The first step in calculating your billable hours is to define a realistic working year. If you were employed elsewhere, you would expect or want at least two weeks vacation time, one week sick time, one week personal time and paid holidays. So, where does that leave us - 52 weeks minus four weeks leaves 48 weeks minus about 10 paid holidays, or a total of approximately 46 weeks per year.
For those of us who have participated in the investment arena for more than just the past couple of years, 2000 will likely go down as "not unprecedented and long overdue." For the investors who have come to the party more recently, it was a brutal, eye-opening, and sobering experience. Buying every dip didn't work. Dot-com IPOs didn't work. This year was truly a coming-of-age experience for millions of "adolescent" investors.
But the economy of making each investment in the stock market does come with a price. It will require self-denial (the money invested is not spent for goods or services). Economy and self-denial, I'm afraid go hand-in-hand. To truly benefit from a stock market investment, a savings plan should be adopted and a systematic approach of dollar-cost-averaging (buying the same stock at different prices) should take place; and when the purchase should take place, economically clearly defined.