Scenes From The Historic Hudson Valley In Early September

Jack of all trades mas­ter of none.… I usu­al­ly trav­el with my cam­era, which elic­its deri­sion and laugh­ter from my kids, who insist that their I phone cam­eras are far supe­ri­or to my old Kodak Easy Share Z981.
The log­ic being that I should dis­card my cam­era or opt for some­thing more up-to-date, mod­ern, and expensive.
But I don’t think so. I’m old school, even though full dis­clo­sure, I do have an iPhone 7‑plus, oaky that’s old too, but there again is the dilem­ma, do I dis­card my per­fect­ly good iPhone 7‑plus because they have sev­er­al iter­a­tions after my mod­el’s release?

So here is my ques­tion to those of you who heap scorn and deri­sion on my old phone and cam­era. Please tell me this; if Apple made a phone with­out a mod­el num­ber- just an I phone with­out any num­ber or alphanu­mer­ic des­ig­na­tion, would­n’t you try to keep your phone for as many years as pos­si­ble, know­ing that you would only replace your device with anoth­er of what you are replacing?
Sure you would!

Apple and all of the com­pa­nies that man­u­fac­ture your elec­tron­ic devices know that. That is why they include num­bers and alphanu­mer­ic char­ac­ters to get you pro­grammed into the idea that a new­er, bet­ter mod­el is just around the cor­ner. And we all know what hap­pens when we try to get the newest mod­el any­thing; we put our­selves in debt for items that make us no money.
Imagine if we begin to invest the mon­ey we waste on the newest giz­mos and invest in our future, in stocks, bonds, real estate?

We would be able to leave some­thing to our chil­dren the type of wealth the Vanderbilts left, and if not that much wealth, who cares? At least we would have left our chil­dren a start­ing block from which to start the race of life.
Anything that allows them a chance, so they do not begin the race of life flat-footed.

We could do sim­ple things like invest­ing in inex­pen­sive bur­ial insur­ance that in some instances cost less than $30 per month to ward off the need for Gofundme efforts when a loved one dies. Allowing that to come from a check­ing accounts is almost pain­less as you almost don’t notice it; the price of a can of soda per day will result in $30’000 when that loved one dies.
Money enough to give them a decent bur­ial and leave some mon­ey for you who took that proac­tive step to look into the future.

Sounds preachy?
I hope not, but artic­u­lat­ing the best path for­ward is not always palat­able to all of us. I also under­stand that some of us real­ly do not want to be both­ered with plan­ning for the even­tu­al­i­ties that will occur as sure as night fol­lows day.
So if these words of advice offend you, I apol­o­gize for offend­ing you; clear­ly, this is not for you.

Anyway, the advice was free, and so was the scenery. Do enjoy the scenery, even if you did not care about the advice.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.