old and just as broke (if not more broke) as I was at 21. I like my life more but I’m not exactly rolling in funds. We’ll call this man Alan. Alan told me that investing is generally a good way to turn your money into more money, that it all depends on what you’re investing in. He was delicate; I think he understood that I wasn’t exactly offering up $100,000 to him to spread around how I pleased.

When I was younger I was always on the lookout for buried treasure. I was convinced that at any moment I’d stumble upon a chest full of gold or find a package in the attic that was actually a rare antique. I’m interested in technology; occasionally I’ll read about someone who finds an unopened copy of a rare video game from the 80s or is browsing a thrift store and finds a test version of an Atari or something. They’re able to auction it on Ebay for hundreds of thousands of dollars and are then, presumably, set for life.

I only rarely look out for things of that nature these days. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an idiot; obviously I still look in gutters for stray $100 bills and browse Craigslist for antique sales. If I visit a Goodwill, you know that I’ve got to see what the comic and video game situation is… just in case. It could still happen for me!

In the meantime, I signed up for one of those robot investment firms. The kind where you can deposit just a few dollars a week and they use some kind of algorithm to try and turn a profit. It’s all a risk, but a semi-calculated one. I’m diversifying, becoming one of those people who ca freely talk about how their stocks are doing. And their bonds. Like a fancyman!

Freelancing is great and I’m hoping to turn it into a more stable job at some point (as my boss at one of my jobs says, the idea is “full employment for everyone”, which, yeah, let’s go for it) but in the meantime I’m trying to jumpstart myself here. I want my money to make money, more than the 1.5 percent cash back my credit cards promise me. Restlessness settles in when I see my checking account dip below a certain and know I probably ought to be making more than I am.

But hey. There’s still time. And if the market does well, in fifty years I’ll be looking at a modest little nest egg (while I still live in a studio in Eagle Rock).

Cameron Daxon

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Former assistant editor with Boss Fight Books. Plays video games and reads. Writer for The Completionist. Passionate about diners. Los Angeles.