Money Forward

There's something in the water in Orlando

2007-05-05T10:44:00.000-04:00

My wife and I went on vacation a little over a year ago to Orlando. We had never been to Disney World before and she really wanted to go, so we went for her birthday. Having never been there, I just went with the most obvious approach to getting everything, from hotel tickets to park tickets. I'm not so sure I got the best price.

Since then, every once in a while all I can think about it going back. It's not like I loved it or anything, but for some reason I want to go back. There must be something in the water. Anyway, this time around I'm probably going to check out this website where I can get the best prices on park tickets and entertinament tickets, including Disney park tickets and Universal Studios tickets. These tickets are surprisingly one of the most expensive parts of the whole trip, and any savings you can get is well worth it.

No wonder newspaper circulation is down

2007-05-04T09:03:00.000-04:00

Journalists like the one that wrote this article on Boston.com, could be one reason no one cares to read the news anymore. Why do they always have to talk to people who live nearby, or bystanders, or people that add NOTHING to the story, or even talk about totally irrelevant things.

The beginning of the article is fine, informative (sad and unfortunate), to the point, talking about a student who shot his roommate and then killed himself. Then they talk to some random person who's parents live nearby and instead of saying how sad it is that someone did this, and how bad that person must have been, she complains about students living in the neighborhood near the college causing trouble with partying, and how someone needs to do something about it. The person's thoughts are TOTALLY irrelevant, and outright selfish. The journalist (Katharine Webster) was trying for something and totally missed the point. Why do people have to try and do more than is needed, especially when it just screws up everything.

As a side note, if you choose to live near a college, you have to accept that college students are going to party, and there's going to be issues. If you don't like it, leave. If you expect a college not to grow, or to house all of their students, good luck. Most of the time, this isn't going to happen. Stop being blind.

My condolences to the family of the students and the people affected by this act.

Cell phones

2007-05-04T08:53:00.000-04:00

We're always surrounded by people that are addicted to their cell phones. That can't help but to wake up in the morning, call someone, and then stay on their phone most of the time they're alone. It's pretty sad. We used to do fine without cell phones, and now some people can't live without them. I wonder if they have ever shown a drop in depression or loneliness due to an increase use in cell phone. Someone should work on that study.

Any way, I don't care how lonely or important you are, if your cell phone is distracting you from doing things that affect others, i.e. driving, you should be banned from using it. This is why I ahve no problem with laws that restrict cell phone use. In addition, it may be nice to use one on a plane or subway, but it's kind of nice to have some quiet.. there's not enough quiet.

Update

2007-05-04T08:47:00.000-04:00

As expected, not much of a networth bump. Our retirement funds did pretty well and gained a chunk last month. Our savings dropped, although this was expected, and this month it will drop a lot more. I'm not worried about it. We have enough money for a few semesters of my tuition, my wife has started interviewing for jobs and making connections. So far we're doing well enough.

My experiment has still been going on, although I made end it early (June or July instead of November and December). It lost a little bit the day before the new month, so things went down slightly. I'm still pretty happy with it overall. I may end it early because we're considering moving, so I want our credit to be better before we have people looking at it to see if we can rent an apartment they have. It'll be a non-gain of a some money, but only like $300 or so. As for the stock portion, we'll probably pay it off using savings and keep the stocks until they have been held over a year. Depending on how I feel about them, we may or may not sell them after that point. I would just rather pay the 15% capital gains, rather than the higher tax amount.

Lately we've been too busy, with the semester ending and a lot of things going on, and upcoming trips. I just don't care too much about our money at the moment. So we're spending a bit, but all to keep sanity and enjoy life.

Vacations

2007-04-22T11:27:00.000-04:00

We definitely do not take enough vacations, mostly because they're so expensive. Although the hotel and rental car and flights are expensive, you at least know those prices before you leave. What gets you, is the cost of food. When we went on our honeymoon to Hawaii, the food was really expensive and we just didn't think about it before we left.

During our search to find a honeymoon location, we checked out a bunch of different sites for all inclusive resorts. There seemed to be a lot of good ones, but it was hard to search them all out. There is a nicely done site that I found recently that will help anyone find an all inclusive resort in most areas of the world. They say that you can ind a resort for up to 50% off. I didn't find the rates, but if you're interested in a place, it seems like they'll show you. The best part is, they have resorts from all of the major all inclusive resort companies. You can search by location, type of resort (couples only, families, adults only, adventure, etc.), or by the resort company.

We've definitely considered this type of vacation because then you're not surprised by the price of food. Plus, you know what you'll be getting before you even go since you'll be able to read up about the resort and all it has to offer. If this type of vacation is something you're interested in, check out the site. Vacations.net

Frugality

2007-04-19T19:57:00.000-04:00

Frugality definitely has it's perks, although it has it's place and time as well. For example, I went to my parents' house on Sunday and I noticed that had a cereal box of tasteeo's (right next to two boxes of honey nut cheerios). My (and even my brother's) first exclamation as "what the hell is that?" My dad of course kept insisting that there was no difference, but there is. Just get regular cheerios. It's well worth the price.

Another good example, beer. Good beer is well worth the price. Paying nothing for bad beer is not only an insult, but a waste of money. I did used to by Miller High Life, because at the corner liquor store in one of my old places, a 6-pack of 16 oz cans was like $4.50. That as well worth it when I was poor. But even when poor, if I had the time and motivation to drive, I had no problem paying more for good beer. Like tonight, I had a Stone Brewing Company, Vertical Epic. It was excellent, and well worth the price. Other beers well worth the price are most things from Magic Hat Brewing Company, and Alaskan Brewing Company.

Priorities

2007-04-19T12:14:00.000-04:00

School has been a priority for me financially, making sure I don't have to go further into debt to pay for my degree. So far I'm making it. Even better, I have enough to hold me over through possibly next spring or farther. It all depends on what classes I take and how much extras are going into savings.

Although it's a great feeling, I've decided that my wife and I don't enjoy life all that much. Sure you can enjoy life without spending money, but there are a lot of things I want to do that require money. So, instead of keeping my savings and being ready for several semesters of school, we've decided to at least take one soemwhat vacation. I say somewhat because it will be a trip back to where most of my friends are, and so it's really a visit rather than a 'sitting by the beach, drinking fancy drinks' type of vacation. Although it will cost some money and possibly make me have to find more money for next year's tuition, it will be well worth it. We'll have the money, so that's not a big deal. Plus we need to enojoy ourselves, and we've been so busy the past few months, that it will be a nice break from it all.

Although have money security is nice, it's worthless if you aren't enjoying yourself.

What can Brown do for me? Go out of business UPS, please.

2007-04-14T10:23:00.000-04:00

UPS, you're a terrible company. Never have I not had trouble with you. From terrible, useless customer service, to some of your incompetent delivery people(although I've never met a competent one, I don't want to assume they're all useless), to your unrealistic delivery policies and procedures.

Your company lacks common sense. It is unfortunate that you have to hire people and then not train them correctly, keeping them from being helpful to your customers. When someone has a delivery sheet, a valid license (even if it is from a different state, it is still valid), you should allow them to pick up their package. It was bad enough that someone was waiting specifically for your delivery person, yet when the package did not arrive and I called customer service, they lied to me saying someone tried to deliver the package and no one was there. SOMEONE WAS THERE. Then to waste my time and make me rush to your delivery center to pick up the package that should have been correctly delivered, and then deny me the package because my valid license with my name which is totally unique in the whole country, if not the world, does not have my in-state address? USELESS.

Or the policy that does not allow your dlivery people to deliver a package to a house with apartments, even if no signature was required and it could be left inside a door, and even if I say it is okay to do so. How many people can take a day off just to wait for a package? We work. Being home between 10 and 2 during the day to get a package is impossible.

Now your latest incompetence when you say you left my package on my front porch. First, I do not have a porch. Second, you obviously didn't leave it at my building since I was hope 15 minutes later and there was no package in site. It was pouring rain, I seriously doubt people were walking around stealing stuff. And who would want to steal this anyway? It isn't worth anything to 99% of the people out there. Plus, my neighborhood isn't like that.

What can Brown do for me? Stop delivering packages for companies I order from. I would request other companies to deliver it, but those requests often, unfortunately, get denied. Just go out of business, restructure, do something useful, because right now, you are inefficient, incompetent, and a waste of everyone's time and money. There are much better companies out there, too bad people are generally clueless and can not be bother with change.

I want a sailboat

2007-04-06T08:40:00.000-04:00

I've wanted a sailboat for so long, but I of course want one that is way too expensive at this time. But it is something my wife and I are working towards, even though they're money holes. I don't want to have to deal with renting a boat, or having to return it on time, or anything like that. Even if it's more expensive and more work, having the freedom to go sailing whenever I want would be great.

Since we like to sail, I've looked at several companies online that have private sailing charters. I've found one in Maine which looks really nice, although Maine can be cold. For an alternative, there are private sailing charters all over the place, Hawaii, Caribbean, etc. This one I found is from the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Thomas Sailing Charter. They offer day cruises, you can go for a whole vacation, everything. It's like being on a luxury RV, but in the water where you don't have to go where the road takes you and you can explore a lot of different areas that you could never get to any other way. They also have dinner cruises, which is probably the only cruise we could afford. Full gourmet dinner, drinking, sailing at sunset. It sounds pretty awesome to me. Someday if we could afford it, I think it would be a great vacation, at least until I decide to get my own boat.

Update on stock games

2007-04-06T08:33:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned I'm playing two stock games online at the moment. One I've done decent in, and the other I got screwed by the system, so I've given up.

First, CNBC's Million Dollar Challenge, as of what is says now:
Value: $1,199,441.27
Rank: 17799
Percentile: top 4%

Best I've been is top 3%. I don't plan on winning this, I just don't have the knowledge or the time to sift through stocks to find the ones that will jump 20% at a time. The top people have over $2,000,000 which is a lot more than I can make I think. But considering my place, I've done fairly well.

For eFIPO's Stock Game, I've given up. I owned a stock that was giving a $15 dividend, and although the program says that they count dividends, it never went through. after the dividend, of course the stock lost $15, (and then went up like $3), but at that point I was down almost 60%. I can't get that back without a lot of work and since the system obviously doesn't work correctly, I'm not going to waste my time.

Update

2007-04-05T14:46:00.000-04:00

I've been losing track of time lately do to the amount of work I've had to do at school and at my job. But this will catch me up a bit.

Last month was nothing exciting in the net worth area. It went up, but I know it's not going to stay that way. Most of the money in savings is for tuition, and since my wife and I decided that we need to live a bit more, some of that will be used for traveling as well. So, by June, our net worth will plummet, but it is expected and not that big of a deal. Hopefully my wife will start hearing about interviews soon and then we will be better able to cope with the ups and downs and actually grow our net worth. So overall, our net worth increased by 19.53%, or by a less exciting number, $809. Some of that had to do with extra money into my retirement from my company for profit sharing.

In the more interesting arena, the losses from last months crazy stock swings have evened out a bit. I'm still not as high as I once was, but my stocks are doing decent at the moment. Only two are in the negatives, and not by much. The two ETFs are up about 5% (as of today), and two other stocks are up over 9% and 38%. Not too shabby. The amount of money I've made is still down a little bit, although I'm not sure how this is true, but the numbers are correct so who knows. Overall my experiment numbers look like this:

Hopefully next month will see some good increases in the experiment.

More moving talk

2007-03-31T09:53:00.000-04:00

My wife and I have continued our discussion on whether or not we should move. A lot of this will depend on where she gets her new job, so we can't decide exactly the location yet. I just know that I don't want to live too far from some sort of center or retail. I like being able to walk to places.

Searching for apartments and condos in Boston is a huge pain. There are so many places, and a lot of them just aren't that nice. Of course, the location is key also. Do I want to be in an up and coming area, or an already proven area? Important questions. One place that could be considered is South Boston. The place has changed a lot over the last decade and it is going to continue to change as they keep developing. Since it's Boston, we would need to look for a realtor to find South Boston real estate. We could look in the surrounding area and it seems like Seaport Realty has a good hold of the area, knowing what is available and what the best places are. Finding an apartment generally isn't easy, finding a condo or something is a lot harder. Some of the places on the Seaport Realty site are really nice. Maybe too expensive, but with real estate the way it is lately, there's always room to negotiate. Worth thinking about.

Gambling

2007-03-29T18:30:00.000-04:00

I thought I was finally getting over my urge to gamble until a few days ago. I know that I will not win if I gamble, but I can't help to think that I could. It's an odd thing. The closest casino is a couple of hours away, so it's not like I would go just for fun by myself. Actually I would probably never go to a casino by myself. Although I play very individual games, I like to have others there. Maybe I could learn craps, I don't know. It seems fun, but I just have no idea how to play. I've tried to read some things, but still don't know. I think my game is roulette. No doubt about it. I guess I will go at some point, I just don't know when. So for now I'll play roulette online, get my fix, and then be done with it without going poor.

Someone hit my car, what would you do?

2007-03-23T08:47:00.000-04:00

The parking lot I park in at work is a long, narrow area with parking spaces on both sides. Sometimes it takes more than a three point turn to get out of a spot. Since the snow last week, the lot has been more narrow and so parking has been more of a pain, and so I've been backing up into a spot everyday so it's easier to get out. Yesterday I left one space next to me and someone else decided to back up there car into the spot, and into my car. There wasn't too much damage, just a dent near the front wheel well, and some scrapes on the side. The person was at least nice enough to leave a note and a phone number to call her.

My car is pretty old (not as old as the one in the above picture, which is not my car, source: http://www.whnet.com/4x4/), and so it really isn't worth it to spend the money and time fixing it up. The frame and everything else is fine, it's just another dent. But I couldn't let it just slide by either. So I called the number, and set a price and the person agreed to pay. It's easier that way. I probably could have gotten more, but the person left their number and you have to respect that a bit, and I don't feel like dealing with mechanics or anyone else.

Should I have asked for more or gone to a mechanic? I don't know.

Thoughts on moving

2007-03-22T16:04:00.000-04:00

My wife and I have realized that we are not going to own a house for a long time. To get a decent house in a decent area will require a 20% down payment of somewhere around $80k. That is a lot of money. But we also don't know how long we can live in our current apartment. The ceiling is paper thin (noise-wise) and so we hear everything from our noisy neighbors upstairs. Unfortunately we only moved 6 months ago, and moving again seems like a bad idea. Moving is very stressful, frustrating, and costly.

I came upon this website that connects you with a moving company that will work for you. They look deeply into the companies that match you with and make sure they're going to be worth your time and money. That would be a huge help since finding a reputable company can take a long time, and even then you could be getting ripped off. Even worse is moving across the country or into a new state, since the movers have your belongings for a longer time, and who knows what happens to your things during the weeks that they are out of your eyesight. To find Long Distance Moving Companies, this site can help you figure out what will work best for you.

Who knows when we'll actually move, but I don't think my brothers will be all that happy to help us out again so soon. They will, but they still won't care for it. I'm thinking a moving company may be the way to go. Who knows what would actually cost less money-wise and family-wise. The less I have to think about it, the better.

The market

2007-03-22T08:50:00.000-04:00

I love when stocks go up, well mostly my own, espec ially after the slump we just had. Some stocks I've owned for a little longer also have started to do well. I bought this one stock in November and it was going up and down and not really anywhere until about 2 weeks ago, and since has shot up 20%. Too bad I didn't have it in either of my stock games. So now my poor Sharebuilder account has actually done something. As I said ages ago, I messed up with my Sharebuilder account and paid too much for one stock. I put in a total of $200, got the $50 promotional money, used that for stocks and was under $200 in my account for a while. Pretty sad. Right now though, it's up to $258. Hopefully it will steadily continue that motion.

As for my stock games...
The CNBC game, my portfolio went up a bit, although I lost ground to others yesterday. I finally decided to sell some of my ok performing stocks and try to go with risky stocks that can potentially earn me more faster. Not so sure that's going to work with the stocks I picked, but I've tried. That portfolio now looks like this:
Rank: 26481 (Top 7%)
Total Return: 10.41%
Value: $1,104,131.22

My Virtual Stock Game:
I was down by a lot, something like 14+%, but I've made up a lot of ground since then. I now am in 26th place (out of 28) and my return so far is -0.27%, a lot better tha -14%. So that is looking up for a bit.

Paid blogging

2007-03-20T19:36:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of talk about what is ok and isn't for getting paid to write blog posts. Personally, I don't see a problem with it at all. Blogging is about writing your opinions and thoughts, and if they are led in some direction by someone that's willing to pay, what's the problem? As long as you are still honest and straight forward, it's still your own opinion. Writing your opinion on something and getting paid for it is just like writing your opinion on something and not getting paid. I don't mind getting paid, so I'll probably do it all because it can't hurt. It doesn't make my opinions any less.

Buy precious metals?

2007-03-15T17:28:00.000-04:00

I thought about this a few years ago when I saw an article about a guy that made millions of dollars through spamming, and then bought millions worth of gold bullion. He then supposedly buried it somewhere in the woods and no one can find it.

Anyway, during my thoughts on the crazy things that could possibly happen to our world, I've thought about buy metal. I figure if our money ends up being worthless, at least gold and silver will still be worth something. It could be thought of as being a backup of your money if the stock market crashes and/or your cash becomes worthless. But I of course don't have that much money that it matters. But I think I would still like to buy gold bullion one day. At least to have it because I think it would be cool to say "I have some gold bars in the safe." or something like that.

But, I figured finding this stuff to buy would be hard. But then I found this site that sells gold bullion and silver coins and the such. Imagine having some of those sitting around. Or you can buy it through this company and have it one of their vaults for safe keeping. Not as cool as keeping it around the house, but cool to know you have it. Eventually I'll invest in this stuff, but who knows when.

(This was a paid post, although my opinions still are the same.. I want a stack of gold and silver in a vault underneath my house.. that'd be awesome.)

Business thought

2007-03-14T11:12:00.000-04:00

I've been toying with the idea of opening an online business using a drop shipper. I haven't found out too much information, but it seems like it could be doable. I need to find out more though, and I'm not exactly sure where to look. It's tough because I don't want it as a full-time job at all, just something to make extra money. So I'm not sure if it could even work.

Ideas?

Happenings online

2007-03-13T08:54:00.000-04:00

There are a few stock market games I'm part of right now online, the CNBC Million Dollar Challenge, and eFipo's Stock Market Game. Join if you'd like, although the CNBC is full of angry people at the moment because of some cheaters. You can read a little about that at It's Just Money.

My stats at this moment are:
CNBC - Rank: 20353 (Top 8%)
Total Return: 5.54%
Portfolio: $1,055,428.36

eFipo's Stock Game:
Rank: 28 (...of 28)
Total Return: -4.74% (Although week's return is marked at 11.29%!)
Portfolio: $952,651.25
I made a mistake on this one and tried out something that quickly lost me $40,000 or so. I've been trying to get back since.

A bit behind... updates

2007-03-12T09:07:00.001-04:00

I haven't posted in a while, but I'll catch up eventually.

Anyway, I did my networth and I'm up by a chunk now. The big increase was from our tax return. Of course, ideally we should be getting little back from the IRS, but for several reasons we did not do that. First, my wife claimed 0 exemptions since she was working on and off while in school and so that was the best way to make sure we didn't pay too little. I have 1 exemption because we need the money to survive. But, we also got the lifetime learning credit and the tuition deduction which is what really boosted up our return. Since my wife will not have a full-time steady job until september, we're just going to keep going on this path for now. The return was nice anyway because it came at a great time and now I know my tuition will be set through the end of the year.

The money experiment, as I said before, is a learning experience. This was from February 28th after close of the stock market:

This was before the bigger crash which I went about 3% down. It's back in the positive now. So I've done ok so far. I was up about 12% at one point and I should have maybe thought about making a move, but I didn't. Of course, this is only the first month, so I have a more time to let this grow, and I believe it will.

I've also started to look for alternative incomes. We just don't make enough to really do all that we want to do, and so it makes sense to see what's out there. So far I've done a lot of surveys and I'm still waiting for the cash to be credited. I've done some stuff on CashDuck as well. I'm not sure how long I can stick with all of these since it really depends on how much free time I have... and right now I don't have a lot. But we can use all we can get.

Are unions robbing us?

2007-02-22T14:21:00.000-05:00

It is well known that unions in Massachusetts have a lot power. Many government officials will back off on plans that unions strongly oppose because of their power. Unfortunately this has lead to a lot of problems, especially financially. (This is related to personal finance, you'll see later on. Also unions can be good things, it just depends.)

In Massachusetts, by law (with the backing of police unions), there has to be a police detail at most construction/repair sites. The other 49 states have civilian flag persons. So if a company is working in a manhole, there must be a police officer. If there is work being done on the highway, there must be a police officer. My parents who live in a small neighborhood on a street that loops onto itself and is not a throughway, once had a police officer in front of their house when a telephone (or some other utility) company was doing work in a manhole. WASTE OF MONEY AND TIME. Most of the time the officers just sit there chatting with the workers, not actually directing traffic or doing anything useful (This is what I've experienced while trying to get around workers by going into on-coming traffic because the officer is too busy chatting to direct traffic.. which is his/her job).

Sure, the company that is doing the work pays for the police detail, and the public money does not directly pay for the detail work right away. But using these police details requires other officers to be taking up the missing work that the individual is missing. Even if it is overtime, the fatigue that must happen from working so much overtime must affect work performance. On top of this, the retirement pension that these officers make looks at their TOTAL salary (usually the last 3 years before retirement), to come up with an average (or percentage of) to calculate the pension. That means if an officer made an extra $40,000 a year in detail work for the past 3 years, that is included in the calculation. So whatever percentage of that they get every month for their pension, we as tax payers have to pay for it, for the rest of their lives.

Think about how much money that is if 5 officers a year retire and live for 30 more years. That money adds up to a lot. And it makes matters worse since our local governments are already adding on more fees and taxes to make up for their budget shortfalls. It may not seem like you are paying for this, but you are. The biggest source of income for local government is property taxes, and everyone pays those. If you rent, it's part of your rent that the landlord uses to pay the property taxes, it's obvious if you own, and money even comes from other taxes (in Massachusetts we have excise tax on cars and boats). Your fees for parking permits and other fees go towards what the government needs to pay. You are paying for these services.

As an example, the MA State Police average salary is between about $49,000 to $68,000. More than 1,000 police officers (out of 2,338) made over $100,000 last year. In Boston, about 41% (1,276) of the police made over $100,000 last year. 25 of them made over $200,000. All the while there were 74 homicides, one less than in 2005 which was at a 10-year high. As of January 1st, according to Boston.com, only 28 of those homicides have been solved. What have the police been doing? (All data taken from Boston.com)

Any mention of changing the way of calculating pensions or taking away police details will be destroyed by union opposition. So for now we're stuck with this system and we will continue to see our money being squandered. How there is not an outcry about this, I have no idea.

$100 gift card from the Citi Diamond AmEx card

2007-02-22T13:04:00.000-05:00

Finally after 2 months of waiting I received my 10,000 bonus points. The free points were one reason I applied for the card in the first place. They first only credited me 5,000 points. I called and asked and it had something to do with an error. Eventually they worked it out. Took a little too long though.

Anyway, I used the points to get a $100 gift card to Target since we do plenty of our shopping there. As I've stated before, I may take $100 and put it into my HSBC account that holds my "not my money", since it is free money and I would be going to Target anyway to spend money. I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to do this yet.

Can you job count as charity?

2007-02-20T15:20:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of talk about giving to charities and how much we should give. A lot of times, giving can be pretty meaningless. We write a check and it's done with. I'm sure a lot of this money goes to wonderful things, but what about people who live their lives helping others? What about the people that take a huge pay cut to work for a cause they feel strongly about? Does this count as charity?

I was thinking about this since every few months I have the urge to go to law school. The problem is that the type of law I would want to do (environmental) generally does not pay well, and having a $100k+ debt with a low paying jobs just isn't appealing. Some people do this though. So if a lawyer who could be making $90k a year (after taxes let's say), actually works at a non-profit and makes $40k a year, do they really make a $50k a year donation to charity? If a doctor who could make $100k a year works in a clinic and makes only $45k a year, does that doctor make a $55k a year donation?

In my opinion, they do. They may not be contributing money, but a non-profit or other organization can not survive without staff members. Someone needs to do the work. Maybe it's their job, but is a job always considered non-charity because you get paid for it? I think that's unfair to those workers.

Of course the doctor and lawyer can not take a $50k or $55k deduction on their taxes or anything, but does that make them worse than the people who make a deduction every year and get to deduct that from their taxes?

I think a lot of professionals get the short end of the stick, and we rarely, if ever, find the time to really think where our world would be without them.

Lessons learned on the stock market

2007-02-15T16:15:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in my post about my money game, I put $5000 into a brokerage account and bought stocks. So far I've learned some lessons, although I'm not sure how good they are.

If you buy a stock and you believe in it, be patient. You can't let a dropping price change your mind, and if it seems high, it doesn't mean it is. Do your research and stick by your picks, unless you have reason to change your mind. I bought one stock at a higher price than I should have, and felt bad that I did this as it dropped several percentage points. Right now it is up over 28% since I bought it on January 31st. I was not patient with another stock. I thought it was trading too high and I bought it too high, so I sold it thinking it would drop and I could get it cheaper. Since then, the lowest price has been my payment price, and right now it is up about $0.46 cents a share (or 8.3%) from the price I originally paid and sold it for. I should have just kept it. Oh well, it was my own mistake.

What's your risk level?

2007-02-15T09:32:00.000-05:00

A lot of people give advice about how much money you should have in stocks and what is smart investments considering your age and everything. This is generally good advice, but it will nto fit everyone. YOU need to be comfortable with your strategy, no one else. A good example is my father. He has a very high risk level. He's almost 60, and up until a week ago, he had 100% of his retirement in stocks. Seriously. Part of this was because he lost so much when the market fell a few years ago, and so he had a lot of making up to do. This is also his risk level. He doesn't mind the risk so much because he prefers the gains, and knows that over time he will come out ahead. He also does not plan on retiring any time soon, it just doesn't interest him that much.

Recently, as I said, he moved some money out of stocks. He thinks the market is going to drop soon. He wants to at least protect some of his money. This is a good move, and whether he's right or not, we'll have to see. But it shows that even he is becoming a little bit more careful, even if he only moved 15% of his money.

In my own strategy, I am more on his boat than others. I prefer to have as much in stocks as possible, and right now that's about 98% of my retirement money. I know I have a lot of time to let it sit, and there is potential for larger gains, so why not? It is all about being patient.

So what's the point? Listen to whomever you want, but go with what is comfortable for you. If a professional says you should have 90% of your money in stocks but you feel more comfortable with 75%, then go with 75%. Just know the consequences, which would be to make potentially less money over time. But also, if a professional says to put 50% in stocks and you want to do 75%, go for it. It's your money, but take responsibility if things go badly. For me, that means a lot of stocks for a long time. After all, it's all a big game, just remember what happens if you lose while you mainly think about winning.

Money can bring happiness

2007-02-07T13:18:00.000-05:00

While reading comments on a post at Money, Matter, and More Musings, I thought of an article I read a few months back. There is a common thought that money can not buy happiness. Money itself will not buy your happiness, but do you really think that money isn't part of the equation? Without money, you can not do many of the things you want to do, or have things that will help with your happiness. Golfing may make you happy, but if you don't have the money to buy the clubs and pay the course fees, then you miss out on one thing that makes you happy.

This article on CNN Money (from Money Magazine) makes it pretty clear that money has an affect on happiness. There is not a correlation between the amount of money and your happiness, but rather there is a threshold that if you're on one side you're more happy than if you're on the other. This makes sense to me. At some point, no matter how much money you have, you won't be more happy. If you have just the right amount to do what you want and not worry about money and finances, then it's great.

"...going from earning less than $20,000 a year to making more than $50,000 makes you twice as likely to be happy, yet the payoff for then surpassing $90,000 is slight."

If you have just the right amount to do what you want and not worry about money and finances, then you have more of an ability to be happy.

The rich are borrowing more than everyone else

2007-02-07T10:34:00.000-05:00

This article from the WSJ through Yahoo!Finance talks about hwo the rich are actually more in debt than everyone else, except they use it for different reasons. What is most interesting is that they're going into debt so that they can make more money with the money they have. Basically playing the arbitrage game.. with a lot more money.

If the rich can do it, so can I.

Networth Update and Money Game update

2007-02-06T11:34:00.000-05:00

I finally got around to somewhat doing my networth. Some of my numbers are estimates, btu they're close enough. Part of the problem is I have no idea of the mileage on my wife's car, and so that has some affect. My company's 401k is also being moved to a different company and not all of the money has come over yet, and I can't access the old account so I have to guess how much money I have there. Also I skipped December's networth. I did this for two reasons (1) I was going on my honeymoon and things were crazy and I just didn't have time (2) we received money as gifts from our wedding, but I knew most of this was going to my tuition this semester and I didn't want to see the rollercoaster ride in my networth.

As you can see, my networth has dropped a bit. Part of this is my lower savings. Part of this is because we spent more than I wanted to on our honeymoon. It didn't drop THAT much though. Also, my depreciation on our cars went down a lot, but I think I may have used the private seller option before, and this time I did the trade-in option. I will try to be consistant and use the trade-in value from now on.

On the other hand, our investments went up (except for my private stocks...). After our tax return our savings will also go up a bit, even though this money will all go towards my summer tuition.

The Money Experiment
I have finally gotten this started, as mentioned in an earlier post. In HSBC I have $6,983 gaining 6.0 APY interest (until April 30th). Since I'm being experimental, I also put $5000 into a brokerage account. That balance has changed a bit, but I'm going to ignore it for another month or so. I'm now just waiting for $9000 more from Discover, which is taking ridiculously long to be transferred onto another credit card. That money will also go into HSBC. My goal by January 1st is to have made $1000 from this experiment. This of course requires me to make mroe than 5% off of the money.

As a side note, I understand that I should just put all of the money in a savings account rather than risk it in a brokerage account. I'm doing this as an experiment, though, am using a certain amount of money that I know I can cover if a problem occurs, and I'm taking risks because I'm partly impatient and partly I want the ability to get more than what a savings account can provide. I may make mistakes (as I have easily done with my lucky timing at picking stocks), but it's a learning experience.

Dropping Capital One

2007-02-02T15:36:00.000-05:00

I originally got a Capital One card because the rewards seemed decent enough and it was accepted everywhere I needed to use it (especially for my tuition). Although the travel rewards aren't too bad, they aren't as good as other places I've seen. Since I mostly wanted this for those rewards, I don't see why I should stick with a program that isn't maximizing my benefit. For example, USAA offers around an 100 point:$1 reward conversion for airlines (and less points per dollar further up the scale), with various levels of redeem-ment, even around the $250 mark, which is a key area where most plane tickets I want fall into. Not only that, but if I buy a ticket through their program that costs $220, they give me a credit of $30 on my account to make sure I get the full 100 points:$1. That's a good deal. Capital One's program allows me to get a ticket that is under $150 for 15,000 points, and a ticket between $150-$350 for 35,000 points, and they don't give you back the difference. Shody deal. And to get cash it's 20,000 points for $100. RIDICULOUS.

To avoid all of this trouble, I'm dealing with my AAdvantage stuff, and I got a new credit card that gives 3% for gas, groceries, and that stuff, and 1% for everything else. I know I can probably do better than that, but generally it is with AmEx which does me no good since I can't pay my tuition with it, or there are more strict limits than this card. So I'm sticking with this and the money will just go into a separate savings account for travel. I figure it's the best way for now.

Why I should have more money

2007-02-01T08:44:00.000-05:00

Sadly, it was probably about the partying. It's not like I was too crazy, I was practically the only one out of my friends that had a major that required studying and a lot of extra work. Plus I had a job, which most of my friends did not, or if they did it was a joke job that they rarely went to. But I tended to always put in the little extra to cover people when it came to partying. I have no idea why though. Most of my friends were useless with money and shouldn't have been given that type of free way out, or they had everything paid for them. I probably wasted a few thousand dollars over the years.

I almost always had enough for what I really needed and for occasional wants. I did always save up enough to get what I needed during the summers, a computer, car, etc. But I should have saved a lot more. This all lasted through my first job. I did make enough to put a chunk in savings, but for some reason I wasted it all on fast food and other crap. Now I'm living in an apartment with crappy, loud neighbors thinking about how close I could be to owning a home of my own. At least I had a good time partying up.

Wrongful attack on a balance transfer player

2007-01-31T15:49:00.000-05:00

I found this article on Boston.com today.

The guy (a retiree) has about $45,000 in credit card debt that he just transfers between 0% balance transfers options. He's making about 8-9% in interest. The author goes a bit crazy saying how this is such a bad deal. I totally disagree.

The guy does have money in risky investments, but 8-9% returns shows that he's not going too crazy on what he's putting his money into. He probably won't lose all of his money if the market crashes (although anything can happen). The guy has enough to pay off the balances, so he's not worried about anything.

The author goes all wrong talking about the bad things that happen to your credit report when you do these offers. This is where the author has no idea what he's doing. The guy is a retiree. He will most likely not be getting a mortgage ever again, so I don't see why that is mentioned. If the guy knows what he's doing, he's not worried about getting any loan at all. This guy is not at the beginning of his credit life, he's getting closer to the end. So what if he has a few points off of his credit score. I'm sure he's not going to be affected.

This author just doesn't understand the game, or doesn't have the organizational skills to do it. He shouldn't be bad-mouthing people that are playing the game and winning.

Why I hate this article:
Credit cards should be used only as a safe and convenient alternative to
carrying cash. Ideally, you should not incur more debt than you can pay off by
the end of the month, thus avoiding any interest charges. (OK, go a bit longer
after the holidays or a vacation. But not more than two or three months.)
Holidays and a vacation are not really a good excuse.

Opening numerous card accounts, and frequently shifting money between
cards, without reducing the overall debt, is a red flag that could hurt his
ability to borrow money in the future... In fact, this behavior with credit cards is likely to hurt one's ability to get a mortgage or car loan, as well.
The guy is a retiree! Annoying.

HSBC isn't making sense

2007-01-31T08:22:00.000-05:00

For my money making experiment, I'm putting my money in HSBC. It's a good deal since right now I'm getting 6.0 APY on my balance. Setting up the account, though, has been a pain. At first it went smoothly and I was able to transfer in money and everything. Then I had to wait a few days for the PIN. This was annoying, but I guess ok. I received my PIN yesterday, logged on, and then went to transfer more funds into my account. I had to set up my other bank in order to do this. I thought this was weird since my initial deposit was from this one bank account. So I go to set it up and it says it can't verify it! THIS MAKES NO SENSE. How could it not be verified, when this is where my money originally came from?? For this illogical series of events, I'm going to rank HSBC as a 3.5 out of 5. They're saved by their decent interest rate.

Festival of Under 30 Finances is up

2007-01-26T10:20:00.000-05:00

The Festival of Under 30 Finances is being hosted by Money, Matter, and More Musings and one of my posts is part of it.

Take a look. You can find the festival here.

Tax Preparation

2007-01-26T08:34:00.000-05:00

I really should find some time some year to take tax preparation classes. I don't want to pay others to do my taxes, especially because right now they're generally simple. I just occasionally don't always know exactly what I can and can't do, or what I should do.

I started my taxes last night just to get an idea of things. I'm still waiting for two more forms, but I generally know what each thing is. My only two confusions come with my Sharebuilder account and tuition stuff. For my Sharebuilder account I got the $50 promotion money, plus about $1 in dividends. They said I didn't make enough to get a 1099, so I have no idea what that $50 falls under. I'm assuming right now that it is bank interest, but I'm not really sure about that. I'm also assuming that the $1 is an ordinary dividend. I hope that's right.

For tuition, both my wife and I were in school last year. I was a little confused about the wording on the Lifetime Learning Credit. My wife received over $10k for tuition in student loans. As far as I can tell, student loans count as money borrowed from others to pay for qualified expenses. So my thought is to use that for the Lifetime Learning Credit since the cap for that is $10k per return. I paid over $4000 for my own tuition, so I was thinking I could use the education deduction for myself since the cap is $4000 per return. This maximizes our benefit, and should be ok since I'm using only money for my wife's education for the LLC, and only money for my own education for the deduction.

The state return is a whole other beast. Schedule B for MA state taxes is weird and annoying. I didn't do any stock selling or anything last year so I don't have to deal with capital gains and losses. Next year may be different though. Hopefully this all seems ok and will be fine. They really need to make this easier, but then again that would put a lot of tax preparers out of a job (or at least extra income).

Free money experiment - update

2007-01-25T12:57:00.000-05:00

I started writing about and planning this in November. To see my original plans, go here. Other posts about this are here and here.

This has been a long process, so I'm really still only at the beginning. I didn't think it would take this long at all. I've also decided that my little deal with Sharebuilder won't count. Although it was $50 free, I did it so long ago that I'm just ignoring it.

Anyway, I applied and received my Citi card after I had to jump through hoops. I made my purchase so I would get my free 10,000 points, then paid off that small amount. I then did a balance transfer for the full credit limit. Unfortunately, they gave me a low limit and I didn't even think about calling and asking for a higher limit. Samerwriter did this, and I should have thought of it. Anyway, I received the check for $4300 and deposited it. I opened an HSBC account yesterday and put the money in there. The process was a lot easier than I thought it would be, although I still have to wait a week for my password to actually access the account.

I also had my wife apply for a transfer from AmEx. We did this through her Capital One card (the only other card she has), but they take forever. They keep the money for 30 days and then it takes another 7-10 days to send out a check. We finally received it two days ago, and it has been sent to the bank. Since it took so long we already had to make one payment, so I'm only transferring $7840 into the HSBC account.

Since then I've applied for another account through Discover. Hopefully they give me a better limit. I'm just waiting for the card to come in the mail.

I'm still thinking about using some of the money in a brokerage account. To make money, you do need to take risks. Although the interest from HSBC will be nice, I think I can get more. A little risky, but I think it will pay off.

Saving vs. paying off loans

2007-01-24T13:00:00.000-05:00

This question is being asked for the Carnival of Under 30 Finances, and I thought i'd answer:

Assume you are an average 25 year old with $25,000 debt (on account of your student loan) You have been given a lump sum $10,000 and the following four choices:

Invest it for your retirement funds.
Save/invest it for your future home.
Save/invest it towards your child’s/children’s future college education.
Pay part of your student loan debt.

You can pick only one of the above choices towards which you should use the entire $10,000. Which one will you pick? ..and Why? Assume that the rate of return on the three investments choices is the same and the student loan charges you an interest rate that is equal to this rate of return. Would your answer be any different if the amount was $25,000 instead of $10,000? Again, you can pick only one of the choices.

This isn't the easiest question since there are so many things to consider. I do know that I would definitely not do #3 (even if I had children). I stick with the idea that you should invest for yourself and do what you can for yourself first. I took out loans to get through school, and I know my children will be able to. Not only that, but I want to limit the amount my children have so that they will not be denied all financial aid. Of course, it would be ideal if I could just use my own money to pay their tuition.

To make it more complicated, if the $25,000 in student loans is spread out over several loans, I would pay off some of them. This would lower my monthly payments, allowing me to put that extra money into savings. This way I'm not losing as much money on the loan interest and I can have more money from my take-home pay to work with.

If the money was all in one loan, I would probably invest it in an investment account to save for a house. If I need to, I would pay off extra of my student loans as time goes on, but I would rather have the kick-start investment. The loans generally aren't so horrible that I can't handle them for a few more years. Also, I need as much help as I can get considering a 20% downpayment for a decent house in my area will be between $70,000 and $100,000.

If it was $25,000 instead, I would definitely put the money in investments to save for a house. The loan will continually be paid down, and so the interest will be less over time, while the amount of interest gained from the investment will increase. Plus, since the $25,000 would be unexpected, it wouldn't make a difference to my current budget, and so I could leave the money to grow somewhere without really thinking about it.

Squeezing what I can from miles programs

2007-01-24T09:13:00.000-05:00

Now that I've signed up for the AAdvantage program (it's free), I want to get as many miles as possible. Luckily I have a miles card that is not on the same rewards program. This means I'm going to be increasing my miles faster (although on different programs that can't be put together, but that doesn't matter).

Here's how it works. If I use my credit card that is registered with the AAdvantage Dining program, I get 3 miles per $1 spent. On my current credit card, I get 2 miles per $1 spent at restaurants. So if I go to a certain restaurant, and say I get a $50 meal including tax and tip, I will get 150 AA miles, and 100 other miles. Not a bad deal.

For eshopping, I go through the AA shopping site and if I want something from Sharper Image that costs $75. I get 5 miles per $1 (375 miles), plus 75 miles on my other card. This works in other variations as well. The only disadvantage is that I will not be getting AA miles for most of my regular purchases. This will slow down their growth. But, I will still be getting miles on my credit card. Overall, I'm part of 2 mileage programs with no fees. Seems to be pretty good in my mind.

I've signed up for a frequent flyer program!

2007-01-23T08:40:00.000-05:00

Yet I'm not a frequent flyer. I've never really thought about signing up for one of these because I rarely fly now that I'm closer to my family. I was always under the impression that you either needed to fly a lot, or get a specific credit card with an annual fee to make a frequent flyer program worth it. This is why I signed up for a Capital One card, I could use miles for almost anything, not just flying. Using this card will still be a huge benefit, a way to double, or more my miles. I'll post my reasons later.

My wife and I, though, do like to travel, and travel is expensive. Getting our honeymoon plane tickets from my dad's miles made me think again about one of these programs. I figured there must be something more to them. Oh how much I never knew.

Since American Airlines tends to go to places I like, has a good, wide ranging network, and since I've generally had good experiences with them, I looked at their program. Their website has so much information, and there are so many different ways to gain miles. You do need to use them every few years, but I do plan on traveling occasionally so this isn't a big deal.

We will not have a credit card that will add on to our American miles. This isn't a big deal at the moment. But there are so many other ways to get the miles. You can put your credit card into their Dining system, and when you use that card at certain restaurants, you will get a certain amount of miles per $1 spent (up to 10 miles per $1). Not a bad deal. And if you go through their eShopping site, you can get a ton of points for a lot of things. For example, I was at Barnes and Noble the other day to find a book (which they frustratingly did not have). If I buy it at BN.com, I can get 3 miles per $1 spent. They have a decent selection of stores, so I know we could easily gain a decent amount of miles going through that site. Check the site out here.

Hopefully this will give us some more options when we want to travel in the future.

Getting rich... casino style

2007-01-18T16:03:00.000-05:00

First I need to say that gambling is NOT the way to make your money grow. Even professional gamblers have there problems. My freshman year roommate's dad was a professional gambler. During high school, his dad came home one day and told him he wasn't going to college. Then after a big college basketball game a few weeks later, his dad told him he could go anywhere he wanted. This is not the way to live in my opinion. Casinos are set up to take your money. Don't be fooled.

Now that that is out of the way, I enjoy gambling. I took a statistics class in college that spent about 4 or 5 weeks on roulette. Although the course told me that the game was set up so you would lose, all I could think about was playing it. My first attempt in Vegas did not go that well. Luckily I only spent $20. But a few weeks ago I went gambling again and I did a lot better.

Although making my money go up 200% was awesome, it took a lot of risk, and there was never a guarantee. My personal preference is large sums on the outside. It may not be that exciting, but when I'm turning my $40 into $200 while everyone else on the table is turning their $40 into $5 or $10, obviously I'm having a better time. Playing the inside is just hoping you pick the correct number. I've tried that, and you can get lucky and make your high payout.. but 35 to 1 on $1 is only $35. Playing the outside is looking at the big picture. You're playing the same game, but since you have to play a certain amount, you're putting more on a larger group. You always have better odds betting on 12 than on 1.

What does this have to do with personal finance? Well, you have to take risks to make money. You just have to be prepared for the consequences. Most investments are risks. There is never a guarantee that you will make money, except with interest bearing accounts. Keeping the value of your money isn't exciting. Watching your wealth slowly grow can be a bit exciting at times, and just enough to maybe keep you doing it (as you should). But overall betting $60 on th first 12 is the most exciting. As excitement goes up, potential for gain and loss also goes up. But you have to have some fun sometimes.. just do it intelligently.

My Men's Wearhouse experience

2007-01-14T13:13:00.000-05:00

For our tuxes for the wedding we went to Men's Wearhouse. With the tux rental they gave us all a 10% discount that had to be used before the wedding. Since I needed a new suit, I decided to go and use the discount. The goal was just to get a suit and I set a limit of $250.

The store I go to can be very frustrating. They are really pushy when it comes to buying things. So I went in, and after some tries I found the suit that would work for me. One of the suits they tried to sell me, though, was a one with 2 pairs of pants. One of the pairs I would never wear. The guy tried to tell me to think of it as me getting a pair of pants for free. I laughed and said there was nothing free. He insisted it was free. So I laughed and told him that if it was free he wouldn't be getting paid for it, and I know he'll be getting paid for it.

When trying on suits you have to wear shoes to get the best idea of what the suit will look like. The salesperson was trying to convince me that I loved the shoes. One wasn't bad, but ridiculously expensive. The other pair was comfortable, but just plain ugly and stupid looking. The whole time he kept trying to say how much I loved the shoes and how I should buy them.

Then when I picked my suit, they put together some shirt and tie combos and tried to sell me those. I let him do his whole thing and try to convince me and then I said no, because I had a budget. He kept insisting he was trying to save me money because I would be using my 10% discount. He had no idea of what a budget was. Then when I asked about some prices he said "I can't do that in my head." These weren't anything hard either. So I asked what he did when the computers were down. And he said, he woldn't bother with it. So I asked what he learned in school, and he said, "well I didn't go to all of my classes." You think?

Anyway, after being annoyed for 45 minutes about saving me money and getting me all new clothes, I bought just my suit and spent under $250. They weren't happy, but they should learn that pushy is suave, not does it work on some people, especially those that fight back.

Wedding - What I'd do differently (Part 2)

2007-01-14T12:56:00.000-05:00

The food at our wedding was generally good and free flowing. The catering company did an excellent job. There was more than enough appetizers going around, they had a server especially for the wedding party as they did the pictures, and so there was never a shortage of food and drink. It was excellent. Generally the food was pretty good also. But in general, we were lucky. We liked the sales pitch they gave, and they had good references. Unfortunately, they didn't have a way to taste the food. The only option was to ask them to put some of the stuff together to try it while you were picking. I don't like this idea because I think you should be able to taste the food before you sign a contract. We went against this method. Also, since the caterer was about 35-40 miles away, we never tried any of the food we wanted for the wedding.

The appetizers were fine, but the entrees could have been better. It could have been that I just wasn't too hungry during the wedding. Everyone else seemed to say it was pretty good, and the veggie option was especially good. I still could have been happier.

Looking back, I should have stuck to my instinct and made sure I tried the food before committing, either to a contract, or to the specific dishes at the wedding. People remember the food if it's good, so you should aim for the best. We did this with the cake, and it worked out really well. The big companies we tried were terrible. We went to a small place that was a little more expensive and would charge a delivery fee, but the cake was excellent and moist, and tasty.

So try things before you commit if possible. That will avoid some disappointment.

Wedding - What I'd do differently (Part 1)

2007-01-12T16:28:00.000-05:00

Luckily, my wife's parents paid for almost the whole wedding. This was a huge help since I would not know how to afford a wedding that my wife wanted. Interesting how women want these sometimes large, glamorous weddings, yet they turn out to feel somewhat different. My wife, for example, doesn't feel like it was all that wonderful just because it was too short and we were so busy with pictures and all of the other stuff.

Knowing how much the wedding cost, I would have changed a lot of things. First, I think we would have made it a lot smaller. There was really no need for a big wedding, or anything that glamorous, as fun as it was. This, of course, was not my choice though. My father-in-law was giving away his last, and most favored, daughter. He of course wanted to make it a wonderful experience, and therefore didn't spare much expense. I wouldn't have minded cutting it a bit and using the extra towards our future goals. Even cutting the cost by $10,000 would have made a huge difference in our finances, and we probably could have cut a lot more.

So my first conclusion is that it was too big. I think we could have had a great time with a wedding of only 40-50 people. To include family and friends, though, required us to invite a lot more. Plus we didn't want a small wedding. We didn't know any better. The cost per person expenses was at least $80-$90. Cut the list by 50 or so and that's almost $5000 in our pocket. That would have been nice.

Honeymoon

2007-01-12T09:08:00.000-05:00

Our honeymoon was pretty good. We prepaid the hotel, so that was all set and something we didn't have to think about. Some other things didn't work out as well. We planned our flights poorly. We originally wanted to spend a few hours in Honolulu before we flew to the other island. After 12+ hours of flying though, all we wanted to do was get to our hotel. So we decided to change our flight in the airport, and it basically cost us the price of the original tickets. If I had known this, I wouldn't have followed through. Or we just should have planned better in the first place. Our flight back also had a 4 hour layover, but I wasn't about to buy new tickets for that, so we just dealt with it.

I had a quote for the car that was reasonable, but this ended up being way too low. The quote waws for about $220 or so. I then decided to do the "return the car on empty and it's ok" deal. We shouldn't have done this since we ended up barely driving anywhere. Although we left the car with almost a 1/4 of a tank, the gas was only $3.00 a gallon, and we would ahve saved money by not paying the $50 for this deal. Also, we were asked if we wanted to have both of us as drivers. I said yes, but they did not explain that this cost an extra $50. I found this out when we returned the car. Overall, the car cost $100 more than expected.

Before we left we didn't really think much about the price of food. We thought we could possibly be ok with around $700 for activities and food. We were greatly mistaken. We didn't end up doing any activities because the weather was rough most of the time, so a helicopter or boat ride just wouldn't have been fun. But food it self was extremely expensive. Anywhere in the resort area it would cost at least $10-15 for an appetizer, or maybe a burger and fries. Luckily we had free breakfast (well we had to pay gratuity), so I at least tried to fill up on that. My wife doesn't like doing that, so she generally would want lunch later. We eventually set up a simple budget after 2 days, and we almost kept to it. It started to make things less than happy, but we worked through it anyway.

So overall we spent more than expected. Luckily we should be getting a decent amount back from the IRS, and our wedding money will cover at least my spring tuition. I'm not sure how to deal with my summer tuition though. I think we need to readjust our budget a bit, except I'm not sure what else I can take out. I'm sure there's something.

Well this sounds kind of like a blah post, but really, the honeymoon was good. We had a lot of fun, sat by the pool, and enjoyed ourselves without thinking too much about money and consequences. We had some good food, good laughs, good scenes, and decent weather. And we got to see some whales breaching from the beach!

Back to normal life

2007-01-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

I'm finally home and back to work, so I'll be adding some posts soon. Not sure when I'll have time, but it will happen. I have plenty to say about money, my money, watching my money go to $12 cheeseburgers and $30 entrees in Hawaii, and all types of craziness.

Happy New Year

2006-12-27T17:03:00.000-05:00

Since I'm getting married this weekend and then I'm going on my honeymoon, I won't be posting for a while. But I'm sure I'll have plenty of things to talk about when I return. Happy New Year!

Is there ever good timing?

2006-12-27T13:59:00.000-05:00

It seems like everything comes at a bad time. I guess the real reason is we usually only think of things happening in the negative, rather than the positive. The wonderful day is quickly overshadowed by the bad day.

My soon-to-be wife went to the dentist this morning and although usually she has excellent teeth and she never has trouble, today was different. She has a filling that's cracking the tooth and so it has to be replaced. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, except they want to do it after the wedding and honeymoon, which is exactly when she no longer has dental insurance. I wish she could have done it today. Now this adds to the growing list of expenses over the next few weeks... honeymoon food, car rental, one night for the hotel after the wedding, tuition, books, the week of unpaid vacation, and now the dentist. Add that to the smaller paycheck I'll be getting next year and... woohoo.

(Well it can't be all bad.. I just looked behind me out my window and it's snowing! excellent.)

Looking at goals differently

2006-12-26T08:19:00.000-05:00

After a slight hick-up during the weekend, I've decided that how we look at our goals needs to be changed. My fiance and I have made a list of goals we would like to reach and their time frame. We also said about how much these goals would cost. This was more secondary and so was not really in both of our minds at the same time. Also, to just know about our goals just isn't enough.

This weekend my fiance wanted to buy some clothes that would be nice for after the wedding reception and for the rehearsal dinner. She needed some new black pants anyway. We set a budget. I suggested that she look at some of the cheaper places first, rather than going to the Limited, Ann Taylor, or any of those more expensive places. She agreed. Well she went with her sister who likes to shop and spend money, even though she complains about not having enough and her financial situation is nto that great at the moment. Her sister refused to go into any of the department stores (like Macy's) with her (because they're supposedly cheap and not good enough quality) and since my fiance wanted to shop with her sister, they basically only seriously looked at the more expensive stores. Anyway, things were found that were really expensive. My fiance bought the clothes for many reasons, although she felt bad about it. Her sister added things like how she shouldn't think about money because she needs to look good, and money shouldn't force her to not look good, and basically only the expensive clothes are good enough. That's a slightly twisted version because I can't think of exactly how it was put, but it's the basic idea.

I agree that she should look great (which she will no matter what she wears), and that she needed new clothes. She doesn't even really like the tops she got. And I was basically called cheap by her family and there are questions about whether I can provide and let her get what she wants. Luckily, she is not like her family all that much when it comes to money. But she couldn't fend it all off because she wants to make them happy, and she knows we have some money.

Since this happened, I decided that our goals weren't in our faces enough. Yes, hearing the people upstairs be loud until 2 AM reminds us that we want to buy a house someday, but this is forgotten when you're out shopping. And I want her to be able to stand up and say, "this just doesn't fit in our budget, and I'm sure I can find something else." So from now on we're going to have a spreadsheet showing what we want, their prices, along with expensive necessities (tuition), and the amount we have in savings. We're going to post this somewhere, like on the fridge, to costantly remind us what we are working for. I was also considering putting a sticker on the credit card with some of this information. I'm not sure if that will be ok or not though. It might be worth a try so we'll always be reminded when we spend.

Does you emergency fund really cover you?

2006-12-19T18:29:00.000-05:00

As I've said in earlier posts, my company is switching health plans. Today we had a meeting with a representative to go over the plan. Generally I wouldn't go because I've read about the plan already, but there was also free pizza. Who says no to free pizza?

While discussing our coverage, the representative mentioned the maximum amount out-of-pocket amount you will pay for the year. I never really thought about what this means. The idea is that if you have a $4000 maximum out-of-pocket expense, you end up paying $4000 in a year for your health expenses, the insurance company will pay for anything above that.

So why is this important?

Depending on your out-of-pocket maximum and your copays, this can be really important. Depending on your limits, you should have a certain amount in emergency money. This of course also depends on the nuances of your particular insurer and plan.

As a hypothetical (and extreme) example, you have a family plan and your out-of-pocket maximum is $5000. You, your wife (or husband) and two children are on a road trip, and you have a car accident. You all are taken to the emergency room, and 3 of you have to stay overnight. For my plan (and most out there), an overnight stay trumps the emergency room copay. So one person pays the emergency room copay (say $100), and three people have to pay the overnight copay (for this example, $1000 each which is what we were quoted). Each individual is covered separately, so the copay exists for all of them. That means you need to come up with $3100 AND the cost of possibly repairing your car or getting a rental. If you had an out-of-pocket maximum of $2000, you would only pay $2000 and the rest of your medical expenses for the year would be paid by insurance.

As I said, this is an extreme example. It is good to think about though, because your emergency fund needs to cover an emergency. Depending on your family, coverage, and other circumstances, you should try your best to be covered as much as possible for the "worst" case scenario.

My suggestion, have your 3 months worth of pay (or whatever is most comfortable for you), as well as some extra to cover the copay of all of your family members if they had to be admitted into a hospital, or to cover the out-of-pocket maximum (which ever is the least).

Christmas shopping is done, and under budget!

2006-12-18T10:48:00.000-05:00

This is the first time I, or my fiance, have ever tried to set a budget for Christmas. We had a somewhat budget last year, but I don't know if we truly followed it. I'm half to blame because I like to buy her nice things, and nice things are often expensive. She also likes to make people happy and will spend to do so.

This year was different because we really had to stick to a budget... we just don't have that much extra money to spend. For that reason we basically decided that we would do $25 to each family member, except for her siblings, which we spent $50 for each family. For each other, we said $100 for my birthday (we said the same for her's in November, and I told her not to get me anything, but she did anyway), and $150 each for Christmas. It wasn't easy, but we both spent to budget or under for each other, and because we decided to not get presents for some family members (mutual agreement), we spent even less. Plus we under spent on the others (without the lack of thought). We also did spend more than out budget for our parents, but it all evened out. We tried to be as creative as possible, and although none of our gifts for each other we think are really great, we put a lot of thought into them, and I actually think I did better this year than last.

Overall, I think we did well.

The Money Rollercoaster

2006-12-15T17:18:00.000-05:00

Whenever I make a deposit into my savings account and see how much money I have, I always get excited. I think I just like to see my amount of spare money increase, especially when I know that I will soon have a lot of expenses, and that I can't really squeeze out much savings. Other the other side, when I see my account being low or having to take money out, even if it's a necessity, I'm always a little sad.

I don't think I'm obsessed with money. It's necessary, and I want more, but I can't live my life obsessing about money. But I think when you add and take away from savings it's a feeling of success or failure. You are happy when it increases because you're moving up, but when you take it out, you feel liek you're going backwards. It's an odd feeling, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way.

The semester is over!

2006-12-14T16:00:00.000-05:00

Finally, my semester ended today. Sent in my take home final and my last project, and now I can somewhat relax. But while relaxing, I've realized I'm getting married in 2 weeks and in 3 weeks I'll be in Hawaii. That's pretty crazy.

Also I've realized I need to find out how we're going to eat in Hawaii. I think that's important. It's funny because we were joking around about how to get as much free food as possible. We are provided a free breakfast every morning, so we figure if we have coolers, use free ice, we can possibly get snacks and other things for the whole day each morning. Maybe even enough for lunch! Will we go through with it? Probably not. Even though I'm paying a few pretty pennies for this hotel, I'd feel awkward stashing away food for later. Then again.. I paid MANY pretty pennies for this hotel.

Any ideas on how to cut food costs with the exception of going to the grocery store? I'm looking for cheap (and fishing off the beach is not cheap, and may not even be allowed, so don't suggest it).

Update on my Citi Card promotion

2006-12-11T18:03:00.000-05:00

In an earlier postI was pondering my next moves with my new Citi AmEx card.. whether to keep with it, or do a balance transfer. Golbguru suggested that I call, which I was thinking of doing anyway, to get all of the details cleared out since there was already some confusion when I applied for the card.

I just called and talked with them. There is currently a promotion for the same card offering 5,000 points after your first purchase, which is what she said I would get at first. I said that the promotion I signed up for gave me 10,000 points. She looked it up and I guess there was a problem with the system. They have a note in there, so she said if I only get 5,000 points I should call back and they'll fix it.

Now comes the decision to do a balance transfer or not. Although I could probably get an additional 20,000 points, I was incorrect that I could trade them in for cash. I thought I saw that before, but they do not offer cash for points, just gifts cards and other merchandise. I could get a credit of $100 for 17,000 points, but that is absolutely ridiculous. Even though I said I could use gift cards as the same as cash and just convert over, for this I don't want to. So I've decided that once I pay my bill I am going to do a balance transfer. This will add to the balance transfer that we're getting from my fiance's new AmEx Blue card. But that will take a while to transfer because we have to do it through Capital One which is really slow at cutting a check.

Open Enrollment update

2006-12-08T12:34:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post I talked about how I needed to sign up for health insurance, and how to add my soon-to-be wife to it, and how everything would work out.

Anyway, I found out that even though it's for 5 days, the policy is the policy, so I have to fill out the form for myself and submit it. Then I need to fill out another form and bring it in on January 2nd (after the wedding) to show that we're married. I'm taking the day off for obvious reasons, so it's kind of annoying that I have to come in to do that. But it must be done.

I've been told that my fiance will be covered retroactively once we're married. I'm not sure I can accept this. But they insist. So if she isn't then that one day (new years day) she will not be covered, but she should be. It's not that great of a day since a lot is going on with parties and all of that. I'm paranoid sometimes though and I want to make sure it all will be fine.. and I don't trust people which is why I don't accept what they say. Yet they know better than I. Just have to go with it I guess.

Networth Update

2006-12-07T12:46:00.000-05:00

I actually updated our networth on the 1st (looking at my financial information for the day before), but I've been a bit lazy on thinking about it. I did get rid of all of our credit card debt which was nice. We added to my 401(k), and our investments did decently. We also added to our savings. Overall we did pretty well. We still have a negative networth, but this month will take care of that. Since we're getting married at the end of the month, our networth will shoot up, but then it will drop in January since I have to pay tuition and for school stuff. Hopefully we get more in gifts than what my tuition is.. but I'm not expecting it.

From January to the beginning of September is looking to be rough. Health care is going to cut into my paycheck a bit more since we'll both be on my insurance until my fiance gets a job. It sucks that they have an individual plan and a family plan, meaning I pay for coverage for a whole family, when there's just two of us. We'll probably switch once she gets a job. Also since she will not be making any money and we'll have to pay for tuition, books, and things, our networth won't grow much, if at all. It may actually go south again. It's better than taking more loans though.

Child support and deadbeat dads

2006-12-07T10:36:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting post about the problems with child custody. Interesting because I agree that a lot of the problems in the world are continued for the sole reason of making money. People are greedy, and it causes a lot of crap. The example is the best at showing the problems with the system. It makes sense why dad's in the UK are fighting back.

To do a balance transfer or not?

2006-12-06T18:26:00.000-05:00

I finally got my credit card that was supposed to be used for my free money making experiment. There was some issue because I recenlty moved and so they didn't trust that it was me applying for the card. After sending a copy of my electric bill, it all went through. Although my credit is excellent, my credit limit on the new card (which was received today) is disappointing.

I read through the agreement to make sure everything is order, and it seems to be. It's annoying that they don't mention the promotional offer that I used to sign up for the card and those benefits. Either they're trying to screw me out of a good promotion, or it just isn't their policy to list that stuff with the new card. Anyway they list the balance transfer fee maximum at $250, although with my offer there should be no fee. What I didn't really look at before was the points program. After the first purchase I will get 10,000 free points (equal to $100). But also, for the year, my purchases of gas, groceries, and at the drugstore get 5 points for every dollar. It's a good deal, but considering what I will spend, it wouldn't get to the 20,000 point threshhold to give me $200. I could find another way to do it of course.

Anyway, this is a new Citi AmEx card. I originally planned to do a balance transfer and use the money mostly in an investment account, and some in a banking account. In just a banking account I would make about $150 or so in interest. That's not very much at all. My investment account could do better, but it could also tank. Then again, this was my intentions with this experiment. I did not get the card to gain points.

So, $200 possibly in rewards in a year which would not be taxed, or $150 of TAXED interest. Obviously the points deal looks like the better choice. But then I won't be able to do my experiment. So I can't decide yet what I want to do. I just know I'm going to make my one purchase and get my free $100 for now.

Update on the Amazon.com Customer Vote specials

2006-12-05T15:08:00.000-05:00

In my post on Sunday I talked about my frustrations with the whole system. Well I guess they got enough complaints to change how they do things. They now are going to only allow the discount to those who vote for that product, and people will be picked at random to decide whether or not they can buy the product. This will save the hassle of server traffic issues, and I think it is probably a better way to go about it. They seem to have also decided to randomly sell additional on-sale units after the actual sale occurs. Maybe I'll get the portable DVD player after all?

This week the deal is a 26" LCD HDTV for $200. I voted for it, but do I really need or want it? I haven't decided.

To check it out, go here.

Open Enrollment time.. possibly?

2006-12-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty confused with the open enrollment period at my new job. I've been here now over 2 months and so I did all of my benefits when I came in. Usually open enrollment seems to be in November, but not here. I only just received the forms today, and I'm not fully sure if everything is there.

The main new thing is that they're changing health insurance. It's a small company so we only have one choice. I signed up for that choice when I entered and now they're changing to the provider I had before. It's about the same price so nothing really changes much. It just gets confusing because I was told a few weeks ago that I could put my fiance on all of the forms since we'll be married when the new plan goes into affect (Jan. 1st). But now they want to get a special deal so the new plan goes into affect December 25th. But I won't be married yet, so I can't have my fiance on that insurance for that week, which isn't a big deal because she has her own insurance until January 1st. But I then don't want to have to fill out all new forms days after the new plan goes into affected to change it. Seems like a nuisance.

So I'm still figuring it all out. I'm also thinking about the FSA.. but I don't know if that's the best choice because we're probably going to switch plans once the wife gets a new job in september. I just want this to be as little of a hassle as possible, but I don't think that will happen.

Damn you amazon

2006-12-03T11:04:00.000-05:00

Amazon.com has this thing going on where they have a weekly sale where customers pick what they want at the special price. I can't decide if it's poorly done or not. I got onto the first page that you put a code in and then it goes to a time-out type of page, and then you do it again, and they're sold out. I think if you get to the first page after you say "buy this" they should hold it until you can do the other pages. Terrible way to do things. Now I have to think of something as good for my fiance for Christmas and I'm pretty stuck considering out budget. Oh well.

Is buying organic worth it?

2006-12-01T13:33:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting article I read today from a doctor. He outlines what makes a food product "organic" and desputes that organic food is actually better for you. He accepts that it is porbably better for the environment, but if you buy it for health reasons, you're wasting your money. he even refers to a study done by Consumer Reports.

I've always tended to think that organic is generally not worth my money and makes little difference to me. I also am a fan of genetically modified foods for various reasons. I majored in Environmental Studies in college and I consider myself an environmentalist, even though some people would say that I'm not. I would (and do) buy organic because I do think it helps the environment and often smaller farmers. My level of buying organic products though is really pretty low because I don't have much extra money. If I can get a similar product that isn't less health, then I will pay the few dollars less for that. I do buy organic when I either find a product I like that is organic so I stick with it, if the food I like only comes as organic, or if when I want something only the organic type is available.

If you believe strongly in supporting smaller farms and protecting the environment (and are against modern methods of genetic modification), then organic can possibly be worth it. For me, maybe someday, but in the back of the mind I really can't wait to be able to have my own garden.

Start of my free money making experiment

2006-11-29T12:58:00.000-05:00

I've decided to start this even though I have not received the funds I need to actually start it. Yes, basically I'm cheating. But this is only for the beginning and the original amounts will be compensated for in a future transfer (basically I'll pay myself back and it will be like I never cheated at all). It's really just a head start.

Anyway, the first order of business was to open a ShareBuilder account. The main reason is because of the promotions they offer. I transferred $200, made one stupid mistake trade (losing an unnecessary $11.95), and then some other trades. I then used a promotion code to get $50 free. This money will take a few weeks to be credited to my account, but that's ok. So as of market closing yesterday my account is worth $181.44. Add the $50 and it's worth $231.44. So far I've made $31.44. Not bad for being a week or so in. Once some balance transfer stuff gets worked out, I'll be on my way.

How much can I make from nothing?

2006-11-29T12:50:00.000-05:00

In a previous post I talked about trying to make as much money as possible from nothing except good credit and special deals. To make it as clear as possible (especially for myself) I've decided on a few rules.

Any free promotional money is considered free and can be used for anything.
Gifts of money do not count. They were meant to be used for something that I would get enjoyment out of, so it can not be used.
Gift cards obtained from any offer (or from redeeming points towards gift cards for this experiment) do count as free money. If the only thing I can recieve is a gift card, I can get a gift card for purchases I would normally make (a restaurant we frequent, or clothing store, etc.) take the equivalent amount of cash and put it into one of my "investment" accounts.

For now I think that is all of the rules that are necessary. My "investment" accounts will be any accounts that contain either balance transfers used for this experiment, or money gained from promotions. These could include Certificate of Deposits (CDs), high-yield bank accounts, investment accounts containing stocks, etc.

I think this will be fun, and hopefully I will gain something from it (hopefully some knowledge, and some money would be nice as well).

Why bother with a prenup?

2006-11-29T12:26:00.000-05:00

Prenuptials can make a lot of sense for a lot of people. With divorce rates increasing in industrialized countries (although the US may have reached the peak in the 1970's) and the increase concerns on security, protecting yourself would be best.

On the financial side, most people do not need them. They are best for couples that have significant assetts individually to make sure that they do not lose anything that was theres before the marriage occurred. I think that all individual assetts before marriage should be the sole possession of that individual (unless they decide otherwise). After marriage, I think things should be done together. If there is an agreement that one person works and the other stays home to take care of the kids or something, then the one person's income is for the whole family. If they both work, all of their earnings and assetts that are gained after marriage are shared between them. If they file for a divorce, all assetts after the wedding should be split evenly. You should not need a prenup to decide this, although unfortunately you do.

A prenup in many ways can erode trust between two people. Why start a marriage where you're already planning for the possibility of failure?

I believe that lately prenups have lost their way. People are using them to put strict and often ridiculous policies onto their marriages. I read somewhere a few months ago about a couple in Florida that was older (50's or 60's) who decided to get a prenup before they were married. They divorced within a year because at least one of the parties did not uphold the agreement. The agreements that weren't upheld were ridiculous things like "so and so must give a back rub everyday" and "so and so must cook a healthy dinner every Tuesday night" and more ridiculous crap like that. If you need to take control of the marriage like that before you take your vows, then in my opinion, you have no right to be getting married.

For people with significant assetts and little knowledge of the person they're marrying, a prenup is a geat idea. For regular people, it's a waste of time and money.

Too much, too little time

2006-11-28T13:08:00.000-05:00

Things have been going crazy with wedding plans and holidays and everything in mind. Plus watching more and more of our money flying away faster than it comes in. Unfortunately, it's mostly for things that are partly out of my control. We're doing decently well, considering. We set a reasonable budget for gifts and I think we'll get under that. I also requested no presents from my fiance for my birthday since I'm a terrible gift receiver and I'd rather not see the money go away (unless she knows I'll love it). And luckily, December is my 3 paycheck month so all of the gift money is coming from that which makes it a lot easier. So the next month is going to be hectic. blah.

Visa doesn't allow minimum purchases

2006-11-21T09:17:00.000-05:00

This article from Boston.com talks about the fact that Visa and Mastercard do not allow vendors to force a minimum purchase. Who knew??? (The story is about parking meters, but that's not as important.) You see it everywhere from small shops, to liquor stores, to even some chain restaurants.

I knew that stores do that because the cost of allowing credit card purchases can take away from profit, and I even understood it for some places. Now that I know that vendors are breaking the rules set by the credit card companies, it's nice to know that I can use my card whenever. Sometimes I only need $5 worth of stuff and I don't have cash, I don't want to buy $15 worth of stuff, and to go to an ATM is going to cost an extra $2 or so. Maybe I'm excited because I can fight someone on it if I need to. All those times that they forced you to buy a damn package of gum to get you over the limit when you hate gum, or chips when you're on the Atkins Diet, you don't need to do it anymore! Fight back. make them call the credit card company and stand there until you can only pay for what you want.

A bit harsh?

2006-11-17T09:41:00.000-05:00

This was taken from Boston.com today.

A bit harsh?

Dog vs. Train

2006-11-17T09:33:00.000-05:00

Generally I think most people are stupid, but I think it's because everyone is really fighting for themselves as crazy as their ideas are for anyone else.

Anyway, this has to do with a new commuter rail line they're putting in in Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has an article about the increased costs of the line because of the lawsuits and settlements they're dealing with. Interesting that there were 18 legal challenges to the line, and the T won all of them. But this comes at a cost, and so you're going to hear the same people that went forward with the legal challenges, complaining about the cost of the project.

The best part of this whole article:

"T officials also said that they seriously considered a woman's request to have the T pay for Prozac for her dog, who she said would be traumatized by the train noise. The woman's claim was eventually denied."

What a waste of time and money.

The electric bill was wrong damnit

2006-11-16T16:08:00.000-05:00

I like it when I'm right, especially when someone tells me I'm wrong and I prove them to be an idiot.

My electric bill last month wasn't too bad considering we used the AC for a week or more. 71 kWh. I was happy with it, but we still took further measures to reduce it more. When I looked at my bill online on tuesday it was for 120 kWh. I was pissed considering we were very conservative as usual and we didn't use the AC or anything, so it was completely wrong. I knew it wasn't the electric company, because that just wouldn't make sense. So I called my new landlord and asked him if my electric box was hooked up to more than just my apartment. He insisted it wasn't and tried to remind me that I had an electric stove, which I then reminded him that it was gas, and then he tried to say that they have a fixed rate that they always charge, but this bill was way above that. Anyway, he said we could use the box and turn everything off just so that we could be confident it's only for our apartment.

So yesterday I did that, and of course it wasn't just for my apartment, but also include the common stairways and lobby lights. Now I'm just waiting for the reduction in rent.

Sharebuilder...

2006-11-16T13:35:00.000-05:00

For some reason I decided this morning to open a ShareBuilder account. I'm not exactly sure why, considering I have basically no money to invest. It may have to do with the lack of sleep caused by the upstairs neighbors, or to really busy week. I even transferred money, but I guess I will at least get $50 promotional money, which I could invest. After all, it's not like it's coming out of my bank account. I should find out if my money gains interest while sitting there without me buying stocks. That would be good to know.

Anyway, I now have a ShareBuilder account that I really don't know what to do with. Maybe I'll finally try one of those free 30 day trials at the Motley Fool. I've been wanting to do that, but without money to invest, I've had no reason.

Ah! I'm such an idiot. I was thinking the other day about trying to see how much money I can make off of free money. My initial idea was to use credit card balance transfers, except I applied for a card and got rejected basically (not because of bad credit but because I just moved and so they're questioning where I live and I don't have utility bills to send them to prove that at the moment). So I thought that was a no go for a while, but I can just start off with this $50. It will take a lot longer to gain any decent amount without large chunks of free money, although that may be solved by a recent credit card offer that was received in the mail yesterday.

So I guess my new thoughts will be on to see how much I can make from free money. excellent.

My fake stock portfolio

2006-11-13T13:53:00.000-05:00

I know this sounds crazy, having a fake stock portfolio and all, but I have my reasons.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough money to invest in stocks at the moment, but I would like it if I did. Since I spend too much time thinking about stock picks and what would be best (and generally being bored), I decided to put together a fake portfolio. Even though I read a lot, I still am not quite sure what I'm doing. So I looked around the net, did some reading, eventually picked a group of stocks, and then made a portfolio on Yahoo! Finance with about $5000 worth of my stock choices. This doesn't take into account fees and stuff, but it's really just an experiment to see if what I found would actually be as good as talked about.

So far the experiment has shown me a better example of the daily ups and downs of the market. It has also shown me that just because a company is talked about highly does not mean that the future for that company is bright. And even if I think there's hope in the company, doesn't mean that there really is. Overall, my portfolio has done reasonably well and I wish I had the money at the time to make the purchases. But for now it's just fake money that I can cheer on when I'm bored.

Original price of stocks: $4976.65
Price as of the end of the day (11-13): $5334.40
Increase since the beginning of October: 7.70%

My largest percent change at the moment is 18.42%, my lowest is -4.23%. I have 2 stocks that have lost value (1 less than 1%), and 8 stocks that have gained value (2 less than 1% and 3 of which have gone up by more than 15%).

Mortgage Accelerator

2006-11-09T11:25:00.000-05:00

Here is an article from Yahoo! that talks about a new type of mortgage in the U.S. that has been used in Australia and the UK. Basically you use a HELOC to desposit your paycheck and use it to pay expenses. Everything left over pays your mortgage. This all assumes you are disciplined with your finances and that you have a positive cash flow. There is an annual fee, but it may be worth it if you save more than that on interest. Just an other option to try and pay as little in interest as possible.

Rounding off with credit cards

2006-11-09T09:39:00.000-05:00

I was reading some of the comments from a post on All Financial Matters about tipping, and I noticed a lot of people talking about rounding up for their credit card. This may make things easier, but with certain cards this may not be getting the best "bang for your buck." It's being picky about change, but a lot of change can add up.

The most obvious problem would be with a card that rounds off your purchases and puts the change in a savings account. If you go out a lot and round off for the tip, then you're missing out on that change.

You can also miss out on certain rewards cards. A card that gives double miles for dining out would be an example. Say you often go out to the same restaurant and you order the same thing all the time and the bill comes to $21. You generally tip 18%, so the bill plus tip equals $24.78. You round up the amount so it's an even $25. You would get 50 miles total for the purchase. If you paid just the $24.78, double that you would get the same 50 miles for the purchase (49.56, and then they round up to the nearest dollar when it is over 50 cents). That last mile, although minimal would be for 44% less than the others. Plus you would have an extra 22 cents. This isn't much, over time it will add up.

Credit cards paid off

2006-11-08T13:24:00.000-05:00

We only had a balance on one of our credit cards for our honeymoon, but finally that's all paid off. No more credit card debt! Now hopefully we can put more into savings.

Investing in CD's

2006-11-06T16:25:00.000-05:00

If you have money that you don't need right away, but you would prefer not to risk losing any of it, a Certificate of Deposit (CD) may be the best choice. You could use it for your emergency fund, house downpayment, or other reserves that you don't plan on using in the near future.

The advantage of CDs compared to savings accounts is that you can generally get a higher yield. Right now you can find CDs that will return 5.65% in interest a year. The disadvantage, though, is that when you put your money in a CD it basically is unusable until the CD matures. This isn't true for all types of CDs, but it is for a traditional CD.

Although you may want to have an emergency fund and other funds more accessible, a CD should not be forgotten. It depends on your goals and assetts. For myself, I would prefer to have about 6 months to a year of income in my emergency fund.

To make this work using CDs, I would make a CD Ladder. Basically you set up several CDs so that one matures on a regular basis. An option for a year's worth of income in an emergency fund would be a CD Ladder where a CD matures every 3 months. Here's an example:
Say you have $20,000 in your emergency fund. You figure that will cover you for a year. To start a CD Ladder, deposit $5000 into 3 month, 6 month, 9 month, and 1 year CDs. Once each one matures, use the money to start a 1 year CD. After the first year, you will be getting a decent rate on your money, and $5000+ interest will be available to you every 3 months if you need it. The longer the period of maturity for the CD, usually the higher the interest. This may not be worth it though, and getting a CD over 5 years is generally a bad idea (just in case the interest goes up, you'll miss out). But several variations of this ladder will give you available money at set times, and a decent yield.

I will post more about CDs later.

Necessary Expense Account - How to deal with unexpected expenses?

2006-11-03T11:37:00.000-05:00

A post from Matt at To One Million and Beyond reminded me of a post I was thinking about.

Generally we think about the short term and can plan for what we know. Sometimes things get missed like oil changes and tune-ups to cars, birthday gifts, and doctor visits. Since we're on a very strict budget at the moment, we can't afford to handle a huge unexpected expense. We could go into our savings, but even that right now is too low, and we prefer not to put anything on the credit card that is going to sit for a while.

To avoid these types of surprises, we've created a Necessary Expense Account (NEA) in the bank with our checking account to allow for instant transfers. We started this because my fiance needs to buy contacts about once every three months, her haircuts are about once every 6 weeks, car repairs happen whenever they happen, and same with doctor's appointments.

To cover these items we have added a few items to our budget like "Contacts", "Haircut", "Doctor", etc. We don't put in the full amount needed to cover for each event, but it's spread out enough that we won't be short. For example, we always put in about $15 a month for doctor visits. Although we will not spend $180 a year on doctor visits, this will cover any emergency room visits or unexpected visits as well. We only put in about $35 dollars a month for haircuts. This amount will not cover a haircut every 6-8 weeks (or whenever it happens), but with the extra from other areas, we're sure to have enough to make up the difference. I also put in the extra money from expense checks from work in this account (I will elaborate more in a future post) to help cover car repairs.

We figure if we have a bad year, maybe we won't be able to cover everything this way, but so far we're doing ok. We also have capped the amount in the account at $2000 (if for some reason it reaches that high), figuring that that is enough to cover any car repairs we may have and other necessities.

Holiday shopping

2006-11-03T11:33:00.000-05:00

Here is a good list fo things from ConsumerReports.org to keep in mind this holiday season while you go shopping.

One of the things that is crazy is the amount of unused gift cards there are (about $972 Million last year). That's pure profit for the retail companies. So maybe we should avoid wasting our money on them this year?

What happened to my stack of cash?

2006-11-02T16:33:00.000-05:00

If you have an euros sitting around, or if you're in Europe and you have a pile stashed in your mattress, this article from Yahoo! News gives a good reason to put it in a bank. It would suck to lose everything.

Playing the Travel Website Game

2006-11-02T16:00:00.000-05:00

Paying for travel is always a hassle, especially when you're trying to find the best deal. The travel websites like Expedia.com, Orbitz.com, Travelocity, etc. all give discounts here and there, but getting the best prices isn't always easy. Some of these may be obvious, but it's good to review.

First, these are from my own experiences:

1. If you check a website for prices and they're high or they seem to be increasing as you do your research, do not buy the ticket. Wait a few days and go back and usually the price is lower. This was a frustrating discovery.

2. If you're going to a resort where you can book your flight and resort stay all on their website, first research other sites and airlines. On one vacation we saved about $300 by buying our tickets separately from the resort.

3. Be flexible about your dates. This seems obvious, but remember this when you're planning on using frequent flier miles as well. We were able to buy our honeymoon plane tickets using 70,000 miles by flying into a major city (then we bought tickets on a local airline for the second 30 minute flight) and by waiting 2 extra days, rather than for 140,000 miles.

And now the more obvious stuff that is repeated a lot of places, but worth reiterating:

1. Always check the airline's website before you purchase through one of these services. Even better, check the airlines that are not on these services. Sometimes the smaller airlines like Southwest and JetBlue have better prices.

2. Look at packages. It can often be cheaper to get everything together than separate. This is not always true though. Check out hotels for their own special deals that may not be shown on a travel website.

3. Travel during low peak times. Some airlines show what off-peak days are (usually Wednesday, Saturday, etc.). This also means on holidays when fewer people seem to want to fly.

(I'm not promoting any site, airline, etc. I'm just giving information about my experiences and thoughts)

Networth

2006-11-02T11:39:00.000-05:00

As you can see on the right, I've put up our networth... a wonderful -$1,966. It really could be worse, so I'm not too worried. A huge amount of the debt we have is from the student loans my fiance is using through this summer. A lot of that won't be doing anything for a while. I did not include credit card debt on one car because it's the card I use for everyday expenses and bills (a miles card), so it's paid off every month anyway. I also did not include our checking account because that is usually emptied every month because of our expenses. I plan on putting a buffer in there at some point, but for now it is what it is. Also for expenses, I added my fiance's engagement ring and her harp, since both are valuable and have to be insured separately. I'm not sure of the actual prices, but it is a good estimate. I will find out more when we change insurance in a few weeks.

So that's the starting point.

On a side note, having the new neighbors upstairs moving in at 11 pm last night with they're loudness and vacuuming has gotten my fiance to really want a house. I'm not sure how we can really start saving for one now, but the thoughts are there.

Plug-in Hybrids

2006-11-01T16:33:00.000-05:00

This is a decent article on Yahoo! from Forbes Auto about plug-in hybrids. I read something a few months ago about how there's a company in Italy that will take a Mini Cooper, cut it and expand it, and make it into a plug-in hybrid (the whole things costs like $60k). I think it's all a great idea, they just need to make it cheaper. If I could get an Escape Plug-in hybrid for $25k, I would probably do it.

Also about batteries, they're doing research into how to make an "instant charge" battery. Using the idea of appliances where you charge a battery instantly to use it. They just haven't figured out how to make it work for larger things, and for longer periods. But if they did, imagine the money that could be saved when you don't have to take hours to charge something.

Get a tax return or put it in your paycheck?

2006-11-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

I was reading this article from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity and it made me think of something that's been on my mind for a while. If you can't ahndle your money, is taking 0 exemptions on your W-4 a better decision?

Since I took my new job I knew that I needed to get as much out of my paycheck as possible to make ends meet. Usually I do 0 exemptions on my W-4, a habit learned from my parents. Since I knew I had already paid about the amount of tax that was expected of me for this year, I took one exemption.

Thinking about it, and reading many articles about how you're better off getting your money in your paycheck than letting Uncle Sam get interest on it has put me somewhat at odds. I think this decision really has to deal with what type of person you are.

If you are:
Good with budgeting: If you can figure out how much your taxes are going to be, you can prepare correctly figure out how much per paycheck that is, and set that aside. You'll gain interest, you won't owe the government anything at tax time, and everyone's happy.

On the other extreme
Spend money as it comes in: This would be a time to maybe consider taking 0 exemptions. If it comes in your paycheck you'll probably spend it. If you are this type of person you probably already have savings problems, so getting that once a year tax refund might be good. It would be a good time to decide that you can save it, and put it away in a ROTH IRA or a CD or something where you won't touch it.

It's too bad that you can't ask the government to electronically deposit your refund into an IRA account. That would help boost your retirement, especially since the average refund is something like $2000.

The people that are between this would just have to decide what would be best. Making that extra interest on your money may be nice, but it will still be nothing if you don't save.

Eating out is cheaper?

2006-10-31T15:35:00.000-05:00

This article from MSN Money is saying that in some cases eating out is cheaper than eating in. I think it depends on what you order, but I could see it being possible. Since portions are so large, my fiance and I often get a salad and share an entree. Sometimes this can cost around $12-15, which is cheaper than cooking a shrimp dinner or many chicken dinners at home. I don't think this would work for everyone, but maybe eating out occasionally is not a bad idea AND is not detrimental to your budget.

Worldwide Debt

2006-10-31T12:53:00.000-05:00

This article from Robert Kiyosaki on Yahoo Finance is interesting and made me think of of how much debt many countries have. I can't imagine what would happen if China and all of the other countries we owe debt to came knocking asking for repayment. Of course this probably wouldn't happen, and taking our currency off the gold standard tried to prevent this, but it's still something to think about.

Should we be worrying about the size of our national debt? Is there something we should be doing personally to avoid these problems? Doing anything might be a bit alarmist, although I have heard of people buying gold bullion and such to make sure they keep something tangible.

Goals

2006-10-31T07:58:00.000-05:00

I'm sure these will change in the future, but at least this will be something to work from.

Short-term (Now-2 years)
New car - Mine is 10 years old and since I have to drive to work now, I would feel better about being in a more reliable car.
Two ROTH IRAs - at least started

Mid-term (3-5 years)
Half of student loans paid - I'm only looking at half since we looked at the numbers and we would do better saving a decent amount of money and waiting longer to pay off the loans than if we just paid them off as fast as possible (which would take several years without much savings).
Downpayment for a house - I'm hoping for between $80k-100k since houses here are so expensive and I would prefer to have a 20% downpayment.

Long-term (5-10 years)
$250k net worth - Although this seems low, I think it will be hard enough to get to considering our $40k of student loan debt and high expenses that we can't get rid of. We may try to cut more things out, but we're already down to bare minimum in many instances.

Another strain on our goals is that I'm going to school part time and I have 7 more semesters left if I keep on track. Depending on classes that will cost between $4000-$5500 a semester (3 semesters a year).

So that at least is a start. Hopefully they're achievable goals.

Economy and the Environment

2006-10-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

In college we looked at a lot of case studies and things that looked at the effects of the environment on the economy. This article today on YAHOO! talks about similar things. Without the environment, we don't have much else, including money or an economy, so why kill it?

Surprisingly I have also found out that most of the time when a business puts in technology and plans that are environmentally friendly, they actually increase their profit in the long-run. Most businesses still only think short-term and therefore won't change; but if they would open up a bit, they could do better while helping the environment.

expectations

2006-10-30T12:06:00.000-05:00

I had a longer post, but I think it's best to not post it.

So in short.. How can family expect so much financially and emotionally from each other, especially when they know the financial and emotional situations everyone else is in? Not sure if it's just selfish or or plain stupidity.

more info

2006-10-26T12:30:00.000-04:00

Since I have time I decided I could give more background info.

I just took a new job over a month ago, and because of that we had to move about 15 miles or so to make my life, and my fiance's life easier. She is going to school full-time and working when she can to make money to pay off some of our debt and to create some savings. We're basically living off of my pay, which is a bit tight. We've cut out a lot of things like cable tv, but I'm sure we could cut a bit more. I'm also going to school part-time and because I don't want anymore loans, my tuition is all out of pocket. My company reimburses a little bit, but I still have to front the money at the beginning of each semester.

I'm not sure of my financial goals, only goals of what I want.. which probably isn't good. I'll add to that later though.

something new

2006-10-26T12:10:00.000-04:00

I've decided that although I've done decently with our money, it's time to try something new since our goals and finances ar eall over the place at the moment. So I'm going to try this and hopefully will be able to keep on any track we've decided on, and exchange a lot of info.

As a start.. I'm getting married at the end of the year. We've already joined our accounts and decided that it would be best if I take care of all of the finance stuff. We're a bit in debt, and with my fiance going to school full time, me going to school part time, we are a bit crazy. Once she gets a job things will start to turn, but for now I have to think of some goals which I'm sure will be "out there" and figure out how to get to them. It'll be hard since we have one income that we barely survive on and loans that keep increasing. We'll see what happens.