As I write this, it is New Year's Eve, and rather than make a resolution that is bound to be broken, I figured I'd list the Best and the Worst of 1996. It has been quite a year, and it seems like a good activity to list what went well, and what went poorly. Let's go over what happened.

Best

Came on as one of the Motley Fools. How could I skip that as the best? This happened because young George ran up a bill of about $300 in August of '95 on Prodigy. I asked them if I could pay the amount on "time," and they gave me a snotty reply that I could certainly pay the bill anytime up to the due date. I paid the bill and stopped the service. Suffering on-line withdrawal, I went to AOL, and found this silly place called the "Motley Fool." There were these two guys in funny hats, and it was just too strange to pass this up. Saw a thing called "The Fribble," which struck my fancy. I wrote a little thing about riding my bike to the mall to make a deposit in my bank account at age 14, and next thing you know, I'm writing all the time. Young George doesn't feel bad at all about that bill anymore; heck, he got me into Foolishness.

Bought Intel as a DRiP - it was Barbara's idea, but I would have thought of it anyway. She says Baloney! (What does she know, ha!). Well, OK, I didn't know Intel had a DRiP plan. Barbara liked them because she saw long term growth in PCs. How could I argue with the woman who got us Microsoft before Windows 95?

Got rid of the whole life insurance policies, and substituted term. Saved big bucks. It wasn't that easy to admit the high premiums we'd paid to Snoopy and his friends were wasted money. The "cognitive dissonance" that marketers refer to had to be overcome. However, although insurance agents may lie, spreadsheets don't.

Kept the debts down, saving interest. That is self explanatory. Still used the credit card somewhat; we hope to build up enough cash that the credit card isn't needed for emergencies (like new transmissions, see the worst).

Went on vacation to Bethany Beach. It cost more than other vacations we've taken. This time we didn't go for the cheapest. It was worth it.

Got rid of the mutual funds, except for the one Barbara had to have (THAT IS DOING TERRIBLE! HA! HA!). Oh, OK, the Stein Roe Young Investor Fund is doing well. That's really Young George's though, even though Barbara chose it and is the custodian. Instead we are putting the money in DRiPs. This felt kind of scary. We were in good funds, and they had outperformed the market. Barbara and I felt we could do better ourselves in blue chip companies. I wrote about this in a Fribble, and received an e-mail criticizing my decision. The writer had some good arguments about diversification, and spreading risk. He said an Index fund would be better. I considered his comments in another Fribble -- and stayed the course. So far we've beaten the market; I'll look at it again in a few months and write a Fribble analyzing how we did. Would we have done better in an Index fund? I don't think so, but let's see if I'm right.

Worst

Bought a stock on message board hype and lost a lot of money. I'd say which one it was, but it still exists (barely), and there are a lot of hard feelings on that one. I knew nothing about this stock. I knew it was a legitimate company, but it was losing money. They had a "hot" product, but a history of losses. Their "hot" product has been kind of cool.

Bought stock in Morrison Knudson a couple months before their reorganization, and lost ALL my money. I have hard feelings on that one. If I'd looked at their 10Q and 10K in the SEC Edgar database, I would have seen the company couldn't get bonded for construction jobs. That's the kiss of death in this industry, and they died. They were recapitalized, but shareholders saw their investments become warrants, the terms of which I didn't understand. I don't put money in things I don't understand anymore, and my warrants expired worthless.

Hosted my first chat at 2AM on a Saturday morning. What was I thinking? I imagined a nice friendly chat with Fools suffering insomnia. Oh, it would be fun! Yeah, it was fun all right. I discovered that bars aren't the only places for drunks at that time in the morning. At least they weren't endangering anybody on the roads; they were too busy insulting me with misspelled words.

Bought a cheap transmission for the Foolmobile from the junkyard, only to have to replace it three weeks later. See the credit card bit above.

Started a discussion on the Coke stock board that the company is overvalued. Oh, boy, did I step on a hornet's nest. I keep saying that "this is my last post on this," but somebody else comes back with another thought. I get thinking too, and respond again.

Made consistently bearish pronouncements on the Coke stock board. How has the stock done? I don't think we're talking about that right now.

It was quite a year. What sort of Foolishness and Folly will next year bring? Who knows, but it should be fun!