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...