Owner: My Investing Blog URL:http://myinvestingblog.com Join Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:53:44 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A blog about money. Specifically mine and who, what, when, where, why, and HOW I invest it. Site statistics:Click here
How did I get INTO debt and more importantly how do I get OUT of debt! 2007-10-26 18:35:04
Climbing out of debt can be hard, but it is certainly possible. I initially started searching Personal Fianance Blogs a year ago to find a way to climb out of debt myself. RedCouch hosts a blog and isn’t so sure about them, but they’re thriving and helping now! There were not as many as there are now; which is nice because it gives people more view and choices on how to do it, but all the info is VERY spread out. I figured it would be helpful to put all the info in one place to best help folks climb out! This is my attempt at helping those folks that have been in my shoes, and SaveLeighAnn’s shoes also who climbed out in just 1 year!
So almost 4 years ago on my climb, I moved into my first house, needed to buy first furniture, had a first kid (with one on the way), needed to get a first new car , first car seats, first diapers, the “FIRST” works! But kept my head about it all and this year started to blog a bit about it and prove that it CAN be done
Do I need a Last Will and Testament? 2007-10-25 00:52:24
I have been rolling this one over for a bit now and wondering where it fits in my investment path. I just got back from a trip to Australia and probably 3-4 months ahead of it I asked myself the worst case scenario. What happens to my kids? What happens to my house, cars, cat, dog, bad paintings, gym socks, 1984 Casio calculator watch in my underwear drawer? Well, not all of those, but a few of them… So I decided to look into it a bit beforehand…
If you DON’T have a Will, odds are your kids will be taken care of. The court isn’t going to send them to a foster home if you have family willing to take them. The court is cold and cruel, but not that cruel. So if you have brothers, sisters, grandmothers willing to take them, they’ll probably be alright.
As far as your assets though, they can bounce around for months or even years till they find a proper home depending on what you’re worth. Principality.co.uk actually has a good flowchart of what will h Read more:Last Will
, Testament
Bad decisions I’ve made in investing 2007-10-23 19:51:50 So in perusing a few posts on the M-Network I stumbled across an interesting set of blogs of bad investment decisions:
Single Guy Money
ChristianPF
Lynnae
DoughRoller
Debt-Free Revolution
Plonkee
Pinyo
PaidTwice
LittlebyLittle
I thought I had some good points to contribute, and stories to tell even though I’m nowhere near retirement. I really have had a few bad investment mistakes along the way, and I’m sure I’ll run into more in the future, but that’s one of the points of MyInvestingBlog.com - figuring this stuff out!
The BAD investments include:
1. I crafted a post earlier this month that touched on the get rich quick schemes I fell for. This was throughout my teenage years I fell for these ideas, what can I say, I was young, dumb and WANTED the money. At least I had the drive to push forward on it. I didn’t sit and let life come at me! Unfortunately, believe it or not, none of them paid off.
2. In 2003 I took a $10,000 loan out on my 401k to fund
Am I getting more frugal by the day? 2007-10-23 18:08:20
I honestly think I am getting more and more frugal each day; especially since starting this site. I quesiton buying everything I want anymore. My wife is pretty good at spending very little on herself too, but when it comes to the kids, she’s been known to splurge. I have already questioned whether or not I should buy a newer car. I’ve weighed the pros and cons of it, and am currently still able to push back the urge courtesy of Shopping for a Car, My Money Management, Get Rich Slowly, Louisville, Klontz, and Frugal Journey. I question buying brand name cereal, new socks, take shorter showers, worry if I turned off the lights, put less kitty litter in the box, wash clothes with less detergent, eat the cheapest meal on the menu when eating out (Nicole Humphrey agrees); heck I’ve even considered just eating the food my kids don’t! But I really don’t NEED to be that cheap. I have money, I just seem like I’m feeling like Ebenezer Scrooge
How did I get that progress bar widget on my blog? 2007-10-22 22:40:29 I have gotten a few requests for the progress
bar widget
(or lack thereof) on the top right of my page. I initially did some research finding the best way to add a progress bar to my site, but had some issues. I have about a .001% knowledge of how CSS and PHP and stylesheet yada yada work. I know enough to make my website work, but all the sites I found said it was easy, but I was flailing trying to find a good way to make it work. Apparently a few folks have, so if you’re good at CSS and PHP look @ ajaxian, fiveone.org, schjerning, widgetsblog, dojo, effbot, uwinni, toolbookdeveloper, livepipe, riverusers, or blogherald.
Conveniently, I AM good at Adobe Photoshop. So if anyone out there just HAS Adobe Photoshop, they can open this file and modify it to fit your own progress. It’s pretty slick and I dug the colors from the Apple progress bar window -
So when you open the .PSD file in Adobe Photoshop, be sure you go to the top of the options menu and click “Windo
How to have the cheapest wedding ever (and why it’s a good decision)! 2007-10-22 19:23:03 So let me start off by saying I have NOTHING against wonderful-big caked-lavishly flowered-thousand guested-giant gowned-enormous ringed wedding
s. I like (to attend) big weddings! They’re a lot of fun and should be the biggest day of your life! Nothing against the women readers either, I think you deserve your day in the sun, but realize what it costs! When you take into account the cost that actually goes into a wedding (and what COULD have been saved and invested with it), it can really blow you away (unless you sue for your flowers being the wrong color for 400k). Should they really be the gift that keeps on giving (to the credit cards you charged everything on)?
I took the easy route, not Vegas, but a friend of a friend of a friendwas a certified minister, and he was bought with a case of beer and a pack of smokes. He signed the papers and performed the wedding in my friends basement the week after I proposed. The wife had nothing wrong with it as we weigh Read more:decision
In what order do you invest your money? 2007-10-19 18:36:04
So one of the biggest steps after deciding that you want to save money is deciding WHERE to put the money? There are so many options out there, and so many different people suggesting places to put it. I’ve actually lurked on dozens of sites that have their own choices on where they put their money. My favorites links to those blog instances are, in no specific order:
Bargaineering
GenXFinance
Everybody Loves Your Money
Fivecentnickel
Living Almost Large
My Money Blog
My Retirement Blog
Beach Girl Blog
And here is what I came up with the months of research in the order I choose to put MY money:
0. While writing this post about paying off credit, I figured this deserved to be first BEFORE you start invest
ing, pay off your debt because you’re just building the CREDIT CARD COMPANIES net worth, NOT your own. First and foremost is to pay these cards off!
1. Build Emergency fund – in the WORST case scenario my wife and I lose our jobs or lose our arms or something, we s
Can you add a timeshare to your net worth statement? 2007-10-18 16:15:54
I own a timeshare - yes, I am one of “those” people that went to “the talk” when getting into the Cancun, Mexico airport and thought, heck, why not? I was 23, with my mother (taking her on vacation for her 50th birthday) and we decided we’d go in on it togehter and possibly wrangle in my other brother to join in on the cost. They sat us down and started at places for 30k per year, which was well out of my budget for being 23 and we whittled the price down to 10k for a double room (sleeps 10) every 2 years. Split that 3 ways and it was $3,333 for each of us to guarantee a place to vacation to every other year. It has a maintenance fee every 2 years of $700, so we pay $233 every 2 years ($115 per year or about $10 per month) to hold on to it. It gives my family which live at the closest point, 550 miles away a chance once every two years to vacation together. I enjoy it, it doesn’t bust the bank at $10/month and we’ve used i Read more:statement
Is it a good idea to use your ROTH IRA as your Emergency fund? 2007-10-17 22:45:30
I just got done reading a post from MyMoneyBlog that asked if you could really withdrawl from your ROTH. My first reaction was, sure, good idea! It’s a good investment vehicle that can draw good returns on good investments. Why not! But then I got to thinking I could invest that money elsewhere, after-tax in generally the same funds in the same way.
People seemed to morph the conversation into using the ROTH as an Emergency
fund vehicle and skipping that step in the all important 10-step program of where you want to put your funds; primarily #1 for some folks (including me) which is to fund 2-6 months of immediate liquid funds in a high yield savings or MMA. MUCH better idea I think.
Your ROTH IRA should be specifically for that. Retirement. Taking funds out prematurely may be possible tax-wise, but retirement-wise it could be the dagger in your portfolio! Taking $ out of there is going to kill the gains you’re making on that money over the life of your investmen
How can I earn a passive income online? 2007-10-31 17:08:42 How long have people asked this question? I suppose since the beginning of money. I certainly have had my fair share falling for scams. Without a big investment you’re kind of limited in your options. I have never had a lot of cash to work for me so I have always been looking for...
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Do we need a MANDATORY financial education curriculum in our schools? 2007-10-30 20:03:15 One of the major goals of my site (written in my disclaimer) is to be able to give my children a better financial education than I received when I was growing up. The most financial education I have now is that I should be as frugal as humanly possible in every situation as we didn’t have...
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How much insurance should I have on my house? 2007-10-29 15:08:48 So in regards to my post How Much Is Too Much I have been back and forth with my possible new insurance
agent, and she has offered me an interesting tidbit:
“…regarding the home, currently you have it insured for $516,000. Home insurance covers the dwelling itself and not the land...
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How do I find a reliable and trustworthy car mechanic? 2007-10-28 22:40:15 Oh how many times has this very question rolled off the tongues of people over the past 100 years? You get your first car, you move to a new city, you broke down in the middle of a trip, you buy a lemon, etc, etc, etc… The list goes on, but the question [...]
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My monthly expenses are high; how can I cut down my monthly expenses? 2007-11-05 19:12:22 So I decided to try out Flexo’s monthly expense template, and it isn’t looking too promising for me this month. I’m doling out more than I am taking in this month. Off the top, that sounds like it is bad, but really it isn’t TOO bad. I figured my cash allowance was high this past [...]
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Weekly Roundup #2 (Nov 3, 2007) 2007-11-03 11:00:20 I go through each week and run through 20-30 posts on average per week, and craft my posts for the week via these. The top 10-15 of those make up my Weekly
Roundup in no specific order. So this week, the honors belong to:
Mrs. Micah: Reflecting on Mondays
PFBlog: Portfolio Update - October 2007 (Up 3.08%)
My [...]
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Looks like I’m going with Allstate Insurance 2007-11-02 19:45:40 So in researching over the past month on insurance companies, I found that Geico (current) and Allstate were my 2 big contenders. Geico customer service is big and getting ahold of them has been good, but not proactive. This agent I have been working with (I’m happy to refer her if you’re [...]
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Networth update November 1, 2007 (+8.99%) 2007-11-01 22:28:02 Well, here it is, November
1, 2007 and the first actual comparison I can do as I started last month. A few additions to this version:
1. Adding in the timeshare worth.
2. Wife upped her 401k contribution to 10% making her 401k the biggest jumper at 19.77%
3. Reached over the 100k limit [...]
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Weekly Roundup #3 (Nov 10, 2007) 2007-11-10 10:45:02 Where did I StumbleUpon this week that lead to some good reads?
Digerati talks about how in emergencies, the credit card is the way to go.
Working Canadian Family can’t decide if blogging is for battling debt, or arguing; Family issues always can play a role in finance.
A Penny Closer examines why it’s better to donate [...]
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Introduction to ZMX - financial guest blogger on My Investing Blog 2007-11-09 19:39:32 CMX has been around for a while and has tried most of the get rich quick schemes I’ve tried myself, but has a different view on many investing strategies I’ve applied. You’ll see the difference between our investing strategies as CMX contributes but to start we have a plug from CMX on House Assessments:
Q: [...]
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, Investing
The #1 secret to investing… 2007-11-09 02:49:41 Where should I put my money now so that I can live comfortably in retirement? I’ve been asked and asked myself this question many times over the years, as I’m sure everyone has. Everyone wants a magic formula that will tell them where to put money. Some people think there is a magic box that [...]
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The difference between ROTH and Traditional IRA 2007-11-14 18:27:14 Why should I choose a ROTH IRA? Why should I choose a Traditional
IRA? What’s the difference
? I’ve been hit with both questions - The main advantage of a traditional IRA versus a Roth IRA is the tax benefits immediately realized. To receive the maximum tax benefits of a traditional IRA the taxpayer must have [...]
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What is a 401k and why should I use it? 2007-11-13 11:30:05 So I got to thinking yesterday in writing about changing the funds around in my 401k, that people may or may not know the reasoning and benefits of a 401k; and I may be putting the cart before the horse. So I figured it best to start at the ground floor…
Many companies offer a 401K retirement plan. [...]
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New funds available in my 401k 2007-11-11 17:19:00 Often times companies have people onboard specifically put there to make sure they’re getting the right allocations and options in their 401k plans. I know my company has a group that determines that. Why? I assume it is because people have sent emails to them about funds they’d like to be involved [...]
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How much should I save per paycheck to reach my retirement goals? 2007-11-19 21:03:43 This question is another tricky one because it depends on who is asking it. If you’re 18 and asking this question, well, I’d say you’re starting off right by asking, and if you are putting away 10% - even if you’re only making $20,000 per year, you’re saving $2,000/year and in 50 years you’d be [...]
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Weekly Roundup #4 (November 17, 2007) 2007-11-17 10:21:30 This week I had a lot going on, but still managed to check out a few blogs of interest -
Millionaire Mommy gives some good advice on “What would I do in your situation“.
Beacon Financial shows you how to save for college AND retirement - an interesting read.
Essentials of Trading lets people know about NOT letting [...]
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, Weekly
Weekly roundup #5 (November 25, 2007) 2007-11-25 10:54:09 Well lets take a trip down memory lane for this week - what caught my eye in the past 7 days?
1. Timothy Sykes talks his ”4 core stocks” strategy - it makes sense, maybe when I get around to diving in the individual stocks, I’ll hop back to this site - good info.
2. FILAM mentions the [...]
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, Weekly
How to have the cheapest Thanksgiving of your life! 2007-11-21 15:04:21 So in my quest for frugality, my brain will occasionally come up with something that makes my family laugh. These ideas did:
1. Don’t have stuffing with all the works - have a large plat of sod from the front lawn. It’s already paid for, and likely has some flavoring already added!
2. Instead of going to [...]
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