I wrote about my college roommate that got by on $6 of food per week and I’ve decided that I’m going to play the Frugal Advocate for the month of February. My plan is to buy large bags of beans and rice and a bag of chicken quarters and/or chicken breasts. I’ll try to keep…
Month: January 2007
Why I Don’t Use Debit Cards with Visa/MasterCard Logo
This article epitomizes why I don’t ever use any debit cards with Visa/MasterCard logos. Generally, when I open a new checking account, the rep is always eager to get me hooked up with a Visa or Mastercard branded Debit card and I always request a regular ATM card with pin. On rare occasions, I will…
Kudos To American Express
American Express is a company that people either love or hate. I’ve come across websites dedicated to bashing American Express but I’ve had nothing but good customer service from this company over the years. The latest great thing they’ve done for me is forgive my stupid mistake. A few weeks ago I paid my statement…
Investment Research 101 – Getting Ideas
The past two days I’ve written a hypothetical story about where investment ideas can be found but if you can change your mindset to OBSERVE everything around you when you’re somewhere the ideas will begin to come naturally. Going to the mall to shop? Why not sit down for a few minutes and watch the…
Investment Research 101 – Day 2
Yesterday, you opted to skip lunch and research some of the investment ideas you came up with during your first day at work. You diligently printed out some news articles, researched the ticker symbols over at finance.yahoo.com, and printed the balance sheets, cash flow statements, and income statements. You looked into the insider selling transactions…
Investment Research 101
Every investment activity starts with an idea.  I’m going to walk you through how I pick up investment ideas on any given day. I’ll run through this in a hypothetical scenario but it will apply just the same. Hypothetical: You work for company XYZ which has 700 employees.  You have money vested in your company…
Fractals & Derivatives of Derivatives – An ETF Component Guide
From Wikipedia: In colloquial usage, a fractal is “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced/size copy of the whole.” See the pattern? About a year ago, I took the kids to the zoo and we came across a magnificent tree. It…
Theory of Non-capitalists
I have a theory as to why non-capitalist types behave and offer the advice they do. Before I tell you, I must take you in my little time machine back to my college days. During my college years I encountered a girl named Sara in one of my classes. I thought Sara as a bit…
Thinking About Long Term Consequences of Your Actions (for PFBloggers)
Greg, a reader, posted a comment on a post that started with the following line, “I think the issue is that a lot of people just don’t see the long-term consequences of their actions.” The comment was related to a post I wrote entitled, “Everyone Has A Vice” and was talking about something else but…
Writing an ETF Covered Call – Epilogue
If you missed my first post, you’ll want to read it here. Today is Options Expiry and it looks like SMH will close below the $35 strike price which means I get to keep the $850 (2.5%) premium AND I get to hold on to my shares so that I can write February 07 or…