Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

Mutual Fund Experiment

Based on my research I put together a formula to rank mutual funds based on long-term (5+ years) performance. I excluded mutual funds from my list that require initial investments of more than $5,000. These are my own recommendations, I do not work for any of these funds or any of the companies in their holdings. I have no influence over their gain or loss in value. I'm watching the 1-year performance of these, and other mutual funds to tweak and improve my formula. Here is my ideal $10K investment portfolio if I had invested yesterday:


EKWBX - 14.628 @ $68.36
USAGX - 85.494 @ $35.09
FKRCX - 25.284 @ $39.55
TGLDX - 16.358 @ $61.13
OPGSX - 27.188 @ $36.78
EKWCX - 14.742 @ $67.83
MDLTX - 18.385 @ $54.39
FAGPX - 26.532 @ $37.69


Total value as of May 24, 2010 - $9999.77


I will keep an eye on this and make periodic reports.

Ouch

The Dow is down almost 800 points this morning on news that Greek government employees are violently rioting at the prospect of taking pay cuts in order to keep the country from going bankrupt.

National Tax Freedom Day

Happy Tax Freedom Day to everyone. According to the Tax Foundation the average American pays 26.89% of their income in taxes. This naturally means that 26.89% of the year is spent earning money for the government rather than yourself. At 3:34AM this morning 26.89% of the year has passed, so assuming the government took all of your taxes at the beginning of the year, today would be the day that you are able to start keeping your wages for yourself. Those living in Alaska get to celebrate Tax Freedom Day early, as the lower state taxes allow them to celebrate on March 26. Connecticut residents have higher taxes and therefore cannot celebrate until April 27. See information for all 50 states at the TaxFoundation.org site.

Is the Convenience Really Worth It?

Trent, writing for The Simple Dollar, calculated the price premiums of pre-cut produce at the grocery store compared to buying whole items and cutting them yourself. The conclusion? Unless you earn over $50 per hour, it probably is not worth the extra cost.

Read the full article here.

Bargain Shopping

A good way to make your money stretch farther is to buy things at significant discounts. Spending less money on something that you were already planning to buy is always a great option. However, some people fall into the trap of buying things they did not plan on buying simply because they were a great deal. When you do this, you are not really saving money.
A great site that lists many short lasting deals is SlickDeals.net. Members are constantly uploading new deals that they have located online and posted them for the rest of us. If you keep your eyes open you can get some great discounts on things you already were shopping for, but make sure to keep that impulse buying in check.

www.slickdeals.net

Many People Don't Want to Retire

Dave Ramsey mentioned yesterday that a significant portion of Americans have no intention to retire. Twenty-seven percent of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings toward retirement! And 43% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved. A typical social security ckeck barely covers rent in a half-decent apartment these days, so that isn't going to go very far.

I'm a pretty cheap person, but I don't think $10,000 will last me very long when I retire, especially when inflation is factored into the equation. You can read a full article on the topic at CNN Money here.

Book Cooking

You've heard of corporations cooking books to make their financial position look better to analysts and stockholders, but countries are equally guilty of such deeds. Jim Jubak explains in his article on MSN Money. Click here to read the full article.

Got Gold?

I just found a random ad from a place called Uncommon Wisdom: Extraordinary Insights For Growing Your Wealth (I'm not endorsing them at all, just naming the source of this information). Basically this is a place wanting me to buy gold. But they don’t want me to buy just any gold, they want me to buy Austrian 100 Corona and Hungarian 100 Korona coins. Having never heard of these particular coins a quick internet search revealed that Corona/Korona were gold coins minted by the Austro-Hungarian empire staring in the late 1800s, composing of 90% gold by mass.

The reason to buy these particular coins, according to this ad, is because they are lesser known than more traditional gold coins such as American Eagles, or Maple Leafs, or Pandas and therefore do not command the same price premiums above spot as other bullion coins. While this may be true, it is also the biggest drawback. If you do intend to buy gold as an investment or bartering tool in the event the world goes to pot, you could theoretically purchase more grams of gold in the form of Corona/Korona coins for the same amount of money as Eagles, etc. However, because these coins are lesser known you will never be able to sell them for the same price as an equivalent gold mass of the others. And if the world does indeed go to pot, it would be unlikely that you’ll be able to barter with 100+ year-old gold coins that no one recognizes.

If someone were to buy gold for the sake of owning gold in the form of coins, something like this may be the way to go. However, know that any savings you would get by buying lesser known coins will also result in less profits whenever you decide to sell said coins. But most importantly, I would recommend NEVER buying any sort of investment (or anything else for that matter) from unsolicited ads showing up in your mailbox, either physical or electronic. Talk to a local coin dealer for more information about coins if you intend to buy coins, always shop around for the best prices, and make sure you are dealing with someone reputable.

Being Patient Pays

I found this video on YouTube and found that it makes some good points about buying cars. There is very little financial sense in purchasing a brand new vehicle. A better idea would be to purchase a slightly used vehicle (around a year old, with under 15K miles) for 20-25% less than the original price. This video below has a similar idea.



The part that is glaring to me is the average car payment of $464, which is slightly more than I pay for rent each month. The video also makes some assumptions, such as getting a 12% return on your money that you've invested in mutual funds. Yes, statistically the stock market has averaged around 12% in the long term, but saving for 10 months, 20 months, or even a few years hardly seems very long term to me so you might be looking at lower returns on your money in the short term. Other than that, it's a solid idea that would do wonders for most long-term budgets.