Good posts on why bonds are important in a portfolio

Good posts on why bonds are important in a portfolio

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If you’ve been following my blog lately you’ve been noticing that I’ve been questioning why one would ever have any money in bonds in the long-term due to their sub-par performance vs. stocks. I’ve had tons of great comments and I thought I even summarized things pretty good, but in the end I don’t know that I really had it nailed down. I was still able to shoot my mouth off somewhat about how in the long-term stocks are still the best investment and I really kind of wanted someone to stick my foot in my mouth, well maybe not that harsh but there are two great posts about why bonds are a vital part of an investment portfolio.

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Cash Plus Rewards Card arbitrage

Cash Plus Rewards Card arbitrage

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Well I had an experience with my Chase Cash plus Rewards card lately that got me thinking. Well you know that bright idea I had with purchasing about 3 playstation 3s at launch and trying to turn them around for a profit on Ebay, well yeah it failed miserably and I ended up returning every single one of them shortly after Christmas. Well here’s where the arbitrage comes in. I bought them at a normal Wal-mart so when I purchased them I got 1% cash back. Well I ended up returning them to a Super-Walmart on which I get 5% cash back on all my purchases because it’s considered a grocery store. Well when I returned them they took 5% off my rewards statement for each one. All in all I lost $72 cash because of my return process.

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OT: The Bears still suck

OT: The Bears still suck

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[audio:http://www.bearsstillsuck.com/bearsuck.mp3]
Happy Schnapps Combo - The Bears still suck
(snippet didn't want to get in trouble by posting the whole song)

Well being from Wisconsin and a lifelong Packer fan it was with great joy that I watched the Bears lose in the super bowl last night. For those of you that don’t know the Packers vs. Bears riverly is one of the oldest and most fierce in all of professional football, and well I got lots of friends that are Bears fans so I’ve lived the experience my whole life….even got the “Bears Suck” t-shirt and cap to prove it. Well I know Packers didn’t even make the playoffs, but I’ll kick the Bears and their fans while they are down anyway 😉

Asset Allocation – If you are young why wouldn’t you be 100% stocks – Comments and Recap

Asset Allocation – If you are young why wouldn’t you be 100% stocks – Comments and Recap

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Well turns out that me suggesting that young people with long investing time horizons invest 100% in stocks sturred up a lot of activity on my blog and to be honest I never could have imagined I would have gotten so many high quality comments on this post. I’ve learned a lot in the process (I think) and I figured it would do good to sort of recap the comments from the other post and give a general idea of what my readers thought (or at least my convoluted interpretation of their thoughts).

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Asset Allocation – If you are young why wouldn’t you be 100% stocks?

Asset Allocation – If you are young why wouldn’t you be 100% stocks?

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I know I have had a few people comment on some of my posts that I’m too heavily weighted towards stocks (100%) and it’s sort of common knowledge that when laying out your asset allocation in your portfolio that it is a mixture of stocks and bonds. Even most lifestyle funds for the most risky aggressive young punk classification have some money in bonds. For some reason I can’t get it through my thick skull why someone would put any money in a historically lower performing investment tool for money that won’t be touched for 30 or more years.

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Retirement NestEgg Report – January 2007

Retirement NestEgg Report – January 2007

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Well it was another good month for my retirment nestegg. Gained over 4.5% and am inching closer to the $50,000 mark. It’s amazing how fast my nestegg continues to grow as just last December it was only at $24k and hopefully in two years time it will be close to $100k. Just goes to show you that if you stick to a plan of continually contributing to your retirement accounts it starts adding up. I mean when I started saving and investing I thought it would take decades for me to reach six figures and everytime I saw a blogger who had a net worth or retirement account that was over $100,000 I always thought wow that guy must make a lot of money to be able to save that much money. Turns out you don’t need to make that much money, those guys were probably just a couple years ahead of me and had the same rigorous saving mentality. Anywho here is where I stand as of today.

My Roth IRA – $11,366.56 (-0.30%)
Wife Roth IRA – $14,223.81 (+9.56%)
Traditional 401K – $11,933.34 (+2.00%)
Roth 401K – $11,406.00 (+6.27%)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $48,929.71 (+4.52%)

Festival of Frugality #59

Festival of Frugality #59

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The Festival of Frugality #59 is up at  Thetaoofmakingmoney.  I always find the festival of frugality to be full of great new ideas on how to save money and this one is no different.  Golbguru did an excellent job of hosting and organizing the carnival into distinct categories.  As usual the carnival is huge and for those of you that haven’t had the opportunity to host a carnival yet, it really is a lot of work.  Anyway my article is down in the car section, go check it out!!