cjcarrad

I am a California registered Architect drawing a very nice pension, thank you Michael Eisner, after a three-decade career as a Walt Disney Imagineering design executive. I am currently in a relaxed but respectable private practice, working from a comfortable home-based atelier in Malibu and I play and travel at will. Ain't it grand?

I invest rather meagerly in securities, primarily buying and holding shares of companies I admire or whose products I use in my daily life.

My larger investment portfolio is cash-flow rental real estate and were I playing monopoly, I should turn in houses for hotels. The mortgage meltdown is not an issue, my wife and I saw it coming. I long ago cashed out all of our real ...More estate loans, so excepting a soft rental market, we are just fine and believe we made the right decisions.

Overall our net worth is dominated by property but we have ready cash available for market opportunities.

As an Architect I understand and appreciate the fundamentals of long-term stability: a good foundation, a robust superstructure, sensible utility and commodity and, most importantly, suppression of the decorative in favor of sustainability. What goes for a good building is a very good guide for sound investing.