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.