I’ve switched to full text feeds

I’ve switched to full text feeds

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Not wanting to be left out I too have switched to full-text feeds.  To be honest I’m not sure why I even had partial feeds to start with as I hate reading feeds that only give me a teaser and make me go out to the site to get more.  So it was pretty stupid for me to be offering partial feeds on my own site.  Anyway hopefully this will be a welcome change.  Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to make it entirely retroactive so my older feed items are still partial, but going forward you will be able to read my articles in their entirety with your favorite RSS reader.  Sorry it took so long.

The true cost of owning a home – or reasons why renting isn’t all that bad.

The true cost of owning a home – or reasons why renting isn’t all that bad.

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My wife and I were discussing whether her soon-to-be-married brother and his future wife should really be looking to purchase a home right away. Knowing what I know about the couple and my personal opinion about buy vs. rent I took the side of the argument that the couple definitely should not be looking to buy a house right now. The two of them are fresh out of college and from what I know don’t have a whole lot of money saved up. In fact I think they have some debt and are going even further in debt to pay for the wedding and honeymoon. Now at their age there is certainly nothing wrong with being in debt, especially if the reason for the debt is college education and well as much as I promote being frugal in all aspects of your life, you probably should enjoy your wedding/honeymoon as hopefully it’s an only once in a lifetime experience.

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The dreaded check engine light – what to do?

The dreaded check engine light – what to do?

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The check engine light came on in one of our cars sometime last week. Now before someone starts saying “I told you so that’s what you get for driving a POS”, it’s not on my Ford Escort – that one burned out a long time ago 😛 The light came on in my wife’s 1999 Honda Accord which well it’s worth at least 7 Escorts so I actually go to worry about the car getting wrecked which means I’m going to have to do something about the light.

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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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