No post this week in celebration of the New Year!
Photo: Daniel Lee
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Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
An Introduction To Hard Money Lending
Last time, I mentioned how I like to receive cash flow from my investments, which is why I am a dividend investor. There is one other type of investment I like and have used for years to generate cash flow and that is hard money lending.
What Is Hard Money Lending?
Hard money lending is the process of making a loan based solely on the value of some item put up as collateral by a borrower. Hard money lenders are usually private investors who lend...
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
A Guide To Dividend Investing
When it comes to investing in stocks, there are all sorts of different strategies people use. Growth investing is the strategy of buying the stock of small companies that you think will get bigger. A growth investor might have bought stock in Microsoft in the 1990s, believing it would grow into the huge company it now is. Value investing is buying stock of established companies when their stock price is less than what the company is actually worth....
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Risk And Investing For Income
Last time, I talked about calculating yields for stocks and how that figure can be used to compare differing investments. If you recall, we looked at three different investments:
A typical savings account paying 1% or less
Realty Income stock (O) paying 4.58%
Microsoft stock (MSFT) paying 2.95%
If we just look at the yields, it looks like the obvious choice is Realty Income. But this overlooks one important factor: risk.
How Safe Do You Want...
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Goal Update: End of November 2015
At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals,
including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have
occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can
always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of
the blog.
Last updated: End of November, 2015
Current value: $18,701
Change from last month: +$559
Percent of Goal: 17.20%
click to embiggerate
Note that the funds in this account...
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
How To Calculate A Stock's Dividend Yield
When comparing different investments, the most common method used is to compare their yields. The yield of an investment is simply the return you get expressed as an annual percentage. This allows you to do a basic comparison between different types of investments. For example, suppose you are trying to decide which is the better investment: putting money in a bank account or buying a dividend paying stock. These are two very different types of investments...
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Retail Credit Cards Are Robbing You
CreditCards.com recently released their annual survey of credit cards rates for retail branded cards. Retail branded cards are those issued by stores, such as The Gap, Apple, Macy's, or Staples. The results are not good news for consumers.
The average interest rate on retail credit cards in 2015 is 23.43%. Zales Jewelers has the highest rate at 28.99% and Staples comes in second at 27.99%. For comparison, the nation average for "regular" credit...
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Save Money By Challenging Yourself
The biggest monthly expense in our household is our mortgage payment. This is probably true for most working families. Our second biggest expense is food. Even if you only include the money you spend at the grocery store and exclude what you spend at restaurants, if you track your spending for a month, you'll most likely find the same thing. If you are on a budget and trying to save some extra money, it make sense to look at your biggest expenses...
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Goal Update: End of October 2015
At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals,
including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have
occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can
always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of
the blog.
Last updated: End of October, 2015
Current value: $18,142
Change from last month: +$1,676
Percent of Goal: 16.68%
Note that the funds in this account are invested in...
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
It's Open Enrollment Season!
It's that time of year again - open enrollment season! This is the period where employees are given the chance to sign up for or make changes to the benefits programs offered by their employers. You can add or change your insurance coverage and sign up for flexible spending accounts for both medical and child care expenses for 2016. It's these last two I want to talk about.
What Is A Flexible Spending Account?
A flexible spending account (FSA)...
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Don't Leave Money On The Table: When Maxing Out Your 401(k) Might Lose You Money
I came across this post on Reddit and it made me aware of a potential situation where you might lose money if you max out your 401(k). I'll recap the post here and try to explain things in a more clear manner (at least to me) than the original author has. The numerical examples I use are the same ones he used.
If your employer offers a 401(k) match AND you are maxing out your 401(k) contributions, you may find your self in a situation where you...
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Is The Model X Telsa's First Big Mistake?
The Model X is now finally in production and is shipping. People seem to love it. It's an amazing vehicle and a technological marvel. But did Tesla miss the boat on this one? Is this Tesla's first big mistake? I think it very well could be.
The first thing to note is the price. The Signature Series, which is fully loaded, checks in at $132,000. The low end, non-performance base model is going be about $93,000. Final details haven't been announced,...
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Goal Update: End Of September 2015
At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals,
including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have
occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can
always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of
the blog.
Last updated: End of September, 2015
Current value: $16,466
Change from last month: +$1,318
Percent of Goal: 15.14%
Note that the funds in this account are invested...
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
What To Do If Your Identity Is Stolen
Having your identity stolen is a major pain in the ass. I know. My wife had hers stolen seven years ago and it took over a year to get everything straightened out. If this happens to you, here's what to expect and what to do.
Something Strange Is Going On
Our first hint that something was wrong was when my wife received a letter from a check cashing company that her check had bounced. Since she had never used a check cashing company, something obviously...
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Don't Leave Money On The Table: Discounted Gift Cards
Gift cards are some of the most popular gifts given. About two-thirds of all American consumers have purchased a gift card at some point - there's millions of these things floating around. But you'll always find people who don't want to use them for some reason. Either the card is for a store they don't shop at or they forget they have them, or some other reason. As a result, there is over $1 billion dollars loaded on gift cards that goes unclaimed....
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Elon Musk Biography
I finally got around to reading Ashlee Vance’s biography of Elon Musk and I must say, I have a new view of him and his companies. If you are looking for details about his personal life, you won't find much here. The book doesn’t go into too much detail about that, other than to give basic background on his youth in South Africa and touch briefly on his marriages. I found the most interesting parts of the book to be those about Space X and Tesla and...
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Wait But Why Interviews Elon Musk
Tim Urban, one of two guys behind the Wait But Why blog, received a call a while back from someone who works with Elon Musk. The caller said Musk reads his blog and wanted to know if he wanted to have an interview with Musk to talk about the various technologies his companies work with. Tim had the phone call. During the call, Elon also invited him out to California to talk in person. Tm went.
Tim has promised this will be a four part series and,...
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Goal Update: End of August 2015
At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals,
including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have
occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can
always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of
the blog.
Last updated: End of August, 2015
Current value: $15,148
Change from last month: -$606
Percent of Goal: 13.93%
Note that the funds in this account are invested in...
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Stock Market Panic
Yesterday (which was Monday, August 24, as I write this), the stock market tanked. It was down over 1,000 points in the early hours and manged to recover a bit to close "only" down 588 points. Headlines were, predictably, full of fear mongering: "A meltdown on Wall Street. Have you looked at your retirement fund today?"
Once again, the media, which needs something to write about every day, is trumpeting panic and instilling fear in people that...
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Congratulations, Americans, On Saving More!
Just over 1 year ago, I wrote that the savings rate in America has been declining and was currently at the woeful level of 3.8%. But it looks like that has turned around. Now, according to this article, the personal savings rate has increased to 5.15%. This is great news. The article does go on to mention that it seems most of the savings have been going into building up emergency funds rather than into retirement savings accounts (either 401(k)s...
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Don't Leave Money On The Table: Paribus
Many stores, both traditional and online, offer a buyer protection program where, if the price of an item you purchased goes down within a certain amount of time, they will refund you the difference between the price you paid and the new lower price. It's cheap marketing for the stores because few people, if any, will ever take them up on the offer. Unless you are spending a large amount of money, most the time, you shop around for a bit,...
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