These Are My JOTtings, Part #2

Finance: "Numbers as a Job"

Amazingly enough, I have never written anything for the finance genre, even though I have been good with numbers most of my life.

My wife and I started out life together going to the grocery store together almost every trip because she liked having me around as a human estimate calculator. We had a food budget, and we didn't want to go over at the register. So, I'd estimate about 5% to 10% over on every item. I didn't miss the limit very often.

We didn't go together as often when the daughter arrived. We had other numbers to think about then, like #1 & #2.

A few years ago I became interested in playing the stock market with play money. How? Investopedia had (and still has) a stock market simulator, whereby they give the student $100,000 in digital faux currency (dollar was the currency I used, of course.) By making simulated trades, using actual stock codes, the student was able to keep track of how their money waxed and waned. Some weeks I "lost" quite a lot, but I started to learn how to increase my "portfolio." As I tracked the leaderboard, I was staggered by how the most savvy among us increased the initial investment by 50 to 100 times and more, whereas the rest of us were tracking in the also-ran part of the field at 20,000 to 30,000 placement or lower with only half of the initial investment left or less.

Funny. I never have seemed to be able to balance my checkbook to the penny, but I can do subtraction in my head to find out how many steps I have left as I progress through my daily walks in my steps app.

Maybe I could try the Investopedia Stock Market simulator, again. That could give me material for a story in this genre.

Words: 324
Written on February 12th, 2026
by Jay O'Toole