Financial Regrets From This Past Year and What I’ll Do Differently In ‘09
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Although we are financially secure and tend to make wise decisions regarding our finances, we still screw up sometimes and do things that we later regret. We’re human. However, while we may have regrets I choose to look at them as learning opportunities. Whatever we regret from this past year is something that can be […]
Best Bets for Holiday Wish Lists, Investing Goals
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Here are Kiplinger’s experts’ picks for 2008. Best Carry-On Travel Bag: Doug Dyment, founder of OneBag.com, advises choosing a bag without curves and wheels, both of which take up storage space. It should also be soft-sided and made of industrial nylon so it’s malleable and can handle being stuffed…
The New Rules for Investing Your Money
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The wisdom of investing in a smorgasbord of categories rests on the premise that something always works. U.S. stocks in a funk? Buy bonds and foreign stocks. The dollar is plunging? Offset it with income funds from countries with strengthening currencies. Worried about inflation? Add oil, gold and…
Dave Ramsey Falters in a Crummy Economy
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By Maggie Ellis, guest writer
I know many people who are followers of Dave Ramsey’s financial advice. Since the economy has tanked, it seems like I’m seeing even more people joining the Dave bandwagon, looking for a way out of the financial messes that they have gotten themselves into. His “Total Money Makeover” and the associated […]
Misconceptions About Investing
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I recently wrote about a conversation I had with my 25-year-old son, John. John had just read a story in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance about a young investor named Deirdre, also 25, who had amassed more than $100,000 in Vanguard index mutual funds. “How come you never told me about mutual funds?” he…
Recession Opportunities
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Is this a recession or opportunity knocking? I’ve seen this question posed all over the media. A lot of the articles are aimed at higher income execs who work the stock markets. But I’m beginning to see front porch lights coming on in businesses everywhere.
Yes, we’re all still feeling the pinch of high unemployment and […]
Review: The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets
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Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book.
Peter Schiff is a huge pessimist about the future of the economy, and because of that, he’s probably the perfect person to write this book.
The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets is the seventh in a series of “Little Books” (I have reviewed […]
Bush’s 8 Years of Financial Distress
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Barry Ritholtz has an interesting article that takes a look at how financial markets fared during Bush’s presidency… Here is a snippet of his article…
The full article is chock full of interesting charts. Read the rest of the article here.
Investing for the Risk-Averse
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You know that you should be greedy when others are fearful, as Warren Buffett likes to say. And your brain is telling you that now is the time to buy because stock prices are low. But you’re frozen, agape at the market’s craziness every trading day.
The Intelligent Investor: A Century of Stock Market History
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This is the third in a weekly series of articles providing a chapter-by-chapter in-depth “book club” reading of Benjamin Graham’s investing classic The Intelligent Investor. Warren Buffett describes this book: “I read the first edition of this book early in 1950, when I was nineteen. I thought then that it was by far the […]
Earning Regular Income from Stock Investing via Dividends
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A few days ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with a fellow in his early sixties who has already retired. He had been self-employed his entire life. I told him about The Simple Dollar and I asked him, if he didn’t mind, if he would tell me about how he had […]
The Intelligent Investor: The Investor and Inflation
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This is the third in a weekly series of articles providing a chapter-by-chapter in-depth “book club” reading of Benjamin Graham’s investing classic The Intelligent Investor. Warren Buffett describes this book: “I read the first edition of this book early in 1950, when I was nineteen. I thought then that it was by far the […]
Factors Driving Current US Dollar Rally
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If you have been watching CNBC lately, you’ll notice that the US Dollar has been skyrocketing against the Euro and Canadian Dollar.
It seemed strange to me that the dollar stronger amidst a crumbling worldwide economy, so I did some research.
Possible Factors Behind the Latest Rally
1) The US Dollar is still the worldwide reserve currency.
When […]
The Bliss of Ignorance
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I have a friend who is, shall we say, “crunchy” (in the best sense of the word). She and her family eschew many modern conveniences such as dishwashers, fast food, and big box stores in favor of doing things the old fashioned way. They are environmentally conscious to a fault and very outdoorsy. A few […]
In This Chaotic Market, Stay Steady With These Solid Investing Tenets
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What are we supposed to make of this whiplash market? I’m certain that the only sane way to play the crazy ups and downs is to hold fast to the investing tenets we at Kiplinger have preached for years (that’s why they’re tenets). Among them:
The Intelligent Investor: Investment Versus Speculation
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This is the second in a weekly series of articles providing a chapter-by-chapter in-depth “book club” reading of Benjamin Graham’s investing classic The Intelligent Investor. Warren Buffett describes this book: “I read the first edition of this book early in 1950, when I was nineteen. I thought then that it was by far the […]
Investment Properties for College Students
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I was chatting with a neighbor – Mike — over the weekend. Mike’s daughter is a senior in high school and looking at a lot of different colleges. Mike is a successful dentist but he is still worried about the economy and the costs of putting his daughter through school, even though he […]
Ten Steps for Remaining Calm in a Financially Turbulent Time
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As I write this, the stock market has just completed the single best day in its history. This follows the worst week in its history, in which the market lost approximately 20% of its value (depending on the indicator you use). The volatility of the stock market has never been higher, and people […]
What the Economic Crisis Means to You
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At any given time in your life you may find yourself in a financial situation not of your making. The recent credit crisis in America is a prime example. It is a uniquely perfect storm to be sure, the kind of economic crisis that comes along once every 50 -100 years perhaps, but that doesn’t […]
How to Read a Stock Chart in Just Five Seconds
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Whenever I tune into CNBC, I’m usually blown away with the raw amount of data thrown at me. For the average person, there’s no way to separate what’s useful from what isn’t, so people often rely on the pundits to tell them. I’d prefer not to do that - I know from my […]
Review: Millionaire by Thirty
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Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book.
Over and over again, I get encouraged by readers to review the “hot” personal finance book of the moment - the one that describes an investment or personal finance plan that takes great advantage of the situation of that moment in time.
I usually […]
Retirement Plans in a Down Stock Market
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After writing my piece yesterday on fear and the economic situation, a very eloquent reader named “Maggie” wrote to me:
I completely agree with your assessment on the economy, particularly if you’re young. There is no crisis that is well served by panic and I don’t think that the current economic situation is anywhere near […]
Current State of the Markets
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Bankaholic reader Wendell posted a link to this article, which is a realistic, accurate, no-nonsense summary of the current state of the economy. This is MUST read. Here’s a snippet:
I will say it again: the last time we saw these economic indicators was 1977-1979. Do you remember 1979-1981? Let me remind you: falling […]
Derivatives: Credit Default Swaps
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I’m surprised mainstream media does not talk about CDS (credit default swaps). I think you will hear about this issue a lot more in the next few months.
The CDS derivative market is a $62 trillion market, and is rampant with wild speculation. This is a titanic figure considering the GDP of US is $13 trillion […]
Looking at Your Career as an Investment
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Last night, I was leafing through the September 22 issue of BusinessWeek (one of the handful of magazines I subscribe to - a great read) when I came across an article by Lewis Braham entitled “The Missing Link in Your Portfolio? Your Job” (it’s titled differently in the online version, which I linked to).
The […]
Saving Money Can Be Social
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Why do many people opt to spend rather than save money? Because saving isn’t fun. It’s not as much fun as going to the movies, or out to eat, or to an amusement park. And why is that? Because many of the things we do for entertainment are social. They get us out amongst other […]
Review: The Little Book That Saves Your Assets
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Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book.
I’ve been a pretty big fan of the “Little Books, Big Profits” series published by Wiley and Sons, of which this is the sixth entry. I’ve reviewed each one and quite liked most of them - they do a very good job
Here are […]
Using TreasuryDirect for Conservative Investing
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Over the last few days, with all the tumult on Wall Street (AIG and Merrill and Lehman, oh my!), several people have written to me expressing deep personal concern about investing in the stock market. They see a 25% dip in the value of the market this year and hear a lot of apocalyptic […]
Sitting on the Nest Egg
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What I Know
Among today’s financial headlines is the prediction that stocks will rise today because traders are optimistic about the Freddie and Fannie takeovers. The articles I read commonly noted this optimism, but none of them explained to me why government intervention was cause for optimism.
Strangely enough, another headline noted that oil was […]
Why Allocations Make A Big Difference
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Bill writes in:
I keep reading tons of stuff about asset allocation and how you need to diversify your investments. Is it really that big of a deal?
In short, just starting a Roth IRA or a 401(k) or an investment account isn’t enough. If you merely open that account, pick a few default investments, […]