Month: May 2008

Over the weekend I had an interesting talk with a family friend regarding this blog and some of the personal finance and investing topics posted here. After a long discussion and based on his experiences I started looking at some of my financial goals a bit differently. This resulted in a…

Finding meaning from your job is something, like a lot of people, I struggle with. One of the most common complaints by people working is "the money may be good but where is the meaning? How can I make a difference?". There are two things that give work meaning. First…

>"Gas (& Oil) prices rise to new records". Seems like this headline appears in the news media every day. Oil and gas prices seem to be a topic everyone is discussing and complaining about nowadays. As national average gas prices approach $4 (I am already paying more than that where…

FEAR is one of the most powerful forces in investing, as it is in life. One of the biggest universal fears is that of losing money, particularly when it can be so tough to earn in the first place. Yet those who fail to embrace fear run the risk of…

Are you a generous tipper or do you give the minimum tip possible? Do you tip extra for good service or not at all for bad service? Do you tip for take-out or to-go orders? Well, everyone has their own tipping philosophy and it does vary by where you live,…

Like a number of you, I regularly get official looking emails asking me to verify my user name and password details by clicking a link which takes me to a site that looks something like my bank's actual site. In today's cyber-age these type of scams and phishing emails are…

I hope you didn't reduce your 401K or other retirement account contributions when stock prices and markets tumbled earlier this year. Even though the value of your current 401K or retirement plan probably fell over this time, in the long term the power of dollar cost averaging and recovering/rising markets would…

The answer is No. According to the IRS website - "The (Stimulus Check) Payment is not income and you will not owe tax on your Payment. It will not reduce your refund or increase the amount you owe when you file your 2020 tax return next year. The will not…

It was recently reported, by the Federal Reserve, that consumer borrowing surged again in March. Consumers increased their borrowing at an annual rate of 7.2%, compared with a 3.1% rate of increase in February. Here is a summary of the worrying borrowing and debt figures: The increase in consumer debt…

With the government hoping people will spend a majority of the $350 billion dollars allocated towards stimulus checks, they may be concerned with the way a number of folks are just going to save the stimulus payment.  What I found interesting was how the various folks responded in line with…

[2021 update] - I came across this old article I wrote in 2009 around buying Visa and thinking I overpaid. Fast forward 12 years and Visa's stock price sits near $240. Or almost 6 times what I paid for it. Goes to show if the company is solid, in the…

In a recent post I talked about the 5 "buy" signs for a stock. However, your portfolio should never consist of just one stock, Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) or mutual fund in the long term because of the potential exposure to loss you will have. So to manage your risk,…

Recently there has been a spate of minor burglaries in my apartment complex, which prompted my wife and I to consider getting an alarm system for our apartment. We looked into this via various on-line sites and calls to security companies in our local area and found that the costs…