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Wednesday, December 12, 2007Pro-Penny or Anti-Penny?There was a post on the Freakonomics blog today that got me thinking about the anti-penny/pro-penny debate. To be honest...I'm not sure where I stand on it quite yet. Let's look at it. Anti-Penny
Pro-Penny:
What are your thoughts? Pro or Anti Penny?!?   Subscribe to the DIA FeedLabels: money, Social Issues Monday, October 15, 2007Group Writing Contest: Financial Success StoryJD at Get Rich Slowly is sponsoring a collective writing contest where participants are asked to write about a personal finance success story. What follows is my story: When I thought about what to write, I was a little torn. You see, I have never been in any sort of consumer debt. I have never not paid off my credit cards in full. I had no student loans (thanks mom and dad!) So I was in fear that my story wouldn’t be very dramatic; and I suppose it’s not. My story is about the everyday decisions that help keep us (me and my wife, Mikah) out of debt. Mikah and I talk about money a lot (ok – maybe I talk about money a lot and she puts up with it!). We are constantly going over our budget and trying to figure out a way to increase our wealth with the jobs that we have. Budgeting has been so valuable in keeping us within our means. I mean, we are both savers by nature, but I know without having a budget to restrain me, I would probably spend a lot more on stuff I don’t need. The most significant change I have made is taking my lunch to work. The amount of money that frees up is astounding. For a while I was going out to lunch every day. If I went to McDonalds, it cost $4.08, Arbys was $6.08, Burger King ran me $5.47 and Chipotle over $7. Even if I ate at McDonalds every day (which I never did!) it would still cost over $20 per week. More realistically I was spending over $25 a week. Over an entire work year, that comes out to over $1250! That is a lot of money! I have since cut down to eating out 4-5 times a month. That equates to some significant savings. I also suspect that I may live longer now that I don’t eat fast foot everyday. I just take last night’s dinner in for lunch the net day. I like leftovers so I don’t mind at all. And having that extra money means I have more to invest with. Which leads us to the next point. I spend a fair amount of time trying to find the best places to put our money for long and short term investments. We had some extra cash, so we decided to pay off my car loan. Now the only real debt we have is our mortgage. We have our regular checking & savings account (that earns about 1 lousy percent). We have our high yield online savings account at E*Trade, earning 4.7% (it just dropped last week because the Fed cut their rates. It was 5.05%). We have our “investment portfolio” (just saying that makes me feel pretentious) invested entirely in EXTREMELY low fee index funds, also at E*Trade. We also have a small amount of money in the Paypal money market at 5.05%, although that amount is currently negligible. I try to move the money around to ensure we have enough to pay our bills and make the most interest at the same time. It takes a little bit of effort, which probably isn’t really worth the time actually, but I enjoy doing it. All of the daily efforts we make with budgeting, keeping spending down, and maximizing our liquid investments means that at the end of the year we will have some extra money to work with. We haven’t decided what to do with that money yet. Our main options are to keep it stashed away, building interest, until one of us needs another car, make a principle only payment to our mortgage, or give it away to charity. We will probably end up doing some combination of the three. What do you think we should do? What would you do? Subscribe to the DIA FeedLabels: Finances, Get Rich Slowly, money Tuesday, October 9, 2007The UpDown: A Stock Market Game About a month ago, I was pointed to an online stock market game called The UpDown. I checked it out and signed up to play the game. It is A LOT of fun. If you are at all interested in the stock market, you should have a good time with this. You start with $1 million dollars and can buy pretty much any stock available on the American markets. Your goal is to beat the S&P 500 for the month. Here is the kicker, if you do beat the S&P 500...you earn real money! They'll send it to your Paypal account (they probably have other methods of payment too). Now, you won't make very much money...I only made $1.03 for September. But hey...it's real money for playing a fun game. There are other ways to make money on the game as well. You can write up stock analysis that all the other players can see. If it gets voted as being a good, solid analysis...you get paid. Pretty cool, although I have yet to write one. Mostly because I don't know what I am doing. you can also refer other people to the game (I guess like I am doing now) and win a small percentage of what they won. I'm sure the person who referred me is ecstatic about the 10 cents I won him! So if you are interested in the stock market at all...or just want to have a little fun: click the image at the top or bottom of this post. Warning: Be ready to enter a land of sunshine, puppy dogs, and pure, unbridled joy. Subscribe to the DIA FeedLabels: Finances, money, Stock Market Sunday, August 26, 2007Warren Buffett is SmartOne of the blogs that I read daily is Get Rich Slowly. It is a fantastic personal finance blog that almost always has something interesting to say. Today they posted video, and comments, from a Warren Buffett Q&A from a few years ago. It is really good. There are links at the bottom of the post to the 10 segments of the Q&A. If you at all interested in finance/investing/wealth/whatever...I'd recommend watching these videos...because he knows what he is talking about. Warren Buffett Q&A Besides Get Rich Slowly, I also highly recommend Free Money Finance for those interested in personal finance. Subscribe to the DIA FeedLabels: Blogs, Finances, Free Money Finance, Get Rich Slowly, money, Warren Buffett Friday, June 15, 2007Make More Interest With Your Savings AccountSorry...this isn't a particularly funny topic. It's not not funny, but certainly not hilarious. Anyway...I am writing today to talk about Online Savings Accounts. Basically there aren't very many good excuses to not be taking advantage of these. We use E*Trade for ours and we get 5.05% on it. This is (obviously) way better than the 3.1-3.3% we get for our Fifth Third savings account. The nice thing about these accounts are that they are pretty liquid. It doesn't take long at all...a day at the most...to transfer funds back and forth. But you get the same high rates that a CD would get you. But CD's aren't liquid...at least not without paying a heavy fee. Like I said before, we use E*Trade...but there are a bunch of good ones out there, like HSBC & ING. It's real nice to see the interest deposits be so much, especially when they weren't nearly as much before. It really is worth it to check out because it is basically free money for a small amount of effort. You won't be disappointed. Labels: Finances, money, Online Savings Accounts
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