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

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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%.

Electronic tax filing results

Electronic tax filing results

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I’ve been filing my returns electronically for the last 4-5 years and each year the process gets smoother and smoother.  This year I filed by taxes electronically last Sunday.  My state return showed up in my bank account on Wednesday and my federal return showed up on Friday.  I was impressed to file and get my money back in the same week.  Maybe I hit a dead spot, but either way it with that fast of a turnaround it makes me think that things are getting more and more automated so even in peak times I would think turn around should be pretty fast if done electronically. 

In case anyone is wondering I took my tax money and then some and used it to pay down my HELOC.  I haven’t talked too much about my HELOC on this blog partly because I’ve been pretty diligent about paying it off on my own.  I took it out 1.5 years ago when we purchased our house and the balance was at $16,500.  After yesterdays payment I only have $1,000 remaining, I’m still trying to estimate my cash flow out for next month and may be able to just go ahead and pay the entire thing off as I’ve seen to had a good string of luck lately running into unexpected money.

Edit: I actually just paid it off entirely. Feels good to pay off debt 🙂

Back to taxes – remember you have until April 17th this year to file your taxes, but if you are getting a refund you may want to go ahead and get your money back before then, it’s painless and quick if you file electronically.

I just don’t get it – what is the big deal about gas prices?

I just don’t get it – what is the big deal about gas prices?

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If there is one thing I don’t understand is, how much people care about gasoline prices. If a news story came out today that said tomorrow all gasoline prices are going to jump by 10 cents, there would be lines wrapped around the block waiting to fill up for gas. I mean it would be great if people were actually that concerned about their finances, that the extra $1.20 (12 gallon gas tank) it was going to cost them just was unacceptable, but it’s not it’s something else and I don’t get it.

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What are your thoughts on Wal-Mart?

What are your thoughts on Wal-Mart?

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Me and my family do a lot of our shopping at Wal-Mart, in fact we almost do all of our shopping at Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart seems to be a very controversial store when it comes to its reputation.  Some people love Wal-Mart and other people hate it.  I have some family members who refuse to even step foot in the store, while other families members do most of their shopping at Wal-mart like me.

I was just curious what my readers thoughts were on Wal-Mart and whether they think it is a great store to find a good bargains or if it is the evil empire  and refuse to shop there.  The reason I ask is I know I have certain opinions about Wal-Mart the store/company (which I will discuss in a follow-up post), but I wanted to possibly get some insight into what people like and don’t like about Wal-Mart and how many people are on each side of the fence

So I got a couple questions for you.

  1. What are your thoughts on Wal-Mart (good,bad)?
  2. Why do you feel that way?
  3. If you have some insight into why they are good or bad where did you get this information?
   OR   

If you have any preferences one way or the other I really would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks,
MFJ