Back to lighter issues...

OK, so, I am tipping Obama to win the US election. I put all of my Nadal winnings on this at 1.49 which is still available at Betfair this evening.

The title of my blog describes exactly what happened to a friend of a friend of a friend.

The man (aged about 60) who sold his house for £1M was stitched up a treat by the Estate Agents (who sold it for £2M seven days later) and quite literally couldn't live with himself. He committed suicide.

I am also aware of someone who had the chance to sell his dot com business for £1M (sterling) and ended up selling it for £1 a year later (the buyer had to take on losses as part of the deal).

This person (aged about 35) managed to fight on and has had to build a new business from scratch which just started to look promising, but now we seem to be heading for a huge recession again...

Taking the above into consideration kind of puts a few things into perspective.

i.e. There are more important things in life than money!

Having said that, this is meant to be (mainly) a fun blog group with ideas for making money. I just wanted to put in a bit of balance.

A single person in Britain needs to earn at least £13,400 a year for a minimum standard of living, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has claimed.

Interesting BBC article about today's cost of living.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7481927.stm

I bought HSBC in February for £8.08 and sold them in May at £8.92

In the last few weeks they have fallen all the way back to £7.54 (so lucky I sold).

I have not 'come back in' yet as the market seems wickedly turbulent at the moment.

I would start getting very tempted at around £7.30 as this would mean they'd 'only' need to go back up to about £8 for me to take profits.

There are other attractive 'offers' around, but really it's anyone's guess to where the market will 'settle' and what the real value of these shares is in today's climate.

I am still tipping Marks & Spencer, and British Land as good to 'buy and hold' at today's prices.

All depends on whether one can afford to hold on until prices recover again!