alexandershorts

My background includes a short stint in the banking world (many years ago!), outside sales and a seventeen-year period managing a commercial business park in Charlottesville, Va. 

While at the business park, I came up with an idea for how to more easily locate outlet box cutout openings when hanging drywall, and HandyMark (www.handymark.net) was born. After steadily rehabilitating and improving this property, it was abruptly sold in January, 2007. Although the new owners brought in their own management and I lost my job, I had a severance package in place and that allowed me to focus full-time on marketing my innovation.

Throughout my entire career my wife has been urging me to do some creative writing, but "the time was never right" ...until a few years ago. After commiting to the task, I finally wrote my first novel entitled The Defector Within. (Available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com) Yes, the writing bug has bitten and won't let go...so here I am as a new Hubber!

My interests include personal finance, healthful living, fitness, tennis, the National Parks and the animal kingdom. Until recently, I had little interest in national and international economic issues. The financial crash of 2007-2008 and the book Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown changed all of that. For the last several years I have been virtually driven to learn all I can about economic issues and have discovered how important the Internet is in gaining access to in-depth, broad-spectrum news coverage. More importantly, I've learned just how precarious world economies are today. 

Besides writing on non-financial topics, I want to share with this forum some of this newly-acquired financial information in the hopes that it will bring a new and different perspective to the reader's understanding of financial issues.