April '09 Month End Report

Days since inception: 485
Cash balance: $8.72 (all time)
Cents per day: 1.7979 (since inception)
Predicted day for $1,000,000: Tuesday August 11th 154,291 AD

4/30/2009
$1,000,000
= 1,124.86 oz of Gold @ $889.00 (as per Nymex close near month)
= 19,650.23 barrels of oil @ $50.89 (as per Nymex close Light Sweet Crude near month)
= 81,037.28 oz of Silver @ $12.34 (as per Nymex close near month)

Well the good news is due to a decent April the predicted date to reach a million has come in almost 57,000 years from last months report! However it is a task that will remain to be completed by my heirs!

-Luke Sidewalker

Paid to park

Mrs. Sidewalker has been doing most of the finding lately. It seems every time she goes somewhere and parks the car she gets out and finds some money. Her successes include a dime and three quarters in the last two days. I have chipped in with six cents myself. The locations of the finds can be found on my cashtrail to the right.

I read a story that in the U.K. there are a lot of counterfeit one pound coins in circulation. Don't the criminals know it is a lot cheaper and legal to just find the real coins on the floor. The story can be found here.

In other news today it looks like the time has expired on Chrysler's parking meter as they will file for some form of bankruptcy once the unions, creditors and government are done bickering over the last couple of billion dollars.

I will be publishing my month end report later today, so keep an eye out for that to follow my progress.

-Luke Sidewlaker
-Current balance $8.72

The density of rock

It's been a slow few days on the cash front. This morning I helped a friend of mine who is moving take some belongings to storage. However this friend is no ordinary friend - he is a vulcanologist (he likes volcanoes, not Star Trek). Not only is he a vulcanologist but a vulcanologist with a substantial collection of rocks. It does not end there; he is a vulcanologist with a substantial collection of rocks who moves about once a year! So generally speaking, when his lease is up we all have prearranged weekends away in order to avoid the "moving of the rocks", because to be frank they are bloody heavy. This year I was the one that didn't get away hence my backache as I type this. Where am I going with all this you may ask? Well at the self storage facility I found a penny, and during my recent cash drought I'll take what I can get, backache or no backache.

In other news my Staycation has got stuck in Greenland, so if anyone out there can hook me up with some one in the Netherlands it would be most appreciated.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $7.81

Luke Sidewalker's Global Staycation

Not a great day today on my local sidewalks, no money to report.

In these tough times the staycation has become very popular, that is a vacation that is spent at home going nowhere. With that in mind I thought it would make the perfect break for Luke Sidewalker and his frugal ways! To follow my global journey you can click here or click on the link in the sidebar to the right. I'm currently looking for a contact in Greenland, if you or anyone you know can help I would be very grateful.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $7.80

$165 Million, who cares really?

I had a good day today, three pennies and a rare quarter, all logged on my cashtrail map to the right. I was feeling particularly happy about bagging my 28 cents. Happy that was until I came across the headlines, and dug further into the AIG bailout.

Long story short AIG (AIG.N) came back for more bailout funds from the Treasury (so I guess consequently Goldman will have another good quarter), they were given another $30 Billion. For those of you keeping score at home that's a total of $182 Billion so far. Actually that is not totally accurate, this time they only got $29.835 Billion because the government held back $165 Million to offset the outrageous bonus payments last month. Well that showed them didn't it? I can't see them paying out anymore taxpayer funded bonuses when the Government takes such heavy handed punitive action such as this! My 28 cents kind of shriveled in my pocket as I was reading the article.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $7.80

David versus Goliath

There is an interesting David versus Goliath battle brewing in the blogosphere today. It is between "squeaky clean" financial behemoth Goldman Sachs, and some "dirty, know nothing, taxpaying" individual investment adviser in Florida called Mike Morgan.

Here is a very brief recap of the story so far. Then CEO of Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson, convinces the regulators to allow Goldman to leverage up to 40:1. The whole 40:1 leverage thing does not work out too well, so Hank Paulson moves over to the U.S. Treasury department and then proceeds to recapitalize Goldman with taxpayer dollars. Nothing wrong with that right? Well Mike Morgan had enough and about a month ago he set up the website www.goldmansachs666.com. Goldman was not too happy with this dose of reality, and have duly started the proceedings to sue. So Mike Morgan, as a fellow taxpaying "little guy", I salute you, and good luck with the court case. I guess I'm at risk of getting named in the lawsuit as an accomplice now, but what the heck, I could use the publicity!

In other news today, Mrs. Sidewalker found 10 cents in the early hours of Sunday morning on her way home from a bachelorette party. Location on map to the right.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $7.52

I'm now a Pandit pundit

Yesterday was my best day in a while. Just three coins were found but the total came to 51 cents. The first time I have found two quarters in one day since the hospital find of March '08. The first quarter was at a bank of parking meters, obviously someone had missed the slot and just thought "nah can't be bothered picking that up". The second was in a mall,I imagine the person was too busy shopping to be worried about their errant quarter, to my gain.

In other news, Citigroup Inc. (C.N) topped their earnings estimates. But to be fair it is not hard to do that when the U.S. Treasury gave them money for nothing, then they deposit that money with the Federal Reserve who then pays them interest. I'm no Warren Buffet, but I could make money using the above funding strategy!

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $7.42

Walker's Remorse

Well it came back to bite me. All the walk more, drive less propaganda I've been spewing forth of late did not help me today. I went to use my car this morning, it looked good, it smelt right, I turned the key and, yes you guessed it, nada. My car has obviously been reading the blog and decided to go on strike. All my walking of late had the unintended consequences of flattening the car battery.

I called a friend, and he gave me a ride to Auto Zone to get some jump leads. That turned into a 1cent trip (see map). The car duly returned to service led to another 1cent find. So all in all not the worst day.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $6.91

Rite Aid Revisited

I took a stroll into town yesterday. I was walking by the Rite Aid (RAD.N) again so I decided to cut through the parking lot having found money there previously and what do you know, there was a shiny penny waiting there for me.

Not too long ago Rite Aid was in financial trouble. It appears all they needed to do was send their staff into the parking lots of their stores to rectify their balance sheet woes! I also snagged another penny in downtown Hoboken as advertised on my cash trail map to the right.

In other news today, Goldman Sachs (GS.N) reported Q1 earnings almost double what was expected. I don't want to be cynical, but as a taxpayer this definitely smells fishy.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $6.89

Happy Easter

Happy Easter fellow Sidewalker's. Money to be found on the sidewalk has been scarce of late, and I have no new finds to report. In the spirit of the season I hope to resurrect my money finding career in the not too distant future.

I had planned to take Sidewalker Jr. on an Easter egg hunt yesterday, but the local weather transpired against us. I thought that while he was looking for eggs I could have scoured the vicinity for cash.

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to Jenny, who has become the most recent follower of my journey. The "Followers" section can be found in the side bar to the right of these posts.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $6.87

A bank haul

I admit it, I was getting nervous stuck on $6.66, but I'm happy to report a trip to the bank today paid dividends, in the amount of 21 cents. Another case of parking lot pay dirt!

Well last week the G20 resolved to end the credit crunch crisis. The IMF said they were going to sell some of their gold reserves to fund it, consequently the price of gold dropped from around $935 an oz. to $882 at the time of blogging. Also the FASB have relaxed the mark-to-market rules for the banks, making them appear more solvent. Initially the stock market cheered all these moves, it is only now that they seem to realize the growth going forward will be galvanized by an accounting shell game and the IMF gold sales, but hey what do I know, I'm just an average guy trolling around for loose change.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $6.87

A spoonful of medicine...

I went to Rite Aid today to fill a prescription, however it was the Sidewalker Fund that got the medicine to the tune of 15 cents I found in the parking lot. One consequence of today's find is that my total now stands at the devilish sum of $6.66, the 'Mark of the Beast'! I had better make a new find soon, superstitious me does not want to be on this total too long.

In other news today the March jobs numbers were reported. The nation shed 663,000 jobs in March and the unemployment level now stands at 8.5%, but not to worry because the G20 met yesterday and they have everything in control!

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $6.66

The anti Luke Sidewalker aka CiCi Pizza

You may have seen this in the news. CiCi Pizza are dropping a million pennies on the sidewalk. While I'm happy that they are making it easier for me, I kind of think they have ripped off my idea! See the article here

I cant believe they are promoting picking pennies up without asking Luke Sidewalker to be the front man for said promotion. What the...

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current Balance $6.51