The Midas Touch!

For the past few days, my brother, a newly minted attorney, has been visting Julie and me here in the Bronx. We've been having a great time hanging out, talking, and playing video games into the wee hours of the morning. I always enjoy my brother's visits, particularly now since we rarely see each other; he and his family live in Las Vegas while Julie and I are on the East Coast. However, this most recent trip will go down in our family history as one of the most appreciated and productive meetings of siblings. Let me explain.

Four years ago I had just begun my studies at BYU. My brother was in his last term and served as my experienced guide through that first stressful semester. One of the pieces of advice he gave me was to open an account on Sharebuilder, a program that allows individuals to buy and sell stock from the comforts of their own home. As an incentive for signing up I received $25 from Sharebuilder (my brother also received $25 for recruiting me). I opened the account and purchased $100 worth of stock in Activision, a video game company. I owned a couple of their games and liked them; that was the extent of my research and careful analysis of the corporation. Anyway, after my initial purchase, I completely forgot that I had those stocks. For four years I was blissfully unaware that I was a stockholder and had money tied to the fortunes of Wall Street.

Fast forward to Thursday, January 31. I noticed that my brother was checking his Sharebuilder account. It suddenly dawned on me that I might still have one too. I sat down, powered up my laptop and quickly logged in. Much to my surprise and my brother's astonishment I discovered that my intital $100 investment had grown to $322, a 222% rate of return (55.5% per year). Needless to say, Activision had done well. Upon further investigation we noticed that the stock had split several times and the price had consistently increased from around $8 per share to more than $25 per share. All I can say is "Sweet!" I am, apparently, a modern-day Midas, producing virtual gold from all I touch (or at least my forgetfulness allowed the stock to ride out the normal ups and downs of the market)! The only question left is what should I do with the money? I've been wanting to waste $350 on an XBox 360 for quite some time and this would seem to be the answer to my prayers. It is, after all, money that neither Julie or I even knew we had. However, ever since I've been married I've felt the need to adopt more responsible spending habits. I therefore pose the question to you, my faithful readers: How should I spend my new found wealth? Post your vote to the right, but hurry: I don't know how long I can keep myself from running over to Best Buy!