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Month: March 2007

Saving money on books

Saving money on books

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Now this is going to be one of those, “no kidding you dufus why are you even posting this – it’s pretty obvious” kind of posts, but honestly I always forget about it and well it just saved me money this weekend. I actually don’t read books, for whatever reason I can’t just sit down and read a book. I usually get bored out of my mind after the first chapter and the only book I know that I have “read” since school (even then it was slim pickings (cliff notes)) is “The Little Book that Beats the Market” by Joel Greenblatt. The only reason I finished that book is because it was maybe 100 pages long, the pages were very small, and it actually was 90% substance instead of having to read 200 pages of fluff to get to the good stuff. I don’t know if I have ADD or am just an unintelligent caveman who can’t read books, but I just don’t read books.
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Frugal cure for a sore throat

Frugal cure for a sore throat

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I’ve been sick for most of the week and last couple days I have had a really bad sore throat. I had been sucking on cough drops and other common things to try to relieve my sore throat, but it kept getting worse and worse, to the point where I could barely manage to swallow. As a kid I had tonsillitis and strep throat probably on average 5-6 times a year, but back then it was taboo to take your tonsils out so I spent a fair share of my time at the doctors office and on amoxicillin and other antibiotics. Well I hadn’t had strep in a long time and was worried that this had to be strep again. I was just dying so as usual I went to the internet to find a solution.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and I am only posting this because I heard such great things about it and had such wonderful results myself, please consult with your physician before trying this magical elixir.
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Sad part is most people won’t get the joke

Sad part is most people won’t get the joke

Comments 3 comments

Got a kick out of a recent dilbert. It’s hilarious because it’s so true, although I’ve got this nagging feeling that 90% of the Dilbert audience doesn’t truly get the joke. The reason is because the average person probably doesn’t even know what a managed stock fund is, what high churn means, or even what front-load means. So let me break the cartoon down for you.
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Ask the readers – How do you come up with that magical retirement number?

Ask the readers – How do you come up with that magical retirement number?

Comments 10 comments

One thing I’ve taken a little slack for is right now my only public goal is that I want to have $100,000 in principal deposited by the time I reach age 30. This is a good goal and has been pretty popular with many of my readers, however as a couple of you have pointed out – it’s a short term goal and really says nothing about how, when, and how early I can retire.
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Carnival of Personal Finance No. 91

Carnival of Personal Finance No. 91

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The Carnival of Personal Finance #91 is being held over at The Sun’s Financial Diary this week. My article on I just don’t get it – what is the big deal about gas prices is down towards the very bottom.

As usual a ton of articles were submitted. Here are a few that I enjoyed

  • My Money Blog’s review of Prosper (Took a very good objective look of Prosper – turns out it’s not all sunshine,roses, and 10%+ returns)

  • Broke Now Rich Later’s Taxation Diversification posts – (I have often talked about this and I’m afraid I’ve just got too much put away in retirement accounts that will prevent me from retiring before age 59.5 (although I do have access to all principal deposits I put into Roth IRA accounts). One point I would make about this article is that if you have a good mix of Traditional and Roth accounts you an manage your taxes by taking as much as possible out of the traditional account until you get to a certain tax bracket and then topping it off with tax free Roth money).

  • The “Get Rich Quick Fallacy” over at Stubborn Capitalist (I think he hits the nail on the head, the programs aren’t necessarily scams, but if you want to be successful it is going to require lots of time and hard work. It’s not easy and something you can do in your spare time like they promote. I have had friends and family members do pretty well with some of the MLM programs, but it was essentially a full-time job outside of their full-time job and even then they decide the work involved wasn’t worth it after a while.)

  • Poorer Than You’s The Road to Millions Starts at Age 16 – (Even though I knew the importance of compounding well before 16 I never followed through and didn’t start saving for retirement until I was 24 – what a complete waste that was and how incredibly harder it will be for me to get where I want to be because I waited so long to start saving for retirement).

Million Dollar Kids – Give me a break

Million Dollar Kids – Give me a break

Comments 8 comments

Sorry for another rant, but I’ve been spending a little more time at yahoo lately and have been actually reading their finance articles and it’s amazing how far from reality some of these articles are.  Ok maybe they aren’t crazy because they can find lots of people to interview for them that back their articles up, but they are are far from reality for people who have common sense.

This latest article, talks about the cost of raising kids.  I’ve always been one to think that the figures out there for the costs of raising kids were completely out of whack.  Yes you can spend that much (if you try), but just like anything (cars, house, landscaping), if you are smart about it you can probably get better results with spending a fraction of the the money.

Maybe I’m the weird guy, but does any of these quotes from the article stand out as completely crazy?
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Quick Finanical Tip – Don’t check your investment accounts daily

Quick Finanical Tip – Don’t check your investment accounts daily

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This is one tip that I think that is especially hard to follow, especially for new investors.  It can be fun to check your stock, investment, retirement portfolio every day or every hour to see how much money you “made” or “loss” that day.  While it can be fun, it can start playing with your emotions and your judgment.  When you buy an investment it should be for the long term and you should accept the fact that in the short-term (especially if you invest in stocks and mutual funds) that your investment will go up and down for no good reason (sometimes significantly).

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine.”
– Benjamin Graham

The problem with watching daily fluctuations or reading daily media reports on your company is that you start thinking that these fluctuations are actually nonsensical and that you should take some action on these fluctuations to make or save yourself some money.  This will eventually result in you making rash decisions to possibly sell an investment or run up a bunch of commissions because you are trying to play the market.

I personally think you should be investing for the long-term so my personal train of thought is that if you don’t plan on holding onto an investment for at least 10 years you probably shouldn’t be buying it in the first place.

“If the job has been correctly done when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is almost never.”
– Philip Fisher

So save yourself the trouble and just rely on your monthly investment statements to keep track of your portfolio and even then don’t get too worked up if a single investment or your entire portfolio rose or fell by 20%.