I am temporarily living here in exile in a remote farmhouse amid the cornfields of Iowa in order to do a few things for my aged mama. I have prepared and filed her income tax returns for example. During the process of feeding those Forms 1099-INT into the mix, I was shocked at the low interest rates this poor little old lady is earning on her money. The reason is that her money is invested as safely as it can be in this financially unsafe era. Safety of course translates into a low return. She is very nearly paying these people to store her money for her.

Upon mashing the button late Friday morning to file those returns electronically, still disgusted, I showered up and changed clothes. Determined to diversify part of her investments and include a reasonable amount of high risk in her portfolio, I grabbed five hundred in cash out of her purse and told her I would be back later. I drove cross country over the gravel roads to Rick's place on the river. 

Rick and I were co-captains of the high school football team in our day, a pathetic, dreadful football team. During the entire time we played that football team never won a single game. It is a wonder that we have not been scarred for life by the experience of it. Rick considers his visit to Vietnam as a Marine a piece of cake in comparison with playing on that football team.

He and I then drove to Dubuque to shoot craps. Craps is a reasonable high risk investment as long as you stay away from those carny bets in the middle of the table. The bet that you place behind the line after placing your line bet is the only bet in the entire casino that pays off at true mathematical odds. No vigorish for the casino there at all. Therefore, the way to look at this is that your line bet is simply the price of admission that you pay for the opportunity to put down your subsequent bet behind that line.

The Dubuque Greyhound Park or Dubuque Sports Complex, or whatever it is they call it now, allows the investor to put down a maximum of twenty times his line bet behind the line. In practical terms for a minimum line bet of five dollars, the investor is allowed to place a hundred dollar bet behind the line and be paid off on that hundred dollars at true odds. A beautiful thing in its simplicity but something that is impossible to explain to my mother. So I do not try.

Rick and I were there for about forty minutes, enough time for a couple coffees. We did not scald them. We each took a reasonable profit considering the risk and came home. After tipping the help twenty bucks, I brought home $1,250 and some change. Whereupon, I stuffed that wad in mother's purse less my management fee and expenses and settled into the easy chair for an evening with The Aeneid.

The weird thing is that I cannot do that with my own money. When I invest my own money at the craps table, I have this irresistible urge to own the casino before I am done. That approach does not work. However, since I know that my mother has no desire to own a casino, I do not have that psychological problem when I am investing her money. I can get in and get out.

Which is the answer to that age old question so often posed to financial advisers: “If you are so smart, why haven't you invested your own money and retired to Palm Springs?” The problem is that the psychology of investing your own money fucks you up. But that, too, is impossible to explain to my mother. So I do not try.