I shorted the hell of out BAC on Friday and after LEH went BK on monday I've already rivaled my FO pay for a year. No kidding. I've since bought it again and also picked up a few October options on it at $27.50 while it was down to $26.80ish earlier today. Now that it's at $28.50 I could already cash out but am going to wait for it to bounce back with the new rule about naked short selling going into effect. I've been investing since I was hired at the airline. First started small just trying to make a $100 here or there but the past three months I've been making more doing this than I have my real job. Paid off all credit card debt I gained when making only 18k that first year and still have enough to put a nice % down on a new home. Usually if I make $1k+ I've taken money out and put half in my savings. Only problem is it's not dependable. During July I almost had an aneurysm when BAC dropped to $18 but luckily that's when the dividend hit and that extra 150 shares the DRIP purchased ended up doing me well when it went back to $32. So it has it's ups and downs. I've come out very much ahead but one thing it's taught me is to live off my paycheck because you never know when it will go belly up. I owned some EWZ that lost about $12 per share on me. Can't figure out why as it was worth $78 last year when oil was at $60 but now that it's dipped below $100 everyone is panic selling. Go figure.

Anyway my concept on life has been that a dollar you spend today hits you two fold. It's one less in your account and that's one less you have earning interest of the future. People dogged me like no other on here because I've always told FO's not to go blow money on expensive headsets, bags, etc until they get a little more security in their job. People gave their own excuses and too many guys walk around wondering how they'll pay off the debt. No one wants to admit it's them but then whole country is going to hell by hand cart because everyone owes everyone else. This current credit crunch is a prime example of what happens when the balances become due. Once you get on the front side of that curve that $200-$400 or whatever you pay extra per month adds up FAST. Credit card debt gone and a restructuring of my student loan some time back it's almost like having a free apartment lol. Feels much better. Now I'm debating if I should pay my car off or not. Another huge downside appears to be the taxes. I keep money for them but I have no idea how to do taxes on so many transactions. Hopefully turbotax or quicken can help as I've done about 2300 transactions so far this year(like I said I started out small lol). I use to day trade a lot more where as now I just set a % I'd like to make and wait for that to hit. That has turned out to be the better way to go for me. Anyway if I have to do it line by line for each trade I've done I'm gonna be found dead on my desk.

Also I'm starting my own side business. Aircraft appraising. There's no one in my home area that does it so I'm going to do that for fun on the side. Figured I wanted to do something aviation related. A family friend also is the CEO of a rather large bank while another does insurance underwriting. They've both said they'd like to have an appraiser in the area.