Just a Quick Introduction.....

I suppose the first thing I need to to is introduce myself, and give you a little insight into why I want to create this BLOG.

First of all, I am an Electrical Engineer who live in New Hampshire. I was born in 1958, and I am a fairly conservative investor. In fact, my parents always taught me to be patient and that "Slow and Steady wins the race". They told me this was true in life, and with money.

Being conservative with money, I also subscribe to a couple of other sayings.....

• Look before you leap.
• Measure twice, cut once. (and the name of this BLOG)

I am going to write to this BLOG because I have been convinced that if you want to pay attention to something and learn more about it....therefore, it is a good idea to WRITE about it. Blogging is a GREAT way for a non-expert to get more involved and learn about an area of interest. (from others, and from your own research)

Being a saver, and a worry wart (I didn't tell you that, did I), the past 10 years I have been conserned with some of the activities going on in our economy, and the natural saver in me worries about our countries huge appitite for DEBT! The USA is the largest debtor nation in the world....by an order of magnitude.

Our competativeness and therfore value-add to the world has been eroding for the past 20 years. I believe our countries manufacturing prowess is no longer what the world looks up to. I also see our technology superiority being sold off and exported at an ever accelerating rate. But we do have one thing the rest of the world still absolutely needs....we are the #1 consumers in the world...and even if we don't have the money, we are willing to sell our future for the comforts of today. (we do this by going further and further into debt!)

I believe that this has left our largest contribution to the world, and even there we are losing ground as Europe and the Far East (India and China) rev-up their economies and collect wealth.

They will soon become the #1 consumers, and at that point we will become expendable.

Is this enough pessamism for one post...I suppose. I hope I am all wet, and I hope to explore these issues as well as talk in general about my own investment thoughts and direction.

I do NOT think I will get so open as to post my net worth or the dollar value of my investments, but I might try to find a way to talk about it in terms of percentages of total or at least % variations. (we shall see)

Just to round this off, I guess I will point you at my Livejournal account, and my home page. Both of those will give you a lot more insight into me than this short post could ever hope for.
I even have a few finance related ideas posted on my journal...you can see them here.

-Quentin