The Amateur Financier

Previously, in our Wacky Wednesday series: You attempted to use the power of time travel (combined with compound interest) to become rich.  It worked, sort of; you were a billionaire, but even a cup of coffee cost millions of dollars.  Inflation having ruined your plan, at which point you decided to travel back to the past, only to discover that it’s impossible to withdraw your money to travel back in time and not invest it.  To survive in the future, you end up taking a job as a hamster groomer; it wouldn’t be so bad, if the hamsters weren’t such huge gossips.  Finally, you’re able to travel back to your own time; well, actually, the Time Cops caught you, pre-Hitler assassination, and forced you back.  What will you try now?

“Alright,” you say to yourself, “this time it’ll work.”  You’re just about to rent a time machine again, but this time, you’re going to do it right.  Rather than traveling to the unknown future (well, unknown to everyone who didn’t spend several weeks grooming talking hamsters), you’re going to travel to the past, invest some money in companies you know will be profitable, and then come back to the present to sell your stock and live large on the profits you’ve made.

You’ve picked 1960 as your target year; fifty years is a nice, round number, and will give your specially chosen stocks plenty of time to grow.  To avoid the problems you had last time, getting stuck in the future and all, you’ve bought the deluxe time travel package; six time jumps included, a total of three round trips.  You can have problems twice, and still manage to make your plan work.

You'll be a bit too early for Woodstock, though

You run one last check: list of stocks to buy, life savings (what you have left of it), address of secluded place to land your time machine and address of an old-fashioned brokerage house.  Confident that you have everything you need, you travel back in time, heading toward the brokerage.  You walk in, confidently asking to speak with a broker, and make your desire to open an account known.  The broker seems quite eager to have you as a client, and asks you for your ID to start the paperwork.

You pause, dumbfounded.  You realize that your ID won’t even be issued for another several decades; heck, you won’t even be born for a few decades more.  There’s no way you can buy stock using your ID without being arrested for fraud or locked up as a lunatic if you decide to share the truth of your time traveling nature.  You quickly excuse yourself, running back to the time machine to head back to the future.

STRIKE ONE!

When you’re safely back in 2010, you think of how to get your hands on an ID that will pass muster in the sixties.  Forgeries are too expensive, and you don’t know how to get your hands on one, anyway.  Then it hits you: your grandfather was a strapping young (well, younger, anyway) lad in 1960, one with a resemblance to you that all your family members keep commenting on; if you can borrow his Social Security Card and other old IDs, you could pass for him, and invest your money in his name.

It takes a minimum of effort to get Gramps to show off his old memorabilia, and just a bit more effort for him to allow you to borrow his old Social Security card and a late fifties dated driver’s license.  Convinced you can now buy and sell stocks to your heart’s content, you hop back in the time machine and jam to the past.

You again head to the brokerage house, and get the same broker, albeit a little more reluctant to work with the man who flaked on their last meeting.  Still, when you produce your authentic (if more worn than he was expecting) IDs, his mood lightens.  He readies the trade, and just asks you to produce the money to cover the purchase.

You smile as you pull the wad of bills out of your wallet and hand it over.  You smile disappears when he hands it back to you, frowning and asking whether you think it’s funny to waste his time.  Before you have a chance to say anything, he berates you for giving him clearly fake money, the work of a not so clever forger.  You don’t ask what he means; looking down at your cash, you realize it’s the re-designed, counterfeit resistant kind that’s been introduced in the past few decades.  Even if it didn’t look totally alien, it all has dates of 2000 or later on it, the sort of thing the broker would only see in Science Fiction films.  You excuse yourself, and run back to the time machine again.

STRIKE TWO!

You know you’ll only have one more chance at this; you vow to make it work.  You rack your brain trying to figure out where you can come up with a sizable amount of pre-1960 cash.  Most of the bills that old have been taken out of circulation or are being hoarded in safes somewhere; the coins are collectibles, rare pieces that fetch a high price now but will be nearly worthless back then.  As you ponder for a solution, it hits you: gold!  Buy some gold now, sell it in the past, and you’ll get 1960’s money without having to steal it from someone in the present!

You go to the nearest pawn shop, and buy as much gold as you can afford.  Hiding it until you get back to the time machine (you don’t want to be mugged), you hurry in order to get to the past.  One quick time jump, another trip to the pawn shop (this time in 1960) in order to liquidate your shiny treasure, and you’re ready for another meeting with your broker.

By this time, he’s rather perturbed with the whole situation; you’ve bailed on this purchase twice now, and he’s a busy man.  But when you produce a sizable amount of time-appropriate bills and lay them down on the table, his mood lightens; he tells you to have a good day, and you leave, convinced you’ve finally accomplished your goal.

You hop in the time machine, heading back to the future as you think of what you’ll do with your money.  You didn’t have that much to invest, but you chose companies that will grow at such an incredible pace that your money will double ten times over, at least, a thousand-fold increase when you finally withdraw it.  If that’s still not enough, you just have to be sure to keep some seed money to rent another time machine, invest the rest, and end up a millionaire all over again.

You arrive back in the present, and go to the brokerage to check on your ‘Grandfather’s’ account.  You’re surprised to hear that it was closed and emptied out decades ago.  You hurry to visit your grandfather, catching him as he regales his grandchildren (and a few great grandchildren) with some of his stories.  You don’t recall ever hearing this one; he tells of how he discovered one day in the early sixties that a brokerage had made a mistake, putting a few thousand dollars in an account with his name on it.  Of course, being the truthful sort he was, he attempted to convince them it was a mistake on their end, but when they insisted it was his, well, what was he supposed to do?  He took it out and spent it, of course!

STRIKE THREE!  YOU’RE OUT OF HERE!

Slumping along the wall, you realize that all your plans have come to naught, yet again.  Still, from the excited way that Grandpa talks about finding that money and what he did with it, you can’t help thinking that perhaps it was worthwhile, after all.  Bringing this much happiness to an old man must surely be worth something.  Also, if you heard correctly, you thought you caught something about a business he started with the remaining funds…

Will you learn more about Gramp’s business?  Does time travel always lead to trouble?  Does Roger like to do ongoing stories?  (The answer to that last one, by the way, is a resounding yes.)  Find out next Wacky Wednesday!

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