Easy Change

So, around September of 2012, I was out to a nice dinner on the water at a restaurant with my mom and stepfather. During this time, over the course of dessert, a delicious cheesecake and cappuccino, we discussed the idea of renovating our aging kitchen. Previously, my mother had remodeled her kitchen as had my in-laws, so I was fairly familiar with the process, or so I thought. Immediately, my mother seized on the idea and encouraged me. I felt fairly confident that things were going well and would continue in such manner so that we would be able to afford a modest remodel and so I suggested that we go forward. As I continued to discuss it, we began to make tentative plans to secure a contractor to discuss the overall vision as well as plans to our local home depot store to look at various materials and see if we would be interested in going forward on the project (depending on the cost of the materials needed). This remodel included all aspects of a remodel other than change of...

It was incredibly clear to me after a cookout this past summer that I was not nearly as diversified as I had thought I was previously. Let me back up a minute. Our household owns all sorts of various investments. This is not uncommon for people in their early thirties who have professional, white-collar jobs. People have retirement accounts in various mutual funds with different brokerage companies etc. This is not news. However, it became clear to me this past summer that there was something wrong with this idea that all of my wealth was outside of my control. Namely, it was electronic. I found that this was somewhat disturbing to me when I began to consider all of the various changes that can happen so quickly in the financial markets and with the currency changes that are ongoing (There's talk of QE4 coming.) Over the past several years I began to watch Consuelo Mack Wealthtrack and I find it to be a phenomenal show for people who are really interested in learning more abou...

So last night, a glass broke in the kitchen. Not terribly exciting....and actually quite annoying when you really just want to relax and not have to do chores. This quickly turned into a project involving fixing the vacuum cleaner because it was clogged and doesn't get emptied regularly. This vacuum has been in our house for about 4+ years and has generally done a good job but has had a few rough moments where we really thought it was done. In on circumstance, a plastic piece broke that held the hose and only with a copious amount of super glue did that damage get fixed. Now that there is a dog in the house in addition to the cat, I really wanted to make sure that I got a vacuum that could handle the pet hair so I chose the lightweight dyson DC24 animal bagless vacuum . I have an amazon card and due to the triple points, I generally prefer to buy items from them. Unfortunately, Walmart had a much better deal where I got a 90 dollar e-gift card for the same product/price. W...

Currently I live in a suburban town in southeastern Massachusetts with a condo association with a ridiculously low condo fee. There. I said it. I am sure that like any organization, there are people in my association who are happy and some who are unhappy. A year ago, I was elected to the board of trustees of my condo association. That was certainly the case then; people were unhappy at the way the property looked and how much service they were getting for the money spent. However, now it is very clear to me that the amount of money that is being spent is not enough to cover the basics on the property. What is the result? People end up spending large amounts of their time and frankly, wasting large sums of money on the property. Condo fees in townhouse style condos typically go toward building maintenance, plowing, and landscaping. In our complex there is no pool, no clubhouse, no exercise room or other shared space. The net result is that the fees can remain relatively low. Howev...

One of the most important skills, indeed, the most important skill when it comes to personal finance is the simple rule: Spend less than you make. This is a simple rule that works for handling all personal financial situations. If applied correctly and the wisdom that it imparts is correctly understood, it can determine the course of your financial future. Personally, I am continuing to work on ways that I can spend less than I make. For this to happen, I need to accurately understand all of my expenses and all of my sources of income and determine how I can track it and ensure that I take steps until my income is larger than my expenses. I have reached this point many years ago and the progress has been positive since then and I consider myself lucky. Now, I am proceeding down the path and I realize that there are two aspects to this constant quest--a shorter term aspect which consists of very specific steps that can be taken in the very near term. Then there is also a longer ter...

I found this post recently and I thought it was quite interesting to look back and see how reasonable and accurate it was since about 2 years have passed since it was written. So, I leave the full post here for you to read and my ideas/comments are at the end. To say that this month has been difficult with the spending would be a huge understatement. Just this past weekend I went overboard on the spending with clothes and christmas shopping. What's more, the car needed new brakes this weekend--420 dollars! Yikes! Yes, Christmas shopping. I know that it is early, but I still intend to be prepared and get it out of the way. That said, there are huge cutbacks this year. I'm hoping this update with help me get some perspective. First off, in our own families, we are keeping the gifts much smaller. Even though I normally give bonds to my nephews and neices I have decided to not do that this year. The bonds are normally quite small and we need to make sure we're being mo...

Thankfully, I have been debt free except for mortgage for over a year, and without a personal car payment on my own car for more than two years. My car is approaching 200,000 miles and knowing deciding what kind of car to buy has consumed a lot of time for me and I find myself wondering what the best kind of car is to get when the time comes. Budgeting the money for a new car is a major motivation for this. And in order to know how much to budget, I have to consider what kind of car I will purchase which is the subject of this post. In terms of changes since I last bought a car, I now have a pug. As a result, there is more fur than you can shake a stick at and I am considering a car with a hatchback/cargo area for the dog where he could be safe and comfortable as opposed to being stuck with having a bulky crate in the back seat. Other than that, I know that I want to maintain with either a small or mid-size car, but nothing larger (although truth-be-told, I'd love to have one)...

One of the biggest things that has made it possible for me to be able to improve my personal financial situation is the maintaining of a freedom fund. A freedom fund is a different bucket of money that is used for clear and present expenses coming in the next 12 months. This is entirely separate money from your emergency fund. The Emergency fund is some bucket of money that is set aside as insurance against loss of income for unavoidable expenses. When something happens and the income is lost, it is difficult to adjust lifestyle immediately. In fact, when you typically lose your income, there can be difficulty adjusting because you now have larger amounts of available time and this may coincide with some residual depression/anxiety resulting in an uptick in spending. If you're anything like me, there are a series of expenses that you'd cut immediately if there was a loss in income. Then there are probably a series of expenses that you'd cut only if absolutely necessary...

This weekend, Donald Luskin had an interesting and compelling piece in the Wall Street Journal that forecasted the impending doom to stock and bond prices were we to see the adjustments that are slated for the end of the year. I encourage you to read Donald Luskin 's piece to see if you agree with him. Then come back here....its ok. I will wait. For me, what is most interesting about this piece is not the doom-and-gloom scenario that Luskin is talking about. Instead, it is about what to do next? I recently found myself wondering what the correct next course of action would be in light of such a decline and how I might reduce risk to be better positioned. I am fortunate enough to be in the high end as far as US Household Income is concerned and measured. And of course, these numbers change all of the time and there is very little certainty about things. So, the question becomes, if you are lucky enough to be well positioned, you have more to lose if you're sandwiched. Of c...

Kiva is a wonderful site that provides opportunities for regular people to provide loans to people in other far-off places, often in developing countries with the goal of helping their businesses become more self-sufficient. Kiva borrowers have a very high payback rate -- I think it was in the high 95+% so the loans are relatively safe. Of course, there is no interest, so there's not any goal of making money. Instead, the goal is to provide access to cheap credit/capital for these businesses. This is something that we have here in the United States at very low cost. If you want, you can use this referral link to sign up and get a free loan opportunity worth 25 dollars.

Its nearly April 15th and I have not yet begun to procrastinate about finishing my taxes. In short, I need to get it done this weekend in order to make sure that I get it done on time. Otherwise, we'll be in big trouble. I've been working on figuring out whether or not there is anything that I can do to make it easier for the next time, but I think that the most obvious thing I can do is stay more organized. This particular year there were a bunch of things that were out of sorts: 1. Lost my W-2 and had to get it replaced. 2. Didn't get an appointment with an accountant early. 3. Wasn't sure whether or not I was going to be eligible to contribute to a Roth, and out of panic, took the money out. Then it turned out I was fine, and I should have left the money in! What an utter waste! For next year, I will make some changes to make this process easier next time around. 1. I will avoid the roth entirely so I don't worry about the eligibility issues. 2. I will make sure ...

One of the things that I really like about the internet is the ability to connect to organizations and efforts that are often halfway across the world. One major thing that I have noticed as a change in my life has been when I got a dog this year. He is less than a year old and was purchased at an AKC breeder so that I felt confident in his genetics etc. However, that does not mean that I am heartless and don't understand the importance of rescue for animals. In fact, one such organization came across my inbox today and I thought they were worth donating to since they were handling such a difficult situation. There are many dog rescue organizations, but this one really stuck out for me because it is the same breed as the one I own and also because the sheer volume really is staggering. Here are some links for the organization; please donate if you are able. I am sure they need every penny they can get. http://www.facebook.com/HomewardBoundPugs http://homewardboundpugs.chipin.com/32...

This morning I watched WealthTrack with Matt Mclellan, who is now running several First Eagle funds, including the global funds which has some amazing records for the trailing periods. He provided some new ideas that were very compelling for me...but the main idea that I like was this: The real risk is not investing because there are no real risk free assets. This, simply put, is that with the real inflation numbers taken into account, preservation of capital is impossible, Mclellan states, unless you invest. Put simply, the challenge and fear for most individual investors is that there is entirely too much volatility in the markets. Looking at a good overall measure of volatility in the market, the VIX as a component of certain ETNs, you can look at this as an example: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEARCA%3AVXX In the end, McLellan argues, you must construct your portfolio from good individual businesses.

As you might have noticed, I left a mutual fund ticker as a teaser at the end of my one of my earlier posts: DFSAX. This ticker is a mutual fund that is managed in part by Andrew Lo, a renowned MIT professor which is designed as a multi-strategy mutual fund. Multi-strategy funds exist as a mechanism to reduce the overall risk in the market by hedging. Hedging/Multi-Strategy funds allow more freedom within the fund to choose different investments. According to Google, these are the top 10 holdings of the fund as of 1/22/2012: Top 10 holdings Security Net Assets German Euro Schatz Futures Dec11 Xeur 8.25% 10yr Japan Govt Bond Ftrs Tse Dec11 Xtks 7.50% 3yr Australian Tbond Futures Dec11 Xsfe 4.22% 10yr Us Treasury Note Futures Mar12 Xcbt 3.41% German Euro Bund Futures Dec11 Xeur 2.81% Uk Long Gilt Bond Futures Mar12 Xlif 2.76% German Euro Bobl Futures Dec11 Xeur 2.28% Msci Taiwan Index Futures Dec11 Xses 1.10% 10yr Govt Of Canada Bond Ftrs Mar12 Xmon 1.04% As...

This morning I tuned in to Consuelo Mack Wealthtrack. It is one of my favorite shows to listen to with respect to personal finance, but more tuned in on the investing side. I think that the subject matter is quite fascinating, although not as titillating as say the Suze Orman show (which I also happen to like). On this week's show, Consuelo interviewed Phil DeMuth, author of the little book on alternative investments. I found that this was a very interesting author and he seemed like a down-to-earth kind of guy, which is a nice, refreshing change compared to many guests that appear on the show who sometimes seem like they are a little bit divorced from the plight of everyman. Her other guest was John Hathaway, founder of the Tocqueville Gold Fund. During an interesting interchange, there was a comparison of a large sum of gold versus an equal amount of the assets of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, and the preference seemed to be Berkshire for Phil. However, John Hathaway wa...