Bank Lending

I don't wish to be a bore like everyone else bashing banks, but when I keep hearing about banks reluctant to lend money to companies then it does flabbergast me somewhat.

When they lend freely during the boom times and pull the plug in the bad times it's like providing an umbrella when the sunshines and then taking it away when it starts raining... What's the point?! OK, I guess they are businesses themselves rather than just social institutions, and so have balance sheets to square and investors to keep happy, but nevertheless I think things would improve a lot quicker in the economy if they were more aware of the social responsibility they do actually have. It will never happen of course, but it is just a thought.

My Investment Strategy - Part 1

My aim is to make this blog a place to record my investment strategy. Perhaps others might find it useful. I work as a contractor in the Oil & Gas industry, and as such, therefore need to make my own provision for retirement. And I'm all in favour of this for the followingreasons:

1) The company I started working for after I graduated, and with which I stayed for 8 years before leaving to go contract, has this year declared that future contributions by employees on the final salary, defined benefits pension scheme will be under a defined contributions basis (previous contributions will still be under a defined benefits basis).

2) I also recently learnt that upon retirement, only a third of the defined benefits pension is index linked.

3) The performance of the funds invested in by the company pension are, in my opinion not the best selection possible.

So it is all good and well a company contributing towards your pension, but if it ceases to provide a defined benefits scheme, results in only a partially index linked pension on retirement and invests in anything but the best funds, then there is little incentive for someone to stay in that type of employment who wants to be proactive in handling their future retirement income.

My aim is to provide for my retirement in the following means:

1) Stockmarket investments.

2) Property.

3) Other.

In my following posts I will explain my plan for each of the above.

How to get poor quick...

Now I don't wish to start off negative, but by far the most effective way to avoid accumulating money is getting divorced. I have to admit that it is even more effective at stripping away personal assets than the effect on my investment portfolio of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent plunge of world stock markets.

I'm not bitter. I actually found a rather pragmatic quote in the weekend paper - "Money comes and goes. You mustn't get too attached to it".

That said, one mustn't get too used to losing money. Once in a while perhaps. And it sometimes serves as a good lesson and encourages you to not take things for granted.

So as you can tell, I'm divorced. Prior to my divorce and the credit crisis, I was actually a dollar millionaire briefly. Back when the exchange rate hit $2.10 to the pound. It was good enough for me anyway :)).

Now I am organising my way to re-attain those seven digits - and this time in pound sterling.

My first post!

This is my attempt at blogging! At this point I'm not entirely sure how this blog will evolve. My interest lies in sharing my experiences (limited) and thoughts (many and varied) on investing and the markets and I also want to share my views on trying to build wealth in general - such as state of mind, goals, persistence, fear and greed etc.

So we'll see where this takes me!!