Chick Susie

Age: 54

Occupation:
Sports Marketing and Arena Development

Born:
St. Louis, MO

Lives Today:
St. Louis, MO

Education:
BA in Psychology from
St. Louis University

Marital Status:
Married with 3 children

Susie's Articles »

I am the second of five children -- the oldest girl -- born to Catholic parents in the Midwest. My entrance into the world of finance, investment, and planning for the future was pretty dismal. I would sit at the dining room table as my father would call for an all hands on deck meeting. That was the signal for momentous occasions -- The Family Meeting. Those family meetings started back when I was eight (earliest recorded minutes) and high finance matters were discussed. Would my allowance be raised from 5 cents per day to 7 cents? What would each completed chore net me monetarily?

I attended St. Louis University and worked part-time in the Athletic Department. This led to my post graduation occupation working for a local professional sports team, which was about as insecure as my financial future back then... we had five different owners in the 20 years. I was employed by the St. Louis Blues.

I recall with great fondness one particular ownership group provided a great employee investment plan -- stock options. Buy four shares, get the fifth free, with no broker’s fees. You could invest up to 50% of your earnings. Yes, I invested to the max. However, my emotions dominated logic and common sense. When that corporation decided to sell my beloved sports franchise, I sold all of my stock and bought a car. I was angry, hurt and also refused to ever buy their cat food again. I thought my personal crusade would make a difference. Fat chance. Today that stock investment would be worth a lot more than the automobile which is now located in some awful landfill.

Finally, three children later, I started to examine my financial future. I was tired of being the only one in the family who didn't have anything to contribute at the family meetings (yes, they still continue) besides the previous night's box scores.

Karin invited me to become a member of the investment club. Better yet, it was an on-line investment club, which meant there would now be true purpose for my meandering throughout the World Wide Web. Yes, I was, am and will be addicted to the web. I have over 200 favorite places on AOL, about 1,250 bookmarks on Netscape and even my own investment portfolio.

Everything that I had learned up to this point was through those family meetings. My dad and brothers made the stock purchase decisions at our family meetings, and the girls just sat in. I don't know what criteria they used to pick the stocks, but I could usually relate the timing of the purchase to a song, a hairstyle I was wearing, or a momentous athletic event, but never the company's numbers.

I read some books, checked some web sites, reviewed the financial section and discussed investment styles with my Dad. I brought all I knew to the Chicks, and gathered more from them. To this day, I'm continuing to learn, contribute and enjoy all the different views on investing. My brothers are even listening to me, or at least pretending.

Oh, by the way, I did leave the St. Louis Blues finally and ran a small little international hockey tournament called the World Cup of Hockey and then served as a liaison between the NHL, NHLPA, IIHF and IOC for the first foray into the Winter Olympic games by professional hockey players in Nagano, Japan. From those worldly experiences I meandered through a few jobs that did not capture my attention for long, KMOX Radio, part of an ownership group of junior hockey teams in Springfield, MO and Texarkana, TX but finally recognized what my passion was at the ripe age of 50.

My oldest brother asked me to volunteer for an annual event for high school students, the FIRST Robotics competition in St. Louis. It quickly became the most important I think I have ever done. So from event volunteer to super volunteer, from programs at the elementary school level through high school, it is truly about changing students’ lives. For more information just peruse the website www.usfirst.org. Oh yes, they finally had to put me on the board because I wore the entire organization out with my sports analogies.

So that's my story. But before I sign off, I just want to verify a few truths. I did not kill Karin's hamster. It drowned on its own in our sump pump. (This was after I retrieved Cuddles from her home. Seems Karin abandoned her to travel 600 miles north for the summer and she only had three children at the time, not four.) I am the mother of three wonderful children, Jenny (25), Joe (23) and Jaime (14), the awesome volleyball player for Rockwood Thunder and Nerinx Hall high School.

Susie